Theodore Roosevelt Abroad (19 page)

Roosevelt did not fear “Levantines in cafés” as much as what he considered the real strength of the nationalists—the “mass of practically unchanged bigoted Moslems to whom the movement meant driving out the foreigner, plundering and slaying the local Christian, and a return to all the violence and corruption” of pre-English rule. All those he spoke to, whether American missionaries, Greeks, Syrians, or Copts, agreed that the “overthrow of English rule would be an inconceivable disaster” and dreaded “keenly the murderous outbreak of Moslem brutality which was certain to follow.” However, they were “cowed by the seeming lack of decision of the English authorities.”
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The speech in the Sudan already had raised the ire of the “Egypt for the Egyptians” nationalists and now, despite the warnings of Iddings and others, Roosevelt further provoked them with another address at the new Cairo University. Entitled “Law and Order in Egypt,” the speech, which had been approved by Gorst and Wingate, pointedly condemned the ongoing agitation and the assassination of Boutros Ghali. Before doing this, however, Roosevelt drew applause from his audience when he spoke of the great University of Cordova, which had flourished a thousand years before in Muslim Spain, as a “source of light and learning when the rest of Europe was either in twilight or darkness.” The previous day he had visited the Al-Azhar, the historic Muslim university of Cairo, and seen the writings of Ibn Batutu in its library. He hoped the new and non-sectarian National University could be part of a “revival, and more than a revival, of the conditions that made possible such contributions to the growth of civilization.”
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Preaching from a text he would repeat before other students at Cambridge two months later, Roosevelt argued that character was far more important than “mere intellect,” which by itself was “worse than useless” unless it was “guided by an upright heart” with “strength and courage behind it.” More important than “mental subtlety” in the make up of a people were “morality, decency, clean living, courage, manliness, self-respect.” Striking at least a glancing blow at Egyptian aspirations for government jobs, Roosevelt also counseled the students to guard against the western tendency to train men at university “merely for literary, professional and official positions.” In his view it was a “very unhealthy thing” for any country to “turn to such channels” more than a small proportion of its “strongest and best minds.” At home he supported Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute and vocational education in general. He was equally glad that industrial and agricultural schools had also been built in Egypt as it was essential to train people to cultivate the soil and to be engineers and merchants, men “able to take the lead in all the various functions indispensable in a great modern civilized state.” The base and foundation of healthy life in any country or society, in his view, was “necessarily composed of the men who do the actual productive work.”
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Comparing gaining an education to gaining self-government, TR asked his audience to remember that securing the first, “whether by the individual or by a people,” was “attained only by a process, not by an act.” You could no more make a man “really educated by giving him a certain curriculum of studies” than you could “make a people fit for self-government by giving it a paper constitution.” The education of an individual was the work of years, just as the training of a nation to “fit it successfully to fulfill the duties of self-government” was a matter, “not of a decade or two, but of generations.” Only “foolish empiricists” believed that granting a “paper constitution” conferred “the power of self-government upon a people.” What was needed first was a “slow, steady, resolute development of those substantial qualities, such as the love of justice, the love of fair play, the spirit of self-reliance, of moderation, which alone enable a people to govern themselves.” This was a long “and even tedious but absolutely essential process,” in which he believed “your University will take an important part.” Roosevelt then drew renewed applause from his audience by quoting in passable Arabic a proverb from Koran: “God is with the patient, if they know how to wait.”
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Roosevelt himself waited until the end to address the assassination of the Coptic Christian premier Boutros Ghali, notably, given the occasion, by a Muslim pharmacology student recently returned from training in Britain. He told his audience that an important feature of the process of working towards self-government was the development of a spirit which condemned “every form of lawless evil, every form of envy and hatred and, above all, hatred based on religion or race.” All good men of every nation, whose respect was worth having, had condemned the recent murder which Roosevelt believed “an even bigger calamity for Egypt than it was a wrong to the individual himself.” Whether such deeds were committed under pretence of preserving order or of obtaining liberty, they were “equally abhorrent in the eyes of all decent men” and in the long run, “equally damaging to the very cause to which the assassin professes to be devoted.” At a national university such as theirs, which knew no creed, there should be absolute equality between Muslim and Christian, as in the laws of the country. He hoped the university in future would “frown on every form of wrong-doing, whether in the shape of injustice or corruption or lawlessness and to stand with firmness, with good sense, and with courage for those immutable principles of justice and merciful dealing” between man and man, without which there could never be “the slightest growth towards a really fine and high civilization.”
