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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

Of Theodore Roosevelt And his Time Volume 2

PROM KHARTOUM TO LONDON—CONCLUDED: 

sweden was delightful! We stayed at the Palace, and the Crown Prince and Princess were our hosts, as the king was in the South of Europe. There was a serious-minded uncle, a very strong Y. M. C. A. man, and another uncle, of the hussar colonel type. The Crown Prince himself was a thoroughly good fellow, very serious and honest, the kind of man who, if he were in England, would have made a good, rather radical, Liberal Member of Parliament, and I am sure would on the whole have backed up your son. His wife was physically, mentally and morally a thoroughly healthy and charming woman, and their three little children were evidently being brought up well in all respects, and were as attractive, busy, vigorous small souls as one could wish to see; the elder couple playing with steam-engine-like energy, and the baby crowing with lusty delight. We lunched with a younger brother, Prince Wilhelm. He had lunched with me in America, but as at that time there had been nothing specially to identify him, it had entirely slipped my mind, and I nearly got into a scrape by asking his wife if I had not met him before. She, by the way, was a Russian princess, rather a young girl with a pretty mutinous face, very fond of her baby. She was a curiously Russian type; one of the things that amused me with all these royalties was the way that they resembled the types of their respective countries, although of course they were all of mixed blood, and, in all of them, the predominant strain was German—this quite as much out of Germany as within it. The princess in question was intelligent and cultivated.

   There was one little incident in connection with our host and hostess which quite amused me. We breakfasted and dined with them either alone or with only other members of the family present, owing to the court being in mourning for the King of England. This was a great relief to us. They were thoroughly nice people, and we enjoyed being with them, as it was interesting to get their ideas; although we found that there was no use trying to talk of books with these or any other of the royalties, excepting the Italians and the Queen of Belgium. At dinner the Crown Princess turned to me and said: "Will you let me ask a question which I have no right to ask I" I answered:" Certainly," and she said: "Is it true that Mrs. Roosevelt would not meet the Grand Duke Boris when he was in America; and why?" I laughed and told her I had not the slightest objection to answering; that the Grand Duke in question had led a scandalous life in America, quite openly taking women whose character was not even questionable to public places, and behaving in restaurants and elsewhere so that the police would have been warranted in interfering. We were not at the White House but at Sagamore Hill at the time, and the Russian Ambassador asked permission to bring the Grand Duke to see me, coming over from Newport in a yacht. The request, coming in such a way, I did not feel I could refuse, and told the Ambassador to bring the Grand Duke to lunch; but I made up my mind that I would make the meeting as obviously formal as possible; and Mrs. Roosevelt, who more than shared my feelings and regarded his presence in our private house as both a scandal and an insult, said that she intended to go out, as she saw no necessity why she should meet him, and her absence would emphasize the entirely formal character of the reception. Accordingly out she went. The Ambassador and the Grand Duke were both disturbed by her absence and the former asked me if she would not return in time to meet the Grand Duke, and when I did not answer, repeated the question, whereupon I merely said: "Mrs. Roosevelt has gone out to lunch and is not in the house, Mr. Ambassador." Neither Mrs. Roosevelt nor I ever said anything on the subject; but apparently the Ambassador and the Grand Duke were not able to conceal their feelings, and expressed their chagrin to a sufficient number of people to insure the matter getting into the papers, which it accordingly did.

