PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE KAISER.
[To THE .EDITOR or THE "SPECTATOR."' Sin,—I have now read Mr. Thayer's delightful life of Roosevelt, and the biographer on p. 228 certainly suggests that the Alge- ciras Conference was the outcome of a private proposal from the White House. But I was in Washington at the time, and I feel certain the proposal that America should be represented at Algeciras originated with the Kaiser, and not as you word it, " that President Roosevelt induced the Emperor to agree to the holding of the Conference." The point can be cleared up, and no doubt will. There can be now no reasons of State why the correspondence should not be published, and not only do the letters which passed cover a very picturesque incident, but they make it clear that Roosevelt kept the world out of war at that time by a private cable to the Kaiser while the conferees were actually in session, reminding him of a written promise contained in his second letter, and but for which promise there must have been war over the Mogador demand. It is well known that the President did not believe the Kaiser would be allowed to keep his written promise, and it came as a joyful surprise to him that the morning after his cable, when the Conference was deadlocked, the German claim was withdrawn. Looking back, it was perhaps a pity that the war did not originate in the violation of a written promise made to an American President and on a subject which virtually concerned every American, because Mogador would have given Germany for ever a port opposite New York, a port from which a German fleet could have reached New York or New Orleans well ahead of any fleet from Spithead with which we could have pursued hers west.—I am, Sir, &c., Moils-cox FREWEN• Stepleton House.
Previous page
