of harmony, as appeared in the public utterances



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 257

of two of the most conspicuous among them. Hay
summed up their contradictory attitudes in this brief
paragraph to the President : —

**Did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous as
that [Charles Francis] Adams and [Carl] Schurz cor-
respondence? Schurz thinks that it will be best to
elect a lunatic President, and trust to a sane Congress
to keep him in order. Adams thinks that the best
way would be to elect a sane man President, and have
a lunatic Congress for him to control ; and neither of
them seems to realize that it makes not the slightest
difference what both of them think." (November I,
1900.)

To another correspondent Hay commented with
equal freedom : —

"Why should anybody want to vote for Bryan
this year? I can perfectly understand a man refusing
Mr. McKinley, on well-known principles of human
conduct, — but I cannot — never could — compre-
hend that polarization of hatred that induces a man,
because he hated Blaine or McKinley or Gladstone,
to adore Cleveland or Bryan or Disraeli. What a
spectacle the Schurzes and Godkins present! Asking
people to vote for Bryan because the Republicans
can tie him up, and prevent him from raising Cain
when he gets in."

The election soon put an end to all doubt. Hay



258 JOHN HAY

wrote to his son Adelbert, who was American consul
at Pretoria, that it "went off magnificently. It was,
in almost every State of the Union, better than we
expected. ... It is the most overwhelming vic-
tory in this generation."

The failure to come to an agreement with England
over the Isthmian Canal weighed upon Hay's con-
science. England, having rejected the amendments
to the first treaty, and being impeded by the Cana-
dian negotiations, seemed to be in an unpropltlous
mood. But Hay would not be balked. After waiting
awhile he Instructed the American Ambassador to
inquire what could be done.

When Mr. Choate sounded Lord Salisbury as to
reopening negotiations on this topic, the Prime
Minister again consented willingly, saying that the
negotiations might be carried on as before at Wash-
ington, and stipulating only that no nation should be
discriminated against in the tolls charged for using
the Canal.

Having this assurance Secretary Hay proceeded to
confer with Lord Pauncefote, and by the end of
April, 1901, he sent the project of the new treaty to
Mr. Choate, who, with Lord Lansdowne, had a large
if not preponderating share In bringing the treaty
to Its final form. Hay explained that the most im-



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 259

portant change involved the question of fortifying
the Canal.

This point, over which there had been the hottest
debate the year before, was now passed over in si-
lence. "I hope it will not be considered import-
ant enough for the British Government to take ex-
ceptions to their omission," Hay wrote. "The fact is
that no Government, not absolutely imbecile, would
ever think of fortifying the Canal, and yet there are
members of the Senate so morbidly sensitive on
the subject, that it might seriously injure the pas-
sage of the treaty through the Senate if this provi-
sion were retained after the omission of the Davis
Amendment." ^

Secretary Hay underrated the weight of some of
the Senators who had disapproved of the terms of
the first treaty and he seems not to have given suffi-
cient credit to their argument. One of these Senators
was Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, a mem-
ber of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
On March 28, 1901, Senator Lodge wrote privately
to the Secretary : —

^ The Davis Amendment, passed by the Senate December 13,
1900, provided that the clause in the first treaty establishing the
complete neutralization of the Canal, in time of war as in peace,
should not "apply to measures which the United States may find
it necessary to take for securing by its own forces the defense of
the United States and the maintenance of public order,"



260 JOHN HAY

"... The American people can never be made to
understand that if they build a canal at their own
expense and at vast cost, which they are afterwards
to guard and maintain at their own cost, and keep
open and secure for the commerce of the world at
equal rates, they can never be made to understand,
I repeat, that the control of such a canal should not
be absolutely within their own power. ... I think we
could ratify a treaty which abrogated and super-
seded the Treaty of 1 850, and which agreed that the
United States could maintain and defend the canal,
keep it open for the commerce of all nations, at the
same rates of toll which were imposed on vessels of
the United States, and which further agreed that the
United States would maintain the neutrality of
the canal as between belligerents when the United
States itself was not engaged in war. A treaty of
this kind, I am sure, could be ratified."