Stockholm was a delightful city, and the Swedes fine people. Sven Hedin was among the many interesting people whom I met, and I went to the museum and saw the collection of battleflags—German, Danish, Spanish, Russian—gained in the great days from Gustavus Adolphus to Charles the Twelfth, when for a century this little nation stood on the perilous heights of greatness and waged war on equal terms with the Titans of the day. I was saddened to see how Socialism had grown among the people, and in a very ugly form; for one of the Socialist tracts was an elaborate appeal to stop having children; the Socialists being so bitter in their class hatred as to welcome race destruction as a means of slaking it. Personally, as Sweden practically has not only free but almost democratic institutions, I could not understand the extreme bitterness of the Socialist attitude, and in view of what at that very moment the Russians were doing in Finland, I felt that any weakening of Sweden in Russia's face came pretty near being a crime against all real progress and civilization. In Sweden, as in Hungary and France, the reception given me was not merely one of general friendliness, but a reception coming from people who felt that they were jeopardized alike by the apostles of reaction, and by the preachers of license under the guise of liberty, and who clutched at any leadership which could be regarded as genuinely popular and yet genuinely sane.
From Sweden we crossed to Germany. The Emperor had been much upset by the King's death, and I found was very much concerned as to whether, if he had me at the palace, it would not look as if, while the king was still un-buried, he was showing levity and lack of consideration; and yet was afraid he might hurt my feelings by withdrawing his invitation. I had guessed this and made inquiries by wire through our Ambassador, and, evidently to the Emperor's relief, asked him whether in view of the circumstances he would not permit us to stay at the Embassy; which he accordingly did.
At Berlin and in Germany I was well received, that is, the Emperor and all the people high up were more than cordial. So were the professors and the people of the university and the scientific men generally; and the crowds were civil. But it was curious and interesting to notice the contrast between my reception in Germany and my reception in the other countries of Europe which I had already visited or visited afterwards. Everywhere else I was received, as I have said, with practically as much enthusiasm as in my own country when I was President. In Germany I was treated with proper civility, all the civility which I had a right to demand and expect; and no more. In Paris the streets were decorated with French and American flags in my honor, and when I went to the theater at the Frangais every one rose and applauded so that I had to get up in the box and bow repeatedly, first to the actors, who had stopped the piece, and then to the audience. In Berlin the authorities showed me every courtesy, and the people all proper civility. But excepting the university folk, they really did not want to see me. When I left Sweden I left a country where tens of thousands of people gathered on every occasion to see me; every station was jammed with them. When I came into Germany a few hundred might be at each station, or might not be. They were courteous, decorously enthusiastic, and that was all. It was just the same on our trip from Berlin to London. We were given the royal carriage, and every attention shown us by the officials; at each station there were a few score or a few hundred people, polite and mildly curious. Late in the evening we crossed into Holland; and at the first place we stopped there was a wildly enthusiastic mob of ten thousand people cheering and calling. The Swedes and Hollanders, and indeed as I have said the people of all the other countries I visited, felt a quite unwarranted feeling of interest in and liking for me, because to them I symbolized my country, and my country symbolized something that stirred them.
The Germans did not like me, and did not like my country; and under the circumstances they behaved entirely correctly, showing me every civility and making no pretense of an enthusiasm which was not present. I do not know quite what the reason of the contrast was; but it was evident that, next to England, America was very unpopular in Germany. The upper classes, stiff, domineering, formal, with the organized army, the organized bureaucracy, the organized industry of their great, highly-civilized and admirably-administered country behind them, regarded America with a dislike which was all the greater because they could not make it merely contempt. They felt that we were entirely unorganized, that we had no business to be formidable rivals at all in view of our loose democratic governmental methods, and that it was exasperating to feel that our great territory, great natural resources, and strength of individual initiative enabled us in spite of our manifold shortcomings to be formidable industrial rivals of Germany; and, more incredible still, that thanks to our Navy and our ocean protected position, we were in a military sense wholly independent and slightly defiant; and they felt that I typified the nation they disliked, and, more especially, that as a volunteer soldier and an adventurer who had fought for his own hand and had risen in irregular ways, I typified the very qualities to which they objected.
