Colonel Roosevelt (134 page)

39
“Theodore, what”
Cleveland Dodge in Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 223.

40
One thing he had
TR,
Letters
, 7.359;
The New York Times
, 23 Mar. 1910. If TR had not quite “summoned” Pinchot, he had certainly written, in response to the latter’s
cri de coeur
of 31 Jan. 1909, “I do wish I could see you. Is there any chance of you meeting me in Europe?” TR,
Letters
, 7.51.

41
Roosevelt remained mute
TR,
Letters
, 7.63–64.

42
Remembering the squalor
Ibid., 7.63, 351–52. See Karl K. Barbir, “Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, the Middle East, and the Twentieth Century,”
The Journal of Middle Eastern and North African Intellectual and Cultural Studies
, 2.1 (Spring 2004). This useful article is marred by the inclusion of an alleged boast by TR that is so uncharacteristic in language and attitude that it cannot be credited without corroboration.

43
Roosevelt detected
Lodge,
Selections
, 2.364. “I must say,” TR wrote Whitelaw Reid on 24 Mar., “I should greatly like to handle Egypt and India for a few months. At the end of that time I doubtless would be impeached by the House of Commons but I should have things moving in fine order first.” TR,
Letters
, 7.63.

44
But he saw
TR,
Letters
, 7.351. In
Power, Faith, and Fantasy
, 258ff., Michael B. Oren makes clear the ambivalent attitude of most Americans toward Britain’s occupancy of Egypt in the last decades of the 19th century. TR’s contrasting sharp certainty in 1910 is seen as the consequence of his might-makes-right Middle Eastern policies as President. His Cairo speech, however, should also be related to his lifelong horror of terrorism, reawakened by his stay in General Gordon’s palace, and his tour of Omdurman in company with Slatin Pasha. See also TR’s 31 May 1910 Guildhall address, 72–74.

45
The real danger
TR,
Letters
, 7.351.

46
Sir Eldon Gorst
Ibid., 7.353.

47
Islamic fundamentalists
Sheik Ali Youssuf in
North American Review
, June 1910; Abbott,
Impressions of TR
, 186–87.

48
Small and struggling
Cairo University’s enrollment in 1910 was only 123 students, down disastrously from 403 in 1909. Egyptian State Information Service, winter 1998.

49
He tried not
The word
contempt
was TR’s own. TR,
Letters
, 7.65.

50
Swinging into
Theodore Roosevelt,
African and European Addresses
, Lawrence F. Abbott, ed. (New York, 1910), 26.

51
The tarboosh-wearers
Sheik Ali Youssuf in
North American Review
, June 1910; O’Laughlin,
From the Jungle Through Europe
, 69. Abbott, a white Christian American in TR’s thrall, contradicts Youssuf’s account of derision among the Muslims.

52
All good men
Abbott,
Impressions of TR
, 156–57.

53
Next day, comments
The Times
and
The Washington Post
, 30 Mar. 1910. Oren,
Power, Faith, and Fantasy
(318) calls this “the first major anti-American demonstration ever in the Middle East.” Among the many outraged telegrams protesting TR’s speech was one reading (in French): “We see with sorrow that you have no accurate idea of the capacity of the Egyptians whom you have wounded in their feelings and their pride.” (Unsigned fragment, 29 Mar. 1910 [TRP].) Also preserved in TRP is a letter, 30 Mar. 1910, from the sirdar of the Sudan, Sir Reginald Wingate: “You have assisted us more than you can possibly imagine, and I am proportionally grateful.” For a presentist critique of TR’s performance in Egypt, see Barbir, “Alfred Thayer Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, the Middle East, and the Twentieth Century.”

54
When he embarked
Sheik Ali Youssuf in
North American Review
, June 1910. About a year later, TR recalled that his “good advice” to the Egyptians had been received “with well-dissembled gratitude.” TR,
Works
, 6.455.

1
Epigraph
Robinson,
Collected Poems
, 75.

2
as if he were still
Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.”