Mr. Lodge also said, referring to the first treaty: —
"There was great difficulty in getting the Senate
to accede to the clause prohibiting fortifications.
Whether we could again secure a two-thirds vote
for a treaty containing that clause, I do not know.
Personally I was willing to accept it, on account of
Costa Rica and Nicaragua, and because I thought,
with the Davis Amendment in, it would be better if
it could be omitted."



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 261

In August, Secretary Hay wrote Senator Morgan,
of Alabama, the member of the Committee on For-
eign Relations who had made the Canal Question his
special province, that the new treaty would probably
come up at the next session; that, as it contained
virtually the amendments suggested by the Senate,
and especially those which Morgan himself had
kindly suggested, he hoped it would go through.
"The British Government," he remarked, "have
shown a very fair and reasonable spirit.'

Secretary Hay himself was converted to the need
of fortifying the Canal ; and no doubt the advent of
Mr. Roosevelt to the Presidency hastened his con-
version.

On November 18, 1901, Secretary Hay and Lord
Pauncefote signed the treaty, which the Senate rati-
fied on December 16, by a vote of 72 ayes to 6 noes.
The British Government concurred without any
delay.

Hay was naturally elated, because, although this
treaty differed widely from that which he first drew,
it contained two provisions which he deemed essen-
tial — the abrogation of the Clayton-Bulwer con-
vention, and the acknowledgment that the United
States should control undisturbed the building and
operation of the Isthmian Canal.

"You will have seen by the newspapers of the



262 JOHN HAY

rapid and prosperous journey of our treaty through
the Senate," he wrote to his loyal assistant, Mr.
White. "Cabot [Senator Lodge], who felt himself
particularly responsible for the wreck of the last one,
put his whole back into promoting this one. The
President likewise was extremely zealous in round-
ing up the bunch of doubtful Senators, and the
treaty at last went through with no opposition,
except from the irreclaimable cranks. Seventy-two
to six was near enough unanimity." (December 26,
1901.)

To turn from political to personal matters, death
brought to Mr. Hay in 1901 losses which almost
crushed him. In June, his elder son Adelbert, whom
President McKinley had just appointed his Private
Secretary, died instantly by a fall from a window.
He had gone to New Haven to attend the Yale
Commencement.

"If sympathy could help," Mr. Hay writes Mr.
White, "our sorrow would be brief. But every word
of praise and affection which we hear of our dead
boy but gives a keener edge to our grief. Why should
he go, I stupidly ask, with his splendid health and
strength, his courage, his hopes, his cheery smile
which made everybody like him at sight; and I be
left, with my short remnant of life, of little use to my



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 263

friends, and none to myself? Yet I know this is a
wild and stupid way to wail at fate. I must face the
facts. My boy is gone, and the whole face of the
world is changed in a moment.

" Have you heard how it happened? The night was
frightfully hot and close. He sat on the window-sill
to get cool before turning in, and fell asleep. He was
the soundest sleeper I ever knew. He probably did
not wake." (June 30, 1901.)

To i\Ir. Adams, Mr. Hay wrote: "... I do not
know yet whether I shall get through or not. I am
not making any progress. I am waiting to see if the
nerves will stand the strain.

"I have hideous forebodings. I have been extra-
ordinarily happy all my life. Good luck has pursued
me like my shadow. Now it is gone — it seems for-
ever. I expect to-morrow to hear bad news, some-
thing insufferable. ... I am too old to stand this,
I suppose. The commonplaces of consolation look
entirely different to me now. I see what a dunce I
was, ever to use them with my friends. ..." (July
II, 1901.)

To Whitelaw Reid, a little later, he wrote: "Our
loss grows greater as we move away from it, and are
able to see it more distinctly. He was a part of all
our lives; our hopes, our plans, our pride, our affec-
tions, were all so bound up in him that we find,



264 JOHN HAY

wherever we turn, something broken, crippled, shat-
tered, torn. . . .

"My one source of comfort is the courage and
sanity with which my wife bears her trouble.
Through all that first horrible Sunday, my keenest
anguish was for her. I wondered what was to be-
come of her. I dreaded to meet her — but when she
arrived and stood with me beside him, looking into
his serene and smiling face, — he never looked so
handsome and so happy, — I felt and have felt ever
since that she had character enough for both of us."
(July 22, 1901.)

