Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [232]
Meyer finished reading, but no answer came. Nicholas sat mute through a series of further appeals, improvised by the increasingly desperate Ambassador. He showed emotion only once, when Meyer remarked that if Japan proved obstinate or greedy at the conference table, Russians would unite behind their sovereign. At this, the Tsar made a half gesture, as if wanting to touch him.
“That is my belief, and I think you are absolutely right,” Nicholas said.
Meyer made much of his own friendship with Roosevelt, extending back to Harvard days, and said that the President was acting, as he always had, “from the highest motives.” He understood that it was agonizing for a Commander-in-Chief to put aside “pride and ambition” in a time of national adversity, but that the saving of “possibly hundreds of thousands of lives” would justify it, and win His Majesty world respect. The alternative was to go on fighting a horde of fanatic Orientals who, unlike “Christian” soldiers, had no fear of death—indeed, had an obsessive worship of it.
Protocol required that the Tsar, not Meyer, signal the end of the interview. Three o’clock approached, but Nicholas still made no move. At last he said, “If it will be absolutely secret as to my decision, should Japan decline, or until she gives her consent, I will now commit to your President’s plan.… Do you suppose,” he added, “that President Roosevelt knows, or could find out in the meantime and let us know, what Japan’s terms are?”
MEYER’S JOYFUL BOMBSHELL hit the White House the next day with no outside reverberation whatsoever. Not until 10 June, after both belligerents had accepted Roosevelt’s formal “invitation,” did the press get official word of what had been going on, and who was responsible for the sudden decrease in international tension. The London Morning Post hailed the emergence of a new world peacemaker:
Mr Roosevelt’s success has amazed everybody, not because he succeeded, but because of the manner by which he achieved success. He has displayed not only diplomatic abilities of the very highest order, but also great tact, great foresight, and finesse really extraordinary. Alone—absolutely without assistance or advice—he met every situation as it arose, shaped events to suit his purpose, and showed remarkable patience, caution, and moderation. As a diplomatist Mr Roosevelt is now entitled to take high rank.
Strangely, the President was nowhere to be seen at the time of the announcement. He had, in fact, left town the day before on a mysterious trip to Rapidan, Virginia, allegedly to spend the weekend with some friends. His real destination was a nearby dacha in dense forest that Edith Roosevelt had acquired as a hideaway for them both. The Tsar and Tsarina would have found it somewhat confining, since it consisted of one rough-cut, stone-chimneyed boarded box, with two smaller boxes upstairs. The pitched roof was overlong in front, creating a shaded “piazza” at mosquito level. Edith called the place Pine Knot, after the most noticeable feature of its interior decoration.
Here, as the news of the forthcoming peace conference reverberated through Europe and Asia, the President and his wife relaxed in solitude, hearing nothing but birdsong and the trickle of a spring. “It really is a perfectly delightful little place,” Roosevelt wrote Kermit. “Mother is a great deal more pleased with it than any child with any toy I ever saw, and is too cunning and pretty, and busy for anything.” Since Edith’s culinary industry extended mainly to boiling water for tea, he served a breakfast of fried eggs and bacon, a dinner of two fried chickens with biscuits and cornbread, plus