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Most of the audience could not understand Roosevelt’s speech at the time and reacted only the next day after reading the published translation. His condemnation of the assassination, and support for those who preached delaying self-government, brought a nationalist student march in protest. Hundreds gathered outside Shepheard’s Hotel to chant “Down with Roosevelt,” “Down with the Occupation” and “Long Live the Constitution.” Cal O’Laughlin sent an article home in which he declared that Roosevelt had “placed his finger on the quivering nerve of Egyptian Nationalism” by denouncing the killing of Boutros in “vigorous language.” Both Sir Eldon and Lady Gorst had listened with “rapt interest” and all the English agreed regarding TR’s “sincere earnestness and the delicate way in which he handled the difficult subject.” One less friendly Egyptian paper,
Al-Moayad
, had in response quoted another Arab proverb: “They are able to make a donkey’s tail look like an elephant’s trunk when so inclined.”
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Sheik Ali Youssuf, a journalist and president of the Constitutional Reform League of Egypt, replied in print to Roosevelt’s words. On the Colonel’s arrival at Cairo the Sheik had published an open letter in
Al-Moayad
criticizing the Khartoum speech and begging him to “respect the dignity of the Egyptian nation when in the country.” At a meeting with Youssuf and other representatives of the local press the day before the Cairo speech, Roosevelt had condemned as “a lie” the rumor that he had wounded the feelings of the Muslim officers in the Sudan. He then told them that he did not want the “newspaper men to dictate to me. I am going to speak tomorrow in the Egyptian University. Wait till you hear what I shall say and then say what you wish to say.” Afterwards, Youssuf was astonished that the former president of the “greatest nation in civilization at the present time” and “best friends of the liberty of nations” had chosen twice to insult the Egyptian people. First, by telling the officers in Khartoum to stay out of politics, and then by telling the students at Cairo that it would take generations to achieve self-government.
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As he had done in the press meeting, the Sheik took umbrage at Roosevelt’s portrayal of Muslims, despite their history of toleration of minorities for thirteen centuries before the British arrived in Egypt, as fanatics who would massacre those of other religions if they gained power. He also noted that the Colonel refused to meet with several Muslim groups while finding the time to see Christian and other leaders. Despite Roosevelt’s misstep, Youssuf declared that he believed Americans were still “in their country, the friends of freedom and are the friends of nations that are governed against their will.”
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Undaunted by this criticism, the few expressions of thanks TR received from Muslim quarters led him to comment that the “really intelligent” men who “earnestly desired to have the Moslem world advance as far beyond what it had been and what it still was as the Christian world has advanced beyond the dark ages,” agreed with his speech. As might have been expected the Coptic and Syrian Christians, as well as the American missionaries, joined the hosanna chorus.
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Gorst, who had been worried about the consequences of mentioning Boutros Ghali’s murder, wrote to TR that he had “Immensely enjoyed” his address and was glad he had consented to speak. He went on that if anything could bring the nationalists “into a more reasonable frame of mind, your words should have that effect.” In any case, Roosevelt had given him “renewed courage to go on with what I often feel to be a very hopeless task.”
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The Colonel was touched by Gorst’s letter of thanks, and by another from Wingate, but reported to Henry White that what he had said would “do small good unless they have the nerve to back it up by deeds” and were “backed up at home.” All in all, he had come away with “rather a contempt for the English attitude in Egypt.”