This is again to Mr. White : —

" ... I hardly know what to say about myself.
I am dull and inert. I am inclined to hold on if
possible a little while longer. The President is most
kind and insistent. If I keep afloat till next winter,
we shall then see. . . . Mrs. Hay bears up wonder-
fully, and keeps us all alive and sane. She said at
the very beginning, — 'We must act as if he were
away on one of his long journeys, and as if we were
to see him again in due time. We must make no
change whatever in our way of life.' So the children
go on, asking his and their friends up here, trying to
make no difference. I am sure she is wise — and I
hope for the best. . . ." (July 26, 1901.)

There brooded over him anxiety for Clarence



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 265

King who was dying of consumption, alone, but in-
vincibly cheerful.
A letter from King prompted this outcry of Hay:

To Henry Adams

August 9, 1901.

"What would I give to be with you" (King asks,
on hearing of Adelbert's death) "to take my share of
the passing shadow and the coming light. But I am
a poor, sick, old fellow, uncertain yet of life or of
death, suffering more than my lot, and simply wait-
ing till nature and the foe have done their struggle."

Here you have it in the face ! The best and bright-
est man of his generation, who with talents im-
measurably beyond any of his contemporaries, with
industry that has often sickened me to witness it,
with everything in his favor but blind luck, hounded
by disaster from his cradle, with none of the joy of
life to which he was entitled, dying at last, with
nameless suffering, alone and uncared for in a Cali-
fornia tavern. Ca vous amuse, la vie ?

Mr. Hay's "hideous forebodings" were soon veri-
fied in a definite and hardly expected form. Early
in September President McKinley was shot by the
demented assassin Czolgosz, and hung for a week
between life and death. On September 14 he died.



266 JOHN HAY

While Vice-President Roosevelt and the other mem-
bers of the Cabinet hastened to Buffalo, where the
crime was committed, Secretary Hay remained in
Washington.

To Lady Jeune

September 14, 1901.

The President [McKinley] was one of the sweetest
and quietest natures I have ever known among pub-
lic men. I can hear his voice and see his face as he
said all the kind and consoling things a good heart
could suggest. And now he too is gone and left the
world far poorer by his absence.

I wonder how much of grief we can endure. It
seems to me I am full to the brim. I see no chance
of recovery — no return to the days when there
seemed something worth while. Yet I feel no dis-
gust of life itself, — only regret that so little is left,
and so narrow a field of work remaining.

. . . What a strange and tragic fate it has been of
mine — to stand by the bier of three of my dearest
friends, Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, three of
the gentlest of men, all risen to the head of the State,
and all done to death by assassins.

I think you know Mr. Roosevelt, our new Presi-
dent. He is an old and intimate friend of mine: a
young fellow of infinite dash and originality. He



LIGHTS AND SHADOWS 267

has gone to Canton to lay our dear McKinley to rest,
and asked me to stay here on the avowed ground
that, as I am the next heir to the Presidency, he did
not want too many eggs in the same Pullman car. . . .

To Henry Adams

September 19, 1901.

The President's death was all the more hideous
that we were so sure of his recovery. Root and I left
Buffalo on Wednesday [September 1 1] convinced that
all was right. I had arranged with Cortelyou that he
w^as to send a wire the next day telling me if the
Doctors would answer for the President's life. He
sent it, and I wrote a circular to all our Embassies
saying that recovery was assured. I thought it might
stop the rain of inquiries from all over the world.
After I had written it, the black cloud of foreboding,
Vv^hich is always just over my head, settled down and
enveloped me, and I dared not send it. I spoke to
Adee and he confirmed my fears. He distrusted the
eighth day. So I waited — and the next day he was
dying.

I have just received your letter from Stockholm,
and shuddered at the awful clairvoyance of your last
phrase about Teddy's luck.

Well, he is here in the saddle again. That is, he is
in Canton [to attend President McKinley 's funeral],



^68 JOHN HAY

and will have his first Cabinet meeting in the White
House to-morrow. He came down from Buffalo
Monday night — and in the station, without waiting
an instant, told me I must stay with him — that I
could not decline nor even consider. I saw, of course,
it was best for him to start off that way, and so I
said I would stay, forever, of course, for it would
be worse to say I would stay a while than it would
be to go out at once. I can still go at any moment
he gets tired of me, or when I collapse.

