Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [111]
Speak softly and carry a big stick was a West African proverb Roosevelt had tried out once, as Vice President, and memorized as a personal mantra. Perhaps the current situation would enable him to test its effectiveness, starting with the soft speech. “If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble; but neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power.”
ON 8 DECEMBER, the German Ambassador, Theodor von Holleben, visited the Executive Office with a party of his compatriots. The appointment was ceremonial. However, it gave Roosevelt a chance to talk to the Ambassador privately, without attracting the attention of reporters. He was adept at drawing callers aside on such occasions, and hissing something forceful through smiling teeth.
The reason for his circumspection was that he had to deal, through von Holleben, with the most dangerous man in the world. Wilhelm II, Emperor of Germany, loomed clear in his imagination—clearer, perhaps, than if they had actually met. (Roosevelt was too good-natured to be a perceptive judge of people in the flesh.) For several years, even before becoming Vice President, he had been receiving apprehensive reports about the Kaiser from mutual acquaintances. Cecil Spring Rice, for one, saw Wilhelm as an economic and military expansionist, with a “definite plan” to consolidate German interests in South America. General Wood, just back from observing the German Army maneuvers at Potsdam, did not know what to be more impressed with: the Kaiser’s bewitching personality, or his domination of an inhumanly efficient military machine.
Roosevelt the Germanist admired Wilhelm’s finer Teutonic qualities, as he did those of Helmuth Karl von Moltke and Albrecht von Roon. He was also aware of some beguiling similarities between the Kaiser and himself. Only three months separated their respective dates of birth, Wilhelm being the younger man. Physically, they were alike in their burly, grinning virility, their hunting prowess, and their conquest of juvenile disability—in the Kaiser’s case, a withered left arm. They had the same quick nerves, charm, explosive speech, and weakness for moralizing. They were catholic in intellect, encyclopedic in memory. They shared a passion for things military, identifying particularly with sea power.
However, as Roosevelt pointed out, superficial similarities between men or nations accentuate their serious differences. In contrast to his own steely sense of direction, he saw a brilliant waywardness in Wilhelm, as of running mercury. The Kaiser was vain, coarse, romantic, and often foolish. He was xenophobic in general and anti-Semitic in particular, given to hoarse shouts of “Ein Reich, ein Volk, ein Gott!” His fits of rage were so violent as to make onlookers sick.
What made Roosevelt most wary was Wilhelm’s inclination toward bejeweled fantasy. “He writes to me pretending that he is a descendant of Frederick the Great! I know better and feel inclined to tell him so.” The Kaiser liked to dress up as Frederick; when he posed for photographs in his hero’s thigh-boots he revealed rather wide hips. Roosevelt, alive to any hint of effeminacy, understood that in negotiating with Wilhelm he must at all times remember the importance of show. It would be foolhardy to humiliate him in the Caribbean. The Kaiser was enough of a man to stand a tough, confidential message—and enough of a woman, presumably, to retreat if it could be made to look glamorous.
ACCORDING TO ROOSEVELT’S later testimony, he spoke to Ambassador von Holleben “with extreme emphasis,” and told him
to tell the Kaiser that I had put Dewey in charge of our fleet to maneuver in West Indian waters; that the world at large should know this merely as a maneuver, and we should strive in every way to appear simply as cooperating