Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [244]
Later that evening, Roosevelt received related news from George Meyer in St. Petersburg. It indicated that Witte was acting on royal authority. Nicholas II, who had made plain at Tsarsköe Selò how precious Sakhalin was to Russia, was increasingly under the sway of war advocates. To them, an indemnity under any name would be an admission that the Motherland was conquered. No Japanese jackboot had yet trodden her soil—unless one counted the non-continental mass of Sakhalin.
Roosevelt detected a resurgence of the Russian lack of logic that had so infuriated him with Count Cassini. His Majesty would not give up Sakhalin, yet Sakhalin was already occupied by the Japanese. Russia was not conquered—she had merely been beaten in every land battle of the war, and lost almost all of her navy. Her soil was undefiled, but if she did not soon treat with Japan, she could say good-bye to eastern Siberia.
A fantasy began to grow in him. He would like to march the Tsar and his ministers to the end of Cove Neck, and “run them violently down a steep place into the sea.” But reality beckoned. The peace conference would soon founder if Russia could not be persuaded to sacrifice some of her “honor.” He told Kaneko that he would appeal, if necessary, to the Tsar, and enlist the aid of the Kaiser and President Loubet of France as well.
The courier returned home satisfied. That night, Roosevelt, having heard from Speck von Sternburg that Britain and France were conspiring to step in as peacemakers, sent a telegram to the Russian delegation in Portsmouth, in care of Herbert H. Peirce. It was galvanizing enough for the Assistant Secretary to wake Baron Rosen up at 2:00 A.M. and tell him he was expected at Sagamore Hill in the early afternoon.
All diplomatic niceties, evidently, were being waived in this hour of crisis. The President of the United States was no longer a neutral mediator between belligerents. He was prepared to intervene, and to do so peremptorily. Rosen had no choice but to obey his summons.
Roosevelt was playing tennis in white flannels when Rosen found him at four o’clock. Disconcertingly, he kept returning to the game at pauses in their conversation, as if to mime the serves and returns of diplomatic dialogue. He said that three of Russia’s principal concerns at Portsmouth—imprisoned war vessels, naval limitation, and Japanese control of Sakhalin—were resolvable, in his opinion. Japan would back down on the first two, and the Tsar must accept the last as a fait accompli. Occupied ground was enemy ground.
“We Americans,” Roosevelt said, by way of example, “are ensconced at Panama and will not leave.”
It was not the most fortunate comparison, but Rosen was more interested in what the President proceeded to say about Sakhalin. Roosevelt seemed to know that Witte had reluctantly begun to talk about dividing the island—the northern half to be Russian and strategic, the southern Japanese and commercial.
He asked Rosen if his delegation would transmit a proposal to the Tsar as “an idea expressed in private conversation” with the President. This was that Russia should buy her half from Japan, as holders of the real estate in question. Without even mentioning the word indemnity, a negotiable quantity of money would begin to flow in Tokyo’s direction. The talks would be reanimated, tempers would cool, and the unmentionable could perhaps be submitted to allies