Before the year ran out, death took John Nicolay
and Clarence King, two of Hay's dearest friends.
Well might he write, "I have acquired the funeral
habit." The shocks of that summer left an indelible
impression on Hay's health; but he had still nearly
four years of service before him under the masterful
young President.



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE GERMAN MENACE LOOMS UP

THIS is not the place in which to discuss the
question of the unwisdom of the Fathers in
giving the Senate a share in making treaties. That
Hay did not accept the fact and make the best of it
lays bare the chief defect in his equipment as a
statesman. If he had only remembered Lincoln's
remark to him, "We must use the tools we have," if
he had only profited by this advice, he would have
been spared constant personal irritation and would
have easily carried through some of the treaties on
which he had set his heart. His gradually failing
health undoubtedly led him to resent adverse criti-
cism. But the flaw went deeper than that. All his
training, after he came back from Spain, tended to
unfit him for the close, crude, rough, and sometimes
fierce, man-to-man conflicts which are the com-
monplaces of political strife. Even his service on
the Tribune, while it brought him wide acquaintance
with men, was not a preparation for what he had to
do in Washington. As editor, like other editors, he
laid down the law and need not reply to those who
differed from him ; but as Secretary of State he could



270 JOHN HAY

not attain his ends without securing the concurrence
of Senators and Congressmen, to whom he would not
pay court.

Among Mr. Hay's colleagues in the Cabinet he
had the highest regard for the ability of Secretary
Root, who succeeded him in the State Department.
I am allowed to quote from a private letter from
Mr. Francis B. Loomis, who served under both of
them, this interesting statement of the contrast in
their methods.

Mr. Loomis writes: "He had very little acquaint-
ance among politicians and many of the leaders of
Congress were almost unknown to him. His failure
to get on comfortably and successfully with the
Senate and with many of the important members of
the lower House of Congress, I think, was due
primarily to the fact that he had come to have very
little in common with the men who had the hard
work in politics in hand and he did not always have
a just appreciation of their usefulness and of their
power. . . . Mr. Root, who is, broadly speaking, a
man of affairs and who has had to deal with all sorts
and conditions of men and with very practical prob-
lems of life, learned while Secretary of War that it
was highly important to be on pleasant terms with
members of the Senate and House. He brought to
the Department of State the knowledge and experi-



THE GERMAN MENACE 271

ence which he acquired during his previous term of
service in the Cabinet and immediately set out to
estabhsh good relations with the Senate. He suc-
ceeded in his efforts and much of his success may be
traced to his abihty to get on with men. He was less
hampered by traditions and knowledge of diplo-
matic usage than Mr, Hay. In estimating the two
men justly, this must be taken into account. Mr.
Hay had certain notions respecting the dignity and
rights of his office, concerning which Mr. Root had
little knowledge ; but he was eminently more practical
than Mr. Hay when it came to treating with the
average Congressman, Representative, Senator, or
business man. The Secretary believed, if a certain
appropriation for the Department or for carrying
out the provisions of a treaty was needed, that he had
fulfilled his duty in the matter when he had written
a letter to the chairmen of the various committees
who had to do with the matter in Congress, making a
request for the needed appropriation. I did not agree
with him at all as to the practical wisdom of this
course and often asked him to let me go before the
committees, discuss the proposed appropriation with
the members, with the view of getting them per-
sonally interested in the matter. He thought this
course would be improper and undignified. Mr.
Root, when he came in, adopted it immediately and



272 JOHN HAY

his appearances before the committees were very fre-
quent and very successful." ^

My purpose in this book is not to analyze Mr.
Hay's opinions and acts, but to state them so far as
possible in his own words ; so that readers may know
the basis and the aim of his work as a statesman.
For this reason I have quoted freely his views of the
public men whom he had to deal with, because men
are the statesman's tools. We have seen that, almost
from the first, he held the Senate as his antagonist.
That a few men, not diplomats by training, should
have the right to shatter a delicate piece of diplo-
macy seemed to him as monstrous as if a clodhopper
should be privileged to trample on a violin. The
artist in him revolted; his reason revolted; his con-
science revolted.

