Theodore Roosevelt Abroad

by J. Lee Thompson

  Instead of being directed by one or two dominant peoples as in the past, the new movement was shared by many nations and had been from every standpoint of “infinitely greater moment than anything hitherto seen.” This was ref lected in an extraordinary growth in wealth, in population, in power of organization and in mastery of mechanical activity and natural resources “accompanied and signalized” by an immense outburst of energy and restless initiative. The result of this in the first place has been the conquest of space, to spread into all the practically vacant continents, and the development of “un-heard-of military superiority as compared with their former rivals.” In Roosevelt’s view, these two factors created for the first time “really something that approaches a world civilization, a world movement.” The net outcome of what had occurred over the past four centuries was that civilization of the European type now exercised a “more or less profound effect over practically the entire world.” This reflected something “wholly different from what has ever hitherto been seen.” The world was bound together as never before. The bonds, he admitted, were “sometimes those of hatred rather than love,” but were bonds nevertheless.36

  In this new world movement the influence of European governmental principles was strikingly illustrated by the fact that admiration for them had even “broken down the iron barriers of Moslem conservatism,” so that their introduction had become burning questions in Turkey and in Persia. At the same time, the unrest in Egypt, India and the Philippines, took the form of demanding a government closer in form to the United States or Britain. From new discoveries in science to new methods of combating or applying socialism, there was no movement of note which could take place in any part of the globe “without powerfully affecting masses of people” on every continent. “For weal or for woe,” the peoples of mankind were “knit together far closer than ever before.”37

  Unfortunately, Roosevelt saw in this world movement “signs of much that bodes ill.” The machinery was “so highly geared,” the tension and strain so great that he feared ruin could follow “any great accident, from any breakdown” or the mere wearing out of the machine itself. He saw many “forces and tendencies” at work in the present that had brought down previous civilizations such as Rome. These included “knowledge, luxury, and refinement, wide material conquests, territorial administration on a vast scale, an increase in the mastery of mechanical appliances and in applied sciences.”38

  Personally, however, Roosevelt did not believe the new world civilization would fall. He asserted that on the whole “we have grown better and not worse” and the future “holds more for us than even the great past has held.” But it was up to mankind, “high of heart and strong of hand,” to make the dreams of the future come true “by our own mighty deeds.” TR concluded by expressing his hope that the world movement “which is now felt throbbing in every corner of the globe” would bind the nations of the world together and at the same time leave “unimpaired that love of country in the individual citizen” which in the present stage of the world’s progress was “essential to the world’s well-being.” In his view, the good citizen, must be a good citizen of his own country before he could “with advantage be a citizen of the world at large.”39

  The Emperor, Empress and several other members of the royal family attended the address, and spoke of it approvingly. Nevertheless, unlike elsewhere in Europe, and ominously for the future, TR noted that, though they behaved entirely correctly, the “Germans did not like me, and did not like my country.” The “stiff, domineering and formal” upper classes, with the organized army, bureaucracy and industry of their “great, highly civilized and admirably administered country behind them” regarded America with a dislike “all the greater because they could not make it merely contempt.” Since they saw America as entirely unorganized, in their view “we had no business to be formidable rivals at all” and they were exasperated to feel that “our great territory, great natural resources, and strength of individual initiative” enabled the United States to be “formidable industrial rivals” and, “more incredible still, that thanks to our Navy and ocean-protected position, we were in a military sense wholly independent and slightly defiant.”40

  Moreover, Roosevelt personally “typified the nation they disliked.” The German upper classes did not like the social type he represented. The lower classes were socialists to whom he was “really an enemy rather than a friend” and his ideals were just as alien. The middle classes looked upon him as typifying a middle class country which was their business rival, “whose manners of life and ways of thought they regarded with profound dislike, and whose business rivalry was irritating and obnoxious.”41 It was with little regret, therefore, that the family left Berlin for London.

