Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [387]
57 What better place In March 1901, John Hay, Henry Cabot Lodge, and Elihu Root had been alarmed by reports that a German gunboat was making hydro-graphic surveys of the Margarita Islands (Richard W. Turk, “Defending the New Empire, 1900–1914,” in Kenneth J. Hagan, ed., In Peace and War: Interpretations of American Naval History [Westport, Conn., 1984], 189). Their scare communicated itself to TR. “The only power which may be a menace to us in anything like the immediate future is Germany,” he wrote (TR, Letters, vol. 3, 32). In July 1901, he warned Karl Bünz, Germany’s Consul General in New York, that his country must not think of acquiring “a foot of soil in any shape or way in South America.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 98.
58 idea of the Weltpolitik Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 55; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 143ff.; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 6. The Kaiser’s brother had actually intended to propose “a German sphere of influence” in South America to TR on his recent state visit, until silenced by von Bülow. J. Lepsius et al., Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette, 1871–1914 (Berlin, 1922–1927), vol. 17, 243.
59 Germany, therefore According to Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 46, the German high command also regarded war with the United States around this time as “a distinct possibility.” See also ibid., 42–46, and John A. S. Grenville and George B. Young, Politics, Strategy, and American Diplomacy: Studies in Foreign Policy, 1873–1917 (New Haven, 1966), 305–7.
60 “For the first” TR, Works, vol. 17, 182.
61 Coincidentally or not Seward W. Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt, the American Navy, and the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903,” American Historical Review, Apr. 1946.
62 SEA POWER TR, Letters, vol. 3, 225, 217. For TR’s 1902 naval thinking, see his speech to the United States Naval Academy in TR, Presidential Addresses, vol. 1, 39–41; Gordon C. O’Gara, Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of the Modern Navy (Princeton, N.J., 1969), 116; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 253–54; Beach, United States Navy, 390–97. Marks, Velvet on Iron, 40, shows how from Dec. 1901 on TR “accompanied every step in the diplomatic confrontation with a corresponding buildup of American sea power.”
63 The most recent Review of Reviews, Apr. 1902; memorandum from Office of Naval Intelligence, 11 Feb. 1903 (TRP); Charles D. Sigsbee to TR, 22 Mar. 1902 (TRP).
64 They sat Photograph in Ronald Spector, Professors of War: The Naval War College and the Development of the Naval Profession (Newport, R.I., 1977). United States Naval War College, Rules for the Conduct of War Games (Naval War College, R.I., 1902); Ronald Spector, “Roosevelt, the Navy, and the Venezuelan Controversy, 1902–1903,” American Neptune, Oct. 1972.
65 Germany, the tacticians Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt”; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 367–70.
66 HE WAS ABLE Amy S. Strachey, St. Loe Strachey: His Life and His Paper (New York, 1931), 142–43; Speck von Sternburg to TR, 19 Oct. 1902 (TRP); Tilchin, Theodore Roosevelt, 28–29; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 50. On 29 Oct. 1902, Henry White wrote TR that Strachey’s White House invitation was “the greatest honor that has ever befallen him” (TRP).
67 Strachey, through his He also had the reputation of being “Germany’s sharpest critic.” Review of Reviews, Dec. 1902.
68 Awake, however Dewey was in full court uniform, having learned that the Roosevelts preferred their military aides that way. “They are getting to be quite a palace down there.” Mrs. Dewey diary, 25 Nov. 1902 (GD).
69 As Roosevelt reminded TR, Letters, vol. 3, 275.
70 But Dewey had John Garry Clifford, “Admiral Dewey and the Germans,” Mid-Atlantic 49 (1967). Like TR, Dewey had been monitoring the Venezuela situation for eleven months, in his capacity as President of the General Board of the Navy. Ronald Spector, Admiral of the New Empire: The Life and Career of George Dewey (Baton Rouge, 1974), 140–41.
Chronological Note: The shared concern of President