Theodore Roosevelt Abroad (28 page)

Roosevelt’s final public address in England, given in a packed Sheldonian Theatre at Oxford on June 7, 1910, was the Romanes lecture, named in honor of George John Romanes, a celebrated naturalist and Fullerian Professor of Physiology at the Royal Institute. TR gave the scholarly speech, “Biological Analogies in History,” in a scarlet gown donned to accept the honorary Doctorate of Civil Law he was awarded beforehand by the Chancellor, Lord Curzon, who had given the Romanes Lecture himself three years before. In his introduction of Roosevelt, Dr. Henry Goudy, the Regius Professor of Civil Law, declaimed, “His onslaughts on the wild beasts of the desert have been not less fierce nor less successful than over the many-headed hydra of corruption in his own land. Now, like another Ulysses, on his homeward way he has come to us . . . after visiting many cities and discoursing on many themes . . . it will be our privilege to listen to him discoursing on a lofty theme.”
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The address, though rather dry and academic in nature, afforded Roosevelt one last European opportunity to praise the “homely, commonplace virtues,” most importantly national character. His jeremiad warned that if this vanished in “graceful self-indulgence, if the virile qualities atrophy,” then the nation had lost “what no material prosperity can offset.” Comparing the “national growth and decay” of new and old nations, Roosevelt found commonalities and differences, both for good and evil. Rome had fallen “because the ills within her own borders had grown incurable” and at present he saw a similar “national danger patent” to all civilized peoples from the “growth of soft luxury” out of which the average women ceased to “become the mother of a family of healthy children” and the average man lost the “will and the power to work up to old age and to fight whenever the need arises.” To survive the “really high civilizations must themselves supply the antidote to the self-indulgence and love of ease that they tend to produce.” Each advanced nation must deal with its own problems, such as the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty, in its own fashion, but he thought the spirit “fundamentally the same.” This must be of a “broad humanity, of brotherly kindness, of acceptance of responsibility, one for each and each for all, and at the same time a spirit as remote as the poles from every form of weakness and sentimentality.”
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Turning to the British and U.S. empires, Roosevelt asserted that in the long run there could be “no justification for one race managing or controlling another unless the management and control are exercised in the interest and for the benefit of that other race.” This was what the English speaking peoples had in “the main done and must continue in the future in an even greater degree” in India, Egypt and the Philippines alike. In his view, the laws of morality which governed individuals “in their dealings with one another,” were “just as binding concerning nations in their dealings one with another” and he had followed this principle in his foreign relations as president. However, since nations could not depend on the courts for protection, it was the “highest duty of the most advanced and freest peoples to keep themselves in such a state of readiness as to forbid any barbarism or despotism the hope of arresting the progress of the world.” The nations that led in that progress would be “foolish indeed to pay heed to the unwise persons who desire disarmament to be begun by the very nations who, among all others, should not be left helpless before any possible foe.”
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The Archbishop of York commented that in the way of grading they had at Oxford, “we agreed to give the lecture a ‘beta minus,’ but the lecturer ‘alpha plus.’” His Grace went on that “while we felt the lecture was not a very great contribution to science, we were sure the lecturer was a very great man.” Roosevelt told the Archbishop that the lecture would have been “a great deal stronger had not one of my scientific friends in America
blue penciled the best part of it
.”
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While at Oxford, TR attended a meeting of Rhodes Scholars and other American students at the American Club. He was also able to see, as he had requested, several writers of note, including Gilbert Murray, whose books on Ancient Greece he admired, and Charles Oman, author of
The Art of War in the Middle Ages
. After dinner with Sir Thomas Warren at Magdalene College, the Colonel spent the night at Nuneham Park, the country house nearby of the Liberal politician Lewis Harcourt, who would soon be made Colonial Secretary and had a particular interest in African affairs.

