The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt (119 page)

T
HE HOT WEATHER CONTINUED
until mid-September, and Roosevelt, showing concern for the Secretary’s health, suggested that he extend his vacation through the beginning of October. This, however, even John D. Long was unprepared to do, and he sent word that he would be back on 28 September. Roosevelt took the news philosophically, for by then he had realized his ambition to consult with the President as Acting Secretary—not once, but three times.
¹⁰⁰

Hitherto their meetings had been pleasantly impersonal, but now, for some reason, McKinley seemed anxious to flatter him. On 14 September he requested Roosevelt’s company for an afternoon drive.
¹⁰¹
He confessed that he had not looked at the
Naval Policy of the Presidents
pamphlet until he saw what press interest it aroused, whereupon he “read every word of it,” and was “exceedingly glad” it had been published. McKinley then made the astonishing remark that Roosevelt had been “quite right” to criticize Japan’s Hawaiian policy at Sandusky. Finally, he congratulated him on his management of the Navy Department during the past seven weeks. Roosevelt took all this praise with a pinch of salt (“the President,” he told Lodge, “is a bit of a jollier”), but he detected nevertheless a “substratum of satisfaction.”

Swaying gently against the cushions of the Presidential carriage, relaxed after a day of stiff formalities, William McKinley appeared to best advantage. Locomotion quickened his inert body and statuesque head, and the play of light and shade through the window made his masklike face seem mobile and expressive. Roosevelt could forget about the too-short legs and pulpy handshake, and concentrate on the bronzed, magnificent profile. From the neck up, at least, McKinley was every inch a President—or for that matter, an emperor, with his high brow, finely chiseled mouth, and Roman nose. “He does not like to be told that it looks like the nose of Napoleon,” the columnist Frank Carpenter once wrote. “It is a watchful nose, and it watches out for McKinley.”
¹⁰²

Not until the President turned, and gazed directly at his interlocutor, was the personal force which dominated Mark Hanna fully felt. His stare was intimidating in its blackness and steadiness. The pupils, indeed, were at times so dilated as to fuel suspicions that he was privy to Mrs. McKinley’s drug cabinet. Only very perceptive observers were aware that there was no real power behind the gaze: McKinley stared in order to concentrate a sluggish, wandering mind.
¹⁰³

Taking advantage of the President’s affable mood, Roosevelt touched delicately on the possibility of war with Spain and Japan. McKinley agreed that there might be “trouble” on either front. Roosevelt made it clear that he intended to enlist in the Army the moment hostilities began. The President asked what Mrs. Roosevelt would think of such action, and Roosevelt replied, “this was one case” where he would consult neither her nor Cabot Lodge. Laughing, McKinley promised him the opportunity to serve “if war by any chance arose.”
¹⁰⁴

Three days later Roosevelt received an invitation to dine at the White House, and three days after that went for another drive in the Presidential carriage. This time he made so bold as to present McKinley with a Cuban war plan of his own devising. It proposed a two-stage naval offensive, first with a flying squadron of cruisers, then with a fleet of battleships—all dispatched from Key West within forty-eight hours of a formal declaration. If the Army followed up quickly with a small landing force, he doubted that “acute” hostilities would last more than six weeks. “Meanwhile,
our Asiatic Squadron should blockade, and if possible take Manila.”
¹⁰⁵

B
Y 17
S
EPTEMBER
, Roosevelt was beginning to feel guilty about “dear” Secretary Long rusticating in New England, especially when the
Boston Herald
printed a mocking story about his desire to replace the old man altogether. He wrote to Long in quick self-defense, protesting his loyalty and subservience rather too vehemently, and ending with a rueful “There!
Qui s’excuse s’accuse.”
¹⁰⁶
But the Secretary took no offense, and proclaimed his entire satisfaction with Roosevelt at a dinner of the Massachusetts Club in Boston. “His enthusiasm and my conservatism make a good combination,” Long said, adding with a twinkle, “It is a liberal education to work with him.”
¹⁰⁷

Had Long known what Roosevelt was up to on the eve of his return to Washington, he might have employed stronger terminology. On Monday, 27 September,
¹⁰⁸
the Acting Secretary intercepted a letter from Senator William E. Chandler to Long, recommending that Commodore John A. Howell be appointed commander in chief of the Asiatic Station—the very post Roosevelt wanted for Dewey.
¹⁰⁹
Howell, though senior, was in his opinion “irresolute” and “extremely afraid of responsibility”;
¹¹⁰
the prospect of such an officer leading an attack upon Manila was too depressing to contemplate. With Long due back the following morning, rapid action was necessary.

