Theodore Rex (181 page)
Authors: Edmund Morris
30
Roosevelt showed
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 559–60.
31
A VISITOR TO
Everett Colby in Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 154. Colby does not give the date of his visit, except to say that the Japanese crisis had just “reached an acute stage.” The only recorded visit of both Taft and Root to the Executive Office at such a moment was on the morning of 13 Feb. 1907, at the height of the first war scare. Washington
Evening Star
, same date.
32
For the last
Esthus,
Theodore Roosevelt and Japan
, 134–35. Chinese schoolchildren already had their own schools in San Francisco. The order of 11 Oct. 1906 had been followed by a white-inspired riot, and a Japanese bank president had been killed. There were immediate calls in Japan for an anti-American boycott.
33
Roosevelt sat
Wood,
Roosevelt As We Knew Him
, 154–55.
34
“They don’t care”
Qu. in Murakata, “Theodore Roosevelt and William Sturgis Bigelow.”
35
Some of the most
TR,
Works
, vol. 17, 452–53.
36
This last remark
Ibid., 454–55;
San Francisco Chronicle
, 10 Dec. 1906; Bailey,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 127. Elihu Root cogently remarked to Ambassador Aoki that the antagonism of American laborers toward Japanese was not so much an assertion of superiority as an admission of inferiority. Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 2, 7.
37
Senator Tillman
The New York Times
, 15 Jan. 1907.
38
Tokyo’s response
Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 2, 9. See also Akira Iriye,
Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1879–1911
(Cambridge, Mass., 1972).
39
The result was
Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 2, 13, 15; Esthus,
Theodore Roosevelt and Japan
, 155–56. See also John R. Jenswold, “Leaving the Door Ajar: Politics and Prejudices in the Making of the 1907 Immigration Law,”
Mid-America
67.1 (1985).
40
“Why should I”
Phillip Dunne, ed.,
Mr. Dooley Remembers: The Informal Memoirs of Finley Peter Dunne
(Boston, 1963), 201–2.
41
To win passage
Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 2, 15. “Yellow Peril” Cassandras tended
to overlook the fact that many Japanese immigrants, having worked in the United States for a few years, returned home with their hard-earned dollars.
42
“in the way”
Root to Ambassador Luke Wright, qu. in ibid., 13.
43
Schmitz, who
Bailey,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 128–33, 143–44. The age scruple was not unreasonable, in that many of the immigrant “children” originally discriminated against had been twenty to thirty years old.
44
his first term
Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,”
Military Affairs
8.3 (1984); TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 35.
45
He had even
Rebecca Kramer, “Theodore Roosevelt, Disarmament, and The Hague,” t.s. monograph (AC). See notes above for chaps. 22 and 25.
46
The idea of
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 398–400.
Chronological Note:
With TR’s encouragement, the United States at first pressed seriously for a general reduction in naval forces, insisting that the issue of arms limitation be discussed at The Hague. This proved to be an unpopular stance with Germany, which had its own strategic reasons for building up a larger navy. Britain was initially supportive of the United States, but then, in view of the Kaiser’s ardent militarism, declined to negotiate away its own armed advantage. Russia and Austria also opposed the idea of disarmament (Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 2, 69;
The New York Times
, 16 June 1907; TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 357).
TR himself was conflicted in his attitude. His letters on the subject earnestly contend that most arms-control proposals did not really apply to the United States, since “we have a small navy (and an army so much smaller as to seem infinitesimal) compared with the armed forces of the other great powers which in point of population, extent of territory, wealth and resources, can be put in the same category with us. Therefore we cannot ourselves reduce our forces” (TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 358).
Through most of 1906, however, he pushed for a “feasible and rational plan” of naval disarmament, declaring that limits on battleship size would reduce the rampant costs and dangers of an arms race. His proposal in Sept. 1906 that the Hague Conference should forbid the construction of any battleship larger than the
Dreadnought
was received unenthusiastically by the British and adamantly opposed by Wilhelm II. TR then wrote Sir Edward Grey in October, suggesting that an attempt should be made to limit the number of ships being built. But his temporary ardor for arms control was clearly flagging. By early 1907 he had essentially lost hope and interest in the Second Hague Conference, whose proceedings he did not even follow. It fell to Elihu Root to direct American delegates at the conference, establish the Drago Doctrine (still in force), and push for the strengthening of the Hague Permanent Court of Arbitration. This idea broke down when the countries could not agree on how the judges would be chosen. By the time the conference closed on 18 Oct. 1907, it was generally considered a failure. TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 601; Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 2, 75–79, 82. See Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,”
Military Affairs
48.3 (1984).
47
In a letter
TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 528–29.
48
Three days later
Esthus,
Theodore Roosevelt and Japan
, 161; TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 600–601. For Root’s unenthusiastic handling of the arms-limitation issue at the Second Hague Conference, see Jessup,
Elihu Root
, vol. 2, 71ff. By February 1907, British interest in the subject had also waned, the Liberal government being at least as wary of Germany’s rearmament as the Roosevelt Administration was of Japan’s.
Historical
Note: TR’s comments on arms limitation in 1906 and early 1907 have an oddly prophetic ring. He cites, over and over again, his fear that if “free peoples” disarm too much, they will become vulnerable to “military depotisms and barbarisms” (see, e.g., TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 366). Eighty years in advance of Ronald Reagan’s cautionary motto regarding arms-control pacts, “Trust, but verify,” TR was writing the British Foreign Secretary about the Hague agenda proposals, “In view of the marvelous ability certain nations have of concealing what they are doing, we would have no real idea whether or not they were keeping down their armaments even in the event of an agreement to do so.” Ibid., 601.