3
He saw less
TR,
Letters
, 7.354.

4
Moving on
Ibid., 7.354–59; John C. O’Laughlin memo, ca. Apr. 1910 (OL). In an open letter to
The Outlook
, TR made sure that Catholics and Protestants back home understood his scruples. “The more an American sees of other countries the more profound must be his feelings of gratitude that in his own land there is not merely complete toleration but the heartiest goodwill and sympathy between sincere and honest men of different faith.” TR,
Letters
, 7.358.

5
He rejoiced
TR,
Letters
, 7.359–60; KR diary, 4 Apr. 1910 (KRP);
The New York Times
, 5 Apr. 1910. Citations for the rest of this chapter frequently refer to TR’s two epistolary accounts of his European experiences, to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 1 Oct. 1911, and to David Gray, 5 Oct. 1911. (TR,
Letters
, 7.348–99, 401–15.) Enormously long and often very funny, these letters have been separately published in
Cowboys and Kings: Three Great Letters by Theodore Roosevelt
, Elting E. Morison, ed. (Cambridge, Mass., 1954). More than any of TR’s other writings, they convey the full charm of his personality.

6
Roosevelt was unfazed
TR,
Letters
, 7.362–63. Before leaving Rome on 7 Apr., TR lunched with the Italian historian Guglielmo Ferrero, whose works he had read, and learned from, as President. (Morris,
Theodore Rex
, 495–96; and Ferrero, “Theodore Roosevelt: A Characterization,”
South Atlantic Quarterly
, 9 [1910].) TR was determined to make his trip through Europe an intellectual as well as a political odyssey. “Cannot you arrange,” he typically wrote to the American ambassador in Sweden, “to have me see Sven Hedin, Nathorst, Colthorp, Nordenskiöld and Montelius? Cannot I see with the last-named the collection of Swedish antiquities, and I would also like to see the battle flags of Gustavus and Charles XII, and the tombs of the kings. Cannot I meet Professor and Mrs. Retzius?” TR to Charles H. Graves, 22 Apr. 1910 (TRP).

7
Edith’s unmarried younger sister
See Sylvia Morris,
Edith Kermit Roosevelt
, 350–51 and
passim
. There is a vignette of Emily Carow in O’Laughlin,
From the Jungle Through Europe
, 98: “She reminded me of a little humming bird as she flitted from side to side … pointing out the beauties of the landscape.”

8
Lanky, passionate
Miller,
Gifford Pinchot
, prologue
passim;
Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.386.

9
Roosevelt, in contrast
Sullivan,
Our Times
, 4.486, describes Pinchot as one “whose eyes, as they pass through the world, instinctively look about for a hero, and for martyrdom in the hero’s service.” For a concise analysis of the relationship between Pinchot and TR, see Miller,
Gifford Pinchot
, 147–76.

10
“One of the best”
Ibid., 233. A long political letter from TR to Henry Cabot Lodge, written this day, avoids any mention of Pinchot. TR,
Letters
, 7.69–74.

11
All warned
Mowry,
TR
, 108, 125.

12
He was more
Lodge,
Selections
, 2.367; TR,
Letters
, 7.336. See also Morris,
Theodore Rex
, 486–87.

13
Four days later
EKR diary, 13 Apr. 1910 (TRC).

14
A familiar, courtly figure
TR,
Letters
, 7.368; Henry White to Mrs. White, 15 Apr. 1910 (HW).

15
the great comet
Halley’s Comet was just beginning its 1910 passage past the sun. It was observed in perihelion at 5° Aquarius over Curaçao on 19 Apr.

16
After a reunion
Henry White to Mrs. White, 15 Apr. 1910 (HW); TR,
Letters
, 7.369.

17
He spoke in French
Ibid.

18
Roosevelt had detected
TR,
Letters
, 7.360–61.
Tempora mutantur:
“The times are changing.”

19
The best that could
TR,
Letters
, 7.369, 409. TR was both right and wrong about Franz Ferdinand. The archduke was reactionary in the sense that he wanted to strengthen and centralize Austria-Hungary’s power over its restive Balkan neighbors.
But he was liberal in believing that the only way to do this was to allow Slavs more representation in the imperial government.

