Theodore Roosevelt Abroad by J. Lee Thompson

Author:J. Lee Thompson [Thompson, J. Lee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Biography & Autobiography, Biography, United States, 20th Century, Africa, Imperialism, Nature conservation, Roosevelt; Theodore - Travel - Europe, Ex-Presidents, United States - Politics and Government - 1909-1913, United States - Foreign Relations - 1909-1913, Roosevelt; Theodore - Political and Social Views, Nature Conservation - Africa - History - 20th Century, Africa - Description and Travel, Ex-Presidents - United States, Roosevelt; Theodore - Travel - Africa, Imperialism - History - 20th Century, Europe - Description and Travel
ISBN: 9780230102774
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2010-04-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

European Whirl

Roosevelt’s reception on April 2, 1910 at Naples gave a foretaste of the hubbub he would create across Europe, at least until he reached the regimented confines of Germany. That first night, at the Naples Opera, the Colonel received a ten-minute standing ovation and so many people came to his box to be introduced he hardly saw any of the performance. A representative Italian paper gushed that in politics Roosevelt was a supporter of vigorous reform at home and aggressive imperialism abroad, and personally, “a man with a masculine appearance and a handsome, muscular and dynamic figure, formidable Teddy.”1

After his embarrassingly popular Neapolitan reception, at Rome there was a dust up with Pope Pius X, who made it a condition of an intended audience that Roosevelt not meet with American Methodist missionaries, a few of whom had attacked the Vatican. A year before there had been an embarrassing incident when the Pope cancelled an audience with TR’s vice president, Charles Fairbanks, simply because he was to meet with the offending Methodists. Roosevelt had had cordial relations with the previous Pontiff, Leo XIII, but deemed Pius, though worthy, a “narrow-minded parish priest”; completely under the control of his Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val, whom he considered a “furiously bigoted reactionary, and in fact a good type of a sixteenth century Spanish ecclesiastic.” Although the Holy See was incensed by the Methodist encroachment at its very doorstep, to Roosevelt it only added a healthy “spirit of rivalry” in service and good conduct which in the long run was “as advantageous to the church as to its people,” but was “peculiarly abhorrent to the narrow and intolerant priestly reactionaries.”2

Some of the Methodist missionaries in Rome, Roosevelt believed, were “really excellent men, who were doing first class work.” At their Sunday School, he discovered that one of the teachers was a granddaughter of the Italian patriot Garibaldi and one of the graduates a grandson. On the other hand, one of the Methodist leaders, with the Dickensian name Ezra Tipple, was a “crude, vulgar, tactless creature, cursed with the thirst of self-advertisement,” who found that he could “attract attention best by frantic denunciations of the Pope.” In addition to preaching sermons in which Pius became the “whore of Babylon,” Tipple also attacked Rome’s other Protestant denominations, Episcopal, Presbyterian and the Young Men’s Christian Association.3

If he had associated himself with Tipple, Roosevelt would have understood Pius’s refusal to see him but felt he had “no right whatsoever to expect that I would be willing to see him if he made it a condition that I should not see the entirely reputable Methodists.” This was the response Roosevelt gave to a letter from Merry del Val received in Cairo. At Naples, he sent Cal O’Laughlin, an Irish Catholic, on to Rome for an audience in an attempt to solve the dilemma. The Cardinal then only made matters worse with an offer not to make it public if Roosevelt would secretly agree not to see the Methodists.

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