Theodore Roosevelt (8 page)

Early in his first term TR had invited Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House, which had aroused a howl of protest in newspapers throughout the South. Roosevelt's response was: “As things have turned out I am very glad that I asked him, for the clamor aroused by the act makes me feel as if the act was necessary.… I do not intend to offend the prejudices of anyone else, but neither do I allow their prejudices to make me false to my principles.”

But in private he admitted that the invitation had been a political mistake, which he did not repeat, and today we might feel that he was going a bit far in not offending the prejudices of others. Witness, for example, this letter of his about the reappointment of three Negroes to political offices in Georgia:

The three best offices in Georgia are filled by colored men who have done their work admirably. High-grade whites feel outraged that these three best offices should be given to colored men, and if it were a case of original appointments I should, as a matter of wisdom, from the standpoint of both races, certainly not make more than one of the three a colored man. But to refuse to reappoint or continue in office a good servant simply because he is colored is an entirely different thing; yet it is wholly impossible to make this distinction clear to most thoroughly good men in Georgia.

The “thoroughly good” may stick in a modern throat, but that was the world TR had to face. We should give him credit for making it clear that his condemnation of discrimination was not limited to hostility against any one race:

There is nothing that I protest more strongly, socially and politically, than any proscription or looking down upon decent Americans because they are of Irish or German ancestry; but I protest just exactly as strongly against any similar discrimination against or sneering at men because they happen to be descended from people who came over here three centuries ago.

Where hate crimes, however, occurred in nations beyond his jurisdiction, he refused to indulge in idle protests or empty threats. Citing the Old West of his younger days where a man didn't draw a gun unless he was ready to shoot, he deplored the brandishing of weapons one had no idea of using. At a later time, during America's neutrality in the first years of World War I, he would accuse Wilson, in his relations with Germany, of shaking first his fist and then his finger. And now we find him writing Jacob Schiff about the persecution of Jews in Russia:

Why, my dear Mr. Schiff, the case was much simpler as regards the Armenians a few years ago. There the Turkish government was responsible and was able to enforce whatever was desired. The outrages on the Armenians were exactly the same as those perpetrated on the Jews of Russia, both in character and in extent. But we did not go to war with Turkey. Inasmuch as it was certain that our people would not go into such a war … it would have been worse than foolish to have threatened it, and not the slightest good would have been or was gained by any agitation which it was known would not be backed up by arms.

Nine

Since the beginning of 1904 Russia and Japan had been engaged in a savage war for supremacy in Northeast Asia. To the astonishment and awakening of the world Japan had emerged as a first-class military and naval power, sinking or capturing the bulk of the Russian fleet, taking Port Arthur, and driving deep into Manchuria. TR had at first favored Japan—Russia had antagonized America and much of Europe by her aggressiveness and arrogance in the Far East—but he now cast a wary eye on Tokyo as a potential opponent of American interests in the Pacific. It would be as well for everyone if Japan did not gain too sweeping a victory, and he decided to use such international influence as he had to procure a settlement.

The Japanese were certainly winning the war, but it was costing them dearly. Russia could always fall back on a seemingly infinite source of manpower if it chose and, as it appeared stubbornly willing to, drag on the conflict. Both sides, therefore, should have been open to overtures, and Roosevelt decided to approach the czar directly through his ambassador in St. Petersburg rather than deal with the prickly and proud Russian legate in Washington. After much jockeying for position both belligerents agreed to a peace conference in the United States, and TR was able to persuade them to pick Portsmouth, New Hampshire, over Washington, as the summer heat in the capital would hardly have been conducive to coolness of temper.

At this time John Hay, whom TR had inherited as secretary of state from McKinley, died and was replaced by Elihu Root, who had been TR's secretary of war before retiring to resume his highly successful law practice in New York. Hay had been a close friend of Roosevelt's as well as of his father, but the president had found him lacking in vigor and drive and was glad to have the services in state of Root, a brilliant and caustic attorney who, as Edith Roosevelt put it, was well qualified to give her husband advice because their characters were so different. Root knew how to keep TR's expansive imagination within reasonable bounds; he used his biting, sardonic humor with good effect on a chief who took it surprisingly well. But that is something always to keep in mind in any evaluation of Roosevelt: his reason was constantly at work, however unperceived, to balance the wildness of his words. At least until the last few years of his life.

