Sunday, August 29, 2010

By Reviewed by John French

"The Imperial Cruise"

By James Bradley

Little, Brown $29.99

We have long been told that you can't tell a book by its cover. "The Imperial Cruise" by James Bradley demonstrates that sometimes you can't tell a book by its title.

First, there were no emperors on the cruise in question. It was a 1905 voyage to China, Japan and the Philippines featuring the rotund (325 pounds) American Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, and the glamorous 21-year old Alice Roosevelt, President Theodore Roosevelt's oldest child, known affectionately to all as "Princess Alice."

Second, the book devotes precious few pages to the cruise. That adventure serves merely as the thread for Bradley's long and carefully documented presentation of Theodore Roosevelt as a White Supremacist whose arrogance drove him to discharge his international duties without the aid of the congress or his own state department.

Among the many other luminaries on the journey to the East was womanizing Congressman Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, who either did or did not become engaged to Princess Alice during the voyage; did, in any event, subsequently marry her but was not the father of her only child, that distinction belonging to her lover, Senator William Borah of Idaho.

So much for the cruise. Now for the real subject of the book.

Through no fault of his own, Theodore Roosevelt, born to wealth in 1858 and educated at Harvard and Columbia, attained maturity at a time in American history when many of the educated elite firmly believed in a racial theory that had no basis in fact. The concept was that, at some time in the distant past, an "Aryan race" arose in the Caucasus Mountains. The Aryan was white, blond, blue-eyed, strong and highly intelligent. In time, this superior being migrated in all directions and was responsible for producing the great civilizations of Egypt, China and India.

Unfortunately, the theory went, many of these remarkable men foolishly mated with local women and their offspring went into decline. But some of the Aryans followed the sun west (a recurring theme) into the part of Europe now known as Germany. There they wisely killed all the preexisting inhabitants, mated only with their own kind and eventually evolved into the racially superior Teutons. These people became masters of political organization, opting for liberty and democracy.

Some of the Teutons again followed the sun to the west, crossing the English Channel. By methodically slaughtering the native peoples, they remained pure and evolved into Anglo-Saxons, a people who produced the Magna Carta, Parliament, Shakespeare and the Industrial Revolution.

By continuing to follow the sun, the descendents of the first Anglo-Saxons populated what became the United States of America. There they exterminated most of the inferior natives and imprisoned the remainder on reservations.

Distinguished professors at Harvard and Columbia fed this baloney to Roosevelt and he swallowed it whole. In 1906, he wrote "The world would have halted had it not been for Teutonic conquests in alien lands."

But a burning question arose. Now that the Aryan Americans had reached the Pacific shore, how could they continue their vital civilizing mission to follow the sun? One answer would be by the conquest of islands such as Hawaii, where they deposed the rightful queen to enhance the profits of white sugar planters, and the Philippines, where they threw out the cruel Spanish oppressors in order to become the cruel Aryan oppressors.

But what of Asia? There were simply too many Chinese and Japanese to exterminate or imprison. The answer - and you will have to read the book to understand this - was to identify the most westernized nonwhites, who happened to be the Japanese, and assist them to follow the sun westward, conquering the Koreans, Manchurian Chinese and others in their path.

Following Commodore Perry's unwelcome arrival in Tokyo Bay in 1853, the leading Japanese had soon scrapped their Chinese-style kimonos in favor of western top hats and tails. They had become known as the "Yankees of the Far East." Meeting with them was the real objective of the "Imperial Cruise." With Alice along to delight and distract the press, Taft was to negotiate a secret arrangement whereby Japan would disavow any designs on the Philippines and the United States would support Japan's sphere of influence in Asia, including its occupation of Korea.

All of this was done a) in direct contravention of an earlier American commitment to protect Korea; b) without consultation with anyone in the state department; and c) without the knowledge of the United States Senate, which must approve any treaty before it can take effect.

Years earlier, Roosevelt had written, "I should like to see Japan have Korea." Now it did. Incredibly, he also suggested that Japan should announce a Monroe Doctrine for Asia in order to preserve the continent from European interference. This led, Bradley believes, to Japan's proclamation of the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere and its conquest of Manchuria.

In the course of their amateur secret diplomacy, Roosevelt and Taft managed to alienate everyone.

In the Philippines, Taft insulted Filipinos by explaining that they would not be ready for self-government for several generations. Meanwhile, American troops continued to wage a ruthless war of attempted extermination against the Filipino freedom fighters.

In China the people were outraged by a Roosevelt-supported policy aimed at excluding the Chinese from the United States, so they declared a highly-effective boycott of American goods.

In Japan, which had trounced Russia in the Russo-Japanese War, the people expected that the peace treaty, brokered by Roosevelt, would require Russia to pay Japan a large indemnity. When it did not, riots broke out in Japanese cities, 13 Christian churches were burned and people threw stones at passing Americans in the streets.

Bradley's tale bears little resemblance to our traditional picture of Theodore Roosevelt but the book is meticulously researched. His discussion of T.R.'s White Supremacist views and foreign affairs arrogance is well-substantiated.

Some of Bradley's conclusions - in particular his assertion that Roosevelt's Asian Monroe Doctrine idea led to World War II in the Pacific - are open to question. A lot of messy history intervened between 1905 and 1941. Still, his argument is impressive.

Bradley's opinions would be easier to accept if he had not become, by the end of the book, so flagrantly contemptuous of Roosevelt. In one situation after another Roosevelt becomes the naÃØve, headstrong "Ranchman Teddy" or "Rough Rider Teddy." Bradley hurts his argument with this sort of invective and it is unnecessary. Roosevelt's embarrassing words and deeds speak for themselves.

One leaves this book with a genuine concern that the Park Service would be wise to beef up its protection of the Roosevelt image at Mount Rushmore. Some readers may be angry enough to try taking a sledgehammer to it.