Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [391]
42 But Metternich “If President Castro should prematurely perceive that there exists on our part a leaning toward arbitration,” Metternich opined, “he would interpret this as weakness and would certainly make no concessions.” Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 121.
43 It was now TR to A. W. Callisen, 3 May 1916 (TRP); Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 122; Washington Evening Star, 16 Dec. 1902; Henry Clay Taylor to Staff Intelligence Officer, San Juan, P.R., 16 Dec. 1902 (GD). There was a flurry of nervous selling on Wall Street. New York Herald, 17 Dec. 1902.
44 “Such cables,” Henry Clay Taylor to Staff Intelligence Officer, San Juan, P.R., 16 Dec. 1902 (GD).
45 After less than Marks, Velvet on Iron, 41; New York Herald, 17 Dec. 1902. Livermore, “Theodore Roosevelt,” notes that the fighting edge of Dewey’s armada moved five hundred miles closer to Venezuela at this “critical” juncture.
46 Throughout the crisis Holbo, “Perilous Obscurity.”
47 By now the The Washington Post, 17 Dec. 1902; “At the Hotels,” The New York Times, 16 Dec. 1902; Marks, Velvet on Iron, 42, is puzzled by German Embassy letters dated 15, 17, and 18 Dec. and signed by von Holleben. There is no question that the Ambassador was out of town from 14 Dec. on: he must simply have taken official stationery with him to New York. See below.
48 From there The New York Times, 17 Dec. 1902; The Times (London), 18 Dec. 1902; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 69.
49 “now the cannons” Edward B. Parsons, “The German–American Crisis of 1902–1903,” The Historian 33 (May 1971).
50 The reaction in Alfred P. Dennis, Adventures in American Diplomacy, 1896–1906 (New York, 1928), 290; George P. Gooch and Harold Temperley, eds., British Documents on the Origin of the War, 1898–1931 (London, 1928–1931), vol. 2, 153. On 18 Dec., Hay, believing the crisis still to be acute, wasted much hot breath in a strongly worded “ultimatum” to Albert von Quadt, the German chargé d’affaires. Both men were, in a later phrase, out of the loop. The skimpy evidence surviving suggests that TR’s ultimatum was received by Berlin not as a shock, but as a confirmation of repeated warnings from Bünz (June 1902) and von Sternburg (July, Oct., Nov. 1902) that the new President was not to be trifled with (Beale, Theodore Roosevelt, 418). Throughout the year, both von Holleben and Quadt had urged Berlin to prepare for possible war with the United States. Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 69, 71.
51 SO THE DEADLINE Von Bülow expressly repeated that Germany had no territorial ambitions in Venezuela. Hill, Roosevelt and the Caribbean, 131.
52 “I am a sick man,” New York Herald news clipping, ca. 10 Jan. 1903, John Hay Scrapbook (JH). Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (Boston, 1918), 437; Herwig, Politics of Frustration, 83. Von Holleben did not return to Washington until 26 Dec. and stayed two weeks to wind up his affairs, still refusing to speak to the press. On 5 Jan. 1903, the Kaiser canceled his credentials. He left town again without saying good-bye to TR or John Hay (New York Tribune, 10 Jan. 1903; Pierre de Margerie to Théophile Delcassé, in Documents diplomatiques français [1871–1914], series 2, vol. 3, 24 [Paris, 1929–1959]). When he sailed home from Hoboken, N.J., on 10 Jan. 1903, “not a single member of the diplomatic corps or German official [with the exception of Karl Bünz] dared to see him off.” TR, Letters, vol. 8, 1104, and Blake, “Ambassadors at the Court.”
53 On 19 December Herbert W. Bowen, Recollections Diplomatic and Undiplomatic (New York, 1926), 261; Gooch and Temperley, British Documents, vol. 2, 163; Washington Evening Star, 20 Dec. 1902; TR, Letters, vol. 3, 396–98.
54 “I suppose,” TR, Letters, vol. 5, 319.
55 Overflowing with Washington Evening Star, 17 Dec. 1902; Baltimore Sun, 13 Feb. 1903. TR also wrote a generous letter to Grover Cleveland on 26 Dec. congratulating him on “the rounding out of your Venezuela policy.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 398.
56 Be yours—we John Hay to TR, 24 Dec. 1902 (TD).
57 Snow fell James Garfield