Theodore Roosevelt Abroad (20 page)

In Root’s opinion the crux of the matter was in Berlin and the only course was to say to Wilhelm: “One of those great opportunities which have been presented to a very few men in history lies before you at this moment. If you ignore it your name will live on only as one of a great multitude of men who have raised and trained armies and governed states and have been forgotten because everything they have done has been what thousands of other men have done equally well.” If Wilhelm seized the moment he would “render a service to mankind of such signal and striking character” as to place him “forever in the little group of the supremely great” who were seen “rising above the great mass of the ordinary great.” Having the “greatest and effective army that ever existed,” having the means and constructive capacity for an “unsurpassed” navy, the Kaiser could say to the world: “I will lead you to peace. Let us stop where we are, and let us end now the race of competition in enlargement and provision for war.”
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In addition, Root suggested that Roosevelt might discreetly intimate to the Emperor that, if the idea was entertained, aid could be given in sounding the other powers without committing Germany. And if this course was entertained by Wilhelm, then TR truly would have something to talk about in England and he had no doubt the British would give informal assurances of support to prepare the way. Root was convinced by the failures of the 1907 Hague Conference that this “Gordian method of cutting the knot is the only one that affords any possibility of success.” The only way to quit was to quit and only the Kaiser could do it. He could think of no one better suited to “make a lodgment in the Emperor’s mind with this idea than Theodore Roosevelt.”
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Root’s letter, TR confessed to Carnegie, was exactly what he wanted and, he gushed, “How wise he is!” He asked Carnegie to tell Root that he would not fall into the errors against which he warned. He would not “seem to interfere with the regular American diplomats,” nor look as though he was “trying to teach Europe how to behave.” All he could do he would do and, as Carnegie suggested, TR’s Nobel speech would be made “with special reference to my call at Berlin afterwards.” He was momentarily at least optimistic and told Carnegie, “What an interesting meeting we shall have at Wrest Park.”
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Roosevelt and family departed Cairo on March 30, 1910 for Alexandria where they took ship the next day on the “dirty and uncomfortable” steamer
Prinz Heinrich
for Naples. TR reported to his old friend Lodge, that the British government was “showing an uncomfortable flabbiness in Egyptian matters.” In the Sudan and Egypt, much to his amusement, “everybody turned to me precisely as if I were in my own country,” hoping and praying for leadership. And ever since “striking Khartoum,” he had been in “almost as much of whirl as if I were on a Presidential tour at home.”
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This “whirl” would continue in the European leg of his odyssey.

Roosevelt’s reception on April 2, 1910 at Naples gave a foretaste of the hubbub he would create across Europe, at least until he reached the regimented confines of Germany. That first night, at the Naples Opera, the Colonel received a ten-minute standing ovation and so many people came to his box to be introduced he hardly saw any of the performance. A representative Italian paper gushed that in politics Roosevelt was a supporter of vigorous reform at home and aggressive imperialism abroad, and personally, “a man with a masculine appearance and a handsome, muscular and dynamic figure, formidable Teddy.”
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After his embarrassingly popular Neapolitan reception, at Rome there was a dust up with Pope Pius X, who made it a condition of an intended audience that Roosevelt not meet with American Methodist missionaries, a few of whom had attacked the Vatican. A year before there had been an embarrassing incident when the Pope cancelled an audience with TR’s vice president, Charles Fairbanks, simply because he was to meet with the offending Methodists. Roosevelt had had cordial relations with the previous Pontiff, Leo XIII, but deemed Pius, though worthy, a “narrow-minded parish priest”; completely under the control of his Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, whom he considered a “furiously bigoted reactionary, and in fact a good type of a sixteenth century Spanish ecclesiastic.” Although the Holy See was incensed by the Methodist encroachment at its very doorstep, to Roosevelt it only added a healthy “spirit of rivalry” in service and good conduct which in the long run was “as advantageous to the church as to its people,” but was “peculiarly abhorrent to the narrow and intolerant priestly reactionaries.”
