Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [208]
ROOSEVELT HAD LONG wanted to “smash” the Ottoman Empire as a passé power, opulent and corrupt. While not exactly violating the terms of her most-favored-nation agreement with the United States, Turkey had for more than a year been so discriminatory toward American missionaries and school-teachers, and so obstructive in dealing with American diplomats throughout the Ottoman Empire, that the treaty might as well have been written in water.
John G. Leishman, the United States Minister in Constantinople, reported that the Sublime Porte, as Sultan Abd al-Hamid’s government was called, had closed on him once too often. He demanded a military response. On 8 August, Hay, who was an adroit politician behind his courtly whiskers, suggested to Roosevelt that Leishman should knock on the Porte just once more, just as Admiral Jewell’s squadron arrived at Smyrna. If the Sultan then reacted as obligingly as His Chereefian Majesty had in Tangier, and granted all the Minister’s claims, Roosevelt would be congratulated on a brilliant diplomatic victory, without having landed a single Marine. If, however, the Sultan pleaded one of his usual excuses—fatigue, indisposition, a prior engagement in the harem—Leishman should come away in one of the ships, and the matter be referred to Congress. Roosevelt would then look like a responsible Commander-in-Chief, while all danger of bloodshed would be postponed until after the election.
The President agreed, and Hay sent new instructions to Leishman.
AS HEADLINES ON the Turkish crisis grew larger, and European diplomats hurried back to Washington from vacation, Democratic National Committee officials competed for attention by notifying Alton B. Parker of his nomination for the Presidency.
Their high hopes were dampened in more ways than one on Wednesday, 10 August, the day set for the ceremony. Once more, fog shrouded Esopus, and rain fell in sheets on Parker’s steep lawn, bleeding mud into the river.
At midday, a small steamer brought the committeemen north from New York City. They disembarked at the pier and looked askance at the slippery path up to the house. An authoritative escort aligned them two abreast and shouted “Forward march.” Almost immediately, their formation broke up as they floundered and lost traction. One toiler, bent almost double, was heard to say that the hero of San Juan himself “couldn’t climb this hill.” August Belmont’s shoes raced on a patch of slime, and he tumbled backward. Fortunately, someone caught him, or the party’s richest benefactor would have ended up in the Hudson.
Parker waited on the porch until they came up, drenched and puffing, to shake his hand. He led the way to an open dais in the garden. About two thousand friends and townspeople sat patiently under low umbrellas. Congressman Champ Clark of Missouri made the notification address, and handed over a moist copy of the St. Louis platform. Camera bulbs popped in the drizzle. Then the judge, bareheaded, made his first political address in nearly two decades.
His declamation came as a surprise to the sodden crowd. He spoke confidently, incisively, like his rival, with little risings of the voice and sideways jabs of the arm. Yet somehow the Rooseveltian air of command was missing. At one point he broke from his text to urge an exposed group of listeners to take shelter under the trees: “You can hear just as well, and you won’t get wet.” Nobody moved.
The speech itself was uninspiring. Like Roosevelt, Parker summarized his party’s campaign philosophy, but apologetically, as if he was embarrassed by the limp envelope in his pocket. He attacked the President’s refusal to name a date for Philippine independence, without suggesting a date himself. He seemed unable to utter the words Morocco and Turkey when