The Other Teddy Roosevelts (14 page)

Finally, after almost two hours, the meal was concluded, and Roosevelt’s men—except for Boyes—left the table one by one. Silva nodded to a young lieutenant, and the Belgian soldiers followed suit, clustering awkwardly around their horses. Then Silva stood up, walked down to Roosevelt’s end of the table, and seated himself next to the American.

“I hope you enjoyed your meal, Mr. Silva,” said Roosevelt, sipping a cup of tea.

“It was quite excellent, Mr…?” Silva paused. “What would you prefer that I call you?”

“Colonel Roosevelt, Mr. Roosevelt, or Mr. President, as you prefer,” said Roosevelt expansively.

“It was an excellent meal, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Silva in precise, heavily-accented English. He withdrew a cigar and offered one to Roosevelt, who refused it. “A wise decision,” he said. “The tobacco we grow here is decidedly inferior.”

“You must be anxious to return to Belgium, then,” suggested Roosevelt.

“As you must be anxious to return to America,” responded Silva.

“Actually, I like it here,” said Roosevelt. “But then, I don’t smoke.”

“A nasty habit,” admitted Silva. “But then, so is trespassing.”

“
Am
I trespassing?” asked Roosevelt innocently.

“Do not be coy with me, Mr. Roosevelt,” said Silva. “It is most unbecoming. You have brought a force of men into Belgian territory for reasons that have not been made clear to us. You have no hunting permit, no visa, no permission to be here at all.”

“Are you telling us to leave?”

“I am simply trying to discover your purpose here,” said Silva. “If you have come solely for sport, I will personally present you with papers that will allow you to go anywhere you wish within the Congo. If you have come for some other reason, I demand to know what it is.”

“I would rather discuss that with the governor himself,” responded Roosevelt.

“He is quite ill with malaria, and may not be able to leave Stanleyville for another month.”

Roosevelt considered the statement for a moment, then shook his head. “No, we’ve wasted enough time already. I suppose you’ll simply have to take my message to him.” He paused. “I suppose it doesn’t make much difference. The only thing he’ll do is transmit my message to King Albert.”

“And what is the gist of your message, Mr. Roosevelt?” asked Silva, leaning forward intently.

“My men and I don’t consider ourselves to be in Belgian territory.”

Silva smiled humorlessly. “Perhaps you would like me to pinpoint your position on a map. You are indeed within the legal boundaries of the Belgian Congo.”

“We know where we are, and we fully agree that we are inside the border of the Congo,” answered Roosevelt. “But we don’t recognize your authority here.”

“Here? You mean right where we are sitting?”

“I mean anywhere in the Congo.”

“The Congo is Belgian territory, Mr. Roosevelt.”

Roosevelt shook his head. “The Congo belongs to its inhabitants. It’s time they began determining their own future.”

“That is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard,” said Silva. “It has been acknowledged by all the great powers that the Congo is our colony.”

“All but one,” said Roosevelt.

“America acknowledges our right to the Congo.”

“America has a history of opposing imperialism wherever we find it,” replied Roosevelt. “We threw the British out of our own country, and we’re fully prepared to throw the Belgians out of the Congo.”

“Just as, when you were President, you threw the Panamanians out of Panama?” asked Silva sardonically.

“America has no imperial claim to Panama. The Panamanians have their own government and we recognize it.” Roosevelt paused. “However, we’re not talking about Panama, but about the Congo.”

Silva stared at Roosevelt. “For whom do you speak, Mr. Roosevelt?” asked Silva. “You are no longer President, so surely you do not speak for America.”

“I speak for the citizens of the Congo.”

Silva laughed contemptuously. “They are a bunch of savages who have no interest whatsoever in who rules them.”

“Would you care to put that to a vote?” asked Roosevelt with a smile.

“So they vote now?”

“Not yet,” answered Roosevelt. “But they will as soon as they are free to do so.”

“And who will set them free?”

“
We
will,” interjected Boyes from his seat halfway down the table.

“
You
will?” repeated Silva, turning to face Boyes. “I’ve heard about you, John Boyes. You have been in trouble with every government from South Africa to Abyssinia.”

“I don’t get along well with colonial governments,” replied Boyes.