Moreover, the German upper classes, alone among the European upper classes—so far as I knew—really did not like the social type I represented. All the other people of the upper classes in Europe whom I met, even the extremely aristocratic Austrians, seemed eager to see me, just because I did represent something new to them. They regarded me as a characteristically American type, which however had nothing in common with the conventional American millionaire; to them it was interesting to meet a man who was certainly a democrat—a real, not a sham, democrat—both politically and socially, who yet was a gentleman, who had his own standards, and did not look down upon or feel defiant toward, or desire to offend, them, but who did not feel that his standards or position were in any way dependent upon their views and goodwill. For instance, the different sovereigns, and the men like the Austrians whom I met in the Vienna Jockey Club, were very anxious, so far as good breeding permitted, to make inquiries as to my life and the lives that my sons were to lead. They thoroughly understood the part I had played in politics, my having been the colonel of a good cavalry regiment in a war, and my finding amusement in hunting big game during a year's trip in Africa—all of this they would have much liked to do themselves. They would have much liked to have held such positions as I had held. Also they all of them immediately fraternized with Kermit, feeling at home with him at once, and much admiring the fact that before he was twenty he had killed lion and elephants, that he could ride and shoot, that he was very quiet and modest, and yet entirely self-confident, and had his own ideals, which were alien to theirs.
Men who had done these things they could understand; and they also understood men who did the things that their own bourgeois class did; but what puzzled them was to find the two characters combined. They would often write to one another from one capital to another about this, and ask in one place questions as to what I had said in another. I told them, for instance, that Ted was a better shot and rider than either Kermit or myself, and if any war occurred I should start him to raise a cavalry troop at once, and would guarantee that he would acquit himself well in handling his men on the march and in battle; that as soon as he had left Harvard he had gone into a mill, had worked with blouse and tin dinner pail, exactly like any other workman for a year, and when he had graduated from the mill had gone out for the same firm to San Francisco, where he was selling carpets; and I added that after finishing his course at Harvard Kermit would do something precisely the same if either of them failed to work hard at any honest occupation for his livelihood, while at the same time keeping himself in such trim that he would be able to perform a freeman's duty and fight as efficiently as any one if the need arose.
All this, while very puzzling, was interesting to most of the people whom I met outside of Germany, and while they would most certainly have objected to their own sons having such ideals they were rather attracted by the fact that my sons and I had them. But in Germany, while of course there were exceptions, most of the upper classes regarded such theories of life as irregular, unnatural, and debasing, and were rendered uncomfortable by them. The lower classes, on the other hand, were Socialists who felt that I was really an enemy rather than a friend, and my ideals were just as alien to them as to the upper classes. The middle class looked on me as a representative of an America which was all middle class, and which consisted of their business rivals, whose manners of life and ways of thought they regarded with profound dislike, and whose business rivalry was irritating and obnoxious.
Of course I do not mean that this was the universal feeling. I never had a pleasanter experience than with Schillings, the African naturalist and explorer, and a number of other African explorers and scientific men whom I met while in Berlin. I thoroughly enjoyed being at the university, and meeting the professors there; and I became much attached to Major Korner, who was specially appointed as my aide because they knew how fond I was of the poet Korner, his collateral ancestor; and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the able men who were the head of politics and the Administration.
Von Tirpitz, the Secretary of War, I had seen when he was with Prince Henry in America. He is an exceedingly able man. He remarked one night at dinner to Mrs. Roosevelt that he had always heard that the Emperor and I were alike, that he now saw the resemblance, but of course I had had to take responsibilities and win my own way and do things for myself, which naturally made much difference between us! Indeed I was not a little surprised to find that the Emperor was by no means as great a character in Berlin as outsiders supposed him to be, and that both the men highest in politics and the Administration, and the people at large, took evident pleasure in having him understand that he was not supreme, and that he must yield to the will of the Nation on any point as to which the Nation had decided views. Von Tirpitz was particularly interested in the voyage of the battlefleet round the world, and he told me frankly that he had not believed we could do it successfully, and added that your (the English) Naval Office and Foreign Office had felt the same way—which I told him I knew. He then said that he expected that Japan would attack us while the fleet was on its way round, and asked me if I had not also expected this. I told him that I had not expected such an attack, but that I had thought it possible ; in other words, that I thought the chances were against it, but there was a chance for it.
