Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [213]
This new pattern of flags pleased the President more than it did John Hay, who saw nothing but blood and snow for the rest of the winter, and, trampled underfoot, his cherished Open Door policy for China. “War grows more frightful to me as I grow older,” he confessed. Roosevelt, younger and less sentimental, saw the possibility of a favorable balance of power developing in the East. He was prepared to let the Island Empire colonize Korea—but not Manchuria.
“I would like to see the war ending with Russia and Japan locked in a clinch, counterweighing one another, and both kept weak by the effort,” he told Jules Jusserand. This would safeguard the security of Hawaii and the Philippines. He noticed signs of Japanese exhaustion, as evinced by General Nogi’s failure to take Port Arthur: “Look how long they’ve been predicting its surrender!”
Jusserand, whose own government was allied with the Tsar’s, reported “un notable changement” in Roosevelt’s views to the Quai d’Orsay.
ACCORDING TO ALL THE laws of political navigation, the Democratic campaign vessel, split along ideological lines and commanded by a man who would not steer, should by now have sunk. Amazingly, however, she began to ride higher in the last week of September, and on the first day of October gave off a blast of live steam.
Joseph Pulitzer complained, in an open letter spread across two pages of the New York World, “You have not kept the faith, Mr. President, in your promise of publicity as to the affairs of the corporations.… Why?” Roosevelt’s much-vaunted Bureau of Corporations had been in existence for eighteen months, but Americans still knew nothing of how trust lords such as E. H. Harriman and J. P. Morgan operated. Both men, Pulitzer reported, were giving huge sums to the Republicans. (He did not mention that August Belmont and James J. Hill were doing the same for the Democrats.) “When they give something to Mr. Cortelyou for your campaign … they regard your acceptance of their tribute as an implied promise of protection.” Pulitzer proceeded to ask ten bold-face questions.
How much has the beef trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the paper trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the coal trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the sugar trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the oil trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the tobacco trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the steel trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much have the national banks contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much has the insurance trust contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
How much have the six great railroads contributed to Mr. Cortelyou?
The aggregate answer—which Cortelyou declined to give—was: less than half of what Hanna and McKinley had collected from such sources in 1900. Corporate contributions were actually tapering off, since the President seemed such a cinch for election.
Cortelyou’s friends knew him to be a man of almost ludicrous probity. He had spent the last fourteen years paying off debts of honor at maximum interest, despite the forgiveness of his creditors. But these were private matters. Pulitzer’s “Ten Questions” (shrewdly aimed at him, rather than at the well-respected Bliss) amounted to ten very public slurs on Cortelyou’s reputation. Soon Democratic campaign speakers were shouting his name over and over again, along with How much? How much? How much?, until the chorus resounded throughout New York State. Judge Parker alone maintained an austere silence.
All Cortelyou said in response was that the next Administration was going to be “unhampered by a single promise of any kind.” Roosevelt chafed with frustration. He was beginning to have doubts