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At the same time, Gorst informed his masters at the Foreign Office in London that Roosevelt’s speech had caused “great dismay in the nationalist ranks.” He admitted that TR had shown him the speech beforehand and that he “encouraged him to administer this unpalatable medicine.” When the initial irritation had “worn away,” Gorst believed “this plain speaking may do some good to those who are not entirely beyond redemption.”
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Wingate predicted that the speech would help to awaken the British government to the true state of affairs in Egypt. Roosevelt’s words would “travel all over the world” and “do more than anything else to make our sleepy people realize that the situation in Egypt is not as it should be and that a strong hand is absolutely necessary.”
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This is exactly the text that Roosevelt would preach in London. He confided to Whitelaw Reid, the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James who was furiously trying to arrange the Colonel’s crowded English itinerary, that when he arrived in London he would have much to tell him about his time in the Sudan and Egypt. He announced that there were “plenty of jobs for which I am not competent,” but he had to say that he would “greatly like to handle Egypt and India for a few months.” At the end of that he doubtless would be “impeached by the House of Commons but I should have things moving in a fine order first.”
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Over the previous months, TR had also corresponded with Reid concerning the forthcoming European campaign in support of Andrew Carnegie’s plan for world peace. Taking advantage of Roosevelt’s gratitude for his additional support of the safari, Carnegie persuaded him to broach his initiatives, including a league of peace, arbitration and arms limitation, particularly with the Kaiser at Berlin. The plutocrat also assured TR that his efforts in promoting universal peace would have the blessing of Taft, who sent Carnegie a letter to this effect.
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The Colonel in return assured Carnegie that he was willing sincerely to “fight for peace” and that “with the big statesmen of Europe, emperors, Kings, Ministers of State,” he would do what lay in his powers “to help secure the adoption of the policies,” in particular international arbitration, for which Carnegie and Elihu Root both stood. He would do all he could to “bring about such a league of, or understanding among, the great powers as will forbid one of them, or any small power, to engage in unrighteous, foolish or needless war.” He would also seek to secure “an effective arbitral tribunal, with power to enforce at least certain of its decrees” and to secure “an agreement to check the waste of money on growing and excessive armaments.” If, as Roosevelt believed probable, the proposals could not be secured at once, he nevertheless promised to do all he could “help the movement, rapid or slow, towards the desired end.” He pledged that in France, Italy, Austria, and in Germany especially, he would “go into the matter at length with the men of power,” and would “report to you in full in England.”
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The greatest immediate threat to peace, in almost everyone’s view, lay in the Anglo-German naval arms race and Carnegie used his influence to ensure that after his talk with the Kaiser, TR would not only report to him but to a conference of British statesmen of both parties. Roosevelt left all the arrangements to Carnegie, who coordinated with Whitelaw Reid in London, and Viscount Morley of Blackburn, a member of the British Cabinet sympathetic with their peace aims. Consequently, a late May 1910 weekend meeting was set for Wrest Park, the English country estate of Reid. The British representatives who agreed to attend a “quiet conference” to discuss Wilhelm’s response included the prime minister, Henry Asquith, the foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, and the former Conservative prime minister and current leader of the opposition, Arthur Balfour.

Carnegie and Roosevelt both saw Wilhelm II as the key to any progress on the peace front and TR pledged to Carnegie from Africa that when he saw the Kaiser he would “go over the matter at length” and reveal that he meant to repeat the entire conversation in England. Roosevelt confided that he considered the proposed meeting as “most important.”
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For an approach to Wilhelm, TR asked Carnegie to solicit the advice of Root, whose “gift of phrasing things” was unequalled. He asked Carnegie to have his trusted advisor put his thoughts in writing and send them to him.
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Carnegie did as TR wished, and in his letter Root first cautioned Roosevelt not to seem to be lecturing Europe on its duties and not to assume the functions of the State Department. He suggested a friendly, informal talk with the Kaiser. It seemed plain to Root that TR could do nothing in England unless he was able to first accomplish something in Germany. He believed the British were willing to quit the arms race if Germany would but to urge her public men to do so except on that basis would be “merely to irritate them.”
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