20
Meeting later
TR,
Letters
, 7.366.

21
At the same time
Martin Gilbert,
A History of the Twentieth Century: Volume 1: 1900–1933
(Toronto, 1997), 188. Germany’s former chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow, used the phrase “Nibelungen loyalty” to describe this compulsion. Michael Stürmer,
The German Empire, 1870–1918
(New York, 2000), xxviii.

22
Roosevelt repeated
TR,
Letters
, 7.377–78.

23
For the next thirty-six
O’Laughlin,
From the Jungle Through Europe
, 105; Henry White to Henry Cabot Lodge, 23 Apr. 1910 (HCLP). “They [Europeans] look on him as the greatest man in the world, and think it strange that with his youth and energy he should be in private life.” (Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.”) For TR’s half-puzzled, half-tickled reaction to his celebrity, see TR,
Letters
, 7.81.

24
He did not see
Carl E. Schorske,
Fin-de-Siècle Vienna: Politics and Culture
(New York, 1981), xxvi–xxvii, 344; Barbara Tuchman,
The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914
(New York, 1966), 329. The rising suicide rate by Austro-Hungarian youth had become such a problem, just as TR arrived in Vienna, that Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic Society called a meeting to discuss its subconscious causes. For an intellectual history describing the comet-haunted year of 1910 as “the year when all [Europe’s] scaffolds began to crack,” see Thomas Harrison,
1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance
(Berkeley, Calif., 1996).

25
All he knew
On the same day that TR was entertained at Schönbrunn, a member of Serbia’s Black Hand terrorist group was arrested in Chiasso, Switzerland, on a charge of plotting to kill him.
The New York Times
, 17, 19 Mar. 1910.

26
Halfway through the banquet
TR,
Letters
, 7.370.

27
Roosevelt was met
TR,
Letters
, 7.372–73. Apponyi, surrounded by an official delegation, hailed TR as “one of the leading efficient forces for the moral improvement of the world.” (O’Laughlin,
From the Jungle Through Europe
, 111.) For the imperial-versus-royal paradox in the union of Austria and Hungary, see Andrew Wheatcroft,
The Habsburgs: Embodying Empire
(New York, 1995), 278–81.

28
He noticed
TR,
Letters
, 7.372–73; KR diary (KRP);
The Times
, 19 Apr. 1910.

29
Multicultural himself
Nicholas Roosevelt,
Theodore Roosevelt: The Man As I Knew Him
(New York, 1967), 56; Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt”; TR,
Letters
, 7.374.

30
an extempore address
TR,
Letters
, 7.374. TR, speaking from memory, wrongly attached the name of King Béla III, rather than Andrew II, to the Golden Bull. A sarcastic British correspondent, filing from Vienna, was thus able to report on the “fervor and inaccuracy” of his speech, as well as Apponyi’s “stage management” of the occasion.
The Times
, 20 Apr. 1910.

31
His carriage had to force
The New York Times
, 19 Apr. 1910; O’Laughlin,
From the Jungle Through Europe
, 114–15.

32
the most famous man in the world
Wellman, “The Homecoming of Roosevelt.” As late as the early years of World War I, a friend of TR’s found that he could travel “all over Europe” with no other credential than a letter from the Colonel. Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 400.

33
“When he appears”
The Times
, 16 Apr. 1910.

34
“Like the elder”
TR to Robert Bacon, TR,
Letters
, 7.65. For TR’s previous relationship with Bacon, his Harvard classmate and former secretary of state, see James Brown Scott,
Robert Bacon: Life and Letters
(New York, 1923),
passim
, and Morris,
Theodore Rex
, 167–68, 456–57.

35
Both ambassadors
Scott,
Bacon
, 136–43. The last-named Frenchmen were favorites
of TR’s. He had been corresponding with them for years, and admired their mix of mind and action. Estournelles de Constant, author of
La conciliation internationale
, had just become a fellow winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Coubertin, author of many books on education, was the founder of the modern Olympic Games.