Theodore Rex (46 page)

Palpably, between the extremes of his divided fleet, a mirage of locks and water shimmered across Panama.

IN BERLIN
, Speck von Sternburg was reporting to Chancellor
von Bülow and State Secretary Olaf von Richtoven on his recent visit to America. He cautioned them against “basking in the illusions” of Roosevelt’s extravagant welcome to Prince Heinrich, nine months before. They must be aware of a steady deterioration in United States–German relations.

Expressionless, self-effacing, and cunning, von Sternburg had his own interests in mind. He knew that Roosevelt was uncomfortable with Ambassador von Holleben, and would prefer a more congenial envoy in Washington. “I feel absolutely confident,” he wrote the President afterward, “that a radical change must take place.… Of course I didn’t say a word as regards myself as a candidate.”

Roosevelt did not mind members of his
secret du roi
advancing themselves, since by doing so they usually advanced American foreign policy. A little farther down in von Sternburg’s letter, he read: “The Venezuelan crisis is causing a considerable stir here.”

There seemed to be a similar stir in London, where St. Loe Strachey was railing in the
Spectator
against “one of the most amazingly indiscreet alliances ever made with a foreign power.” British popular opinion was generally against shared adventurism. In the United States, newspaper hostility toward Germany rose to such a pitch that von Holleben sent a worried cable to the Wilhelmstrasse.

Von Bülow passed it on to the Kaiser, who scrawled irritatedly in the margin, “Herr Ambassador is over there to take the pulse of the press and to calm it, when necessary, by administering proper treatment.” Wilhelm agreed, however, that Germany should refrain from any more unilateral displays of force. “We will allow our flag to follow the lead of the British.”

The ink on his superscription was scarcely dry when the British Royal Navy obliged off Puerto Cabello. The captain of an armored cruiser, responding to some “insult” to the Union Jack, bombarded the Venezuelan coast, and a German cruiser joined in, heavily damaging two forts.

Roosevelt continued to believe that Germany was “the really formidable party” in the alliance. Sir Arthur Balfour’s government had to find a way out or jeopardize the rapprochement between the two great English-speaking powers. One thing was certain: Britain would declare neutrality in any clash over the Monroe Doctrine.

Sunday, 14 December, dawned gray and bitingly cold in Washington. The White House stood shrouded in weekend quiet. But the clock of war ticked on. Four more such dawns, and Roosevelt’s deadline would expire. Then Theodor von Holleben came to see him.

If Roosevelt expected an answer to his ultimatum of 8 December, he was soon disappointed. Von Holleben was a
Diplomat älterer Schule
, a sociable old Prussian with a bachelor’s paunch and mild, misty eyes. His booming laugh precluded conversational attack. He preferred to do business in writing,
with long delays between dispatch and response. The characteristics of his diplomacy were concern about America’s rise to world power, and what John Hay called “mortal terror of the Kaiser.”

Today,
von Holleben seemed interested in talking about only the weather and, of all things, tennis. When he rose to go Roosevelt asked if his government was going to accept the arbitration proposal transmitted by Secretary Hay. The Ambassador said, “No.”

Controlling himself, Roosevelt replied that Kaiser Wilhelm must understand he was “very definitely” threatening war. Von Holleben declined to be a party to such language.

The President said that in that case he would advance his ultimatum by twenty-four hours. Calculating back to 8 December, the deadline would now fall on the seventeenth, rather than the eighteenth. Von Holleben, shaken, insisted that His Majesty would not arbitrate. Roosevelt let him have the last word.

WILLIAM LOEB SAW
the Ambassador go, but made no log of his visit. Neither did clerks at the State Department or the German Embassy. It suited everybody concerned that blank paper should obliterate the diplomatic record. Wilhelm was still free to end the crisis without evidence of being coerced.

Von Holleben pondered Roosevelt’s incredible threat. He could transmit it now (if he dared to transmit it at all) only as a matter of extreme urgency. Contrary to von Sternburg’s insinuations, he had long been aware of the rise of anti-Germanism in the United States, to the extent of predicting war, sooner or later, over the Monroe Doctrine. But the Kaiser had scoffed at his qualms. “We will do whatever is necessary for our navy, even if it displeases the Yankees. Never fear!” This ultimatum might well be Rooseveltian bluster. Von Holleben did not want to be dismissed as an alarmist.

But what if the President was serious? Von Holleben decided to consult a German diplomat in New York who knew Roosevelt well—Consul General Karl Bünz. Under cloak of a snowstorm, the Ambassador left town.
Late that evening he registered at the Cambridge Hotel, Manhattan.

Sometime during the next twenty-four hours, Bünz assured him that the President was “not bluffing.” Nor was Roosevelt’s short-term strategy flawed. Whatever the worldwide strength of the Kaiser’s Navy, it was currently dispersed. Admiral Dewey was therefore in a position to deal a brutal blow to German prestige in the Caribbean.