The most difficult issue in the negotiations at Portsmouth was Japan's demand for an indemnity. Japan's emissaries finally agreed to drop the term
indemnity
as humiliating to Russia and instead call the sum demanded the price for half of Sakhalin Island, which Russia was to cede to Japan. The Russians, however, continued stubbornly to resist the imposition of any payment, and TR had to use all his powers of persuasion to convince the Japanese to be content with what they already had: control of Korea and Manchuria and a fleet doubled at the expense of the Russian navy. He also used the clinching argument that a continuation of the war would cost even a victor far more than any indemnity that could be extracted from a defeated enemy. What good would Siberia do for Japan even if she conquered it all?

Japan finally gave in, dropping all claim for an indemnity, and a treaty was concluded. Roosevelt in 1906 was deservedly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He accepted it gladly, but gave the money, forty thousand dollars, to a committee for industrial peace, writing to one of his sons:

I hate to do anything foolish or quixotic, and above all I hate to do anything that means the refusal of money which would ultimately come to you children. But Mother and I talked it over and came to the conclusion that while I was President, at any rate, and perhaps anyhow, I could not accept money given to me for making peace between two nations, especially since I was able to make peace simply because I was President.

TR's troubles with Japan were not concluded by the treaty. Even while it was being negotiated he had to face Japanese anger at the treatment of their emigrants in California. He never had patience with discrimination of any kind, but he found himself severely handicapped, as he did in the southern states that virtually disenfranchised the Negro by the limits of federal power in what were then deemed essentially state matters. One thing he could do, in view of the rise of the Japanese menace in the Pacific, was build up the navy, and this he did, making large annual demands of Congress. In 1908, for example, he requested authority to build four battleships, knowing the number would be halved, which it was, but also knowing it was the only way to get the needed two. In all he increased the navy from fifth in the world in size to second only to Britain's, with a total of twenty battleships, and in his second term he sent “the great white fleet” around the world to impress the powers that the United States was in a position to back up its word.

It was natural for him at times to express his exasperation at how much violent push was needed to persuade Americans to protect themselves, as when he wrote: “Most certainly the Japs are a wonderful people. I feel rather bitterly when I compare what they have done with the howling and whooping and yelling of our own people against even a moderate increase in our navy.” And in 1908 he wrote: “I do not believe that there will be war with Japan, but I do believe there is enough chance of war to make it eminently wise to secure against it by building such a navy as to forbid Japan's hope for success. I happen to know that the Japanese military party is inclined for war with us and is not only confident of success, but confident that they could land a large expeditionary force in California and conquer all of the United States west of the Rockies. I fully believe that in the end they would pay dearly for this.”

He was not only concerned with the present status of the navy but was keenly concerned with its future. He went down on an early dive of the USS
Plunger,
one of our first submarines: “I went down in it chiefly because I didn't like to have the officers and enlisted men think I wanted them to try things I was reluctant to try myself. I believe a good deal can be done with these submarines, although there is always the danger of people getting carried away with the idea and thinking that they can be more use than they possibly could be.”

Trouble in the Caribbean offered TR several opportunities to develop a new and wider concept of the Monroe Doctrine. When a Latin American nation defaulted in its financial obligations to one of the greater European powers, it had become an accepted remedy for the creditor country to send warships to intimidate and sometimes actually bombard the debtor nation. This was the case with Venezuela and Germany in 1902, but Roosevelt made it clear to the German ambassador that he would order Admiral Dewey to make sure that Germany did not take possession of any Venezuelan territory. When the ambassador gravely asked if the president realized the possible consequences of such an order, TR later claimed: “I answered that I had thoroughly counted the cost before I decided on the step, and asked him to look at the map, as a glance would show him that there was no place in the world where Germany in the event of conflict with the United States would be at a greater disadvantage than in the Caribbean Sea.” Germany refrained from action, though some historians have thought that Roosevelt's account of it showed him as considerably more defiant than he had been.

