Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [433]
17 On 29 July Strachan, The First World War, 11.
18 The idea of a world war The first potential belligerent to invoke it seriously appears to have been the Hungarian prime minister István Tisza, who warned on 8 July that an Austrian attack on Serbia would lead to “intervention by Russia and consequently world war.” Lee, Outbreak of the First World War, 61.
19 RUSSIA READY The Washington Post, 30 July 1914.
20 “It’s the Slav” Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 326.
21 “An ignoble war” These exchanges between “Willy” and “Nicky” are taken from Michael S. Neiberg, ed., The World War I Reader: Primary and Secondary Sources (New York, 2007), 46–47.
22 more than one ally Strictly speaking, Britain was not allied to France under the Triple Entente, as France was to Russia. Strategically, however, neither Britain nor France could stand for German mobilization in the summer of 1914.
23 When Goschen G. P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914 (London, 1926), vol. 11, doc. 293.
24 The combined vagueness Lee, Outbreak of the First World War, 82. The double assurance of Wilhelm II and Bethmann-Hollweg on 5 July that Germany would stand by Austria in its Serbian quarrel is known to historians as “the blank check” that precipitated World War I.
25 The last forty-eight Ibid., 118.
26 “those peace people” Nevins, Henry White, 502.
27 “Germany does not” Moltke to Bethmann-Hollweg, 30 July 1914, in GHDI.
28 Forces for good TR, Works, 14.274–75.
29 the new autocrats The phrase is that of Martin Gilbert in A History of the Twentieth Century, 329.
30 “the French Socialist Republic” Superscript by the Kaiser on St. Petersburg dispatch, 25 July 1914, GHDI, no. 160.
31 “That is the match” Wister, The Pentecost of Calamity, 10–11. See also Wister, Roosevelt, 321.
32 for the first time in history Gerard, My Four Years in Germany, 70.
33 That insult Since the Reichstag elections of 1912, and especially since the Zabern affair of 1913, when the German crown prince had actually proposed a military coup d’état to Bethmann-Hollweg, Prussian conservatives “had come to regard war as a ‘tempering of the nation.’ ” Lee, Outbreak of the First World War, 55–56.
34 Ordinary Berliners The following description of Berlin on the eve of World War I owes much to the vivid account of Modris Ecksteins in Rites of Spring, chap. 2. See also Lee, Outbreak of the First World War, 121.
35 Holy flame Author’s translation.
36 “a dance of death” Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century, 326. There were similar demonstrations of war fever in other German cities, including Munich. Sullivan, Our Times, 5.5.
CHAPTER 19: A HURRICANE OF STEEL
1 Epigraph Robinson, Collected Poems, 74.
2 “The situation” TR to QR, 2 Aug. 1914 (ERDP).
3 A packhorse QR to KR, 2 Feb. 1916 (KRP).
4 As a little girl Longworth, Crowded Hours, 235.
5 Balfour’s dream See 71.
6 he also had his Saxon side The Kaiser, flattering TR during his presidency, had come up with a triple adjective: “Let us rejoice that, thank Heaven, the Anglo-Saxon-Germanic Race is still able to produce such a specimen.” (Wilhelm II to TR, 14 Jan. 1904 [TRP].) For TR’s German days, see Putnam, TR, 102–13, or Morris, The Rise of TR, 43–47.
7 “From that time” TR, An Autobiography, 274.
8 “I wish I had” TR to Finley Peter Dunne, quoted in Ellis, Mr. Dooley’s America, 154.
9 “the battle forced” Quote in Ecksteins, Rites of Spring, 93.
10 “If they refuse” Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York, 1962, 1979), 141.
11 “The lamps are going out” Grey, Twenty-five Years, 2.20. There was a personal poignancy to Grey’s metaphor. He was afflicted with dimming vision, and had been told by oculists that he would become functionally blind in a few years. Ibid., 61–62.
12 “You’ve got to” Felix Frankfurter, eyewitness.
13 Booth would only say Charles Booth (1840–1916) was a stellar example of the high Victorian ideal of a businessman devoting himself to the making of money and enlightened philanthropy.