Back in London, with his trip almost at an end, Roosevelt attended a joint meeting of the Geographical and Alpine Clubs. In his note of acceptance TR declared, “You do no know how attractive an invitation is from people ‘who have done things!’”
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At a Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire dinner presided over by Edward North Buxton, TR regaled the three hundred fellow big game hunters and naturalists present with “an unusually vivid description” of African scenes, and particularly the Nandi lion hunt he had witnessed in which the warriors surrounded their prey and closed in with their spears for the kill.
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Earlier that day he had lunch at the Shikar Club with Buxton, Selous and the other donors of the 450/500 Holland & Holland he had wielded so successfully in Africa and which R. J. Cuninghame brought to the affair. Reid gave the Colonel a farewell dinner at Dorchester House on June 8. The next day, which Roosevelt claimed was the one he enjoyed the most in all his time in Europe, was spent back in nature with Sir Edward Grey.

The foreign secretary and Roosevelt had a common love of birds and TR, anxious to see and hear at first hand the English species he knew so well from his books, gladly accepted an invitation for a final quiet day comparing bird lore while walking Grey’s home ground. The two tramped through the rain in the Valley of the Itchen, ate their lunch on a bank, then motored to an inn near the New Forest for tea. Afterwards, they hiked through the New Forest, reaching an inn on the other side that evening, “tired and happy and ready for a warm bath, a hot supper, and bed.”
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Though both the weather and lateness of the season somewhat hampered the experience, Grey made a list of forty-one birds they had seen, twenty-three of which they heard sing.
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Grey later recalled that on their trek he was astounded by TR’s knowledge of English birds. Roosevelt “not only knew more about American birds than I did about British birds, but he knew more about British birds also.” What he had lacked was an opportunity of hearing their songs. On their walk he told Roosevelt the name of birds as they sang and “it was unnecessary to tell him more.” He knew the “kind of bird it was, its habits and appearance. He just wanted to complete his knowledge by hearing the song.” How Roosevelt had found the time in his busy life to gain such an expertly trained ear Grey could not fathom. Of all the songs, Roosevelt was the most impressed by the blackbird, and he became positively indignant that he had not heard more of its reputation. He theorized that its name hurt its standing in comparison to the more lauded thrush.
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To be with Roosevelt, wrote Grey, was to be “stimulated in the best sense of the word for the work of life.”
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The admiration of the two men for each other was mutual. In TR’s estimation, Grey was “not a brilliant man like Balfour, or a born leader like Lloyd George,” but he was the “kind of high-minded public servant, as straight in all private as in all public relations, whom it is essential for a country to have.” He did not remember meeting anyone, except for Leonard Wood, his commanding officer in Cuba, to whom he “took so strong a fancy on such short acquaintance.”
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At the time, however, Arthur Lee thought he noted in TR a certain disillusionment in what he considered Grey’s lukewarm support of the Guildhall speech. Roosevelt said of Grey that he had “the profile of an eagle but I cannot help wondering whether his heart may be that of a

s p a r r o w - h a w k . ”
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The Colonel arose at 4 a.m. on June 10 to spend a final few hours listening to bird songs, before Lee took him to the train for Southampton where he joined Edith and Ethel already aboard the liner
Kaiserin Auguste Victoria
for the eight-day voyage home.

While in London, Roosevelt met at the American Embassy with Elihu Root, who spent an hour defending President Taft’s record. He urged Roosevelt to stay out of politics for at least sixty days after his return. Taft also sent a letter, his first since the one Archie Butt delivered to TR at Hoboken fifteen months before. The president explained that he had not written “for the reason that he did not wish to invite your comment or judgment on matters at long range” or to commit him on issues he would need to decide on once he returned to the United States. He now congratulated Roosevelt on “a trip exceptional in history and most successful in every detail.”

