Theodore Rex - Edmund Morris [76]
For a moment Roosevelt was tempted to accept the verdict, in the spirit of his recent amnesty declaration. Military authority no longer applied in the Philippines; ugly memories of the pacification campaign should be encouraged to fade. Part of him sympathized with General Smith. As a former commanding officer himself, Roosevelt had no illusions about the nature of guerrilla warfare. “I thoroughly believe in severe measures when necessary, and am not in the least sensitive about killing any number of men when there is adequate reason.”
Smith, however, had condoned the killing of women and children—“shooting niggers,” to use the general’s own phrase. Roosevelt could not tolerate such genocidal rhetoric, nor could he discount the brutalizing effect it must have had on junior officers. The court-martial, he decided, had been a miscarriage of justice. He ordered Smith’s prompt dismissal from the Army.
After dinner, Roosevelt and Root sat up late in their tuxedos working on another Philippines problem: how to buy and secularize Vatican holdings in the archipelago, to the gratification of natives, without alienating American Catholics. Both of them got deep satisfaction out of such chesslike exercises in policy. At 2:00 A.M., they closed the last folder and went out onto the lawn overlooking Oyster Bay. Root puffed a cigar. He had been touched by the President’s cry of comradeship at Harvard. Roosevelt, in turn, felt convinced that of all the men in his Cabinet, Root alone had the qualities to succeed him as President.
Friends again, they stood surrounded by the tranquillity of wealth, protected by the trappings of power. Below them, Root’s naval transport lay black on the moonlit water. Farther off floated another recent arrival, slender, white, and glistening: Roosevelt’s own official vessel, USS Mayflower. Personally, he did not much care for yachts. But this 273-foot refitted dispatch boat, with its twelve guns and white-and-gold reception rooms (not to mention its wine cellar, silk paneling, and a solid marble bath), was clearly more suited to his dignity than the Sylph or tubby little Dolphin. He looked forward to a tour of inspection in the morning.
ABOUT FIVE HOURS LATER, sailors were swabbing the Mayflower’s decks, and its officers were dressing below, when a rowboat began to splash across the bay. Pulling the oars was a stocky man in a sleeveless swimsuit. The sailors paid no attention until there was a creaking of the gangway ladder, and the President appeared beaming in their midst.
“Bully! Bully!” Roosevelt exclaimed, as he rushed around admiring fixtures and fittings. By the time the officers came on deck in their hastily buttoned tunics, he was already rowing back to Sagamore Hill for breakfast.
“ROOT ALONE HAD THE QUALITIES TO SUCCEED HIM AS PRESIDENT.”
Elihu Root as Secretary of War (photo credit 8.2)
ROOSEVELT’S DECISION TO dismiss General Smith won universal praise. Democrats congratulated him for acknowledging that there had been both cruelty and injustice in the Philippines campaign. Republicans felt that he had upheld the national honor.
Even the Anti-Imperialist League conceded that the President had out-maneuvered them at every turn. His seemingly haphazard actions since General Miles’s opening shots in February now looked more like a careful battle plan. First, a broadside against the general’s character and reputation; next, a series of aggressive moves that were actually retreats—his acceptance of the Gardener Report, his demand for an investigation, his self-distancing from Root.… Each of these feints had coincided with, and neutralized, some strike by the League, Congress, or the press. Then his double dispatch of envoys—Lodge to the Senate with a promise of justice in Manila, Root to Cuba with a grant of independence. Finally, the coup de grâce: Roosevelt had