Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [159]
NOT SURPRISINGLY, news of revolutionary activity on the Isthmus came within days. “The fathers at Bogotá are eating sour grapes,” Assistant Secretary of State Alvey A. Adee wrote Hay, “and the teeth of the children of Panama are getting a fine edge on to ’em.”
Hay was pleased that the President wanted to wait “a reasonable time” before deciding what to do next. He warned him against an outright seizure of Panama, which Moore’s memorandum seemed to justify. “The fact that our position, in that case, would be legal and just, might not greatly impress the jack-rabbit mind. I do not believe that we could faire valoir our rights in that way without war—which would, of course, be brief and inexpensive.”
Gradually, a partial understanding of Colombia’s behavior emerged, together with hopes that President Marroquín might yet save the situation by executive action. Beaupré seemed to feel some responsibility, having deeply offended the Colombian Senate with his imperious notes demanding ratification. He pleaded that the proposed treaty be given its full legal term to expire—some thirty more days.
“The President will make no engagement as to his action in the canal matter,” Hay replied. From then on, the wires from Oyster Bay and Washington were silent. Apprehension mounted in Bogotá.
“For the first time I must tell you,” Tomás Herrán wrote William Nelson Cromwell, “that I have lost all hope.”
AUGUST DROWSED TO an end. Inland, the weather turned cool, but Oyster Bay was reluctant to yield its summer heat. Geese continued to laze in the mudflats, and, when the breeze shifted landward, their guttural conversation could be heard at the top of Sagamore Hill. Other sounds were audible now, as the air sharpened: the distant tolling of a bell buoy, sometimes even the thrum of a steamer out to sea. Evening brought the less welcome whine of mosquitoes. For some reason, they avoided Roosevelt, as he sat on the piazza reading Euripides, and fanned out in search of Secret Service men hiding in the grape arbor.
Toward the end of the first night watch, about 10:15 P.M. on 1 September, a buggy rolled silently up the driveway’s grass shoulder. Clouds covered the moon. Nobody saw the little vehicle until it got within fifty yards of the house. Then Roosevelt, working behind blinds in his library, heard sounds of scuffling and swearing outside.
Unthinking, he stepped onto the piazza, and stood with the light behind him. Two of his guards were struggling with a youth in the buggy. “There he is!” the youth screamed, and brandished a revolver. It was knocked to the ground, while other agents rushed out of the dark and shoved Roosevelt back inside.
“I came to kill the President,” the youth admitted, as manacles were snapped on his wrists. At Oyster Bay police station later, he rambled about Roosevelt’s action in the Government Printing Office matter. “Why doesn’t the President do something for organized labor? He’s said a lot about it, but he hasn’t bettered the condition of the working man.”
The security detail at Sagamore Hill was increased to a twelve-man, twenty-four-hour alert, while Roosevelt, shaken, reflected on his sudden unpopularity among unions. By insisting that all GPO employees swear obedience to the civil-service law, he had disillusioned thousands of radicals who had come to count on his “partiality” during the great coal strike. Even more damagingly, he had issued an executive order mandating an open-shop policy in every government department. The influential Central Labor Union of Washington, D.C., declared in a nationwide mailing, “The order of the President cannot be regarded in any but an unfriendly light.”
A providential invitation came for him to review the Labor Day parade in Syracuse, New York. He accepted, to the delight of the little city: it had not been so honored in many years.
His speech there on 7 September was so utopian that Jules Jusserand