Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [120]
ROOSEVELT WORKED OFF his political frustrations in typical physical fashion. He chopped down trees on Cathedral Heights, gunned his big horse Bleistein daily through Rock Creek Park, and, when ice made riding dangerous, hiked for miles in hobnailed boots, crashing over saplings like a bear. His singlesticks duels with Leonard Wood continued: after one session he was so whacked about the right arm that he had to greet his evening guests left-handed.
ALONG EMBASSY ROW, anticipation of the arrival of new ambassadors from Germany and France mounted. Jusserand was an unknown quantity, but Baron von Sternburg’s previous postings to Washington, not to mention his closeness to the President, allowed for a good deal of gossip—not all of it friendly. “Il est plus anglais qu’un anglais,” sneered the Russian envoy, Count de Cassini, “et plus américain qu’un américain.” Insofar as Cassini himself spoke French at home, and was excessively proud of his Italian surname, this was a qualified condemnation.
“I see you are to have Specky again,” Cecil Spring Rice wrote enviously from St. Petersburg. “What fun.” With the Venezuela arbitration talks not yet under way, Roosevelt remained guarded. Time enough for “fun” when the Kaiser withdrew his warships, which were ostensibly guarding against any breakdown in the peace process. “He thinks he has me because he is sending an intimate friend of mine to Washington. I know what I mean to do.… The new Ambassador will not influence me any more than Herr von Holleben could.”
This confidence, shared with the French chargé d’affaires, Pierre de Margérie, let the diplomatic corps know that Roosevelt had not been merely modest in declining to arbitrate Allied claims against Venezuela. He wanted to use the current negotiatory situation to make a powerful, one-sided point. Since Germany and Britain would not deal directly with their debtor, President Castro had asked Herbert Bowen, the United States Minister in Caracas, to represent him at the talks. This awkward choice played right into American hands.
“Mr. Bowen is a capable man, but his manner is not always, shall we say, diplomatic,” the President said to de Margérie. Rambling on half ruminatively, he enunciated for the first time the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine:
The debts will be paid. I’ll do whatever’s necessary to ensure that. There’s the Monroe Doctrine to consider. Since we can’t, on the one hand, tolerate permanent seizure of territory by a European power in any of the American republics … I, on the other, can’t let them hide behind the Doctrine in order to shirk obligations.
De Margérie speculated that it might have been a delusion to the contrary that caused President Castro to be so cavalier about credit in the first place. “That is precisely what I want no more of,” Roosevelt snapped. If Venezuela refused to abide by the arbitration agreement, he would enforce it himself. “I have the means.”
ON 22 JANUARY, Roosevelt held another conference, this time with Senators Hanna, Spooner, and Shelby M. Cullom, chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations. They discussed the deadlocked Panama Canal Treaty. Bogotá’s latest instructions to Dr. Herrán proposed an annual rent that was at least a half-million dollars more than the United States was prepared to pay for a sea-to-sea strip of jungle six miles wide. Secretary Hay had made a New Year’s concession, offering to begin rental payments within nine years rather than fourteen, but this was still not satisfactory to Herrán. After six weeks of argument, negotiations had broken off, and both men were bedridden with frustration.
Under the Spooner Amendment—now enshrined in law—Roosevelt was required to revert to the Nicaragua