The rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [310]
The funny part of it all is, that he actually takes the thing seriously … he bores me with plans of naval and military movement, and the necessity of having some scheme to attack arranged for instant execution in case of an emergency. By tomorrow he will have got half a dozen heads of bureaus together and have spoiled twenty pages of good writing paper, and lain awake half the night.… Happily, the latest dispatches of this afternoon are to the effect that everything is quiet again.4
Roosevelt soon realized that the “flurry in Havana” was no real threat to American security, but he volunteered his services, just in case, to his friend General C. Whitney Tillinghast II, Adjutant General of New York.
I believe I can get a commission as a major or lieutenant colonel in one of the National Guard regiments, but I want your help and the Governor’s … I have served three years in the State Militia (not to speak of having acted as sheriff in the cow country!) and I believe that I would be of some use.…5
Meanwhile, Edith was lying alarmingly ill at 1810 N Street, having collapsed with suspected typhoid fever nine days before.6 Roosevelt was “exceedingly put out” by this inconvenience, for it obliged him to cancel a trip to the annual Boone & Crockett dinner in New York. To make matters worse, little Ted was suffering from nervous exhaustion.7 Roosevelt’s own attitude to disease and frailty was the same now, in his fortieth year, as it had been in his fourteenth: if one ignored them long enough, presumably they would go away. No illness, not even the mortal kind, must deter him from leaving for the front at the first hint of war.8
But the trumpets did not blow for him that freezing January day. He worked off his frustrations, as the Secretary had predicted, by “spoiling twenty pages of good writing paper,” in the form of a memorandum on naval preparedness, and deposited it on Long’s desk the following morning.9 The document was signed Yours respectfully, but in its urgency and peremptory statement of facts it read more like a curt set of orders.
Roosevelt warned of “serious consequences” for the Navy Department if it allowed itself to drift unprepared into war. “Some preparation can and should be undertaken, on the mere chance of having to strike … the saving in life, money, and reputation by such a course will be very great.” He advised—insisted—that vulnerable U.S. cruisers and gunboats currently “scattered about the high seas” be concentrated at strategic points for possible blockade duty in Cuba and the Philippines. This redeployment must begin “at once,” since even a fast cruiser like the Cincinnati would take thirty days to steam north from South America and would arrive home without any coal. “In other words for the first five or six most important weeks of the war these vessels will be absolutely useless,” Roosevelt wrote, temporarily forgetting that war had not yet been declared. Such ships should be recalled “tomorrow,” and assembled at Key West, where they could fill up with coal and be ready for instant battle orders.
He was confident that Dewey, his man in Hong Kong, had enough ships to “overmaster” the Spanish Asiatic Squadron, but just to make sure, the vessels now patrolling Hawaii should add their gunpower to the Commodore’s. On the Eastern seaboard, “a flying squadron composed of powerful ships of speed and great coal capacity” should be readied for instant dispatch to the Canaries, whence it might attack Cadiz, or slip through Gibraltar by night and destroy Barcelona.
The memorandum ended with rapid-fire demands for more ammunition, men, and colliers. “When the war comes, it should come finally on our initiative, and after we have had time to prepare.”
Roosevelt’s fine writing-paper was not altogether wasted. Something about his “impetuosity and almost fierceness” persuaded the Secretary to order the Cincinnati and several other South Atlantic cruisers into equatorial waters, and station a small force at Lisbon, where it could monitor Spanish naval movements. Meanwhile the formidable North Atlantic Squadron,