Theodore Roosevelt [76]
any plot he would have been the first to hunt it down and crush it. He knew in general of the extravagant vaporings of the Pan-Germans; but, like most of us, he supposed that there was still enough sanity, not to say common sense, left in Germany to laugh such follies away. Through his intimate friend, Spring-Rice, subsequently the British Ambassador, he had early and sound information of the conditions of Germany. He watched with curiosity the abnormal expansion of the German Fleet. All these things simply confirmed his belief that the United States must attend seriously to the business of making military and naval preparations.
Secretary Hay had already secured the recognition by the European Powers of the policy of the Open Door in China, the year before Roosevelt became President, but the struggle to maintain that policy had to be kept up for several years. On November 21, 1900, John Hay wrote to Henry Adams: "At least we are spared the infamy of an alliance with Germany. I would rather, I think, be the dupe of China, than chum of the Kaiser. Have you noticed how the world will take anything nowadays from a German? Billow said yesterday in substance--'We have demanded of China everything we can think of. If we think of anything else we will demand that, and be d--d to you'--and not a man in the world kicks."*
* W. R. Thayer: John Hay, II, 248.
By an adroit move similar to that by which Hay had secured the unwilling adherence of the Powers to his original proposal of the Open Door, he, with Roosevelt's sanction, prevented the German Emperor from carrying out a plan to cut up China and divide the slices among the Europeans.
Equally adroit was Roosevelt's method of dealing with the Czar in 1903. Russian mobs ran amuck and massacred many Jews in the city of Kishineff. The news of this atrocity reached the outside world slowly: when it came, the Jews of western Europe, and especially those of the United States, cried out in horror, held meetings, drew up protests, and framed petitions, asking the Czar to punish the criminals. Leading American Jews besought Roosevelt to plead their cause before the Czar. As it was well known that the Czar would refuse to receive such petitions, and would regard himself as insulted by whatever nation should lay them before him by official diplomatic means, the world wondered what Roosevelt would do. He took one of his short cuts, and chose a way which everybody saw was most obvious and most simple, as soon as he had chosen it. He sent the petitions to our Ambassador at Petrograd, accompanying them with a letter which recited the atrocities and grievances. In this letter, which was handed to the Russian Secretary of State, our Government asked whether His Majesty the Czar would condescend to receive the petitions. Of course the reply was no, but the letter was published in all countries, so that the Czar also knew of the petitions, and of the horrors which called them out. In this fashion the former Ranchman and Rough Rider outwitted, by what I may call his straightforward guile, the crafty diplomats of the Romanoffs.
CHAPTER XV. ROOSEVELT AND CONGRESS
In a previous chapter I glanced at three or four of the principal measures in internal policy which Roosevelt took up and fought through, until he finally saw them passed by Congress. No other President, as has been often remarked, kept Congress so busy; and, we may add, none of his predecessors (unless it were Lincoln with the legislation required by the Civil War) put so many new laws on the national statute book. Mr. Charles G. Washburn enumerates these acts credited to Roosevelt's seven and a half years' administration: "The Elkins Anti-Rebate Law applying to railroads; the creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor and the Bureau of Corporations; the law authorizing the building of the Panama Canal; the Hepburn Bill amending and vitalizing the Interstate Commerce Act; the Pure Food and Meat Inspection laws; the law creating the Bureau of Immigration; the Employers' Liability and Safety Appliance Laws, that limited
Secretary Hay had already secured the recognition by the European Powers of the policy of the Open Door in China, the year before Roosevelt became President, but the struggle to maintain that policy had to be kept up for several years. On November 21, 1900, John Hay wrote to Henry Adams: "At least we are spared the infamy of an alliance with Germany. I would rather, I think, be the dupe of China, than chum of the Kaiser. Have you noticed how the world will take anything nowadays from a German? Billow said yesterday in substance--'We have demanded of China everything we can think of. If we think of anything else we will demand that, and be d--d to you'--and not a man in the world kicks."*
* W. R. Thayer: John Hay, II, 248.
By an adroit move similar to that by which Hay had secured the unwilling adherence of the Powers to his original proposal of the Open Door, he, with Roosevelt's sanction, prevented the German Emperor from carrying out a plan to cut up China and divide the slices among the Europeans.
Equally adroit was Roosevelt's method of dealing with the Czar in 1903. Russian mobs ran amuck and massacred many Jews in the city of Kishineff. The news of this atrocity reached the outside world slowly: when it came, the Jews of western Europe, and especially those of the United States, cried out in horror, held meetings, drew up protests, and framed petitions, asking the Czar to punish the criminals. Leading American Jews besought Roosevelt to plead their cause before the Czar. As it was well known that the Czar would refuse to receive such petitions, and would regard himself as insulted by whatever nation should lay them before him by official diplomatic means, the world wondered what Roosevelt would do. He took one of his short cuts, and chose a way which everybody saw was most obvious and most simple, as soon as he had chosen it. He sent the petitions to our Ambassador at Petrograd, accompanying them with a letter which recited the atrocities and grievances. In this letter, which was handed to the Russian Secretary of State, our Government asked whether His Majesty the Czar would condescend to receive the petitions. Of course the reply was no, but the letter was published in all countries, so that the Czar also knew of the petitions, and of the horrors which called them out. In this fashion the former Ranchman and Rough Rider outwitted, by what I may call his straightforward guile, the crafty diplomats of the Romanoffs.
CHAPTER XV. ROOSEVELT AND CONGRESS
In a previous chapter I glanced at three or four of the principal measures in internal policy which Roosevelt took up and fought through, until he finally saw them passed by Congress. No other President, as has been often remarked, kept Congress so busy; and, we may add, none of his predecessors (unless it were Lincoln with the legislation required by the Civil War) put so many new laws on the national statute book. Mr. Charles G. Washburn enumerates these acts credited to Roosevelt's seven and a half years' administration: "The Elkins Anti-Rebate Law applying to railroads; the creation of the Department of Commerce and Labor and the Bureau of Corporations; the law authorizing the building of the Panama Canal; the Hepburn Bill amending and vitalizing the Interstate Commerce Act; the Pure Food and Meat Inspection laws; the law creating the Bureau of Immigration; the Employers' Liability and Safety Appliance Laws, that limited