Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [105]
Roosevelt, marching through, did not affect any aesthetic rapture. Subtlety, balance, refinement of line, harmonies of color and texture escaped his eye, as music bypassed his ears. To him, game heads were not decorative statements so much as reassuring tokens that he was (pace Mississippi!) a mighty hunter. Gentlemen of his class—McKim included—felt at home dining beneath tusks and antlers, ensconced in oiled wood. Even effete little Henry Adams liked this room.
Breeding, however, saved Roosevelt from the pretensions of the nouveau riche. Having deaccessioned the china hen, he felt no urge to replace it with a Japanese miniature tree, or a collection of Bavarian steins. He was too much of a professional himself to venture any amateur design suggestions. Indeed, his only mild criticism was that here and there McKim had not been austere enough.
Upstairs, Edith Roosevelt had fewer scruples. Fortunately, her fondness for brown-and-green upholstery, and pink-and-green garlanded curtains, left intact the structural grand plan. Two big new bedrooms where the executive suite used to be increased the White House’s total of domestic apartments to seven. Now that Kermit had followed Ted to Groton, there was plenty of room for houseguests. The oval library had been turned into an elegant parlor, suitable for the entertainment of fashionable ladies. Next door, the former Cabinet Room became Roosevelt’s writing “den,” with leather chairs, a deep fireplace, and yards of books. Knowing her husband’s love of all things nautical, Edith set an old desk carved from the timbers of HMS Resolute in the center of the room. Here, late at night, after she had gone to bed, he could work on the final draft of his Second Annual Message.
THE DOCUMENT WAS half the length of its predecessor and clearly the work of a cautious Chief Executive. Roosevelt had little to say on matters of domestic policy, except to demand a special fund for antitrust prosecutions, and to insert the word urgent into his repeat request for a Department of Commerce. He took a peaceable survey of international affairs, noting that the United States and Mexico had just become the first powers to submit a legal dispute to The Hague.
“As civilization grows,” he wrote, “warfare becomes less and less the normal condition of foreign relations.” Yet he could not resist pointing out a corollary responsibility for the strong to maintain order. “More and more the increasing interdependence and complexity of international political and economic relations render it incumbent on all civilized and orderly powers to insist on the proper policing of the world.”
By this he did not mean to threaten well-behaved Latin American nations. On the contrary, they could look for protection against European aggression, under guarantee of the Monroe Doctrine. The Western Hemisphere was secure. “There is not a cloud on the horizon at present … not the slightest chance of trouble with a foreign power.”
With these bland words, Theodore Roosevelt revealed—or, rather, further concealed—an unguessed aspect of his character; namely, that of the covert diplomat practicing Louis XV’s secret du roi. Foreign policy was, he acknowledged, “the subject on which I feel deepest.” The very depth of his feeling convinced him that negotiations, in times of crisis, should be private and verbal, hence undocumented.
He had a far-flung network of intermediaries and informants, men of diplomatic or intellectual or social stamp, by no means all Americans. Most of them were globe-trotting friends from prepresidential days, such as Cecil Spring Rice of Berlin, Constantinople, and St. Petersburg; Henry White, chargé d’affaires at the American Embassy in London; and Arthur Hamilton Lee, a Tory member of the British Parliament. Their urbane, literate reports kept him up to date with court affairs and privileged gossip. As members of the secret, they were able to negotiate without paper, and keep agreements quiet, protecting