“You don’t get along well with native governments, either,” said Silva. He turned to Roosevelt. “Did you know that your companion talked the ignorant natives who proclaimed him their king into selling him Mount Kenya for the enormous price of four goats?”

“Six,” Boyes corrected him with a smile. “I wouldn’t want it said that I was cheap.”

“This is ridiculous!” said Silva in exasperation. “I cannot believe I am hearing this! Do you really propose to conquer the Belgian Congo with a force of 53 men?”

“Absolutely not,” said Roosevelt pleasantly.

“Well, then?”

“First,” said Roosevelt, “it is the Congo, not the Belgian Congo. Second, we don’t propose to conquer it, but to liberate it. And third, your intelligence is wrong. There are only 48 men in my party.”

“48, 53—what is the difference?”

“Oh, there is a difference, Mr. Silva,” said Roosevelt. He paused. “The other five are halfway to Nairobi by now.”

“What do they propose to do once they get there?” asked Silva suspiciously.

“They propose to tell the American press that Teddy Roosevelt—who is, in all immodesty, the most popular and influential American of the past half century—is under military attack by the Belgian government. His brave little force is standing firm, but he can’t hold out much longer without help, and if he should die while trying to free the citizens of the Congo from the yoke of Belgian tyranny, he wants America to know that he died at the hands of King Albert, who, I believe, has more than enough problems in Europe without adding this to his burden.”

“You are mad!” exclaimed Silva. “Do you really think anyone will care what happens here?”

“That is probably just what the Mahdi said to Chinese Gordon at the fall of Khartoum,” said Roosevelt easily. “Read your history books and you’ll see what happened when the British people learned of his death.”

“You are bluffing!”

“You are welcome to think so,” replied Roosevelt calmly. “But in two months’ time, 50,000 Americans will be standing in line to fight at my side in the Congo—and if you kill me, you can multiply that number by one hundred, and most of them will want to take the battle right to Belgium.”

“This is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard!” exclaimed Silva.

Roosevelt reached into a pocket of his hunting jacket and pulled out a thick, official-looking document he had written the previous day.

“It’s all here in black and white, Mr. Silva. I suggest that you deliver it to your superior as quickly as possible, because he’ll want to send it on to Belgium, and I know how long these things take.” He paused. “We’d like you out of the Congo in six months, so you can see that there’s no time to waste.”

“We are going nowhere!”

Roosevelt sighed deeply. “I’m afraid you are up against an historic inevitability,” he said. “You have 20 armed men. I have 47, not counting myself. It would be suicidal for you to attack us here and now, and by the time you return from Stanleyville, I’ll have a force of more than 30,000 Mangbetu plus a number of other tribes, who will not be denied their independence any longer.”

“My men are a trained military force,” said Silva. “Yours are a ragtag band of outcasts and poachers.”

“But good shots,” said Roosevelt with a confident grin. He paused again and the grin vanished. “Besides, if you succeed in killing me, you’ll be the man who precipitated a war with the United States. Are you quite certain you want that responsibility?”

Silva was silent for a moment. Finally he spoke.

“I will return to Stanleyville,” he announced. “But I will be back. This I promise you.”

“We won’t be here,” answered Roosevelt.

“Where will you be?”

“I have no idea—but I have every intention of remaining alive until news of what’s happening here gets back to America.” Roosevelt paused and smiled. “The Congo is a large country, Mr. Silva. I plan to make many more friends here while awaiting Belgium’s decision.”

Silva got abruptly to his feet. “With this paper,” he said, holding up the document, “you have signed not only your own death warrant, but the death warrant of every man who follows you.”

Boyes laughed from his position halfway down the table. “Do you know how many death warrants have been issued on me? I’ll just add this one to my collection.” He paused, amused. “I’ve never had one written in French before.”

“You are both mad!” snapped Silva, stalking off toward his men.

Roosevelt watched the assistant governor mount his horse and gallop off, followed by his twenty soldiers.

“I suppose we should have invited him to stay for dinner,” he remarked pleasantly.

“You don’t really think this is going to work, do you?” asked Boyes.

“Certainly.”

“It’s a lot of fancy talk, but it boils down to the fact that we’re still only 53 men,” said Boyes. “You’ll never get the natives to go to war with the Belgians. They haven’t any guns, and even if they did, we can’t prepare them to fight a modern war in just six months’ time.”

