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Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography
Chapter XX. World Honors
by Thayer, William Roscoe
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What to do with ex-Presidents is a problem which worries those
happy Americans who have nothing else to worry over. They think
of an ex-President as of a sacred white elephant, who must not
work, although he has probably too little money to keep him alive
in proper ease and dignity. In fact, however, these gentlemen
have managed, at least during the past half-century, to sink back
into the civilian mass from which they emerged without suffering
want themselves or dimming the lustre which radiates from the
office. Roosevelt little thought that in quitting the Presidency
he was not going into political obscurity.
Roosevelt had two objects in view when he left the White House.
He sought long and complete rest, and to place himself beyond the
reach of politicians. In fairness, he wished to give Mr. Taft a
free field, which would hardly have been possible if Roosevelt
had remained in Washington or New York, where politicians might
have had access to him.
Accordingly, he planned to hunt big game in Africa for a year,
and in order to have a definite purpose, which might give his
expedition lasting usefulness, he arranged to collect specimens
for the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. His second son,
Kermit, then twenty years of age, besides several naturalists and
hunters, accompanied him. His expedition sailed from New York on
March 23d, touched at the Azores and at Gibraltar, where the
English Commander showed him the fortifications, and transshipped
at Naples into an East-African liner. He found his stateroom
filled with flowers sent by his admiring friend, Kaiser William
II, with a telegram of effusive greeting, and with messages and
tokens from minor potentates. More important to him than these
tributes, however, was the presence of Frederick C. Selous, the
most famous hunter of big game in Africa, who joined the ship and
proved a congenial fellow passenger. They reached Mombasa on
April 23rd, and after the caravan had been made ready, they
started for the interior.
We need not follow in detail the year which Roosevelt and his
party spent in his African hunting. The railroad took them to
Lake Victoria Nyanza, but they stopped at many places on the way,
and made long excursions into the country. Then from the Lake
they proceeded to the Albert Nyanza and steamed down the Nile to
Gondokoro, which they reached on February 26, 1910. On March 14th
at Khartoum, where Mrs. Roosevelt and their daughter Ethel
awaited them, Roosevelt emerged into civilization again. He and
Kermit had shot 512 beasts and birds, of which they kept about a
dozen for trophies, the rest going to the Smithsonian Institution
and to the museums. A few of their specimens were unique, and the
total product of the expedition was the most important which had
ever reached America from Africa.
After spending a few days in visiting Omdurman and other scenes
connected with the British conquest of the Mahdists, less than a
dozen years before, the Roosevelts went down the river to Cairo,
where the ex-President addressed the Egyptian students. These
were the backbone of the so-called Nationalist Party, which aimed
at driving out the British and had killed the Prime Minister a
month before. They warned Roosevelt that if he dared to touch on
this subject he, too, would be assassinated. But such threats did
not move him then or ever. Roosevelt reproved them point-blank
for killing Boutros Pasha, and told them that a party which
sought freedom must show its capacity for living by law and
order, before it could expect to deserve freedom.
From Egypt, Roosevelt crossed to Naples, and then began what must
be described as a triumphal progress through Central and Western
Europe. Only General Grant, after his Presidency, had made a
similar tour, but he did not excite a tenth of the popular
interest and enthusiasm which Roosevelt excited. Although Grant
had the prestige of being the successful general of the most
tremendous war ever fought in America, he had nothing picturesque
or magnetic in his personality. The peasants in the remote
regions had heard of Roosevelt; persons of every class in the
cities knew about him a little more definitely; and all were keen
to see him. Except Garibaldi, no modern ever set multitudes on
fire as Roosevelt did, and Garibaldi was the hero of a much
narrower sphere and had the advantage of being the hero of the
then downtrodden masses. Roosevelt, on the other hand, belonged
to the ruling class in America, had served nearly eight years as
President of the United States, and was equally the popular idol
without class distinction. And he had just come from a very
remarkable exploit, having led his scientific and hunting
expedition for twelve months through the perils and hardships of
tropical Africa. We Americans may well thrill with satisfaction
to remember that it was this most typical of Americans who
received the honors and homage of the world precisely because he
was most typically American and strikingly individual.
Before he reached Italy on his way back, he had invitations from
most of the sovereigns of Europe to visit them, and universities
and learned bodies requested him to address them. At Rome, as
guest of King Victor Emanuel II, he received ovations of the
exuberant and throbbing kind, which only the Italians can give.
