Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris Read Free Book Online

over) enabled Roosevelt, Hay, Loomis, and Darling to concentrate on the worsening crisis in Colón.
    Commander Hubbard, by triple authority of the White House and the State and Navy Departments, had issued a denial of rail transport to the
tiradores
. (They were free to march across the Isthmus, if they liked, on a mud trail two feet wide, through one of the wettest jungles in the world.) Hubbard informed Colonel Shaler in writing that any redistribution of troops, loyal or revolutionary, “must bring about a conflict and threaten that free and uninterrupted transit of the Isthmus which the Government of theUnited States is pledged to maintain.” He had sent an early copy of this order to Colonel Torres, emphasizing that it applied to both sides, and trusting in his “cordial” cooperation.
    Torres reacted with cordial fury. He was still unaware of what had happened in Panama City, but he had grown increasingly nervous since the departure of his commanding officers. Their silence was suspicious, as was Hubbard’s cryptic reference to a possible “conflict.” Did the commander mean a clash with
insurrectos
inland, or an international battle right here on the Colón waterfront? Torres knew only that an American naval officer was denying him the right to cross his own country.
    The mid-morning train from Panama City arrived, bringing the first unofficial news of yesterday’s uprising. Porfirio Meléndez offered to buy Torres a drink. Under soothing fans at the Astor Hotel, he confirmed that Panama had seceded from Colombia. The new republic’s security had been guaranteed by the United States, which was sending more warships. General Tovar was in jail, along with his fellow officers, and so was Governor Obaldía. All Panamanians supported the revolution, so resistance was “entirely useless.” If Colonel Torres would be so good as to order his men to surrender their arms, the
junta
would provide rations and passage back to Barranquilla.
    Torres went in a frenzy to the prefect of Colón and told him to deliver an ultimatum to Consul Malmros. Unless Tovar and Amaya were freed by 2:00 P.M. , he would open fire on the town “and kill every U.S. citizen in the place.”
    When Commander Hubbard heard of this threat, shortly after one o’clock, he took it as tantamount to “war against the United States.” All male Americans in Colón were ordered to take cover in Shaler’s stone depot, while their women and children were rushed aboard steamers in the harbor. Forty-two heavily armed Marines simultaneously came ashore to defend the railroad, while the
Nashville
patrolled the waterfront. Its guns covered the town at boardwalk level.
    Undeterred, Torres’s five hundred men surrounded the railroad yard.

    IN WASHINGTON , the President lunched with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes—“one of the most interesting men I have ever met”—and Sir Frederick Pollock, Professor of Jurisprudence at Oxford University. Roosevelt enjoyed their company, yet remained temperamentally unable to understand the workings of minds more concerned with reason than power.
    In New York, Philippe Bunau-Varilla decoded a cable from his friend “Smith” in Panama City. It was not, as he expected, his appointment as the new republic’s Minister Plenipotentiary, but a pressing demand for one hundred thousand pesos. He decided to send half that amount. Fifty thousand pesos equaled about twenty-five thousand dollars, or one quarter of his total pledge. If
junta
members wanted the rest, they would have to make good onthe ministership—and certify that they held both coasts. The United States was not likely to dig a canal on only one side of the continental divide.
    “With all the insistence possible,” he cabled back, “I recommend you to seize Colón.”

    COLONEL TORRES , closeted with Chief Meléndez, let his 2:00 P.M. deadline pass. For another hour and a quarter, Colombians and Americans continued to draw beads on each other across the