Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [245]
Rosen, politely masking his resentment at being manipulated, agreed to carry the proposal back north for his chief to relay to St. Petersburg. Witte reluctantly obliged on 21 August, advising Count Lamsdorff, “If it is our desire that in the future America and Europe side with us, we must take Roosevelt’s opinion into consideration.” On Monday, the President felt uneasy enough about Russian duplicity to cable Meyer and ask him, once again, to read a personal message to Nicholas II:
I earnestly ask your Majesty to believe in what I am about to say and to advise. I speak as the earnest well-wisher of Russia and give you the advice I should give if I were a Russian patriot and statesman.… I find to my surprise and pleasure that the Japanese are willing to restore the northern half of Sakhalin to Russia, Russia of course in such case to pay a substantial sum for this surrender of territory by the Japanese and for the return of Russian prisoners. It seems to me that if peace can be obtained substantially on these terms, it will be both just and honorable.… If peace is not made now and war is continued, it may well be that, though the financial strain upon Japan would be severe, yet in the end Russia would be shorn of those east Siberian provinces which have been won by her by the heroism of her sons during the last three centuries. The proposed peace leaves the ancient Russian boundaries absolutely intact. The only change will be that Japan will get that part of Sakhalin which was hers up to thirty years ago. As Sakhalin is an island it is, humanly speaking, impossible that the Russians should reconquer it in view of the disaster to their navy; and to keep the northern half of it is a guarantee for the security of Vladivostok and eastern Siberia to Russia. It seems to me that every consideration of national self-interest, of military expediency and of broad humanity makes it eminently wise and right for Russia to conclude peace substantially along these lines, and it is my hope and prayer that your Majesty may take this view.
Roosevelt used the words substantial and substantially with little consideration for an Emperor whose idea of conciliation was “not an inch of land, not a rouble of indemnities.” The cable went off, coded to cheat Russian surveillance, with carbon copies referred to the ambassadors of Germany and France. He sent a much colder message to Baron Kaneko: “I think I ought to tell you that I hear on all sides a good deal of complaint expressed among the friends of Japan as to the possibility of Japan’s continuing the war for a large indemnity.” Then, putting his trust in the hands of Meyer, he soothed himself by reflecting that Ramses II had not scrupled to treat with the Hittites in 1272 B.C., after years of militant blustering.
“I cannot trust myself to talk about the Peace Conference,” Henry Adams wrote Elizabeth Cameron from Paris. “I am too scared. Literally I am trembling with terror.… The general débâcle must now begin.”
THE SIGHT OF Sergei Witte standing huge and rumpled to the right of the President of the United States did not beguile Nicholas II, when, on 23 August, Meyer showed him a batch of photographs from the Mayflower. Nor was the Tsar disposed to be reasonable, as he had been during their last interview. He remarked rather peevishly that his cousin Wilhelm had just sent him a letter urging peace, and added that it was “quite a coincidence” that such missives always seemed to precede audiences with the American Ambassador.
“Russia is not in the position of France in 1870,” Nicholas said, refusing again to pay any indemnity. Meyer had to argue for two hours before he consented to pay at least “a liberal and generous amount” for the care and maintenance of Russian prisoners of war. This encouraged the Ambassador to press him on Sakhalin. Nicholas at last said that Japan could keep “that portion” of the island she had once had clear title to.
On the same day, Roosevelt, who by now had become a one-man electrical storm of cables to St. Petersburg, Peking, Paris, London, and