Gore Vidal - Empire

“I don’t want them, dear fellow. I’ve got quite enough with Cuba.” Root lit a cigar. “In fact, I’ve told the President that State should have all our island possessions. War just isn’t suited to run a peacetime colonial government. Of course, Cuba isn’t really a colony.” Root frowned. “I wish we could think of a better word than ‘possession’ for our…”

“Possessions?” Hay smiled; the pains in his back were in remission. A summer in New Hampshire had restored if not his weary soul his spinal column. “We must face what they are.”

“I’ve just divided Cuba into four military districts, rather the way we did the South in 1865. In due course, we’ll come home, but then what happens to Cuba?”

“Germany?” Lately the “German menace” was much discussed at Cabinet, where it was generally thought that the German fleet was making itself too much at home in both the Caribbean and the Pacific; and all-or almost all-agreed that if Germany were to obtain a single port anywhere in the Caribbean, there would be war.

The Major’s recent discovery of the Monroe Doctrine had been galvanizing. But then, as Henry Adams always said, his family’s masterpiece only came to irritable life once every other generation or so. Plans were now afoot to buy the Virgin Islands from Denmark; unfortunately, the Danes had assumed that the government of the United States was so corrupt that it would be necessary to pay off the relevant officials. Hay himself had been crudely approached; severely, he had told the eager Dane, “You must pay off Senator Lodge first. He is the key, and a very expensive one, too, because he is from Massachusetts, and their senators still idolize-and emulate-Daniel Webster, who was ‘retained’ by everyone.” Cabot had not been amused by the subsequent advances. Adams had not stopped laughing for a day.

“I don’t think Germany is going to amount to much on this side of the Atlantic.” With a forefinger, Root dusted the silver-framed portrait of the Prince of Wales. “Poor man. He’ll never be king, will he?”

“Queen Victoria cannot live forever, as far as we know. She has been queen all my life; yours, too. She adds whiskey to her claret at table.”

“That explains her longevity. It’s going to be Leonard Wood in Cuba.”

“As governor-general?”

Root nodded. “Or whatever we’ll call him. He wants to clean up, literally, Cuba. You know, collect the garbage. Educate the children. Give them a constitution where only men of property can vote.”

Hay inhaled the smoke from Root’s cigar: Cuban, he noted, of the best quality. “No one can ever accuse us of exporting democracy. Poor Jefferson thought that he had won, and now we are all Hamiltonians.”

“Thanks to the Civil War.”

Adee opened the door, and put his elegant head into the room. “They are coming, Mr. Hay,” he softly quacked.

“Who,” asked Hay, “are they?”

A high screeching falsetto shouting “Bully!” promptly identified one of them .

“ I should have warned you,” said Root, baring his teeth in an anticipatory smile.

“Theodore approaches…” Hay held on to the edge of his desk, as if battening down, whatever that nautical verb meant, a hatch.

“With his invention…”

The door was flung open and in the doorway stood the portly young Governor of New York, and the portly old Admiral Dewey. “There you two are! We’ve been with Secretary Long. Nice to have the three of you all in the same building. You look bully, Hay.”

“I feel… bully, Theodore.” Hatch battened down, Hay had risen to his feet with some pain. Root’s murderous smile was now in place. He started to shake the Admiral’s right hand; and was given the left. “My arm’s still paralyzed from shaking hands in New York,” he said. Dewey was small and sunburned, with snow-white hair and moustache.

“The hero of the hour,” said Root, reverently.

“Hour? The century!” shouted Roosevelt.

“Which ends in less than two months.” Hay was pleased to deflate Theodore. “Then we shall be, all of us, adrift in the frightening unknown of the twentieth century.”

“Which begins not in two months but in a year and two months from now.” Root was pedantic. “On January one, 1901.”

“Surely,” Hay began; but Roosevelt broke in.

“Why frightening?” The Governor removed his glasses and cleaned them with a silk handkerchief. “The twentieth century-whenever it starts-will see us at our absolute high noon. Isn’t that right, Admiral?”

Dewey was staring out the window at the White House. “I don’t,” he said, “suppose it’s very difficult, being president.”

The three men were too startled to react either in or out of character. “I mean, it’s just like the Navy. They give you your orders and you carry them out.”

“Who,” said Root, the first to recover, “do you think will give you your orders, President Dewey?”

“Oh, Congress.” The Admiral chuckled. “I’m a sailor, of course, and I have no politics. But I know a thing or two about the trade. My wife, as of tomorrow my wife, that is, likes the idea. So does her brother, John R. McLean. He’s very political, you know. In Ohio.”

Hay was watching Roosevelt during this astonishing declaration-or, more precisely, meditation. Theodore’s teeth were, for once, entirely covered by lips and moustache. The blue eyes were astonished; the pince-nez fallen.

“The house is certainly an enticement.” Dewey indicated the White House, with a martial wave. “But, of course, I have a house now, at 1747 Rhode Island Avenue. The people’s gift, which I’ve just deeded over to my wife-to-be.”

Hay was speechless. For the first time in American history, a subscription had been raised to reward an American hero with a house. When General Grant had died in poverty, editorials were written about Blenheim Palace and Apsley House, national gifts to Britain’s victorious commanders. Did not the United States owe her heroes something? Shortly after Admiral Dewey’s return, a house in the capital was presented to him, according to his reasonably modest specification: the dining room must seat no fewer than fourteen people, the Admiral’s idea of the optimum number. Now the Admiral had blithely given away the nation’s gift. “Is this wise?” asked Hay. “The people gave you the house.”

“Exactly. Which means that it’s mine to do with as I please, and I want Mrs. Hazen to have it now that she’s to be Mrs. Dewey. All in all,” he continued, without a pause, “I think one must wait till the people tell you just when they want you to be president before you yourself say or do anything. Don’t you agree, Governor?”

Roosevelt’s screech sounded to Hay’s ear like a barnyard chicken’s first glimpse of the cook’s kitchen knife.

As always, Root rallied first; and said smoothly, “I’m sure that the thought of being president has never occurred to Colonel Roosevelt, who is interested not in mere office or its trappings or, indeed, the housing that goes with office. No. For the Governor, service is all. Am I not right, Colonel?”

Roosevelt’s huge teeth were again in view, but not in a smile; rather, he was clicking them like castanets, and Hay shuddered at the sound of bony enamel striking bony enamel. “You certainly are, Mr. Root. I set myself certain practical goals, Admiral. At the moment, as governor, I wish to tax the public franchise companies so that-”

“But doesn’t your legislature tell you what you should do?” The Admiral’s homely dull face was turned now toward the Governor.

“No, it doesn’t.” The teeth snapped now like rifle shots. “ I tell them what to do. They’re mostly for sale, as it is.”