“John, you know Africa and you know hunting,” answered Roosevelt seriously, “but I know politics and I know history. The Congo is an embarrassment to the Belgians; Leopold wasted so much money here that his own government took it away from him two years ago. Furthermore, Europe is heading hell for leather for a war such as it has never seen before. The last thing they need is a battle with America over a piece of territory they didn’t really want to begin with.”

“They must want it or they wouldn’t be here,” said Boyes stubbornly.

Roosevelt shook his head. “They just didn’t want anyone else to have it. When Africa was divided among the great powers in 1885, Belgium would have lost face if it hadn’t insisted on its right to colonize the Congo, but it’s been an expensive investment that has been a financial drain and a political embarrassment for more than two decades.” He paused. “And what I said about General Gordon was true. He refused to leave Khartoum, and his death eventually forced the British government to take over the Sudan when the public demanded that they avenge him.” Suddenly Roosevelt grinned. “A lot more people voted for me than ever even heard of Gordon. Believe me, John, the Belgian government will bluster and threaten for a month or two, and then they’ll start negotiating.”

“Well, it all sounds logical,” said Boyes. “But I still can’t believe that a force of 53 men can take over an entire country. It’s just not possible.”

“Once and for all, John, we are
not
a force of 53 men,” said Roosevelt. “We are a
potential
force of a million outraged Americans.”

“So you keep saying. But still—”

“John, I trust you implicitly when we’re stalking an elephant or a lion. Try to have an equal degree of trust in me when we’re doing what
I
do best.”

“I wish I could,” said Boyes. “But it just
can’t
be this easy.”

On December 3, 1910, five months and 27 days later after receiving Roosevelt’s demands, the Belgian government officially relinquished all claims to the Congo, and began withdrawing their nationals.

8

“
Damn
that Taft!”

Roosevelt crumpled the telegram, which had been delivered by runner from Stanleyville, in his massive hand and threw it to the ground. The sound of his angry, high-pitched voice combined with the violence of his gesture frightened a number of birds which had been searching for insects on the sprawling lawn, and they flew, squawking and screeching, to sanctuary in a cluster of nearby trees.

“Bad news, Mr. President?” asked Boyes.

They were staying at the house of M. Beauregard de Vincennes, a French plantation owner, some fifteen miles west of Stanleyville, on the shores of the Congo River. Three dozen of Roosevelt’s men were camped out on the grounds, while the remainder were alternately hunting ivory and preparing the Lulua and Baluba, two of the major tribes in the area, for visits from Roosevelt himself.

“The man has no gratitude, no gratitude at all!” snapped Roosevelt. “I gave him the Presidency, handed it to him as a gift, and now I’ve offered to give him a foothold in Africa as well, and he has the unmitigated gall to tell me that he can’t afford to send me the men and the money I’ve requested!”

“Is he sending anything at all?” asked Boyes.

“I requested ten thousand men, and he’s sending six hundred!” said Roosevelt furiously. “I told him I needed at least twenty million dollars to build roads and extend the railroad from Uganda, and he’s offered three million. Three million dollars for a country a third the size of the United States!
Damn
the man! J. P. Morgan may be a scoundrel and a brigand, but
he
would recognize an opportunity like this and pounce on it, I’ll guarantee you that!” He paused and suddenly nodded his head vigorously. “By God, that’s what I’ll do! I’ll wire Morgan this afternoon!”

“I thought he was your mortal enemy,” remarked Boyes. “At least, that’s the way it sounds whenever you mention him.”

“Nonsense!” said Roosevelt. “We were on different sides of the political fence, but he’s a competent man, which is more than I can say for the idiot sitting in the White House.” Roosevelt grinned. “And he loves railroads. Yes, I’ll wire him this afternoon.”

“Are we refusing President Taft’s offer, then?”

“Certainly not. We need all the manpower and money we can get. I’ll wire our acceptance, and send off some telegrams to a few sympathetic newspaper publishers telling them what short shrift we’re getting from Washington. I can’t put any more pressure on Taft from here, but perhaps
they
can.” Roosevelt shook his head sadly. “It serves me right for putting a fool in the White House. I tell you, John, if I didn’t have a job to do right here, I’d go back to the States and take the nomination away from him in 1912. The man doesn’t deserve to run a second time.”