My point of view at the time the fleet sailed, was that if the Japanese attacked it, it was a certain sign that they were intending to attack us at the first favorable opportunity. I had been doing my best to be polite to the Japanese, and had finally become uncomfortably conscious of a very, very slight undertone of veiled truculence in their communications in connection with things that happened on the Pacific Slope; and I finally made up my mind that they thought I was afraid of them. Through an ex-member of the Dutch Cabinet, and, rather curiously, through two of the Austrian secretaries of Embassy—all at or from Tokio—I found that the Japanese war party firmly believed that they could beat us, and, unlike the Elder Statesmen, thought I also believed this. Then Ian Hamilton (whose "Staff Officer's Note Book" I think particularly valuable) wrote me congratulating me upon my efforts to keep the peace, and adjuring me by all means to do so, and not under any circumstances to let America get drawn into war with Japan until industrialism had time to eat out the Japanese military fiber. On receipt of this letter I definitely came to the conclusion that, if this was the way a friend of ours felt who had ample opportunities of knowing, the Japanese undoubtedly also felt that they were our superiors ; and that it was time for a show down. I had great confidence in the fleet; I went over everything connected with it and found that the administrative officers on shore were calmly confident that they could keep everything in first class shape, while the officers afloat, from the battleship commanders to the lieutenants in charge of the torpedo boats, were straining like hounds in a leash, and the enlisted men were at least as eager, all desertions stopping and the ships becoming for the first time over-manned as soon as there was a rumor that we might have trouble with Japan, and that the fleet might move round to the Pacific. I felt that, in any event, if the fleet was not able to get to the Pacific in first class shape, we had better find it out; and if Japan intended to have war it was infinitely better that we should gain two or three months necessary to prepare our fleet to start to the Pacific, instead of having to take those two or three months after war began.
Accordingly, in answer to the question of Von Tirpitz, I told him that when the fleet had once started, it meant that we had gained three months anyhow, and that the fleet was doing what it would have to do in any event if the Japanese went to war; and so that if they did make war it would be proof positive that I had followed exactly the right course; and that if they did not go to war, but became peaceful, it would also be proof positive that I had followed exactly the right course. The latter was what actually happened; and every particle of trouble with the Japanese Government and the Japanese press stopped like magic as soon as they found that our fleet had actually sailed, and was obviously in good trim. As I told Von Tirpitz, I thought it a good thing that the Japanese should know that there were fleets of the white races which were totally different from the fleet of poor Rojestvensky. He said to me, as did the Emperor, that he regarded this voyage of the battlefleet as having done more for peace in the Orient than anything else that could possibly have happened.
I enjoyed meeting the various other ministers—the Chancellor, the Minister of War, and others. I hope it is not un-gallant of me to say that the North German women of the upper classes were less attractive than the corresponding women of any country I visited. They have fine domestic qualities, and if only they keep these qualities, then the question of their attractiveness is from the standpoint of the race, of altogether minor importance. But these domestic virtues seem to have been acquired at the cost of other attributes, which many other women who are at least as good wives and mothers as the German women, do not find it necessary to sacrifice. Perhaps they are cowed in their home life. Their husbands, who also have fine qualities, not only wish to domineer over the rest of mankind—which is not always possible—but wish to, and do, domineer over their own wives. Whether because of this, or for some other reason, these same wives certainly did not seem attractive in the sense not only that their more southern neighbors were, but their more northern neighbors, like the Swedes.