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Some of the Methodist missionaries in Rome, Roosevelt believed, were “really excellent men, who were doing first class work.” At their Sunday School, he discovered that one of the teachers was a granddaughter of the Italian patriot Garibaldi and one of the graduates a grandson. On the other hand, one of the Methodist leaders, with the Dickensian name Ezra Tipple, was a “crude, vulgar, tactless creature, cursed with the thirst of self-advertisement,” who found that he could “attract attention best by frantic denunciations of the Pope.” In addition to preaching sermons in which Pius became the “whore of Babylon,” Tipple also attacked Rome’s other Protestant denominations, Episcopal, Presbyterian and the Young Men’s Christian Association.
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If he had associated himself with Tipple, Roosevelt would have understood Pius’s refusal to see him but felt he had “no right whatsoever to expect that I would be willing to see him if he made it a condition that I should not see the entirely reputable Methodists.” This was the response Roosevelt gave to a letter from Merry del Val received in Cairo. At Naples, he sent Cal O’Laughlin, an Irish Catholic, on to Rome for an audience in an attempt to solve the dilemma. The Cardinal then only made matters worse with an offer not to make it public if Roosevelt would secretly agree not to see the Methodists. This “piece of discreditable double dealing and deception” TR condemned as so reprehensible that even a “Tammany Boodle alderman” would have been ashamed to make it.
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When Merry del Val revealed his proposal, Roosevelt also published their correspondence and had Lawrence Abbott put an article in the
Outlook
which fully explained why he would not see the Pope.
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In the end, when they also displeased him with public utterances on the affair, TR cancelled a planned public reception with the leading Methodists. All this led him to comment to Arthur Lee that since reaching Khartoum he had been “dragged into every kind of mess. I trust the balance of my trip in Europe will be more peaceful.”
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To Roosevelt, Rome presented the “very sharpest contrasts between the extremes of radical modern progress, social, political and religious, and the extremes of opposition to all such progress.” The Vatican represented the last. The first he found at a reception and dinner at the Campidoglio with the “Jew mayor, a good fellow, and his Socialist backers in the Town Council.” Ernesto Nathan, whose official title was “Syndic” of Rome, spoke excellent English, was “apparently a good public servant” and in TR’s view would have been “quite at home as Reform Mayor of any American city of the second class.”
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Nathan, whom the American Ambassador John Leishman had informed TR was an “embryo Disraeli,” a friend of the United States and a personal admirer, lauded Roosevelt as akin to the warrior philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
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As president, TR had often railed against radical socialists, a minuscule party at home, but as he would see firsthand, much more powerful and prevalent across Europe. One of the socialist journalists present at the Roman reception wrote that beneath the Colonel’s rather nondescript blonde “Teutonic profile,” he found what he was searching for. “Behind his thick glasses” was a “strong, confident and investigative eye,” that penetrated and probed. “An eye that sees and foresees: acute, imperious, immense despite its smallness, as bright as an emerald. An eye of polished steel like his soul.” Behind TR’s glasses, he “saw the man, the great man.”
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What Roosevelt saw of Italy made him feel that there was “infinite need for radical action towards the betterment of social and industrial conditions.” He felt a “very strong sympathy with some of the Socialistic aims,” but at the same time had “a very profound distrust of most of the Socialistic methods.”
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Roosevelt placed Italy’s king, Victor Emmanuel III, somewhere in between the two extremes of socialism and reaction. The “most companionable” monarch had invited TR a year before to hunt ibex and now showed him his impressive collection of trophies, including a very rare South Italian chamois, but the two also spoke of social reform. About the last Roosevelt found the King “deeply and intelligently interested” and not only “astonishingly liberal, but even radical, sympathizing with many of the purposes and doctrines of the Socialists.” Victor Emmanuel’s understanding of the social and civil needs of the country, combined with his knowledge of military affairs, prompted TR to comment that he did not see how Italy could have “a more intelligent, devoted and sympathetic ruler” and he told the King he wished he had a “few more men like him in the Senate!”
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Roosevelt repeated this sentiment in his reply to an appeal from Lodge, who solicited his friend’s aid for the fall congressional elections. TR’s continued silence on U.S. politics, combined with the unpopularity of Taft and the Republican party, had garnered much comment. The
Washington Post
, for example, noted the “stress” the party was under and the need for Roosevelt’s help, while his attitude toward the Taft administration remained an “Unknown Quantity.”
