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to propose a classification system for federal salaries and positions; to suggest uniform regulations for work hours and leaves of absence; and to recommend the centralization of supply purchasing and distribution, as well as the reduction of unnecessary government publications and mailings. Despite the Commission’s hard work, Congress refused to pass any related legislation. Kraines notes that while Congress viewed the increasing cost of government with alarm, it viewed with equal (if not greater) alarm the President’s attempts to investigate and reorganize as threats to both legislative control and patronage. The Keep Commission became just another battleground between TR, who wished to expand his executive powers, and a Congress reluctant to surrender any authority. It took until 1920 for Congress to create a retirement system for federal employees.

13 ROOSEVELT PUT ALL As early as Aug. 1904, TR had considered Meyer to be Cabinet material, as well as a potential top ambassador. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 890.

14 Although the United States Ambassador When Meyer first met the Tsar, on 12 Apr. 1905, he was able to break the ice by saying that he had “met His Imperial Majesty’s brother … at Kiel, when I was racing there with the Emperor of Germany” (Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 142). For a modern assessment, see Wayne A. Wiegand, “George Meyer and Kaiser Wilhelm II,” Mid-America 74.1 (Jan. 1974).

15 The way Meyer Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, passim. Failure to “make the Porc.,” as Cousin Teddy had, became a lifelong neurosis for Franklin Roosevelt. Geoffrey C. Ward, A First Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1989), 46.

16 “I want a man” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1079.

17 “I am not inclined” Ibid., 1079–80.

18 After only two Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 157.

19 This was not Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 46; Dennett, Roosevelt, 215–16.

20 At all costs TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1203.

21 The move was Ibid., 1203–4.

22 Count Lamsdorff George von Lengerke Meyer diary, 6 June 1905 (GVM). The Tsarina’s birthday is wrongly dated in Dennett, Roosevelt, 193.

23 Meyer found himself Except where otherwise indicated, the following account is taken from Howe, George von Lengerke Meyer, 158–62.

24 “It is the judgment” Telegram copy, 5 June 1905, in TRP. See also TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1204.

25 As Meyer read George von Lengerke Meyer diary, 7 June 1904 (GVM).

26 “If Russia will” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1204.

27 “… and the President” Ibid.

28 “Mr Roosevelt’s success” London Morning Post, 12 June 1905.

29 He had, in fact Washington Times, 9 June 1905; TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1209; Morris, Edith Kermit Roosevelt, 289–90.

30 “It really is” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1209.

31 Since Edith’s culinary industry Ibid. Pine Knot, 125 miles southwest of Washington, remained TR’s country hideaway throughout his second term. It is now maintained as a museum by the Theodore Roosevelt Association. See William H. Harbaugh, “The Theodore Roosevelts’ Retreat in Southern Albemarle: Pine Knot 1905–1908,” Magazine of Albemarle County History 51 (1993).

32 “The President is” Joseph James Matthews, George W. Smalley: Forty Years a Foreign Correspondent (Chapel Hill, 1973), 158.

33 What was “going on” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222–29; vol. 6, 234–36.

34 “The President feels” TR to Kogoro Takahira, 15 June 1905, qu. in Letters, vol. 4, 1228.

35 There was a world Ibid., 1230; Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 168.

36 “the triumph of Asia” TR, qu. in Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 168.

37 Roosevelt had confided Mrs. Lodge was included as an honorary member of TR’s secret du roi. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1202.

38 As he mediated Ibid., 1303; vol. 6, 234.

39 Wilhelm II had Jusserand, What Me Befell, 319–20. Von Sternburg asked if the President was also taking Wilhelm II’s Weltanschauung into account in his Far Eastern negotiations. (The Kaiser had urged peace upon the Tsar, fearing that Nicholas might be assassinated after Tsu Shima.) TR truthfully replied that Meyer had used Wilhelm’s name as well as his own when conversing with the Tsar.