  Traveling through Germany in a royal rail carriage, every attention was shown them, and at the stations a few score or hundred polite and mildly curious people might be on hand. But when they crossed into Holland at the first stop a “wildly enthusiastic” crowd of ten thousand awaited the party. While the Colonel had been in Germany, Taft had wired a request that he act as America’s special ambassador to the funeral of Edward VII. In Washington Archie Butt commented that with the Kaiser and TR present, it would be “a wonder if the poor corpse gets a passing thought.”42 It was with his new post foremost in mind that TR arrived in London on May 16, 1910.

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  Chapter 8

  Last Rites: England

  The state funeral of Edward VII brought together the grandees of Europe for a final time before World War I swept away most of these human remnants of the old regime. Until the funeral was done, and with it his official capacity as special ambassador, TR stayed at Dorchester House, the cavernous Park Lane mansion that the U.S. ambassador Whitelaw Reid had taken on lease from Earl Morley.1With him were Edith, Kermit, Ethel, and a new arrival, his oldest daughter “Princess Alice,” or Mrs. Nicholas Longworth as she was since her White House marriage four years before. Alice brought with her black mourning attire from a recent family funeral, while Edith and Ethel, who had been warned in Germany by Mrs. Reid that the London shops had been emptied, bought proper clothing in Berlin. Alice also brought the latest political gossip from Washington and stayed up very late sharing it with her father, who told her of his disappointment in their mutual friend Taft’s administration and that he thought it would be impossible for him to speak for it in the fall elections.

  A royal carriage of state was put at the Colonel’s disposal, complete with a guard of six grave grenadiers in bearskins, who lined up and saluted while a bugler sounded off whenever he left or entered Dorchester House. The British Crown also assigned two special aides, Lord Cochrane and Captain Cunninghame R. N., as guides through the intricacies of the many formal calls TR made on the luminaries gathered in London, including King Frederick VIII of Denmark, King Haakon of Norway, King George I of Greece, and the German emperor, with whom he had another brief interview. Roosevelt commented that not only “all the Kings I had met, but the two or three I had not previously met, were more than courteous and the Kaiser made a point of showing his intimacy with me and of discriminating in my favor over all his fellow sovereigns.”2

  The day they arrived, Roosevelt and his family visited the catafalque of Edward VII at Buckingham Palace and afterwards, he and Ambassador Reid were received by George V and Queen Mary at Marlborough House. The new King was forty-five years old and a younger son who had been trained as a naval officer. But the death in 1892 of his brother, the Duke of Clarence, had thrust him forward. He was something of an unknown quantity and not particularly highly regarded.3 An avid hunter, though with no big game experience, the King was eager to hear from TR about the safari and conditions in general in his African possessions, all of which Roosevelt gladly supplied. Their hour-long discussion on May 16 soon turned from big game when the King congratulated TR on his speeches at Cairo and Khartoum, adding that he wished something along those lines, “but stronger,” could b
e openly stated at home. Roosevelt responded that he was considering just such a message for the Guildhall address he had already agreed to; however, not wanting to give offence, he intended first to consult with figures from both political parties, particularly Lord Cromer, still considered the British authority on Egypt, and Sir Edward Grey, the Liberal foreign secretary responsible for Egyptian affairs.4

  At a meeting arranged by Reid, TR found Cromer strongly supportive of a speech about Egypt, while warning him that he should be “rabidly attacked for making it.” The former Egyptian Proconsul told Roosevelt that in his view the Liberal government, abetted by his successor Gorst, were reaping the whirlwind from foolishly sharing too much power too soon. This conciliatory policy had only made the Egyptians hungry for more: hence the burgeoning agitation for selfgovernment. Cromer went on that he felt it “almost imperative that England should be told the truth by someone to whom England would listen.” The public had already heard what imperialists such as himself had to say, while the “people of the other way of thinking simply refused to listen to the facts.”5Many of these, in Cromer’s estimation, were in the Liberal Government.