Turning to politics, Taft admitted that he had had a hard time as president, a task made heavier by the illness of his wife. “I do not know that I have had harder luck than other Presidents,” he wrote, “but I do know that thus far I have succeeded far less than others.” The Pinchot-Ballinger controversy had given him “a great deal of personal pain and suffering,” but he was not going to say a word on the subject. TR would have to “look into that wholly for yourself without influence by the parties if you would find the truth.” He defended the PayneAldrich Tariff as a good one and a real downward revision, “not as radical a change” as he had favored, but “still a change for the better.” Taft claimed that he had been “conscientiously trying to carry out your policies,” but his methods of doing so had not worked for several reasons. First, the Republican insurgents had “done all in their power to defeat us.” The added hostility of the press, Taft put down to the fact that the tariff did not sufficiently lower the rate on print paper. Outside the newspapers, the general enthusiasm of business had been curbed by the corporation tax about to be tested in court. The president concluded by telling Roosevelt that it would “give me a great deal of personal pleasure if after you get settled at Oyster Bay, you could come over to Washington and spend a few days at the White House.”
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In reply to this
cri de coeur
, TR commiserated with Taft over his wife’s illness which had “added immeasurably to your burden.” He told his old friend that, even though he was “much concerned about some of the things I see and am told,” what he felt it was best to do was “say absolutely nothing—and indeed to keep my mind as open as I keep mouth shut!” This would prove difficult in the short term and impossible afterwards. Finally, and ominously for their future relations, TR asked Taft “to let me defer my answer” to his “more than kind invitation” to visit the White House “until I reach Oyster Bay, and find out something about what work is in store for me.”
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In a P.S to his letter, Taft had mentioned that a great reception was being prepared for Roosevelt in New York, which would be “nonpartisan and the sincere expression of all the people of their joy at your return.” This insured that there would be no quiet return to a “Promised Land” of quiet retirement at Sagamore Hill, as Edith had hoped, but only the beginning of another quest for her husband, this time sadly against an old friend.

Theodore Roosevelt died unexpectedly in January 1919, at only sixty years of age, before he could snatch back one last time the presidency he had walked away from ten years before. Carl Akeley, whose story of lions had helped send TR to Africa, and who counted the quiet talk he had with Roosevelt under the shade of an acacia tree on the Uasin Gushu plateau in 1909 one as of the great experiences of his life, was among the many shaken by the death. Since their meeting on safari TR had more than once reminded Akeley of his promised book on Africa and volunteered to contribute a foreword and a chapter. However, it was not until ten years later that Akeley sat down to write that he meant at last to start the work. He had finished only two words, “Dear Colonel,” when the phone rang and he was given the news of Roosevelt’s death. For Akeley, the “bottom dropped out of everything” and until he returned from the funeral he did nothing.

To escape his depression Akeley began to sculpt a model of a lion. He meant to make it “symbolic of Roosevelt, of his strength, courage, fearlessness—of his kingly qualities in the old-fashioned sense.” This modeling offered him great comfort and one day Archie Roosevelt came by his studio and he showed him the still unfinished lion. TR’s son told Akeley that none of the family wanted “to see statues of father. They can’t make father.” But as he put his arms around the pedestal of the lion, he said “this is father. Of course, you do not know it, but among ourselves we boys always called him the ‘Old Lion’ and when he died I cabled the others in France, ‘the Old Lion is dead.’ ”
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Taken as a whole, Roosevelt’s last decade makes a rather sad coda to an otherwise remarkable career. The feud with Taft which, as we have seen, was well developed before the Colonel returned to America in June 1910, culminated two years later in the Bull Moose Progressive campaign. This bitter division in the Republican ranks delivered the presidency into the hands of the Democratic candidate, Woodrow Wilson, and placed a political mark of Cain on TR. He never fully recovered from illnesses and injuries suffered on a perilous expedition down the Amazon, which in the shadow of the electoral defeat afforded him “one last chance to be a boy.”
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After the Great War began in 1914, Roosevelt’s last years were marred by virulent outbursts aimed at what he considered Wilson’s foolhardy and cowardly policy which kept America out of the war until 1917 and in the bargain frustrated the Colonel’s long-stated hope to lead troops again as he had in Cuba. It is tantalizing to wonder how Wilhelm II and Germany’s course might have been deflected had TR been president in 1914, something which must have weighed on Roosevelt’s active mind as well. In 1918, much of his joy, and perhaps also his indomitable will to live, were drained away by news of the death of his youngest son Quentin in aerial combat over France. TR’s own death less than a year later forestalled any possibility of the third term prophesied more than once on the journey a decade earlier. At any rate, though he might have garnered the Republican nomination in 1920, and possibly been elected, the old warrior was rather out of step with the temper of a nation tired of moralists and crusaders like both Wilson and himself.