Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [469]
32 For the last Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 134–35. Chinese schoolchildren already had their own schools in San Francisco. The order of 11 Oct. 1906 had been followed by a white-inspired riot, and a Japanese bank president had been killed. There were immediate calls in Japan for an anti-American boycott.
33 Roosevelt sat Wood, Roosevelt As We Knew Him, 154–55.
34 “They don’t care” Qu. in Murakata, “Theodore Roosevelt and William Sturgis Bigelow.”
35 Some of the most TR, Works, vol. 17, 452–53.
36 This last remark Ibid., 454–55; San Francisco Chronicle, 10 Dec. 1906; Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 127. Elihu Root cogently remarked to Ambassador Aoki that the antagonism of American laborers toward Japanese was not so much an assertion of superiority as an admission of inferiority. Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 7.
37 Senator Tillman The New York Times, 15 Jan. 1907.
38 Tokyo’s response Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 9. See also Akira Iriye, Pacific Estrangement: Japanese and American Expansion, 1879–1911 (Cambridge, Mass., 1972).
39 The result was Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 13, 15; Esthus, Theodore Roosevelt and Japan, 155–56. See also John R. Jenswold, “Leaving the Door Ajar: Politics and Prejudices in the Making of the 1907 Immigration Law,” Mid-America 67.1 (1985).
40 “Why should I” Phillip Dunne, ed., Mr. Dooley Remembers: The Informal Memoirs of Finley Peter Dunne (Boston, 1963), 201–2.
41 To win passage Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 15. “Yellow Peril” Cassandras tended to overlook the fact that many Japanese immigrants, having worked in the United States for a few years, returned home with their hard-earned dollars.
42 “in the way” Root to Ambassador Luke Wright, qu. in ibid., 13.
43 Schmitz, who Bailey, Theodore Roosevelt, 128–33, 143–44. The age scruple was not unreasonable, in that many of the immigrant “children” originally discriminated against had been twenty to thirty years old.
44 his first term Frederick C. Leiner, “The Unknown Effort: Theodore Roosevelt’s Battleship Plan and International Arms Limitation Talks, 1906–1907,” Military Affairs 8.3 (1984); TR, Letters, vol. 5, 35.
45 He had even Rebecca Kramer, “Theodore Roosevelt, Disarmament, and The Hague,” t.s. monograph (AC). See notes above for chaps. 22 and 25.
46 The idea of TR, Letters, vol. 5, 398–400.
Chronological Note: With TR’s encouragement, the United States at first pressed seriously for a general reduction in naval forces, insisting that the issue of arms limitation be discussed at The Hague. This proved to be an unpopular stance with Germany, which had its own strategic reasons for building up a larger navy. Britain was initially supportive of the United States, but then, in view of the Kaiser’s ardent militarism, declined to negotiate away its own armed advantage. Russia and Austria also opposed the idea of disarmament (Jessup, Elihu Root, vol. 2, 69; The New York Times, 16 June 1907; TR, Letters, vol. 5, 357).
TR himself was conflicted in his attitude. His letters on the subject earnestly contend that most arms-control proposals did not really apply to the United States, since “we have a small navy (and an army so much smaller as to seem infinitesimal) compared with the armed forces of the other great powers which in point of population, extent of territory, wealth and resources, can be put in the same category with us. Therefore we cannot ourselves reduce our forces” (TR, Letters, vol. 5, 358).
Through most of 1906, however, he pushed for a “feasible and rational plan” of naval disarmament, declaring that limits on battleship size would reduce the rampant costs and dangers of an arms race. His proposal in Sept. 1906 that the Hague Conference should forbid the construction of any