As von Holleben struggled with this frightening information, diplomatic strains developed between London and Berlin. Lord Lansdowne, the British Foreign Secretary, found himself in a difficult position, with King Edward VII expressing annoyance at the Venezuelan entanglement, and the German Ambassador,
Count Paul von Metternich, insisting the Kaiser would not arbitrate. Lansdowne wondered querulously if the Allies could at least agree on “the principle of arbitration,” and “perhaps invite the United States” to weigh some of their claims against Venezuela.

This was the first hint that the British government wanted Theodore Roosevelt to help resolve the crisis. His neutrality, not to mention his recent mediation of the great coal strike, recommended him as an arbitrator.
But Metternich would not budge.

It was now Tuesday, 16 December. Fewer than twenty-four hours remained before Roosevelt’s deadline. In New York, von Holleben went down to Wall Street to check the latest fluctuations of German-American and Latin American opinion. In London, the British Cabinet approved Lord Lansdowne’s proposal to accept arbitration “in principle,” thus driving a wedge into the alliance. In Washington, the Roosevelt Cabinet met in closed session. And in San Juan, Puerto Rico, a fast torpedo boat stood ready to rush any emergency orders to Admiral Dewey.

“
Such cables,” Admiral Taylor alerted naval intelligence, “may be written in cipher … and [are] to be considered confidential.” He reminded all staff that “there are many matters connected with the business of the fleet here, which are not a proper subject for discussion.”

After less than an hour in the Cabinet Room, Secretary Moody hurried back to his office with a presidential order. A White House spokesman said that it concerned Christmas visits that the fleet would make to various Caribbean ports. Reporters soon learned that Dewey’s big battleship squadron was headed for Trinidad, only sixty miles from La Guiria. And why was the Navy Department handing out detailed maps of the blockade zone?

Throughout the crisis so far, Roosevelt had pursued a policy of apparent candor and cooperation with the press, issuing regular bulletins about the maneuvers, along with qualified assurances that he was handling the Allies with restraint. “He sees little reason,” the Washington
Evening Star
noted that afternoon, “to be throwing out unofficial intimations to Germany and England that this country has fixed a deadline, which they must not cross.” The truth or untruth of this statement lay in the adjective
unofficial
.

By now the Ambassador’s unexplained absence from town was causing comment along Massachusetts Avenue. He was scheduled to attend an evening reception at the home of the British Ambassador, Sir Michael Herbert. Protocol clearly required that he make an appearance, but darkness came, and von Holleben was not seen. Neither were the German military and naval attachés. They had slipped away to join their leader in New York.

From there, before midnight, certain words flashed to Berlin. Roosevelt was not to know exactly how von Holleben transmitted his threat of war, only that the threat got through—on a night when the Atlantic cable was so electric with communications that even
The Times
of London was denied access.

Once read, von Holleben’s words were probably burned, in approved German-security fashion. His dispatch of record for 16 December 1902 advised only that

The reaction in Berlin was immediate. On 17 December, the Reichstag voted secretly to accept arbitration, in such haste that other encouragements, from Hay in Washington and Metternich in London, were redundant on receipt.

SO THE DEADLINE
passed in peace. There could be no end to the blockade until arbitration actually began, but a massive release of tension was felt on both sides of the Atlantic.

Roosevelt’s triumph was von Holleben’s disgrace. The Ambassador remained in New York while arrangements were made to bring him home on permanent disability leave. “
I am a sick man,” he told a reporter. “I cannot answer a single question.” He had misjudged a President, misled an Emperor, and nearly started a war. His only consolation was that the Wilhelmstrasse could not cite these as reasons for his recall without making the decision to arbitrate seem forced. To save the Kaiser’s face, it was necessary to save von Holleben’s. Discreet cooperation from the White House made both expedients possible.

On 19 December, Germany and Britain formally invited Roosevelt to arbitrate their claims against Venezuela. He said he would think about it, and left town with his children to spend a day or two in the pinewoods of northern Virginia. Cortelyou announced that the President had been under great strain “both mentally and physically … in the Venezuela crisis.”

This was the nearest Roosevelt got to a public acknowledgment that there had indeed been a “crisis” involving himself. “
I suppose,” he wrote privately, “we shall never make public the fact of the vital step.”

Overflowing with goodwill, he went out of his way to praise things Teutonic at a meeting with trade representatives of the Kaiser. For twenty minutes he spoke, in vigorous if ungrammatical German, of Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, and Theodor Körner. “He astounded us,” one of the group said afterward. “He is as well posted on German affairs as on American.… His familiarity with the masterpieces of German literature would amaze even the most exact scholar in the Fatherland.”