Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [113]
The ink on his superscription was scarcely dry when the British Royal Navy obliged off Puerto Cabello. The captain of an armored cruiser, responding to some “insult” to the Union Jack, bombarded the Venezuelan coast, and a German cruiser joined in, heavily damaging two forts.
Roosevelt continued to believe that Germany was “the really formidable party” in the alliance. Sir Arthur Balfour’s government had to find a way out or jeopardize the rapprochement between the two great English-speaking powers. One thing was certain: Britain would declare neutrality in any clash over the Monroe Doctrine.
Sunday, 14 December, dawned gray and bitingly cold in Washington. The White House stood shrouded in weekend quiet. But the clock of war ticked on. Four more such dawns, and Roosevelt’s deadline would expire. Then Theodor von Holleben came to see him.
If Roosevelt expected an answer to his ultimatum of 8 December, he was soon disappointed. Von Holleben was a Diplomat älterer Schule, a sociable old Prussian with a bachelor’s paunch and mild, misty eyes. His booming laugh precluded conversational attack. He preferred to do business in writing, with long delays between dispatch and response. The characteristics of his diplomacy were concern about America’s rise to world power, and what John Hay called “mortal terror of the Kaiser.”
Today, von Holleben seemed interested in talking about only the weather and, of all things, tennis. When he rose to go Roosevelt asked if his government was going to accept the arbitration proposal transmitted by Secretary Hay. The Ambassador said, “No.”
Controlling himself, Roosevelt replied that Kaiser Wilhelm must understand he was “very definitely” threatening war. Von Holleben declined to be a party to such language.
The President said that in that case he would advance his ultimatum by twenty-four hours. Calculating back to 8 December, the deadline would now fall on the seventeenth, rather than the eighteenth. Von Holleben, shaken, insisted that His Majesty would not arbitrate. Roosevelt let him have the last word.
WILLIAM LOEB SAW the Ambassador go, but made no log of his visit. Neither did clerks at the State Department or the German Embassy. It suited everybody concerned that blank paper should obliterate the diplomatic record. Wilhelm was still free to end the crisis without evidence of being coerced.
Von Holleben pondered Roosevelt’s incredible threat. He could transmit it now (if he dared to transmit it at all) only as a matter of extreme urgency. Contrary to von Sternburg’s insinuations, he had long been aware of the rise of anti-Germanism in the United States, to the extent of predicting war, sooner or later, over the Monroe Doctrine. But the Kaiser had scoffed at his qualms. “We will do whatever is necessary for our navy, even if it displeases the Yankees. Never fear!” This ultimatum might well be Rooseveltian bluster. Von Holleben did not want to be dismissed as an alarmist.
But what if the President was serious? Von Holleben decided to consult a German diplomat in New York who knew Roosevelt well—Consul General Karl Bünz. Under cloak of a snowstorm, the Ambassador left town. Late that evening he registered at the Cambridge Hotel, Manhattan.
Sometime during the next twenty-four hours, Bünz assured him that the President was “not bluffing.” Nor was Roosevelt’s short-term strategy flawed. Whatever the worldwide strength of the Kaiser’s Navy, it was currently dispersed. Admiral Dewey was therefore in a position to deal a brutal blow to German prestige in the Caribbean.
As von Holleben struggled with this frightening information, diplomatic strains developed between London and Berlin. Lord Lansdowne, the British Foreign Secretary, found himself in a difficult position, with King Edward VII expressing annoyance at the Venezuelan entanglement, and the German Ambassador, Count Paul von Metternich, insisting the Kaiser would not arbitrate. Lansdowne