Theodore Roosevelt Abroad (22 page)

Another threat, which could not be overstated in the Colonel’s opinion, was the “deadening effect on any race of the adoption of a logical and extreme socialistic system.” This would “spell sheer destruction; it would induce grosser wrong and outrage, fouler immorality than any existing system.” However, this did not mean that “we may not with great advantage adopt certain of the principles professed” by some who happened to call themselves socialists. To be afraid to do so would be a “mark of weakness on our part.” He was a “strong individualist by personal habit, inheritance and conviction”; but it was only common sense to recognize that “the State, the community, the citizens acting together, can do a number of things better than if they were left to individual action.” But, he warned his audience, let us “not be misled into following any proposal for achieving the millennium” until it had been subjected to “hard-headed examination.” If any idea seemed good, try it. If it proved good, accept it; otherwise reject it. There were plenty of men in his experience who called themselves socialists with whom it was quite possible to work.
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The speech delighted French Republicans, in the Colonel’s opinion, because it came from a fellow “radical republican” and because they were “getting very uneasy over the Socialist propaganda, or at least over the mob work and general sinister destruction” in which it was “beginning to take practical form.” He felt the same kinship with many of the French Republicans that he did with many English Liberals and American progressives. Fundamentally, it was the “radical liberal” in all three countries with whom he sympathized. They were all at least “working towards the end” for which he thought “we should all of us strive.”
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Others credited the Sorbonne speech for the stiffened attitude of the Briand government which, with elections looming, banned a mass socialist demonstration planned for May 1, 1910 and authorized the police and troops for the first time in years to use their weapons in self-defense. At the very least the attack on doctrinaire socialism in the Sorbonne speech got Roosevelt back in the good books of the royalist press, while the pro-government
Le Temps
published 57,000 copies for distribution to the teachers of France. Thus, his friend Jusserand commented, TR’s words were “sure to reach the whole of the coming generation and it will do it an immense good.”
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The Colonel’s friend, still the French Ambassador at Washington, came over to act as a companion and guide at Paris. Though he was very fond of him, TR commented that Jusserand seemed to think “he was not doing his duty if I had one hour to myself.” The Colonel had declined an invitation to review French troops, but Jusserand convinced him that, since everyone knew he was to do so with the Kaiser in Germany, it would be an insult to French Arms if he did not change his mind. This he agreed to do, watching a sham battle at Vincennes from horseback after borrowing a mount and riding breeches at the scene. Roosevelt was touched to receive a letter sent on behalf of the enlisted men of the squadron from which the horse was fetched, informing him they planned thereafter to take special care of the animal and to commemorate the event. He sent the men a signed photo, in his Rough Rider regalia, which they hung in a place of honor in their barracks.
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From Paris, Roosevelt reported to Carnegie his doubts concerning the prospects of any peace initiative, “even along the cautious lines of conduct” which Root had suggested. He took for granted that Carnegie had seen the Berlin papers and that, consequently, his “anticipations of the difficulties came far short of the actual facts.” He felt Carnegie had been very wise in his suggestion about the Nobel speech, which Roosevelt now feared would “represent very nearly all that is efficient and useful that I can accomplish.” Nevertheless, as he wanted to see Carnegie before the Wrest Park meeting, he invited him to dine “alone and entirely informally with us” at Dorchester House, Ambassador Reid’s London home, on the first night he arrived in England.
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After a week and a day in Paris, the travelers departed for Brussels, where they would spend only twenty-four hours. Roosevelt gave an address at the Brussels Exposition, in part to make amends for the rather embarrassing fact that the United States had not sent an exhibit. This was on account, in TR’s estimation at least, of the failure of the skinflint Congress to provide the paltry funds needed. The recently crowned Belgian King Albert was on hand and Roosevelt described him as “a huge fair young man, evidently a thoroughly good fellow, with excellent manners and not a touch of pretension.” Albert drove the Colonel through the streets in his carriage “as if he had been one of his own subjects,” and was “greeted by the people in cordial democratic fashion.” When they met later at the Laeken Palace for dinner, Queen Elizabeth “proved really delightful, really cultivated and intellectual.” Every evening, she told Roosevelt, she read aloud to Albert books “in which they were both interested” and in his opinion “altogether they led a thoroughly wholesome life.” Much in contrast, it may be said, to the behavior of the previous King, Albert’s uncle Leopold. In this brief visit to Belgium Roosevelt was very favorably impressed by all he met.
