Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [229]
A steady succession of snowstorms and blizzards made Roosevelt rather regret his self-enforced sojourn on New Castle Mountain. On 6 May, he was at last free to descend to Glenwood Springs. He subsequently recorded in “A Colorado Bear Hunt,” his first piece of published nature writing as President,
As we left ever farther behind us the wintry desolation of our high hunting-grounds we rode into full spring. The green of the valley was a delight to the eye; bird songs sounded on every side, from the fields and from the trees and bushes beside the brooks and irrigation ditches; the air was sweet with the springtime breath of many budding things.
CHAPTER 24
The Best Herder of Emperors Since Napoleon
Thim was th’ modest days iv the raypublic, Hinnissy.
It’s different, now that we’ve become a wurruld power.
ROOSEVELT’S SOJOURN IN the mountains had understandably caught the attention of the popular press. Humorists such as the poet Wallace Irwin made the most of it—noting that Dr. Lambert had been invited along as much for his camera as for his company:
“Come hither, Court Photographer,”
The genial monarch saith,
“Be quick to snap your picture-trap
As I do yon Bear to death.”
“Dee-lighted!” cries the smiling Bear,
As he waits and holds his breath.
The fact that an urgent telegram had been delivered by William Loeb was also noted. But Roosevelt so adroitly concealed its content that the message was thought to be about further mischief-making by Cipriano Castro:
But as he speaks a messenger
Cries, “Sire, a telegraft!”
Which he opens fore and aft,
And reads, “The Venezuelan stew is boiling over—TAFT.”
Irwin did not doubt, therefore, that the President had decided to return home early to “spank” a Latin American republic, as lustily as he had done in 1903. This misperception suited Roosevelt’s purposes. The longer the press thought he was concerned only with Monroe Doctrine matters (Santo Domingo would prove to be the first test of his Corollary), the better he could secretly answer the biggest challenge of his career.
So backward, backward from the hunt
The monarch lopes once more.
The Constitution rides behind
And the Big Stick rides before
(Which was a rule of precedent
In the reign of Theodore).
THE BATTLE OF Tsu Shima on 27 May 1905 was the greatest naval engagement since Trafalgar. Russia’s Baltic Fleet was annihilated in a holocaust of two thousand shells per minute. Japan sank twenty-two Russian ships, including four new battleships, and captured seven others. She lost only three torpedo boats in the process, and killed four thousand men. Admiral Rozhdestvenski was taken prisoner. The Tsar’s humiliation was complete. Only his limitless supply of military manpower, and the nearly eight thousand miles separating Tokyo from St. Petersburg, served to protect the Romanoff dynasty from rout.
Roosevelt was awed by how decisively Japan had proved herself “a civilized, modern power”—civilization, to him, being synonymous with strength. Although he confessed to Cecil Spring Rice that he loathed the Tsarist form of government, he felt a deep sympathy for ordinary Russians and their culture, so much more congenial to him than that of Nippon. If this culture was to survive Tsu Shima, and not regress into some dark age of the Russian soul, Nicholas II must be coaxed at once into the peace process.
His cousin Wilhelm would seem the likeliest agent to prevail on him, except that the Kaiser, currently obsessing about France and Great Britain, was not averse to having Nicholas tied up in Manchuria a while longer. Ambassador Cassini did not seem to know what was going on in St. Petersburg, insofar as he could be trusted: “What I cannot understand about the Russian,” Roosevelt complained, “is the way he will lie when he knows