Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [273]
It was agreed that the President should make a final appeal to Cubans to “sink all differences” and “remember that the only way they can preserve the independence of their republic is to prevent the necessity of outside interference.” Roosevelt sent a letter to this effect to the Cuban minister in Washington, and released it to the press. He announced also that Bacon and Taft were being dispatched immediately to Havana, in the hope that they could broker some sort of truce.
THE FIRST DAY of fall found the President in limbo at Sagamore Hill. A final week of vacation stretched ahead, with no visitors on his calendar, and no news yet of any break in the Brownsville investigation—except that a grand jury in San Antonio had failed to indict any of the twelve main suspects. Roosevelt consequently had time to ponder three important replacement problems.
That of a successor to Justice Brown was the most urgent, with the Supreme Court due to reconvene in October. Once again, Taft had turned him down. Or rather, Helen Taft had begged Roosevelt not to appoint her husband. She was already mentally redecorating the White House. Taft sounded sincere in protesting a continued sense of obligation toward the Philippines (where an Army unit commanded by General Leonard Wood had recently slaughtered six hundred of his “little brown brothers,” against a resurgence of Moro violence). Yet he sounded just as sincere in saying that he would jump at the job of Chief Justice. Behind Taft’s jolly-fat-man facade, there lurked a love for titles.
For much of the summer, Roosevelt had hesitated between appointing William Henry Moody and Horace H. Lurton, a Democrat recommended by Taft. He favored the Attorney General, except that Moody came from the same state as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Not only that, the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department was just beginning what promised to be an exciting prosecution of the Standard Oil Company; any move of Moody would seem either precautionary or defensive. So Lurton had loomed as the next Justice until Henry Cabot Lodge, to whom all Democrats were lepers, entered a passionate protest against him. The President, accordingly, remained undecided.
He was much more certain of the absolute necessity of getting a new British Ambassador to replace Sir Mortimer Durand. During last year’s peacemaking efforts, and again during the Algeciras Conference, he had been maddened by Durand’s disinclination to unbend in private conversation. He interpreted it as stupidity. (Actually, the Ambassador was a shy but perceptive man, well aware that Roosevelt equated “privacy” with persuasion.) Sir Mortimer also disliked slogging through the thickets of Rock Creek Park, another essential locale for diplomatic dialogue. Without doubt, the British government must recall him. But how, and how soon, could such a delicate matter be arranged? And what chance was there of Cecil Spring Rice being sent instead? Answers would not be forthcoming until the arrival in early October of a possible intermediary, Arthur Lee, MP, secretly summoned from England.
The least urgent yet most momentous question Roosevelt had to consider was that of his own successor. Mrs. Taft did not know it, but his personal preference always had been for Elihu Root. “I would walk on my hands and knees from the White House to the Capitol to see Root made President. But I know it cannot be done. He couldn’t be elected.” The Secretary of State was considered by many who knew him to be a great man—something never said of Taft. Intellectually formidable, tireless, brave, unbeatable in any negotiation, Root was hampered by his