  During a breakfast with Grey, Roosevelt found him “obviously uneasy” at the course his Liberal party was taking about Egypt. He was surprised that the foreign secretary also was “very anxious” for him to speak out, although both men knew that the Prime Minister, Henry Asquith, would disapprove. According to TR, Grey was in the “unpleasant position of finding his party associates tending as a whole to refuse to allow him to do what was necessary: and he wanted his hand forced.” The Colonel offered a vow of secrecy concerning their meeting which Grey declined, telling him that if a question arose in the House of Commons he would not only admit talking the matter over, but that he approved and that TR was “rendering a real service to Great Britain by saying it, and that I was strengthening his hands.”6 Roosevelt appraised Grey as “one of the finest fellows I have ever met” and agreed with him on “both internal and external politics.” He also was very much in sympathy with the Radical domestic views of Grey’s Cabinet fellows David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and John Burns, president of the Local Government Board, and “took a real fancy to both.” Burns struck him as having “a saner judgment,” while Lloyd George, being a Welshman, was more emotional, but at the same time “the most powerful statesman I met in England, in fact the man of power.”7

  The odd man out among the Liberal leaders, in TR’s estimation, was Winston Churchill, whom he refused to see. As noted earlier, the two had first met a decade before in New York when the newly elected Member of Parliament was on a speaking tour in support of the British cause in the Boer War. Three years later, Churchill turned his party coat from Conservative to Liberal over the tariff reform/free trade fiscal controversy that still divided the country in 1910. Crossing the aisle in the Commons had gained Churchill office, lately the Presidency of the Board of Trade in the Asquith Government, but he was branded the second most hated man in politics after Joseph Chamberlain, the tariff reform champion. Ironically, in two years’ time TR would follow an even more maverick political course and garner a similar reputation.

  Another speaker scheduled for the Guildhall that month, on a slightly different subject, world peace, was Andrew Carnegie, who had arrived in England a few days before TR. When asked by the press whether Roosevelt’s reelection would further the cause of international peace, he commented that he had “a fine peace record, but we all know there’s a bit of the barbarian in him.” On the other hand, he declared that the Kaiser was a “true peacemaker” and “peace-lover” who would close his career “unstained by the shedding of human blood.”8Carnegie sent TR a message of greetings on May 13 from his resort hotel in Torqay, “Welcome Colonel Commanding to London.” He warned him to take care of his still ailing throat for which England had a “dangerous climate in May,” and he thought it “very fine” that he was to be America’s representative at Edward’s funeral. He planned to come to London afterwards to try and see Roosevelt’s “cronie” [sic] the Kaiser. He went on “If you and he don’t make a team that can drag the cart behind I am a disappointed man.”9

  Carnegie did not receive Roosevelt’s report on the failure of his Berlin mission until the next day when he wrote again in light of that, and the indefinite postponement of the Wrest Park summit in England. He told TR that he had not seen the Berlin papers and had not known that all had not “past [sic] off well.” However, the eversanguine Carnegie was sure at least that “you and the Emperor now being friends may some day count for much.” He went on that the Wrest Park conference was only a way to give TR “a chance to become known to the leaders here and they to know you. It may make all the difference some day that you are friends.” In his usual over the top style, Carnegie continued, “Your future is, recent events excepted, likely to excel your past since you are a born leader of men with the sublime audacity to perform wonders.”10

  Regardless of Roosevelt’s lack of success in Berlin, Whitelaw Reid also hoped to salvage the conference at his Oxfordshire house. About the eminent guest list he had worked so hard to build, he told TR, “I am sure that the presence of three prime ministers at one table, filled out with others of such distinction” as John Morley, the Secretary of State for India, and Lord Lansdowne, a former Conservative foreign secretary, “would constitute an occasion not lightly to be lost.”11 Unfortunately for the hopes of Carnegie and Reid, though Roosevelt did visit Wrest Park, the death of Edward VII scrambled all arrangements and there would be no gathering of eagles. TR instead saw Carnegie in London and many other of the notables on the proposed guest list at other occasions.

