Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [239]
AT SIX AND A half feet tall, Russia’s senior plenipotentiary was a delight to cartoonists, who imagined him crushing, or bear-hugging, his tiny Japanese adversaries to death. Yet Sergei Iulievich Witte was more adept at commercial negotiations than at the often dangerous business of ending a war. He was a former finance minister and railroad man, convinced that gold, not gunpowder, was the final arbiter of all questions. As such, he had become so identified with the “peace party” in his homeland that Nicholas II at first absolutely declined to appoint him. Only when two other nominees quailed before the challenge had the Tsar yielded to the urgings of Witte’s supporters.
Henry Adams had met Witte in St. Petersburg a few years before and recognized him as an archetypal Slav, except for an inherited streak of Dutch phlegmatism. “He is quite ignorant. Of the world outside Russia, and especially of America, he knows little. He fears Germany, detests England, and clings to France. He is a force; a rather brute energy, a Peter-the-Great sort of earnestness.” More recent reports described Witte as the ablest man in Russia, a “most bitter enemy” of reform, and a likely leader of the government, were the Tsar not so afraid of him.
Roosevelt had hoped that Marquis Hirobumi Ito would head the Japanese delegation, since he was a revered former statesman, and had the same pragmatic views about peace as Witte. But to the further joy of cartoonists, Katsura appointed the puniest-looking officer in his government, Baron Jutaro Komura. The Foreign Minister was delicately boned and wizened, although he was only forty-eight, with eyes black as calligrapher’s ink, and nervous, jerky gestures, as if swatting at imaginary gnats. He had the pallid look of a man who lived largely on seaweed. Lloyd Griscom had learned not to underestimate him. Komura was, like Takahira, a Harvard graduate, and he had the advantage over Witte in that his mind was “remarkably Western in its comprehension of world affairs.” Not only that, he had served as a diplomat in St. Petersburg, Washington, Peking, and Seoul—the power centers in the current war. If he had any weakness as a negotiator, it was the common Japanese one of being “apprehensive lest somebody might get the better of him.”
The four plenipotentiaries were each assisted by six accredited aides, of economic, diplomatic, or military persuasion. Together with their clerical staffs, security officers, and countless hangers-on, they invested New York City with an unusual amount of diplomatic pomp as the fifth of August, the day they were to meet at Oyster Bay, drew near.
That solemn engagement did not prevent first Komura and Takahira, then Witte and Rosen from paying advance visits to the President at Sagamore Hill. The Japanese party came an hour earlier than arranged, in their high silk hats and frock coats. They waited for a while on the porch until they heard a shouted greeting from the trees far below and saw their host approaching in knickerbockers and a collarless brown shirt. He was waving an ancient hat.
After Roosevelt had changed, he escorted them into the “North Room,” a new adjunct to the house, designed by C. Grant LaFarge for the reception of important visitors. It had been completed just six weeks before: a space both deep and high, sunken four steps down from the first-floor walkway, and stretching forty polished feet to its farther windows (a spread eagle cawing silently between them). Although the woodwork and vaulted ceiling were of heavy Philippine hardwoods and