Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [418]
30 “Mr. President” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 310–12. Bunau-Varilla, interviewed by Howard K. Beale, July 1936 (HKB), rephrased TR’s question as, “What will this do to our preparations?” See also Bunau-Varilla to John Hay, 15 Oct. 1903, qu. in Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 318: “I [told him] the whole thing would end in a revolution” (JH).
31 Loomis remained Philippe Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun: My Fight for France (Philadelphia, 1940), 332. Bunau-Varilla (probably tipped off by Loomis) seems to have known about the professor’s advisory role.
32 “General and special” Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 311.
Historiographical Note: David McCullough’s inference from a thirdhand source (the diary of John Bigelow) that Bunau-Varilla fully informed TR of his revolutionary plans at this meeting contradicts the testimony, on repeated occasions, of all three primary participants. It seems much more probable that Bunau-Varilla, a model of Gallic scrupulosity, gave the specifics to Loomis, to pass on to the President in executive session. This is what TR himself recalled ten years later, and does not conflict with Bigelow’s contemporary diary entry, “Bunau-Varilla … has seen the President and the Ass’t Secretary of State; unfolded to them his scheme [etc.].” Bigelow could quite well be describing separate meetings with each man. McCullough, Path Between the Seas, 352; Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”; Margaret Clapp, Forgotten First Citizen: John Bigelow (Boston, 1947), 313.
33 All that the President Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum.” Collin, “Big Stick,” 302–3, argues that by seeking a part of the Compagnie Nouvelle’s forty million dollars, Colombia—a police state corruptly ill-disposed toward both the United States and Panama—sought to reinvolve France in Latin American affairs, whereas TR wanted to take Europe out of Latin America once and for all.
34 tremendous little foreigner “That man would instruct Cosmos,” TR told Mark Hanna. The Senator became nervous. “Never mind Cosmos. Cromwell’s the man for you to listen to.” John J. Leary, Talks with TR (Boston, 1920), 256.
35 Bunau-Varilla, in Bunau-Varilla, Panama, 310–12. See also Bunau-Varilla, From Panama to Verdun, 131–33. TR joked afterward, “He would have been a very dull man had he been unable to make such a guess.” TR, Letters, vol. 3, 689.
Historiographical Note: Bunau-Varilla’s interview with TR on 10 Oct. 1903 has become one of the most widely debated episodes in the Roosevelt presidency. Anglo-Saxon historians tend to dismiss Bunau-Varilla as an unreliable chronicler, given to exaggerations. However, William Glover Fletcher interviewed and corresponded with Bunau-Varilla at length in the course of researching his exhaustive dissertation, and came to the conclusion that he was an honest man (Fletcher, “Canal Site Diplomacy,” 176–78).
On the day of the interview, TR wrote another letter to Albert Shaw confirming in every detail the impression that Bunau-Varilla took away (See TR, Letters, vol. 3, 628). TR’s own accounts of the meeting (to John Bigelow in TR, Letters, vol. 3, 689; and to Archibald C. Coolidge in Schoonover, “Max Farrand’s Memorandum”) are supplemented by details provided by two mutual acquaintances. Elihu Root recalled years later: “Bunau-Varilla told me about [it]. He said that he … got from Roosevelt such violent expressions of opinion unfriendly to the Colombians that … he told his people in Panama to go ahead.… Roosevelt did not say a single word to him about what he intended to do, but B-V found out just what he thought from his explosive comments” (Root to Philip Jessup, 16 July 1931 [ES]).
The other item is an entry dated 16 Oct. 1903 in the journal of Bunau-Varilla’s close friend John Bigelow: “Bunau-Varilla was up over Sunday [11 Oct.], has seen the President and the Ass’t Secretary of State; unfolded to them his scheme for proceeding with the Isthmian Canal without much more delay.… It is in brief to have the Isthmians revolt from the Colombian govt. declare their independence … have the U.S. send vessels to protect the Railway as it did