  The night before Edward’s funeral, Roosevelt attended a formal dinner at Buckingham Palace for the special envoys that surprised him by turning into, in his words, “a veritable wake—I hardly know what else to call it.” TR and Stéphen Pichon, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, were the only non-royals in the company of seventy. But even Pichon’s clothes were “stiff with gold lace and he wore sashes and orders,” while Roosevelt was the only one present in plain evening dress. After perfunctory words of condolence to the King, it was “on with the revel! It was not possible to keep up an artificial pretense of grief any longer, and nobody tried.”12

  At dinner George V sat in the middle of one side of the immense table with his cousin Wilhelm II across from him and everyone else arranged by order of precedence. TR had Prince Heinrich of Prussia, the German Emperor’s younger brother and commander of the High Seas Fleet, on his right hand. On his left, he found a “tall, shambling young man in a light blue uniform,” whose place card proclaimed him Prince Ernest of Cumberland. In reply to TR’s remark that the young man’s title was English, but he seemed German, he answered, “with a melancholy glance at the very vivacious Emperor” opposite them, that he “ought to be Prince of Brunswick and King of Hanover and would be ‘if not for him,’ ” with a nod to Wilhelm. TR considered suggesting that the young man “relieve his feelings by throwing a carafe at the usurper.”13

  That evening, Roosevelt found himself engaged in conversation by the Bulgarian ruler, Ferdinand I, who had angered his fellow sovereigns by taking the title Czar, which was thought “bumptious.” He was also involved in a row with the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand over precedence. The Archduke did not like the Czar or Bulgaria and thought that as heir to “a real and big empire” he should have priority. On the express train to London, the Archduke had succeeded in having his car inserted in front of the Czar’s who then refused to let the Austrian walk back through it to the dining car. Instead he was forced to get off and on the train at two stations. All in all, TR considered the royal spat delightfully amusing and as “utterly childish” as similar “nursery quarrels” he had refereed, much to his distaste, in official Washington. Such matters, however, were of import to Europe’s rulers, and the Kaiser sided with his Austrian ally in the affair. While the Colonel and Czar Ferdinand chatted, Wil
helm stalked over to introduce Alfonso XIII, the King of Spain, and with a “ferocious” look over his shoulder at the Czar, said of Alfonso, “he is worth talking to.”14

  For the state funeral the next morning, Theodore planned to wear his Rough Rider Colonel’s uniform; however, Edith insisted on plain evening dress, which meant that he stood out all the more, a penguin amongst the glorious uniformed plumage of the assembled international nobility. In the procession through London to Paddington Station, where a royal train for Windsor waited, nine kings riding three abreast followed Edward’s coffin, immediately behind which trotted Edward’s little white terrier, Caesar. The affronted Kaiser commented that he had “done many things in his life, but he had never before been obliged to yield precedence to a dog.”15This contretemps aside, Wilhelm put aside his previous animosity and proved, for all appearances at any rate, the “most genuine mourner” present of Edward VII, whose disappearance from the scene he believed would allow him to take his proper place at the head of European affairs.16

  Further back in the procession, TR shared a coach with the incensed French envoy, Pichon. The night before, he had complained to Roosevelt of the plain black coats of their coachmen, while red was worn for royalty. This he considered “an outrage, a slight upon the two great Republics.” At Buckingham Palace the following morning TR found Pichon, whom he described as “a queer looking creature at best” whose anger “made him look like a gargoyle,” even more agitated than the night before. Now he was infuriated that the two were to ride in what Roosevelt considered a gorgeous coach. Pichon explained that this was another outrage as the royals all had glass coaches. Since TR “had never heard of a glass coach except in connection with Cinderella,” he was “less impressed by the omission.”17