Theodore Roosevelt Abroad by J. Lee Thompson Read Free Book Online Page B

be more than half a century before such an event truly took place.
    Another of Roosevelt’s passions was building American sea power, often in the face of stiff congressional opposition, to safeguard U.S. interests in a hostile world. He was therefore very gratified before he left office to be on hand to greet the return of the Great White Fleet from its triumphant fourteen month, 42,227 mile, circumnavigation of the globe. 80 This armada of sixteen white-painted ships, practically the entire Atlantic battleship fleet, remains the largest ever to complete such a voyage. Setting forth at the end of 1907, the first objective had been to reach the U.S. west coast. With the Panama Canal still almost seven years from completion, it took the ships considerable time to sail down the Atlantic coasts of North and South America, past the Straits of Magellan and into the Pacific, all along the way making good will calls before large and appreciative crowds. When the fleet arrived at San Francisco, 1 million lined the Golden Gate. Across the Pacific at Australia, half a million greeted the flotilla at Sydney, and hundreds of thousands elsewhere, including Japan. The ships had departed amidst much criticism and some fear of war with the Japanese, whose considerable national pride had been deeply insulted by discrimination against their countrymen in California. As it fell out, however, the cruise proved entirely peaceful and demonstrated to a doubting world the capabilities of the Atlantic-based American Navy.
    The multitude of yachts and steamers also waiting in the rain at Hampton Roads on George Washington’s birthday, February 22, sailed by whistling and shrieking until Roosevelt appeared on the deck of the 273-foot presidential yacht Mayflower , a refitted twelve-gun dispatch boat, and lifted his hat. When he caught sight of the Great White Fleet’s “forest of masts and fighting tops” in the distance TR exclaimed: “Here they are. That is the answer to my critics. Another chapter is complete, and I could not ask a finer concluding scene to my administration.” “Until some American fleet returns victorious from a great sea battle,” Roosevelt exalted in a toast to the commander, Admiral Sperry, never would “there be another such homecoming.” 81 Unfortunately the ships, soon painted gray for better camouflage, were rendered obsolete even before they sailed by the all-big-gun, turbine powered, Dreadnought -class battleship unveiled by England in 1906 and soon accepted by all the great powers, including the United States, as the new standard.
    As it came to an end, Roosevelt reflected on his presidency in a letter to one of the British champions of Dreadnought construction, Arthur Lee. His old friend of Cuban days had entered parliament and become such a staunch supporter of the United States in the Commons that he was derided as the “Member for America.” TR told Lee that he was finishing his presidency “with just the same stiff fighting” that had marked it since he took office but was nevertheless having a thoroughly good time. He had achieved a large proportion of what he set out to do and felt he had “measurably realized my ideals.” TR supposed he should be melancholy on leaving and “taking his hands off the levers of the great machine,” but the African trip represented the “realization of a golden dream” and he looked forward to it with such delight that, he told Lee, it was “quite impossible for me to regret even the Presidency.” Regarding Taft, Roosevelt declared that he could not express the “measureless content” that came over him to think that the work in which he so much believed would be carried on by his successor. 82 Whatever he put in letters, TR must have had at least some doubts about Taft. Shortly before he left office, he confided to his faithful Secret Service bodyguard of seven years, Jimmy Malone, that he hoped he was “not mistaken; that my policies will be made into law;