Of course my chief interest at Berlin was in the Emperor himself. He is an able and powerful man. The first day we went out to take lunch with him. Afterwards he drove us to Potsdam, and showed us over Sans Souci. He also held army maneuvers at which I was present. On this occasion I rode with him for about five hours, and he talked steadily; and on another afternoon we spent three hours together. He was much interested to find how he was looked at by outsiders, and finally put a practically direct question to me as to how he was regarded in America; and I answered: "Well! your Majesty, I don't know whether you will understand our political terminology; but in America we think that if you lived on our side of the water you would carry your ward and turn up at the convention with your delegation behind you—and I cannot say as much for most of your fellow sovereigns!" Of course this needed a little explanation, but he was immensely pleased and amused with it when he understood it. He has a real sense of humor, as is shown by the comments he wrote on the backs of the photographs he sent me, which had been taken of us while we were at the maneuvers by his court photographer. Morever, he is entirely modest about the many things which he thoroughly knows, such as the industrial and military conditions and needs of Germany. But he lacks all sense of humor when he comes to discuss the things that he does not know, and which he prides himself upon knowing, such as matters artistic and scientific.
In the fundamentals of domestic morality, and as regards all that side of religion which is moral, we agreed heartily; but there is a good deal of dogmatic theology which to him means much and to me is entirely meaningless; and on the other hand, as is inevitable with a man brought up in the school of Frederick the Great and Bismarck—in contrast to any one whose heroes are men like Timoleon, John Hamp-den, Washington, and Lincoln—there were many points in international morality where he and I were completely asunder. But at least we agreed in a cordial dislike of shams and of pretense, and therefore in a cordial dislike of the kind of washy movement for international peace with which Carnegie's name has become so closely associated. The Emperor, as was natural and proper, took a certain sardonic amusement in the fact that the Czar had started the two international peace congresses at The Hague, and between times had fought a needless and unsuccessful war, had seen his country indulge in most revolting massacres of the Jews, had kept Poland under his heel, and had shamefully broken faith with, and prepared for the infamous subjection of, poor little Finland. I do not wonder that cynics take unalloyed enjoyment out of the antics of those professional peace people who have discovered in Russia their champion and ideal.
The Emperor, as every one knows, talks with the utmost freedom with almost every one. I especially desired to talk with him about the relations of Germany with England, and these he discussed eagerly and at great length. Moreover, I believe he spoke exactly his mind. He is not down at bottom anything like as hostile to England as his brother Prince Henry, of whom he is rather jealous, by the way. Prince Henry is, I believe, a more really powerful man than the Kaiser, and a more cold-blooded man; and talking with him afterwards I was by no means sure that he did not have clearly in mind the chance of some day using the German fleet against England if exactly the right opportunity arose, simply on the theory that might rules, and that the one capital crime in international matters is weakness. The Kaiser, however, I am confident, never postulates to himself such an idea as the conquest of England. This does not mean that I regard his attitude toward England as free from menace. I do not believe that Germany consciously and of set purpose proposes to herself the idea of a conquest of England, but Germany has the arrogance of a very strong power, as yet almost untouched by that feeble aspiration towards international equity which one or two other strong powers, notably England and America, do at least begin to feel. Germany would like to have a strong navy so that whenever England does something she does not like she could at once assume towards England the tone she has assumed towards France. The Morocco incident shows how far Germany is willing to go in doing what she believes her interest and her destiny demand, in disregard of her own engagements and of the equities of other peoples. If she had a navy as strong as that of England, I do not believe that she would intend to use it for the destruction of England; but I do believe that incidents would be very likely to occur which might' make her so use it.

