Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [421]
12 “fureur d’hégémonie” Georges Clemenceau, Discours de guerre (1934, 1968), 12.
13 Early in November Except where otherwise indicated, the following account of the Zabern affair is based on David Schoenbaum, Zabern 1913: Consensus Politics in Imperial Germany (London, 1982), and on Sebastian Compagnon, “Novembre 1913: Saverne la tranquille se rebelle,” online study published by the University of Strasbourg at http://mcsinfo.u-strasbg.fr/.
14 “Should you kill” Schoenbaum, Zabern 1913, 98. The author has retranslated the words in Schoenbaum’s source, Arnold Heydt, Der Fall Zabern (Strasbourg, 1934), 7–8.
15 “And me, I’ll” Zaberner Anzeiger, 6 Nov. 1913, quoted in Compagnon, “Novembre 1913.” The local report inflated the shooting-range scuffle into an actual sword attack on an Alsatian.
16 “For every one” Ibid.
17 “Tête de macchabée!” Ibid.
18 “As far as I” Schoenbaum, Zabern 1913, 103.
19 shouts of “Bettscheisser” Ibid., 111–12.
20 The Chancellor, sounding Transcript of Bethmann-Hollweg’s remarks at World War I Document archive (http://wwi.lib.byu.edu/); James W. Gerard (eyewitness), My Four Years in Germany (New York, 1917), 67. Gerard, the American ambassador to Germany, gives a personal account of the Zabern affair and its effect on the German people in ibid., 59ff.
21 During the debate Schoenbaum, Zabern 1913, 125.
22 rage and shame The British peer Lord Milner was in Germany at the time of the Zabern crisis and reported that “the people were so incensed that a revolt against the brutality of the system was with difficulty controlled.” (Robert T. Loreburn, How the War Came [New York, 1920], 283.) Meanwhile, Alsatians began to refer to themselves bitterly as Muss-Pruessen, compulsory Prussians. Tuchman, The Proud Tower, 344.
23 One day, at Clemenceau, Discours de guerre, 18 (trans. author).
Historical Note: On 5 Jan. 1914, Reuter and Forstner appeared before a military tribunal in Strasbourg on charges of overriding the civil authority in Zabern. They were acquitted after defense lawyers argued that they had been doing their duty in a situation threatening riot. The Crown Prince personally congratulated Reuter and decorated him. Nevertheless, the German and Reichsland parliaments pressed the issue of abuse of military power so forcefully that on 19 Mar., Wilhelm II issued a new regulation that compelled the army to seek civil clearance for acts of social discipline.
In 1916, the “hurricane” that Clemenceau had so long predicted mowed down Günter von Forstner. The lieutenant’s offenses remained largely forgotten until 1931, when Sergeant Willy Höflich published a memoir, Affaire Zabern. In retrospect, the incident can be seen as having been doubly divisive, driving a wedge not only between German democratic opinion and royal authority, but between the citizens of Alsace-Lorraine and their temporary overlords (“perhaps the final factor which decided the advocates of the old military system of Germany in favor of a European war”). Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, 91.
CHAPTER 15: EXFEDIÇÀO CIENTÍFICA ROOSEVELT-RONDON
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 67.
2 On the first day TR, Works, 6.110.
Chronological Note: Upon arrival at Barbados on 10 Oct. 1913, TR and his expedition colleagues were joined by Leo Miller. They steamed on south without visiting Panama, where President Wilson had just triggered, via electric signal, the fall of the last canal dike separating the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. If TR was wistful at not seeing this consummation of what he considered the greatest initiative of his presidency, he gave no sign. Earlier in the year, he had joked about keeping clear of Colombia, to avoid being jailed there for enabling the Panama Revolution of 1903. (James T. Addison to Hermann Hagedorn, 26 Apr. 1921 [AC].) He was happy now simply to be away from all things political. “I think he feels like Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress when the bundle fell from his back,” EKR wrote on 15 Oct. 1913 to Anna Roosevelt Cowles, “—in this case