Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [200]
“All except the members of the National Committee,” Senator Scott murmured.
Root did not enunciate the words “Theodore Roosevelt” until his final sentence, at 1:18 P.M. There was a gratifying roar, but it died in thirty seconds. At 2:10 P.M., the convention adjourned for the day, and Henry Cabot Lodge’s Committee on Resolutions began to write the party platform. Simultaneously, Consul Gummeré’s cable arrived in Washington.
HAY PONDERED THE cable overnight. More and more, he dreaded an American show of force. European reactions would be negative, and could turn hostile when—as now seemed certain—Mr. Perdicaris was revealed to be a Greek. A report from Athens confirmed that one “Ioannis Perdicaris” had applied for Greek citizenship there, at the start of the American Civil War. Ioannis certainly sounded similar to Ion.
Unable to confront Roosevelt with this news, Hay asked a deputy, Gaillard Hunt, to take the Perdicaris file over to the White House, along with a recommendation that Raisuli and the Sultan be given a final warning. As Commander-in-Chief (not to mention political candidate) Roosevelt must consider the risks.
Hunt came back and said that the President had not been at all pleased with the contents of the file. However, he had authorized Hay’s suggested ultimatum. Rightly or wrongly, Raisuli believed Mr. Perdicaris to be American; he had therefore done deliberate violence to the whole concept of American citizenship. For that he must be held responsible, and the Sultan responsible for him.
ONCE AGAIN IT was afternoon in Morocco as Roosevelt conducted his mid-morning audience, and delegates in the Chicago Coliseum awaited the noon opening gavel.
Hay, drafting his ultimatum, hit upon “a concise impropriety” to gratify the aggressive Gummeré. It nicely balanced the more cautious phraseology that followed:
WE WANT PERDICARIS ALIVE OR RAISULI DEAD. FURTHER THAN THIS WE DESIRE LEAST POSSIBLE COMPLICATIONS WITH MOROCCO OR OTHER POWERS. YOU WILL NOT ARRANGE FOR LANDING MARINES OR SEIZING CUSTOM HOUSE WITHOUT SPECIFIC DIRECTIONS FROM THE DEPARTMENT.
Hay could not resist showing his draft to Edwin M. Hood, the veteran State Department correspondent for the Scripps-McRae news service. “Think I’ll send it,” he said, as one old newspaperman to another.
“Then I will too,” Hood replied. The message went out over government and news wires simultaneously. But by the time it reached Morocco, Gummeré had no need for it. An up-country sheik announced that he would make his village available for the exchange of hostages and ransom on the next morning, 23 June.
HOOD’S DISPATCH REACHED Chicago at about 3:00 P.M., and a copy was delivered to the permanent chairman of the convention, Joseph Cannon. He let it lie on his desk while Henry Cabot Lodge read the Republican Party platform for 1904.
“We declare our constant adherence to the following principles,” Lodge shouted. His voice rang with the earnestness of a politician determined to say as little as possible. He was noncommittal on the tariff, trust control, labor relations, and foreign policy. The future of the Philippines was left vague. Disfranchised Negroes got a few words of sympathy, insurgent Republicans none. There was no call for railroad rate regulation, no acknowledgment of the Iowa Idea, no mention of the power war between Governor LaFollette and Senator Spooner. (The latter’s Old Guard delegation doggedly occupied Wisconsin floor space, courtesy of the Committee on Credentials.)
When Lodge finished, Cannon called for acceptance of the platform. There was a unanimous, if apathetic, chorus of ayes. Cannon, smiling, took up his slip of paper. “With the consent of the Convention, the Chair will direct the Clerk to read a dispatch from Washington … received through