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CHAPTER FIVE

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

 WORLD VOYAGE OF THE NAVY: 

pResident roosevelt always regarded his sending of the battle fleet of the navy around the world as a most important service to peace. He decided upon it at a critical moment in the relations between the United States and Japan. Throughout the entire year of 1907 he was endeavoring with zeal and infinite patience to induce the California Legislature to refrain from violently offensive action on the subject of Japanese immigration and the treatment of Japanese children who had been excluded from the public schools. In the end he succeeded completely, both in Congress and in California. Writing from Oyster Bay to Secretary Root, on July 13, he refers to his plan in regard to the fleet:
"I am more concerned over the Japanese situation than almost any other. Thank Heaven we have the navy in good shape. It is high time, however, that it should go on a cruise around the world. In the first place I think it will have a pacific effect to show that it can be done; and in the next place, after talking thoroughly over the situation with the naval board I became convinced that it was absolutely necessary for us to try in time of peace to see just what we could do in the way of putting a big battle fleet in the Pacific, and not make the experiment in time of war.
"Aoki and Admiral Yamamoto were out here yesterday at lunch. Aoki is a singularly cool and wise old boy. I am afraid he is much more so than his fellow countrymen. Yamamoto, an ex-Cabinet Minister and a man of importance, evidently had completely misunderstood the situation here and what the possibilities were. I had a long talk with Mm through an interpreter. 
"He kept insisting that the Japanese must not be kept out save as we keep out Europeans. I kept explaining to him that what we had to do was to face facts; that if American laboring men came in and cut down the wages of Japanese laboring men they would be shut out of Japan in one moment; and that Japanese laborers must be excluded from the United States on economic grounds. I told him emphatically that it was not possible to admit Japanese laborers into the United States. I pointed out to him those rules which Secretary Wilson quoted in his memorandum, which show that the Japanese Government has already in force restrictions against American laborers coming into Japan, save in the old treaty ports. I pointed out that under our present treaty we had explicitly reserved the right to exclude Japanese laborers. I talked freely of the intended trip of the battleship fleet through the Pacific, mentioning that it would return home very shortly after it had been sent out there; at least in all probability. I also was most complimentary about Japan, and repeated at length the arguments that I had written to Takahira and Kaneko. How much impression I made upon him I can not say."
The California controversy was at its height in the summer of 1907, and sensational newspapers in the United States and Japan were vying with each other in inflammatory utterances calculated to promote illfeeling between the two nations. The President had unhesitatingly taken action in behalf of the Japanese in the controversy. In view of the hostile utterances of the Japanese press he deemed it well, as he stated to me subsequently, that the Japanese people should not think that his action had been taken in fear of Japan, and he accordingly decided to send the battle fleet into the Pacific and around the world to show that the United States earnestly desired peace, but was not in the least afraid of war. '' This demonstration,'' he said to me, '' of combined courtesy and strength nowhere received a heartier response than in Japan, which is itself both strong and courteous. No English, German or other battle fleet had ever gone to the Pacific. I regarded the Pacific as home waters just as much as the Atlantic, and regarded it as essential to find out in time of peace whether or not the fleet could be put there bodily. I determined on the move without consulting the Cabinet precisely as I took Panama without consulting the Cabinet. A council of war never fights, and in a crisis the duty of a leader is to lead and not to take refuge behind the generally timid wisdom of a multitude of counselors. Except the digging of the Panama Canal this voyage of the battlefleet impressed Europe with a feeling of friendly respect for the United States more than anything else that had occurred since the Civil War." (See also his 'Autobiography' and the passage in his "Khartoum to London" letter to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, Chapter fourteen.)
When the President's purpose was announced a great outcry was raised in certain New York newspapers against taking the fleet from Atlantic waters and appeals were made to Congress to forbid its sailing. The chairman of the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs announced that the fleet should not and could not go, because Congress would refuse to appropriate the money. Roosevelt announced in response that he had enough money to take the fleet around to the Pacific anyway, that it would certainly go, and that if Congress did not choose to appropriate enough money to get the fleet back, it would stay in the Pacific. There was no further difficulty about the money.
Writing to Dr. Albert Shaw, New York, on September 3, 1907, he said:
"Unless I am impeached I shall be President for nineteen months and I shall most certainly not be President any longer, and in all probability will hold no public office, so that the hysterical violence of the attacks of the Wall Street crowd are of no possible consequence to me. But they have shown signs recently of getting into a condition not much better than that of the Moyer and Haywood people. Their most servile and most violent and most unscrupulous representative (in the press) is, as part of its campaign on behalf of the wealthy malefactor class, trying to prevent the fleet from going to the Pacific. It can not prevent it. I will tolerate no assault upon the navy or upon the honor of the country, nor will I permit anything so fraught with menace as the usurpation by any clique of Wall Street Senators of my function as Commander-in-Chief."
The fleet sailed from Hampton Roads on December 16, 1907. It passed in review before the President who had gone to Hampton Roads on the Mayflower to be present at its departure. It was composed of 16 battleships, with officers and crews numbering about 12,000 men. The fleet went first to San Francisco through the Straits of Magellan under command of Admiral Robley D. Evans. At that point the command was turned over to Admiral C. S. Sperry, Admiral Evans being relieved at his own request. The President had always held Admiral Evans in high esteem as a naval officer, and in accepting his request he wrote to him, March 23, 1908:
"It is with very great regret that at your own request I relieve you from command. You have now practically finished your active service in the United States Navy; and you have brought your long and honorable career, identified to a peculiar degree with the whole history of the navy, to a close by an achievement which marks the entrance of the United States into the rank of naval powers of the first class. In your early youth as a young officer you won a signal gallantry in the Civil War. You have closed your career by conducting a great battle fleet from the North Atlantic to the North Pacific in a manner which has shown you to be a master of your profession. The fleet comes to San Francisco in better shape than when it left Hampton Roads; better fit for service in every way; and the officers and men owe no small part of their improvement in their profession to the mastery of your profession which your handling of the fleet has shown.
With thanks, congratulations and good wishes, believe me,	Sincerely yours,
theodoee roosevelt.

From San Francisco the fleet went to New Zealand, Australia, the Philippines, China and Japan, and home by way of the Suez Canal. It was gone about 16 months, arriving at Hampton Roads on February 22, 1909. In placing Admiral Sperry in command the President wrote him a letter, March 21, 1908, which shows in the following passages how desirous he was to maintain friendly relations with Japan:
"I need not tell you that you should exercise the most careful watch throughout the time that you are in Oriental waters—for you will naturally exercise the most careful watch at all times both before and after you leave the Orient. I wish to impress upon you, what I do not suppose is necessary, to see to it that none of our men does anything out of the way while in Japan. If you give the enlisted men leave while at Tokio or anywhere else in Japan be careful to choose only those upon whom you can absolutely depend. There must be no suspicion of insolence or rudeness on our part.
"I firmly believe that the Japanese Government will use every effort to see that the highest consideration and courtesy are accorded to our people, and you of course will do everything in your power to show the utmost consideration and courtesy to the Japanese with whom you are brought in contact, not only in Japan but elsewhere. We want to take peculiar care in this matter."
The President went to Hampton Roads to meet the fleet on its return, and on board the flagship of the Admiral he delivered an address of congratulation which is published in full in his ' Autobiography.'
The return of the fleet was greeted with a great outburst of pride and praise, and the newspapers that had been most violent in their opposition to the voyage were loudest in their congratulations and expressions of national rejoicing over its achievement.