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The same could not be said, at least at the top, for Holland, Roosevelt’s ancestral home and the next stop on their journey. Lodge had exhorted TR to visit Holland, telling him he was one of “the half dozen great men whom that little country, or rather race, has given to the world.”
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On their way to The Hague the family visited the Het Loo Palace for lunch with Queen Wilhelmina. She was the only royal for whom they had felt much sentiment in advance and she ended by being the only monarch they did not like at all. Roosevelt had supposed that the Queen, who had come to the throne as a child of ten in 1890, would be “a very nice attractive little woman in a difficult position” and had sympathized with “her apparent loneliness, and had been glad at the birth of her little daughter” only the previous year. However, instead of being “attractive, sweet-tempered and dignified,” they found her “excessively unattractive and commonplace” while “conceited and bad-tempered” to boot.
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The “almost freezing hauteur” displayed by the bourgeois Wilhelmina led Roosevelt to tell Arthur Lee that he felt inclined to say to her, “If you ever come to my country, Madam, I should like to introduce you to the wife of the Lieutenant-Governor of Oklahoma.” She reminded TR of nothing more than a “puffed up wife of some leading grocer” such as he had met in many American towns. He would not have minded her “lacking refinement and being both common and commonplace if only she had not been pretentious.” It was this trait in his estimation that made her ridiculous.
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Aside from this clash of personalities with the royal family, Roosevelt thoroughly enjoyed his stay in Holland, both at Amsterdam, where he viewed the many Rembrandts at the Ryk’s Museum, and The Hague, where he found a surprising number of people spoke English. As elsewhere he was treated as if he were still president and at home in America. At Amsterdam the Colonel told an audience that it had been nearly three centuries since his people left Holland and now he was back with his son who represented the ninth generation in America. His family had taken part in the foundation of what was then the tiny trading post of New Amsterdam. He was “very sorry they ever changed the name” and his “forefathers had done what they could to stop it.” Roosevelt unfortunately did not speak Dutch but could recall a nursery rhyme he learned from his grandfather that he recited to the applause of the audience.
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Before taking ship for Norway, where TR was scheduled to give his Nobel Peace Prize Address, the last country on the continent the family visited was Denmark. They traveled to Copenhagen by way of Kiel, where the German battle fleet honored the Colonel by manning the rails in salute. The Danish King Frederick VIII was absent in Southern Europe so that Crown Prince Christian and Crown Princess Alexandra of Mecklenberg-Schwerin, played host to them. When their train arrived at the Copenhagen station TR, preoccupied by the apparent loss of their baggage, emerged from the wrong car. The waiting Crown Prince, one of the tallest men in Europe, with the longest legs, loped down the platform to meet him, with the rest of the official party strewn behind. Maurice Egan, the American Minister, recalled that Roosevelt, dressed in an army coat and ancient sombrero, seemed “pleased beyond words to see us all.” After he was formally introduced to a bemused Prince Christian, TR declared, “Now I have lost my baggage. Let’s go look for it!”
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Theodore and Edith caused something of a diplomatic uproar when they were assigned the chamber in the Christian VII Palace that the Czar had occupied the previous summer. As Roosevelt was “not even an Excellency” in the United States, the Russian Ambassador protested this unheard of state of affairs. However, the palace officials were duly impressed when Edith, their luggage delayed, agreed that she and her husband would attend a formal dinner in their gray flannel traveling clothes. The Baron in charge commented, “C’était vraiment royale!”
