Theodore Rex (69 page)

AT 2:34 P.M., ROOSEVELT’S
special train pulled out of Jersey City for Washington. Facing six hours of travel, he remembered that Nicholas Murray Butler had asked him for a list of recommended books. It seemed like a strange request, coming from the President of Columbia University, yet deserving of a full answer.
He cast his mind back over what he had read since taking the oath of office, and began to scribble.

All these had been in translation. However, he had read, in French, the biographies of Prince Eugene of Savoy, Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, Henri Turenne, and John Sobieski. He had also browsed, if not deeply studied, Froissart on French history, Maspero on the early Syrian, Chaldean, and Egyptian civilizations, “and some six volumes of Mahaffey’s
Studies of the Greek World.”
What else?

ROOSEVELT HAD BARELY
settled in his seat before the first hint of trouble in Panama reached the State Department. Hubbard’s early-morning dispatch from Colón had gone astray; this one came from Oscar Malmros, the United States Consul in Colón.

Washington was ill prepared to deal with such sudden news, since most of its top officials, including Root, Moody, and the President himself, were out of town on election trips. Assistant Secretary Loomis cabled Felix Ehrman, the United States Vice Consul in Panama City, ordering him to keep the State Department apprised of the situation in Panama City. Ehrman could reply only that it was “critical,” but not yet violent. Some sort of uprising was expected “in the night.”

Had the Vice Consul been better informed, he might have noticed the curious frequency with which deadlines of “five o’clock” recurred in local communications.
Governor Obaldía had promised the increasingly desperate Tovar that his battalion would be delivered at that hour. The fire brigade was
on notice to be ready for action then, and a freelance scribe assigned to write an important public proclamation had his contract amended accordingly. Word spread that there would be “a great mass meeting” in Plaza de Santa Ana at 5:00
P.M.
, and certain key citizens were told to bring guns.

WHEN ELISEO TORRES
, the young colonel whom General Tovar had left in command of the
tiradores
, asked Colonel Shaler when his men might expect to cross the Isthmus, he received a variety of answers. At first Shaler repeated Obaldía’s promise of delivery by five, but when that hour drew near, the railroad suddenly demanded advance payment of all fares. Torres, who had no money, was quick-thinking enough to insist on the government of Colombia’s right to transport troops on credit. Consul Malmros, overhearing, confirmed that such a right was written into the railroad’s concession. Shaler did not contest this, but noted that the concession also called for the Governor of Panama’s signature on all military travel requisitions. Also there was still the question of a shortage of available cars, most of the railroad’s rolling stock unfortunately being on the other side of the Isthmus.

Torres waxed more and more angry. Shaler had to admit, quietly to Chief Meléndez, that the railroad could not stall much longer without jeopardizing its treaty privileges. Torres could probably be held off until sunset, when trains stopped running anyway. But some cars were going to have to be laid on in the morning, unless Shaler received “written orders of the United States Government to refuse the transportation.”

ROOSEVELT RECALLED PLOWING
through Charles Lever’s
Charles O’Malley
and some Brockden Brown novels with little real enjoyment, during the period when he was confined by his leg injury. Keats, Browning, Poe, Tennyson, Longfellow, Kipling, Bliss Carmen, Lowell, Stevenson, Allingham, and Leopold Wagner were more to his taste, and he had spent many enjoyable hours in their literary company. He had read aloud to his children (“and often finished afterwards to myself”) the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm, and Howard Pyle. As for Joel Chandler Harris, “
I would be willing to rest all I have done in the South as regards the negro in his story ‘Free Joe.’ ”

FIVE O’CLOCK CAME
and went in Colón without any word of a disturbance in Panama City. The cable and railroad offices prepared to shut down for the night. Commander Hubbard came ashore again from the
Nashville
, and heard with concern that Shaler was resigned to transporting the government battalion in the morning. But before he could object, at 5:49
P.M.
, a call came through from Herbert G. Prescott, Shaler’s deputy at the Pacific terminus. Strangely, Prescott wanted to speak to Chief Meléndez. His message was a coded one—indicating that Prescott, too, was an agent of the
junta
, and saying that the revolution was “about to begin.”

Subsequent calls made clear that General Tovar and his senior staff had already been arrested at the order of General Huertas. Governor Obaldía was next (surrendering with the utmost equanimity), and by 6:00
P.M.
the
junta
had started reorganizing itself as a “Provisional Government.” Its official documents and proclamations showed that the elderly Dr. Amador held little real power. The executive signatures were always those of José Augustin Arango, Federico Boyd, and Tomas Arias.

One of their first official acts was to send Shaler a telegram warning him, in the strongest terms, “not to accede” to any request for transportation of the
tiradores
. “This act would be of grave consequences for the company you represent.”

KENNETH GRAHAME.
Somerville and Ross. Conrad. Artemus Ward. Octave Thanet. Viljoen. Stevens. Peer. Burroughs. Swettenham. Gray. Janvier. London. Fox. Garland. Tarkington. Churchill. Remington. Wister. White. Trevelyan …