Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [112]
The tactfulness of this warning was lost on von Holleben, who doggedly repeated Germany’s official position. His Majesty had no intention to take “permanent” possession of Venezuelan territory. With a touch of sarcasm, Roosevelt said that he was sure Wilhelm felt the same about Kiaochow, which was “merely held by a ninety-nine years lease.”
Again von Holleben failed to react. Roosevelt politely informed him that he would wait ten days for a total disclaimer from Berlin. If none was forthcoming, Admiral Dewey would be ordered south “to observe matters along Venezuela.”
The Ambassador escorted his party out. “You gave that Dutchman something to think about,” said William Loeb, who was doing secretarial duty. But Loeb wondered if von Holleben had the courage to transmit an ultimatum. “I don’t think he will give the Kaiser a correct picture of your attitude.”
THE “PACIFIC” BLOCKADE turned violent the next morning, 9 December. Four Venezuelan gunboats were seized by the Allies, and three of them destroyed by Germany. President Castro, in a panic, proposed that all claims against his country be arbitrated, and asked the United States to intercede for him.
John Hay relayed Castro’s proposal to London and Berlin, while Roosevelt considered the implications of his secret ultimatum to the Kaiser. The sinking of the gunboats struck him as “an act of brutality and useless revenge.” If Der Allmachtige was this willing to lay violent hands on Venezuelan shipping, what price Venezuelan real estate? More than ever, Roosevelt suspected that Germany wanted to establish “a strongly fortified place of arms” near the future Isthmian Canal. He himself was pledged to violence now—unless von Holleben brought him a peaceable message in the nine days remaining.
MORE THAN EIGHT thousand miles away, the only detached units of the United States Navy steamed to a routine rendezvous at Manila. Neither the Pacific nor the Far Eastern Squadron was needed for Caribbean duty. But Roosevelt had never forgotten that, in 1898, it had taken the battleship Oregon sixty-four days to rush from San Francisco to Florida via Cape Horn.
Palpably, between the extremes of his divided fleet, a mirage of locks and water shimmered across Panama.
IN BERLIN, Speck von Sternburg was reporting to Chancellor von Bülow and State Secretary Olaf von Richtoven on his recent visit to America. He cautioned them against “basking in the illusions” of Roosevelt’s extravagant welcome to Prince Heinrich, nine months before. They must be aware of a steady deterioration in United States–German relations.
Expressionless, self-effacing, and cunning, von Sternburg had his own interests in mind. He knew that Roosevelt was uncomfortable with Ambassador von Holleben, and would prefer a more congenial envoy in Washington. “I feel absolutely confident,” he wrote the President afterward, “that a radical change must take place.… Of course I didn’t say a word as regards myself as a candidate.”
Roosevelt did not mind members of his secret du roi advancing themselves, since by doing so they usually advanced American foreign policy. A little farther down in von Sternburg’s letter, he read: “The Venezuelan crisis is causing a considerable stir here.”
There seemed to be a similar stir in London, where St. Loe Strachey was railing in the Spectator against “one of the most amazingly indiscreet alliances ever made with a foreign power.” British popular opinion was generally against shared adventurism. In the United States, newspaper hostility toward Germany rose to such a pitch that von Holleben sent a worried cable to the Wilhelmstrasse.
Von Bülow passed it on to the Kaiser, who scrawled irritatedly in the margin, “Herr Ambassador is over there to take the pulse of the press and to calm it, when necessary, by administering proper treatment.” Wilhelm agreed,