Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [449]
61 mutiny aboard Dennett, Roosevelt, 205.
62 Wilhelm II seemed Ibid., 208.
63 Roosevelt was reinforced Gwynn, Letters and Friendships, vol. 1, 476.
64 “Now, oh best” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1283–84.
65 “My feeling is” Ibid., 1284.
66 Knowing he could Ibid.
67 Roosevelt’s admiration Ibid., 1233.
68 Eight years before Morris, Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, 572–73.
69 “In a dozen years” TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1233–34.
70 The oracular tone Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 129; Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 85. According to John Barrett, whom TR asked to report on the situation in California, anti-Japanese hysteria was largely due to propaganda put about by Michael H. De Young, owner of the San Francisco Chronicle, for reasons as much to do with newspaper circulation as any desire to “embarrass” the President. At any rate, the “yellow peril” propaganda was dangerously effective. John Barrett to [unknown], ca. 6 July 1905, and TR to Barrett, 15 July 1905 (JB); Thomas A. Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt and the Japanese-American Crises (Stanford, 1934), 10–11.
71 He was afraid When Cassini blustered that Russia “was fighting the battles of the white race” in the Far East, TR, thinking of the Kishinev pogrom, asked him “why in that case she had treated other members of the white race even worse than she had treated Japan.” The Ambassador’s reply was not recorded. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1222.
72 He asked Lloyd Trani, Treaty of Portsmouth, 86. TR also vehemently protested discrimination against Chinese immigrants, with the exception of “coolies,” or peasants. TR, Letters, vol. 4, 1235–36.
73 HAPPILY, THE PRESIDENT Taft’s party left Washington on 30 June 1905, and sailed from San Francisco on 8 July. For varying accounts of the trip, see Ralph E. Minger, “Taft’s Mission to Japan: A Study in Secret Diplomacy,” Pacific Historical Review 30 (1961), and Stacy Rozek Cordery, “Theodore Roosevelt’s Private Diplomat: Alice Roosevelt and the 1905 Far Eastern Junket,” in Naylor et al., Theodore Roosevelt, 352–67.
74 Roosevelt had asked Pringle, Theodore Roosevelt, 384.
75 the flare and smell This was Alice’s own phrase. Longworth, Crowded Hours, 70.
76 She was, if anything Ibid., 72–77, 68.
77 When they arrived Ibid., 79–84.
78 On 27 July William H. Taft to Elihu Root, 29 July 1905 (“Agreed Memorandum of Conversation Between Prime Minister of Japan and Myself”), cable transmission reproduced in John Gilbert Reid, ed., “Taft’s Telegram to Root,” Pacific Historical Review, March 1940 (hereafter “Taft-Katsura Memorandum”). Taft addressed himself to Root, but was communicating with TR. His cable cost the United States taxpayer just over one thousand dollars, or about $19,400 today.
79 Although the memorandum Esthus, Roosevelt and Japan, 102.
Historiographical Note: Esthus notes the illogicality whereby conspiratorial historians have insisted, over the years, in calling this document the “Taft-Katsura Agreement.” Its own title, qu. above, shows “only that the two parties agreed that the memorandum was an accurate record of what was said.”
Esthus notes further that the memorandum, for all its subsequent reputation as a “secret pact” and progenitor of the myriad “executive agreements” characteristic of 20th-century diplomacy, lay forgotten for nearly twenty years, after serving its original informal purpose. TR specifically denied on 5 Oct. that there had been any quid pro quo. The memorandum was meant “merely to clear up Japan’s attitude [regarding the Philippines], which had been purposefully misrepresented by pro-Russian sympathizers.” Its separately numbered statements about Korea and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance stood “entirely apart” from that primary concern (TR, Letters, vol. 5, 46).
In further support of TR’s denial, Katsura himself denied Japanese rumors of a “bargain” concerning Korea. The Prime Minister stated that United States policy toward Korea in 1905 struck him as “entirely spontaneous” (Esthus,