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Denmark had a Liberal government with a Social Democratic opposition and over the previous decades had instituted an impressive number of reforms including old age pensions and homes, health insurance, aide for small farmers to buy their leaseholds and government promotion of cooperative farming. Roosevelt was particularly interested in the old age homes and cooperative farming, both of which he was able at least to catch a glimpse of during his visit. But he was “rather puzzled” that this growth of the “wise and democratic use of the power of State toward helping raise the individual standard of social and economic well-being had not made the people more contented.” In Copenhagen, as at Rome, the Colonel found himself seated next to a Jewish Socialist Mayor at a municipal dinner. He was rather surprised to find that the man was a banker, who told him bluntly that “as long as individualism persisted” he would be foolish not to be, but that he “hoped for the advent of Socialism in such a form as to destroy the very kind of individualistic business in which he was engaged.”
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The last destination in Denmark was Elsinore Castle, redolent of TR’s re-reading of Shakespeare in Africa. This visit afforded one clever cartoonist the opportunity to picture him as Hamlet, holding a scroll marked “1912” and followed by an anxious ghost ascribed “Third Term Taboo.” By this time, Roosevelt had come to a more clear-eyed view of the political situation at home, where, he told Lodge, Taft, Aldrich, Cannon and others had “totally misestimated the character of the movement which we now have to face in American life.” Since Taft’s election, the Colonel had not allowed himself to “think ill” of anything he did, but he finally had to admit that Taft had “gone wrong on certain points.” Now TR also had to admit to himself that “deep down underneath” he had known all along his successor was wrong, but that he had “tried to deceive myself, by loudly proclaiming to myself, that he was right.” He intended no longer to continue the self-deception.
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After Elsinore, Roosevelt and his family left for Norway to begin the next, pacific, leg of his journey.

On May 4, 1910, Theodore, Edith, Ethel, and Kermit arrived at Christiana (the future Oslo), and were greeted by King Haakon VII and Queen Maud. Once again they stayed at the Royal Palace. TR reported to Lodge his continuing puzzlement about the “extraordinary” receptions he received in Norway and elsewhere. The royals vied with each other to entertain them and the popular displays were even more remarkable. In his opinion this was largely because to them he represented the American Republic, which stood to the average European as a “queer, attractive dream,” sometimes as a “golden utopia partially realized” and on others as a “field for wild adventure of a by no means necessarily moral type—in fact a kind of mixture of Bacon’s Utopia and Raleigh’s Spanish Main.” In addition, the former president appealed personally to their imaginations as a “leader whom they suppose to represent democracy, liberty, honesty and justice.” The combination of enormous popular demonstrations, and their being asked to stay in the royal palaces, left the diplomats he met “perfectly paralyzed.” It was all very interesting and amusing, but also fatiguing and irksome. As much as he dreaded getting back into the “confusion” of American politics, he longed “inexpressibly to be back at Sagamore Hill, in my own house, with my own books, and among my own friends.”
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Haakon, a son of King Frederick VIII of Denmark, had been elected King of Norway only five years before, after a treaty of separation was reached with Sweden. It was as if Vermont, TR remarked, should try the “offhand experiment of having a king.” Norwegians he had talked to at home had been in favor of the creation of a constitutional kingdom, rather than a republic, but one in which the king would not interfere with the people’s complete self-government while at the same time lend an element of stability and credibility to the government, which would be respected by her monarchical neighbors.
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As president, Roosevelt had granted the new state official recognition and dispatched the first U.S. ambassador.

Though he thought the system curious, Theodore and Edith found the royal family delightful. He commented that if Norway ever did decide to become a republic, they both would love to have them come live near Sagamore Hill. Roosevelt described the King as a “trump, privately and publicly” who took a keen and intelligent interest in every question affecting his people, and “treated them and was treated by them with a curiously simple democracy of attitude.” Queen Maud, the youngest daughter of Edward VII, was “dear; shy, good, kind, very much in love with her husband, devoted to her boy, anxious to do anything the people expected from her.” The marriage was a love match, unusual among European royals. The antics of their seven-year-old son Olav, who had been born in England, recalled TR to early days at the White House romping with his own small children. On the first afternoon, in the drawing room of the very informal palace, he gave Olav “various bits of bloodcurdling information about lions and elephants” and before long Ethel, Kermit and their father all joined the “dear little boy” in spirited play. Since Olav had no experience of such behavior with anyone else save his parents he “loudly bewailed” their departure.
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