But here also occurred what might have been, but for his common
sense and courage, a hitch in his triumphal progress. The
intriguers of the Vatican, always on the alert to edify the Roman
Catholics in the United States, thought they saw a chance to
exalt themselves and humble the Protestants by stipulating that
Colonel Roosevelt, who had accepted an invitation to call upon
the Pope, should not visit any Protestant organization while he
was in that city. Some time before, Vice-President Fairbanks had
incensed Cardinal Merry del Val, the Papal Secretary, and his
group, by remarks at the Methodist College in Rome. Here was a
dazzling opportunity for not only getting even, but for coming
out victorious. If the Vatican schemers could force Colonel
Roosevelt, who, at the moment, was the greatest figure in the
world, to obey their orders, they might exult in the sight of all
the nations. Should he balk, he would draw down upon himself a
hostile Catholic vote at home. Probably the good-natured Pope
himself understood little about the intrigue and took little part
in it, for Pius X was rather a kindly and a genuinely pious
pontiff. But Cardinal Merry del Val, apt pupil of the Jesuits,
made an egregious blunder if he expected to catch Theodore
Roosevelt in a Papal trap. The Rector of the American Catholic
College in Rome wrote: " 'The Holy Father will be delighted to
grant audience to Mr. Roosevelt on April 5th, and hopes nothing
will arise to prevent it, such as the much-regretted incident
which made the reception of Mr. Fairbanks impossible.' Roosevelt
replied to our Ambassador as follows: 'On the other hand, I in my
turn must decline to have any stipulations made or submit to any
conditions which in any way limit my freedom of conduct.' To this
the Vatican replied. through our Ambassador: 'In view of the
circumstances for which neither His Holiness nor Mr. Roosevelt is
responsible, an audience could not occur except on the
understanding expressed in the former message.'" *
[ Washburn, 164.]
Ex-President Roosevelt did not, by calling upon the Pope, furnish
Cardinal Merry del Val with cause to gloat. A good while
afterward in talking over the matter with me, Roosevelt dismissed
it with "No self-respecting American could allow his actions or
his going and coming to be dictated to him by any Pope or King."
That, to him, was so self-evident a fact that it required no
discussion; and the American people, including probably a large
majority of Roman Catholics, agreed with him.
From Rome he went to Austria, to Vienna first, where the aged
Emperor, Francis Joseph, welcomed him; and then to Budapest,
where the Hungarians, eager for their independence, shouted
themselves hoarse at sight of the representative of American
independence. Wherever he went the masses in the cities crowded
round him and the people in the country flocked to cheer him as
he passed. Since Norway had conferred on him the Nobel Peace
Prize after the Russo-Japanese War, he journeyed to Christiania
to pay his respects to the Nobel Committee, and there he
delivered an address on the conditions necessary for a universal
peace in which he foreshadowed many of the terms which have since
been preached by the advocates of a League of Nations. In Berlin,
the Kaiser received him with ostentatious friendliness. He
addressed him as "Friend Roosevelt." Since the Colonel was not a
monarch the Kaiser could not address him as "Brother" or as
"Cousin," and the word "Friend "disguised whatever condescension
he may have felt. There was a grand military review of twelve
thousand troops, which the Kaiser and his "Friend" inspected, and
he took care to inform Roosevelt that he was the first civilian
to whom this honor had ever been paid. An Imperial photographer
made snapshots of the Colonel and the Kaiser, and these were
subsequently given to the Colonel with superscriptions and
comments written by the Kaiser on the negatives. Roosevelt's
impression of his Imperial host was, on the whole, favorable. I
do not think he regarded him as very solid, personally, but he
recognized the results of the power which William's inherited
position as Emperor conferred on him.
Paris did not fall behind any of the other European capitals in
the enthusiasm of its welcome. There, Roosevelt was received in
solemn session by the Sorbonne, before which he spoke on
citizenship in a Republic, and, with prophetic vision, he warned
against the seductions of phrase-makers as among the insidious
dangers to which Republics were exposed.
His most conspicuous triumph, however, was in England. On May
6th, King Edward VII died, and President Taft appointed Colonel
Roosevelt special envoy, to represent the United States at the
royal funeral. This drew together crowned heads from all parts of
Europe, so that at one of the State functions at Buckingham
Palace there were no fewer than thirteen monarchs at table. The
Colonel stayed at Dorchester House with the American Ambassador,
Mr. Whitelaw Reid, and was beset by calls and invitations from
the crowned personages. I have heard him give a most amusing
account of that experience, but it is too soon to repeat it.
Then, as always, he could tell a bore at sight, and the bore
could not deceive him by any disguise of ermine cloak or Imperial
title. The German Kaiser seems to have taken pains to pose as the
preferred intimate of "Friend Roosevelt," but the "Friend"
remained unwaveringly Democratic. One day William telephoned to
ask Roosevelt to lunch with him, but the Colonel diplomatically
pleaded a sore throat, and declined. At another time when the
Kaiser wished him to come and chat, Roosevelt replied that he
would with pleasure, but that he had only twenty minutes at the
Kaiser's disposal, as he had already arranged to call on Mrs.
Humphry Ward at three-thirty. These reminiscences may seem
trifling, unless you take them as illustrating the truly
Democratic simplicity with which the First Citizen of the
American Republic met the scions of the Hapsburgs and the
Hohenzollerns on equal terms as gentleman with gentlemen.
Some of his backbiters and revilers at home whispered that his
head was turned by all these pageants and courtesies of kings,
and that he regretted that our system provided for no monarch.