Roosevelt sent an urgent appeal to Chandler. “Before you commit yourself definitely to Commodore Howell I wish very much you would let me have a chance to talk to you … I shall of course give your letter at once to the Secretary upon his return.”
¹¹¹

Presumably Senator Chandler could not be persuaded, for he withdrew neither his recommendation nor his letter. Throwing all caution to the winds, Roosevelt called in Dewey. “Do you know any Senators?” The Commodore mentioned Redfield Proctor. Roosevelt was delighted, for Proctor had expansionist tendencies and was known to be influential with the President. Dewey must enlist his services at once.
¹¹²

Senator Proctor obligingly went over to the White House and
spoke to McKinley in behalf of the little Commodore. He might have made discreet reference to the fact that Roosevelt also favored Dewey. The President, who took little interest in naval affairs, accepted his advice without question and wrote a memorandum to Secretary Long requesting the appointment.
¹¹³

Long returned to the Navy Department on 28 September and was greatly annoyed to find what political intrigues had been going on in his absence. Tradition required that he appoint the senior officer, and besides he personally favored Howell. But McKinley’s memo could not be ignored; and so, to quote the sonorous words of Theodore Roosevelt, “in a fortunate hour for the Nation, Dewey was given command of the Asiatic Squadron.”
¹¹⁴

The Secretary was still in an irritable mood when Dewey called to thank him and apologize for using the influence of Senator Proctor. It had been necessary, Dewey explained, to counteract Senator Chandler’s recommendation of Howell. “You are in error, Commodore,” snapped Long. “No influence has been brought to bear on behalf of anyone else.”

A few hours later Long, in turn, sent apologies to Dewey. It appeared that Senator Chandler had indeed recommended his rival, but the letter “had arrived while he was absent from the office and while Mr. Roosevelt was Acting Secretary and had only just been brought to his attention.”

The culprit was serenely unrepentant about his delay in forwarding Senator Chandler’s letter, and saw nothing wrong in Dewey’s enlistment of senatorial aid. “A large leniency,” Roosevelt wrote, “should be observed toward the man who uses influence only to get himself a place … near the flashing of the guns.”
¹¹⁵

B
Y 30
S
EPTEMBER
, Roosevelt was free to go north for a fortnight’s rest at Sagamore Hill. Before leaving he asked the Secretary’s permission “to talk to him very seriously about the need for an increase in the Navy.” He proceeded to urge the instant construction of six battleships, six large cruisers, seventy-five torpedo-boats, and four dry docks, together with the modernization of ninety-five guns to rapid fire, the laying in of nine thousand armor-piercing projectiles, and the purchase of two million pounds of smokeless powder.

Long could only suggest that Roosevelt list these demands in a memorandum. The Assistant Secretary was eventually persuaded to settle for one battleship.
¹¹⁶

R
OOSEVELT WAS BACK
in Washington on 15 October, accompanied by his wife and family. Installing them at 1810 N Street, “a very nice house, just opposite the British Embassy,” he set off almost immediately on the campaign trail, stumping in Massachusetts for local candidates, and in Ohio for Senator Hanna.
¹¹⁷
On 27 October he turned thirty-nine.

With November came the familiar, seasonal quickening of his activity, as the days shortened and crisp winds stimulated his blood. The ground of Rock Creek Park grew hard under his hobnailed boots, as he and Leonard Wood strolled their endless visionary miles, talking of Cuba, Cuba, Cuba.
¹¹⁸

Roosevelt’s duties as Assistant Secretary were not numerous enough to divert him, and he began to show signs of intellectual restlessness. He plotted four more volumes of
The Winning of the West
, took Frederic Remington to task for rendering badgers “too long and thin,” and yearned for a war with Spain “within the next month.”
¹¹⁹
Long sympathetically appointed him president of a board investigating the Navy’s most chronic ailment: friction between line and staff personnel.
¹²⁰
The resultant work load was heavy, yet Roosevelt now toyed with the idea of writing “a historical article on the Mongol Terror, the domination of the Tartar tribes over half of Europe during the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries.”
¹²¹

Early in the morning of 19 November he sent joyful news to Bamie: “Very unexpectedly Quentin Roosevelt appeared just two hours ago.” Pausing only to enter the boy for Groton, he marched off to work and dictated his most bellicose letter yet, to Lt. Comdr. W. W. Kimball, author of the department’s original war plan.
¹²²
“To speak with a frankness which our timid friends would call brutal, I would regard a war with Spain from two standpoints: first, the advisability on the grounds both of humanity and self-interest of interfering on behalf of the Cubans … second … the benefit done our military forces
by trying both the Navy and Army in actual practice.”
¹²³

On 8 December, he heard that Dewey had sailed for the Far East, but by now he was so busy writing the report of his Personnel Board that he paid little attention. The eight-thousand-word document, submitted the following day, proposed a bill for the prompt amalgamation of line and staff, on the grounds that engineers, in an industrial age, could no longer be held separate from or inferior to officers above deck. Roosevelt inserted one of his typical historical parallels, showing how in the mid-seventeenth century sailormen and sea-soldiers had to unite and resolve their differences in much the same way. “We are not making a revolution,” he wrote, “we are merely recognizing and giving shape to an evolution.”
¹²⁴