I said to the Emperor that it seemed to me that a war between England and Germany would be an unspeakable calamity. He answered eagerly that he quite agreed with me, that such a war he regarded as unthinkable; and he continued: "I was brought up in England, very largely; I feel myself partly an Englishman. Next to Germany I care more for England than for any other country." Then with intense emphasis: "I ADOBE ENGLAND!" I said that this was a stronger statement than I myself would be willing quite to make, but that I was very glad he felt so, because I believed that the English, Germans and Americans ought to be fundamentally in accord; and that nothing would so make for the peace and progress of the world. He answered that he entirely agreed with me; and then continued to speak of England with a curious mixture of admiration and resentment. From an experience I had had with him at the time of the Russo-Japanese peace, of which I think I wrote to you, I had grown to realize, very much to my astonishment, that he, the head of the greatest military empire of the day, was as jealously sensitive to English opinion as if he were some parvenu multi-millionaire trying to break into the London social world; and this feeling was evident in his talk. He complained bitterly that Englishmen of high social position never visited Berlin, but, when they came to the Continent, always went to Paris, or some watering place, or else to the Mediterranean. I could not well answer by telling my real thoughts, which were that Berlin, though admirable in the same sense that Chicago and Glasgow are admirable, was not much more attractive than either to the people of whom he spoke. I am convinced that it would make a real difference in the Emperor's feelings if occasionally some man like Londonderry, who has done something, at least, titularly, in politics, and possesses great wealth and high social position, would take a house in Berlin for six weeks during the season. Evidently the Emperor, and indeed the leaders of the North Germans generally, feel towards the English and at times even towards the French, much as the Romans of the Second Punic "War felt towards Greece—a mixture of overbearing pride in their own strength, and of uneasiness as to whether they really are regarded by cultivated and well-bred people as having the social position which they ought to have. The Emperor actually listens to gossip as to what is said of him in the London clubs, even to what he is told quite untruthfully that King George says of him.
I was especially interested in the Emperor, at seeing developed in him, to a much greater degree, what I had already seen traces of in some of the kings, that is, a kind of curious dual consciousness of events, a dual way of looking at them in relation to himself and his fellow sovereigns. Down at the bottom of his heart, he knew perfectly well that he himself was not an absolute sovereign. He had never had a chance to try. Taking into account the curious combination of power, energy, egotism, and restless desire to do, and to seem to do, things, which his character shows, it is rather interesting to speculate on what he would have done as a really absolute sovereign, a Roman Emperor. On the contrary whenever Germany made up its mind to go in a given direction he could only stay at the head of affairs by scampering to take the lead in going in that direction. Down at bottom he realized this, and he also knew that even this rather shorn power, but still a genuine power, which he possessed was not shared by the great majority of his fellow sovereigns, and that they really had no marked influence in shaping the action of their respective countries in spite of their great social importance and prestige. But together with this underlying consciousness of the real facts of the situation went a curious make believe to himself that each sovereign did represent his country in the sense that would have been true two or three centuries ago. In speaking of the late and the present kings of England, he would alternately show both of these attitudes. He evidently had a real affection and respect for King Edward, and also a very active and jealous dislike for him; first one feeling and then the other coming uppermost in his mind, and therefore in his conversation. He complained bitterly that King Edward had always been intriguing against Germany, and hated Germany. He spoke of King George, however, in entirely different terms, saying: "He is a very nice boy. He is a thorough Englishman and hates all foreigners; but I do not mind that at all, as long as he does not hate Germans more than other foreigners, and this I do not think he does. He is merely like other Englishmen and dislikes all people who are not Englishmen, and I don't object to that." This, by the way, amusingly illustrates what I think I have already spoken to you of; the way that each sovereign somehow felt himself of the same stock as his subjects, although of course all the sovereigns were of practically the same stock, and none of them of the blood of their countrymen. Moreover, I think that the Emperor was quite right in the idea he had of King George's attitude, although it was a little exaggerated.