49
AS THE END
Gould,
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
, 203; TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 604.
50
Conservation
,
by itself
J. Leonard Bates, “Fulfilling American Democracy: The Conservation Movement, 1907 to 1921,”
Mississippi Valley Historical Review
44.1 (1957); Lacey, “Mysteries of Earth-Making,” 386, 339.
Historiological Note:
The date at which
conservation
acquired its modern, politicized meaning is as variously debated by historians as that for
progressivism
. Bates and Lacey agree that 1907 was when conservation became a social movement, as opposed to a complex of disciplines—and as contrasted with the sentimental
preservation
of John Muir and the Sierra Club. Bates directly links conservation to progressivism. Lacey stresses conservation’s scientific origins in the work of such pioneers as the explorer-geologist John Wesley Powell, the mammologist C. Hart Merriam, the forester-geographer Henry Gannett (bequeather of much data to Pinchot), and the prodigiously catholic WJ McGee. It was Gannett who first spoke of forest preservation as “almost a religion.”
51
Roosevelt had virtually
Gould,
Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt
, 200; Harold T. Pinkett,
Gifford Pinchot: Public and Private Forester
(Urbana, 1970), 75–78; Cutright,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 216–17.
52
There was something
The word
hypnotic
is that of TR’s childhood friend Fanny Parsons, in a description that emphasized Pinchot’s extraordinary attraction for women (Parsons,
Perchance Some Day
, 127). See also Wister,
Roosevelt
, 174;
Roosevelt vs. Newett
, 196; James Garfield diary, 30 July 1904 (JRG).
53
“Pinchot truly”
TR qu. in Butt,
Letters of Archie Butt
, 147.
54
A forced draft
Mowry,
Era of Theodore Roosevelt
, 215.
55
Thus came into
TR’s own “Memorandum on signing proclamations” appears in TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 603–4. “Failure on my part to sign these proclamations would mean that immense tracts of valuable timber would fall into the hands of the lumber syndicates.… The creation of the reserves means that this timber will be kept … in such manner as to keep them unimpaired for the benefit of children now growing up to inherit the land.”
56
Only after the
“The opponents of the Forest Service turned handsprings in their wrath,” TR gleefully wrote in his
Autobiography
(419). The other major conservation measure of this session was TR’s creation of the Inland Waterways Commission on 14 Mar. 1907. See chap. 29, below.
57
ON 4 MARCH
British Documents on Foreign Affairs
, 171–72. For a short sketch of Ambassador Bryce, see Burton, “Theodore Roosevelt and His English Correspondents.”
58
the first Jew
According to Straus, TR said when offering him the appointment, “I want to show Russia and some other countries what we think of Jews in this country.” Straus had assumed office on 17 Dec. 1906. Straus,
Under Four Administrations
, 210.
59
Cortelyou had been
Sullivan,
Our Times
, vol. 3, 509; Strouse,
Morgan
, 565–66.
60
“a demonstration”
Klein,
E. H. Harriman
, 399; Adler,
Jacob H. Schiff
, vol. 1, 44–50.
61
his native Germany
Schiff was also rather deaf. An enduring joke in Rooseveltian circles was that the President, boasting at a dinner of New York notables about his appointment of Oscar Straus without any regard to ancestry or creed, turned to Schiff for corroboration (“Isn’t that so, Mr. Schiff?”) and got it: “Dot’s right, Mr. President, you came to me and said, Chake, who is der best Choo I can put in my Cabinet?”
62
“We are confronted”
Adler,
Jacob H. Schiff
, vol. 1, 44–45.
63
Roosevelt wrote back
Klein,
E. H. Harriman
, 398; TR,
Letters
, vol. 5, 631. TR’s naïveté in financial matters is indicated not only by the remark he made about Harriman, but also in his disinclination to call what might have been an important conference. He had not hesitated, seven weeks before, to invite Mayor Schmidt and the entire San Francisco school board to Washington, at government expense.
64
“This has been”
Klein,
E. H. Harriman
, 400.
65
“your stern and
” Adler,
Jacob H. Schiff
, vol. 1, 47.
66
the macabre artifact
The New York Times
, 14 Apr. 1907.
67
More rational admirers
Adams,
Letters
, vol. 6, 55–57; Bliss Perry,
The Life and Letters of Henry Lee Higginson
(Boston, 1921), 361; TR,
Letters to Kermit
, 184.
68
Spring came
TR,
Letters to Kermit
, 186, 189.
69
In early May
James Bryce to Sir Edward Grey,
British Documents on Foreign Affairs
, 203–4; Presidential scrapbook (TRP).
70
It also revived
Ibid., 204; TR,
Letters to Kermit
, 195.
71
second elective term
Longworth,
Crowded Hours
, 148. “No one will ever know how much I wished, in the black depths of my heart, that ‘something would happen’ and that Father would be renominated.”
72
nine tenths of him
TR made this admission on 10 Oct. 1908, long after the question of a third term had become academic. Butt,
Letters
, 125.
73
Having thus made
TR,
Letters to Kermit
, 196.
74
HE SAW THEM
TR to C. Hart Merriam, 23 May 1907 (TRP). Except where otherwise cited, the source for the following section is Alton A. Lindsey, “Was Theodore Roosevelt the Last to See the Passenger Pigeon?”
Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science for 1976 86
(1977). The authoritative work on TR as ornithologist and natural historian is Cutright,
Theodore Roosevelt
.
75
He had collected
Cutright,
Theodore Roosevelt
, 78.
