Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [389]
10 “We look like” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 389.
11 General Wood Leonard Wood diary, 30 Nov. 1902 (LW).
12 Speak softly and TR first used the proverb publicly on 2 Sept. 1901. TR, Works, vol. 15, 334–35.
13 ON 8 DECEMBER Washington Evening Star, 8 Dec. 1902; Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 419; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 74; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358.
14 the most dangerous Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 341, 343; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 19, 158; Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 227–30. Another of TR’s early informants about Wilhelm was Speck von Sternburg.
15 General Wood, just Leonard Wood diary, 10 Sept. 1902 (LW); Hermann Hagedorn, Leonard Wood: A Biography (New York, 1931), vol. 1, 398–99. Wood had been personally received by the Kaiser, and had noted that, like TR in the 1880s, Wilhelm spoke exultantly about his country’s newness and rawness and burgeoning economic power. Wood also saw that he was “somewhat nervous in manner,” and easily put out. All these observations were doubtless relayed to TR, between singlesticks blows.
16 some beguiling Elihu Root teased TR, referring to the Kaiser as “your cousin William.” Speck von Sternburg commented publicly that he had “not seen two men who are as alike.” Wilhelm II himself remarked to von Holleben, “Mr. Roosevelt must in some respects be very like me.” Root to TR, 15 Feb. 1904 (TRP); New York Herald, ca. 21 Jan. 1903; Smalley, Anglo-American Memories, 356–57.
17 Only three months A caricature of TR and the Kaiser as twins (“Kindred Spirits of the Strenuous Life”) appeared in Punch, 16 Nov. 1904, and was suppressed by Berlin police. See also Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 441–43; Jules Jusserand to Théophile Delcassé, 9 Mar. 1904 (JJ). In youth, both men used to doodle ships and fleet dispositions, and in power, both tended to use the first-person possessive in referring to their respective navies. Wilhelm awarded himself the title of “Admiral of the Atlantic.” Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 142; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 81; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 58; Leonard Wood diary, 10 Sept. 1902 (LW); TR, Letters, vol. 3, 283.
18 However, as Roosevelt Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 55. “It is absolutely impossible,” Henry Adams wrote, “for anyone to be as big a fool as the Kaiser without being shut up” (Adams, Letters, vol. 5, 353; Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II, 18–19). Röhl quotes an example of the Kaiser’s ranting against Jews: “There are far too many of them in my country. They want stamping out” (129).
19 What made Roosevelt Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (Boston, 1964), 85; Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age (Boston, 1989), 87–88. Jules Cambon noted how “very sensitive” TR was, “in his political judgments, to questions of prestige.” Geneviève Tabouis, Jules Cambon: par l’un des siens (Paris, 1938), 108, tr. the author. For the Kaiser’s homoerotic inclinations, which included a delight in seeing his courtiers dress as poodles and ballerinas, see Isabel Hull, “Kaiser Wilhelm II and the ‘Liebenberg Circle,’ ” in Röhl, Kaiser Wilhelm II.
20 “to tell the Kaiser” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358–59. This is TR’s best, fullest, and most nearly contemporary account of the Venezuela crisis. He makes no reference to arbitration. See the chronological analysis in Morris, “ ‘A Few Pregnant Days.’ ”
21 The tactfulness TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1102.
22 Again von Holleben Even as TR met with von Holleben, the USS Marietta was en route to La Guiria, Venezuela, for “purposes of observation.” Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt.”
23 The Ambassador William Loeb to Hermann Hagedorn, n.d., and Loeb interviewed by Henry Pringle, 14 Apr. 1930 (HP).
On this same day, TR also had a conversation with George Smalley, Washington correspondent of The Times. His clear purpose was to have the well-connected reporter let London policymakers know just where he stood regarding Germany’s threat to Venezuela. White House appointment book, 8 Dec. 1902, and Smalley to TR, 12 Dec. 1902 (TRP). “I think it desirable that