The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [295]
“No triumph of peace is quite so great as the supreme triumphs of war.”
Assistant Secretary of the Navy Roosevelt at the Naval War College, 2 June 1897. (Illustration 22.1)
“BEST MAN FOR THE JOB,” John D. Long wrote in his diary after his first formal meeting with Roosevelt. Whatever misgivings he may have had about him earlier soon changed to avuncular fondness. The young New Yorker was polite, charming, and seemed to be sincere in promising to be “entirely loyal and subordinate.”4 Long concluded that Roosevelt would be an ideal working partner, amply compensating for his own lack of naval expertise, yet unlikely, on the grounds of immaturity, to usurp full authority.
Certainly the Secretary was everything the Assistant Secretary was not. Small, soft, plump, and white-haired, Long looked and acted like a Dickensian grandfather, although he was in fact only fifty-eight.5 Nobody would want to hurt, or bewilder, such a “perfect dear”—to use Roosevelt’s own affectionate phrase.6 The mild eyes beamed with kindness rather than intelligence, and they clouded quickly with boredom when naval conversation became too technical. Abstruse ordnance specifications and blueprints for dry-dock construction were best left to specialists, in Long’s opinion; he saw no reason to tax his brain unnecessarily.7 Fortunately Roosevelt had a gargantuan appetite for such data, and could safely be entrusted with them. Long was by nature indolent: his gestures were few and tranquil, and there was a slowness in his gait which regular visits to the corn doctor did little to improve. From time to time he would indulge in bursts of hard, efficient work, but always felt the need to “rest up” afterward. On the whole he was content to watch the Department function according to the principles of laissez-faire.8
Roosevelt had no objection to this policy. The less work Long wanted to do, the more power he could arrogate to himself. His own job was so loosely defined by Congress that it could expand to embrace any duties “as may be prescribed by the Secretary of the Navy.” All he had to do was win Long’s confidence, while unobtrusively relieving him of more and more responsibility. By summer, with luck, he would be so much in control that Long might amble off to Massachusetts for a full two months, leaving him to push through his own private plans as Acting Secretary. But no matter how calculating this strategy, there was nothing insincere about Roosevelt’s frequently voiced praises of John D. Long. “My chief … is one of the most high-minded, honorable, and upright gentlemen I have ever had the good fortune to serve under.”9
The American press was largely optimistic about Long and Roosevelt as a team. “Nearly everybody in Washington is glad that Theodore Roosevelt [has come] back to the capital,” reported the Chicago Times-Herald correspondent. “He is by long odds one of the most interesting of the younger men seen here in recent years.” The Washington Post looked forward to lots of hot copy, now the famous headliner was back in town. “Of course he will bring with him … all that machinery of disturbance and upheaval which is as much a part of his entourage as the very air he breathes, but who knows that the [Navy Department] will not be the better for a little dislocation and readjustment?”10
Overseas newspapers, such as the London Times, took rather less pleasure in the “menacing” prospect of Roosevelt influencing America’s naval policy. With Cuba and Hawaii ripe for conquest and