This afforded him infinite amusement. "Think of it!" he said to
me after his return. "They even say that I want to be a prince
myself! Not I! I've seen too many of them! Do you know what a
prince is? He's a cross between Ward McAllister and
Vice-President Fairbanks. How can any one suppose I should like
to be that?" It may be necessary to inform the later generation
that Mr. Ward McAllister was by profession a decayed gentleman in
New York City who achieved fame by compiling a list of the Four
Hundred persons whom he condescended to regard as belonging to
New York Society. Vice-President Fairbanks was an Indiana
politician, tall and thin and oppressively taciturn, who seemed
to be stricken dumb by the weight of an immemorial ancestry or by
the sense of his own importance; and who was not less cold than
dumb, so that irreverent jokers reported that persons might
freeze to death in his presence if they came too near or stayed
too long.
All this was only the froth on the stream of Roosevelt's
experience in England. He took deep enjoyment in meeting the
statesmen and the authors and the learned men there. The City of
London bestowed the freedom of the city upon him. The
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford gave him their highest
honorary degrees. At the London Guildhall he made a memorable
address, in which he warned the British nation to see to it that
the grievances of the Egyptian people were not allowed to fester.
Critics at the moment chided this advice as an exhibition of bad
taste; an intrusion, if not an impertinence, on the part of a
foreigner. They did not know, however, that before speaking,
Roosevelt submitted his remarks to high officers in the
Government and had their approval; for apparently they were well
pleased that this burning topic should be brought under
discussion by means of Roosevelt's warning.
At Cambridge University he exhorted the students not to be
satisfied with a life of sterile athleticism. "I never was an
athlete," said he, "although I have always led an outdoor life,
and have accomplished something in it, simply because my theory
is that almost any man can do a great deal, if he will, by
getting the utmost possible service out of the qualities that he
actually possesses . . . . The average man who is successful--the
average statesman, the average public servant, the average
soldier, who wins what we call great success--is not a genius. He
is a man who has merely the ordinary qualities that he shares
with his fellows, but who has developed those ordinary qualities
to a more than ordinary degree."
The culmination of his addresses abroad was his Romanes Lecture,
delivered at the Convocation at Oxford University on June 7,
1910. Lord Curzon, the Chancellor, presided. Roosevelt took for
his theme, "Biological Analogies in History," a subject which his
lifelong interest in natural history and his considerable reading
in scientific theory made appropriate. He afterwards said that in
order not to commit shocking blunders he consulted freely his old
friend Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, head of the Museum of Natural
History in New York City, but the substance and ideas were
unquestionably his own.
Dr. Henry Goudy, "the public orator" at Cambridge, in a
Presentation Speech, eulogized Roosevelt's manifold activities
and achievements, declaring, among other things, that he had
"acquired a title to be ranked with his great predecessor Abraham
Lincoln--'of whom one conquered slavery, and the other
corruption.'" Lord Curzon addressed him as, "peer of the most
august kings, queller of wars, destroyer of monsters wherever
found, yet the most human of mankind, deeming nothing indifferent
to you, not even the blackest of the black."
This cluster of foreign addresses is not the least remarkable of
Roosevelt's intellectual feats. No doubt among those who listened
to him in each place there were carping critics, scholars who did
not find his words scholarly enough, dilettanti made tepid by
over-culture, intellectual cormorants made heavy by too much
information, who found no novelty in what he said, and were
insensible to the rush and freshness of his style. But in spite
of these he did plant in each audience thoughts which they
remembered, and he touched upon a range of interests which no
other man then alive could have made to seem equally vital.
On June 18th Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt reached New York. All the way
up the harbor from Sandy Hook, he was escorted by a vast
concourse of vessels, large and small, tugs, steamboats, and
battleships. At the Narrows, Fort Wadsworth greeted him with the
Presidential salute of twenty-one guns. The revenue-cutter,
Androscoggin, took him from the Kaiserin Auguste Victoria, on
which he had crossed the ocean, and landed him at the Battery.
There an immense multitude awaited him. Mayor Gaynor bade him
welcome, to which he replied briefly in affectionate words to his
fellow countrymen. Then began a triumphal procession up Broadway,
and up Fifth Avenue, surpassing any other which New York had
seen. No other person in America had ever been so welcomed. The
million or more who shouted and cheered and waved, were proud of
him because of his great reception in Europe, but they admired
him still more for his imperishable work at home, and loved him
most of all, because they knew him as their friend and fellow,
Theodore Roosevelt, their ideal American. A group of Rough Riders
and two regiments of Spanish War Veterans formed his immediate
escort, than whom none could have pleased him better.
His head was not turned, but his heart must have overflowed with
gratitude.
Later, when the crowds had dispersed, he went into a bookstore,
and some one in the street having recognized him, the word
passed, and a great crowd cheered him as he came out. Telling his
sister of the occurrence, he said, "And they soon will be
throwing rotten apples at me!"
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