At any rate, Europe and Latin America learned that the new Monroe Doctrine would not tolerate any European attempt to collect debts in our hemisphere by force. But a corollary to this was that the United States had an implied obligation to Europe to see that our small neighboring debtor states did not behave irresponsibly. When the government of Santo Domingo fell apart, Roosevelt assumed virtual control of the republic, appointing an American receiver and collector of customs, building roads, establishing schools, and creating a revenue service. It may have been for the good of Santo Domingo but it created howls of anti-imperialist resentment at home and throughout South America.

No charge is more often flung at Roosevelt than imperialism. Yet he never advocated an empire for the United States such as Britain, France, Portugal, Holland, and Germany conceived for themselves. It is true that we catch him in a letter written in 1895 to an old Civil War veteran saying: “If I were asked what the greatest boon I could confer on this nation was, I should answer, an immediate war with Great Britain for the conquest of Canada.” But that was when he was allowing his always vivid imagination to visualize a single vast united nation covering everything on our continent north of the Mexican border. It was a concept that has intrigued many Americans; Canada wouldn't have been an empire but a group of additional states. TR never wished to keep Cuba or the Philippines; in each case he favored occupation to last only until the islands were ready for independence. The naval bases that he wanted—Hawaii, Guam, Cuba, Panama, and Puerto Rico—were not the bastions of empire but the necessary fueling spots for the warships that guaranteed the security of his country as preached by his mentor, Admiral Mahan.

Another example of TR's success in rather high-handed diplomacy is found in his management of the Alaskan-Canadian border dispute of 1903. Before the United States acquired Alaska, Britain and Russia had defined the line between British Columbia and the Alaskan Panhandle as running thirty miles inland from the head of tidewater. After the discovery of gold in the Klondike, Canada tried to alter this line to include the goldfields in its territory, but TR took a very firm position, generally now considered to have been justified by the facts, that he would not accept this and was willing to maintain the old border by force, if necessary. A compromise was sought of referring the matter to six arbitrators—three Americans, two Canadians, and one British. TR, being determined not to lose the decision by any such arrangement, appointed three arbitrators he could trust to vote as he wished, so that the result, if not favorable to the United States, would at least be a tie. The Americans voted as expected, as did the Canadians, but the British arbitrator, Lord Alverston, probably to avoid an international incident, took the American view, and the issue was peacefully settled.

Ten

France had bought off British and Italian interests in Morocco by promising them a free hand in Tripoli and Egypt, and the French Convention with Britain of April 1904 contemplated the ultimate division of Morocco between France and Spain. Germany and German interests were totally ignored, and the Kaiser's indignant retaliatory visit to Tangier provoked a war-threatening crisis. The Kaiser then proposed an international conference to settle the disputes and invited the American president to second his proposition to the nations concerned. TR, although dubious of the extent of America's involvement in the Mediterranean, agreed to do this on behalf of world peace, and the conference of thirteen nations duly assembled in the Andalusian port of Algeciras in Spain in 1906, with Henry White as the United States representative.

TR instructed White, whom he regarded as the ablest of American diplomats, “to keep friendly with all” but to do nothing to shake the recently concluded Franco-British entente, which he considered a force for peace in the troubled European scene. Basically TR was much more on the French than the German side. The prickliest issue facing the conference was the question of who should police Morocco, such policing being essential to the maintaining of the open-door agreement. The French, who had already been policing the territory for years and who had by far the greatest investment in Morocco, insisted on continuing their virtual control, willing only to share a bit of it with Spain, while the Germans wanted the policing confided to a group of smaller, neutral nations. Tempers flared, and the home capitals began to be heard from. The president of the Reichstag in Berlin made threatening speeches; the Paris press boiled. War loomed. White, believing that the Kaiser was not fully informed by his representative in the conference, now urged TR to go over the heads of the conference in a direct appeal to him.