I spoke with the Emperor as to the possibility of putting a stop to the ever-increasing naval expenditures of the nations. This, however, he said, there was no use of his discussing, because the element in Germany which he represented was bound to be powerful on the ocean. I told him that if I were an Englishman I should feel that naval supremacy was a vital matter to England, and that under no circumstances would I permit the fleet to sink to such a position that its mastership of the ocean could be threatened. A little to my surprise he at once answered that he entirely agreed with me, and that if he were an Englishman he would feel just as I had said I would. He went on to say that he did not object at all to England's keeping up her fleet relatively to all other powers, but that he did complain because English statesmen kept holding up Germany as the nation against whom they were to prepare; and he was particularly bitter about Balfour's having taken such an attitude, because he said that Balfour "was a gentleman" and not the ordinary type of politician, and that he knew, better, and ought not to be willing to excite national hostility for partisan ends. I asked him if he did not think that some of his German statesmen had acted in similar fashion, as American politicians I was sorry to say frequently acted; he admitted that this might be true. He earnestly asked me to say to any of the British leaders whom I had a chance to meet just what he had said to me, namely, that he was not hostile to England, and on the contrary admired England and did not believe for a moment that there would be war between England and Germany, that he did not in the least object to the English keeping their navy supreme above all other navies, but that he did very strongly feel "that it was wrong for Englishmen publicly to hold Germany up as the power against whom they were building their navy, because this excited the worst feelings both in England and Germany.
I talked with him over the agricultural conditions in Germany, over Germany's extraordinary industrial progress, and especially over what Germany had done to protect its wage-workers in old age, and when they are crippled by accidents, and when through no fault of their own, they are thrown out of employment; and on most of these matters he was most intelligent and took advanced views. He kept saying that he thought it was the business of those who believe in monarchical government to draw the teeth of the Socialists by remedying all real abuses. I went over the problems at length with him from this standpoint. Of course it was not necessary or advisable that I should speak to him about one thing that had struck me much in Germany, namely, that the discontent was primarily political rather than economic; in other words, that the very real unrest among the lower classes sprung not from a sense that they were treated badly economically, but from the knowledge that it rested not with themselves, but with others as to how they should be treated, whether well or ill, and that this was galling to them.
The Emperor showed an astonishing familiarity with all contemporary and recent history of the political and economic kind. The Japanese were much on his mind. This I was rather glad to see, for I have always felt that it would be a serious condition if Germany, which, industrially and from the military standpoint, is the only white power as well organized as Japan, should strike hands with Japan. The thing that prevents it is Germany's desire to stand well with Russia. The Emperor was sure that Japan intended to organize China, and then, at the head of the Mongolian race, threaten the white dominance of the world. I told him that I thought it very possible that the white race had hard times ahead of it, and that there were evident movements of hostility among the peoples alike of Africa and Asia, but that at this moment if China did develop an army her first use of it would be against Japan, and this Japan well knew. I could not forbear asking him why, as he felt so keenly that the Christian powers should stand as one against the Yellow Peril, he did not feel the same way about Turkey;, of course he could make no real answer, except to say that in the past England also had encouraged Turkey against Christian powers, for her own purposes; which I had to admit.
I liked the Empress and the Princess Royale and the Crown Princess, and I thought the family relations of the Emperor's family good. But it is very possible that the same spirit which makes the Emperor like to hector small kings also makes him dictatorial in his family. In public affairs, experience has taught him as far as his own people are concerned that he must be very careful in going too far in making believe that he is an all-powerful monarch by divine right, and I think he likes to relieve himself by acting the part where it is safer. In international affairs he at times acts as a bully, and moreover as a bully who bluffs and then backs down; I would not regard him nor Germany as a pleasant national neighbor. Yet again and again, and I think sincerely for the moment at least, he dwelt to me on his desire to see England, Germany and the United States act together in all matters of world policy.
Rudyard Kipling's verdict upon Roosevelt's visit to Egypt and England was given in a letter that he wrote to Brander Matthews, of New York, on June 10, 1910:
"Roosevelt has come and gone and done our state great service. Here you have one single-minded person, saying and doing quite casually, things which ought to set the world planning instead of which the world says:   ' Thank you! please do it again!'

"His Egyptian speech was, from certain points of view, the biggest thing he has ever done. I saw him for a hectic half hour in London, and a little at Oxford. Take care of him. He is scarce and valuable."