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To this point, Lodge had strongly advised TR to stay out of politics altogether on his return. But now, in particular to counter the unpopularity of the Payne-Aldrich tariff, which was being blamed for the country’s economic problems, he proposed to send the former president on the stump. Roosevelt responded that he would be happy to do what he could for Lodge in Massachusetts, but a general appeal was “impossible” and would only eliminate him as a factor afterwards. Based on what he had been told by Lodge and others, TR had been “at first inclined to think that as much had been done with the tariff as possible.” But now, with additional knowledge, he believed the tariff issue was “not met as it was necessary to meet it; that certain things that ought to have been done were left undone, and that the whole was done in a way that caused trouble.” Therefore, the Colonel did not intend to spend his political capital defending it. He also told Lodge that “under no circumstances” would he accept either of the New York jobs widely rumored to be available to him—the governorship or a senate seat.
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After Rome, while Ethel and Kermit went on to Pisa, Theodore and Edith attempted to reprise, in reverse, their honeymoon trip of twenty-three years before along the Italian Riviera. However, the local populations and authorities refused to cooperate. On the first, and only, “delightful” day of privacy they drove a three horse carriage in “sun and shadow” from Spezia to Rappallo and then on to Sestri Levante, where they stayed at an old hotel. The next morning, however, the local residents descended, and on the way to Chiavari, brass bands, locals, and tourists lined the route, festooning their carriage with flowers. There would be precious little more privacy until the final day before departing for America. After a few hours hurried sightseeing at Genoa, the couple were rejoined by the children and the two secretaries for the seventy mile journey to picturesque Porto Maurizio and Edith’s sister Emily’s seaside house, Villa Magna Quies (Villa of Great Quiet), which hardly lived up to its name during Roosevelt’s visit. Six thousand spectators filled the small seaport to see Mayor Carreti greet the Colonel as “the first citizen of the American Republic, but above all a great humanitarian.” He was given the freedom of the City and opened a new boulevard named in his honor.
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The most notable of the multitude of visitors who descended on scenic Porto Maurizio was Gifford Pinchot, who on April 11 reported to his old chief on President Taft’s apostasy and gave his version of the Ballinger-Pinchot affair that had cost his job and of which he had already written. The papers at home were abuzz that Roosevelt had sent for the former Chief Forester, and the visit was widely viewed as the beginning of the “Back From Elba” movement.
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Pinchot recorded in his diary that the Porto Maurizio meeting, which lasted nearly all day, was “one of the best and most satisfactory talks” he had ever had with TR.
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He wrote to James Garfield that he found “everything exactly as you and I had foreseen. There was nothing changed. Nothing unexpected.” Pinchot admitted that their discussions left the ex-president “in a very embarrassing position, but that could not be helped.”
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For extra ammunition, Pinchot had brought along a “sheaf of letters,” including appeals from Garfield and the insurgent senators Jonathan Dolliver and Albert Beveridge, all of whom reported on the gloomy state of political affairs and the present insurgent movement of progressives in the party against Taft.
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In perhaps the most eloquent of these, after comprehensively condemning the Taft administration’s record, Dolliver added a more personal, and damning, indictment of the president for turning over the “certificate of character which Mr. Roosevelt had given him” to Senator Aldrich. If Pinchot saw the former president, Dolliver went on, he wished he would tell him that “the next certificate of character he issues ought, for the sake of caution, to be marked ‘Not Transferable’.” Dolliver ended with an appeal that Roosevelt, who was about to receive on his return a “popular welcome unparalleled in our history,” not give his “affirmative approbation of the things which went on here last summer and the things that are going on here now.” Instead, Dolliver appealed for TR to support the “little group of us in both houses of Congress” who were “fighting for public rights, under the inspiration which we gained in other years serving in the ranks under his leadership.”
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To Roosevelt, the political cartoons showing Taft carrying his policies out “on a stretcher” must have begun to seem all too accurate.