And yet he did not hide from himself that his
feeling toward the Senate had grown to be an ob-
session. From his sick-bed at Newbury he wrote
almost pathetically to Mr. Adams: —

" I need you no end, but, alas, the inevitable has
happened and I have become a bore. I cannot tell
when the malady attained its present proportions —
its progress is always insidious. ... I can think of
nothing but the Senate and talk of little else. Even
when I get out of office, which will be, D. V., next

1 Hon. Francis B. Loomis to the author, August i, 191 5.



THE GERMAN MENACE 273

March, I have a grisly suspicion that it will be no
better. The poison is immanent. I shall begin every
phrase with : ' When I was ' " (September 25, 1900.)

An exhaustive study of Hay's treaties will show that
the most important of them were not so badly mis-
handled by the Senate as he supposed under the
smart of disappointment. The draft of the first
Canal Treaty, which he virtually wrote and Paunce-
fote merely adopted, contained such an anomaly as
that of putting the Canal under the protection of
many Powers, as was done in the case of the Suez
Canal. If that had passed, where would it have
left the Monroe Doctrine? Or how could the United
States have protected the Canal which it constructed
and owned? Here is one example of the benefit
which came from the Senate's revision. Mr. Hay
was too sore when he passed judgment on that revi-
sion to give due credit to the senatorial improvement.

"I long ago made up my mind," he wrote to a
correspondent, "that no treaty on which discussion
was possible, no treaty that gave room for a difference
of opinion, could ever pass the Senate. When I sent
in the Canal Convention, I felt sure no one out of
a madhouse could fail to see that the advantages
were all on our side. But I underrated the power of
ignorance and spite, acting upon cowardice." (April
22, 1900.)



274 JOHN HAY

In all his other relations, as Secretary of State,
Hay outshone most of his predecessors. He knew
how to treat with equal dignity and courtesy the
variegated personnel of the Diplomatic Corps, and
on state occasions he made an impressive appear-
ance, and he was always an effective speaker. By
taste, not less than by training, he was fitted to deal
with ambassadors and cabinet ministers rather than
with some of the leaders who emerged into eminence
from the rough-and-tumble of politics.

And as usually happens with a man of poetic cast,
— and Hay's nature was primarily that of a poet, —
the mood of the day colored his expressions. Thus,
on April 24, 1900, he writes to Richard Watson
Gilder: —

"Many thanks for your kind letter from Berlin.
I need all the help and comfort I can get from the
apostles of sweetness and light, for verily I am in
deep waters these days. Matters have come to such
a pass with the Senate that it seems absolutely im-
possible to do business. . . . The fact that a treaty
gives to this country a great, lasting advantage,
seems to weigh nothing whatever in the minds of
about half the Senators. Personal interests, personal
spites, and a contingent chance of a petty political
advantage are the only motives that cut any ice at
present."



THE GERMAN MENACE 275

And yet, only two months later, he wrote again to
Gilder: —

" I am afraid you read too many newspapers while
you are away. I am an old man, and have had op-
portunities of observation most of my days, and I
give it to you straight that there never has been less
corruption in American affairs than there is to-day,
nor, as I devoutly believe, in the affairs of any other
people."

As we have already had several references to Ger-
many and as others will follow, it is necessary now
to speak of the German Conspiracy against the
United States. When the history of that plot comes
to be written in detail. Hay's contacts with it will
be seen in their true significance. He could not fore-
see, of course, the full extent of the Pan-Germanist
purposes nor the time and manner in which they
would burst into open activity. But he was one of
the first to perceive that the intrigue was hatching,
and it fell to him, both as Ambassador and as Secre-
tary of State, to guard the United States against the
earliest masked assaults of Germany.

Soon after William H succeeded his father as
German Emperor, he uttered several declarations to
the effect that his will was absolute law, and that
he held the life and death of every German in the



276 JOHN HAY

hollow of his hand, and other boasts of similar pur-
port. The Germans at first were startled and used
to tell you privately that the young monarch did not
really mean that; or that he was simply having his
fling; or that he was neurotic by temperament; and
they would remind you of the taints of scrofula,
cancer, and insanity in the Hohenzollerns and of his
own diseased ear and crippled arm. German-
Americans looked a little ashamed when they were
questioned about these declarations and protested