Sea Power and the Large Policy and on McKinley

From The War Lovers:
 Lodge had written an article for the June issue of the North American Review, a highbrow journal of affairs, called "England, Venezuela, and the Monroe Doctrine," in which he stretched the Monroe Doctrine to declare America's "rightful supremacy in the Western Hemisphere" —a doctrine to be asserted "peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must." In Congress Lodge had been for the past nine months chief architect of something called "the Large Policy," to distinguish America's territorial ambition from that more distasteful European term, "imperialism." Lodge wanted to sprinkle the globe with American territorial possessions that would protect and open up trade. The junior senator from Massachusetts had started the course of American expansionism, as he so often did, arm in arm with Roosevelt. Back in 1890 Roosevelt had read a book called The Influence of Sea Power on History by Alfred Thayer Mahan. Soon he and Lodge were dissecting Mahan's theories over dinner. Captain, later Admiral, Mahan was an unlikely Poseidon. He disliked sea duty and during the Civil War his ship had showed up too late for its only battle. A tall, thin figure with an under-shot chin covered up by a beard, he had a bad drinking habit (to medicate nervous headaches so severe he feared a breakdown) and a deep Christian faith. Regarded as something of a nuisance by most of his superiors, he nevertheless became the most influential naval officer in history, if ideas can be measured against exploits in battle. Drawing heavily on social Darwinist notions
*(In a letter to his mother two months later, Lodge described the origin of the word " jingo" —from an 1870s English music-hall ballad during a war scare over Turkey: "We don't want to fight / But by jingo if we do /We've got the men/We've got the money too." )
of the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race, Mahan saw sea power as the key to world dominance. Great Britain was his model and inspiration: an empire built on a great navy that protected trade across the seven seas. Mahan's ideas, coming as the Euro-pean powers were carving up the "uncivilized" world and jos-tling against British naval supremacy, caused a global sensation. In 1894 Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany wrote a friend, "I am just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan's book and am trying to learn it by heart." The kaiser ordered The Influence of Sea Power on History placed in the wardroom of every ship in Germany's High Seas Fleet. The Japanese adapted it as a text at their naval academy.22 Lodge would use Mahan as a preacher used the Bible. For three days in March 1895 he had held forth on the floor of the U.S. Senate to expound his Large Policy. By his desk he erected a large map upon which were placed large red Maltese crosses to signify future American possessions: Hawaii, Cuba, Puerto Rico, a canal across the Panamanian isthmus. "It is the sea power which is essential to the greatness of every splendid people," he declared. 23 Lodge was startled, even a little overwhelmed, by the reaction in the chamber. "It was by far the most successful speech ... I ever made in Congress," he wrote his mother. "I was in desperate earnest.... As I spoke the Senators all came in from the cloak-rooms, members of the House appeared, the messengers and doorkeepers came in. I knew I had absolute attention everywhere and I vaguely [realized] that the chamber was filled & that men were standing all around the walls.... When I sat down every-body crowded around to shake my hand, something quite common in the House but which hardly ever happens in the Senate."
and
In hindsight it is difficult to understand why Roosevelt and Lodge were so baffled by Reed, so slow to grasp his basic dis-agreement on something as fundamental as American foreign policy. It may be that Roosevelt and Lodge were so fond of Reed, so impressed by his commanding presence in the House — and by his intelligence and wit over dinner—that they chose to over-look philosophical differences for as long as possible. It is also true that Roosevelt and Lodge themselves came fairly late to a coherent foreign policy. While they shared a strong sense of manifest destiny for their "race" from at least the early 1880s, it was only during the 1890s that the two Harvard men imbibed enough of the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan to formulate fully articulated expansionist policies. While Roosevelt had long been ready to go to war almost anywhere, his motivations were personal and atavistic, not subject to close self-examination. And while more measured and intellectual, Lodge did not give his Large Policy speech until March 1895. In time Roosevelt and Lodge might have found a way to bridge their policy differences with Reed, though only with dif-ficulty and with large doses of humor and goodwill. Yet there was a deeper divide between Reed and the others. Lodge and
Roosevelt were full of righteousness (and self-righteousness). Reed was proud but too acerbic and world-weary in his view of human nature to mount the secular pulpit for very long or with real conviction. And while Lodge and Roosevelt cloaked their actions in moral authority, they were willing to be expedi-ent, to make common cause with some fairly crude characters to advance their ambitions. Reed, for all his worldliness, was not. He would not compromise his integrity to reach for higher office, no matter how much he desired it. From his chair overlooking Lafayette Square, Henry Adams had affected a resigned amusement over the presidential contest. He called McKinley a "sad jellyfish." Reed, he regretted, was just "too clever" for the "Bankers' Party," by which he meant the Republicans.' Reed was indeed sometimes too clever for his own good. For a man of deep New England reserve, an emotional stoic proud of his passivity, he was remarkably undisciplined in his personal remarks. His biting comments about feckless poli-ticians and their greedy backers came from a deep bitterness forged by a prickly sense of honor and conscience that was at war with his political ambition. Reed did wish to become president, and he not unreasonably regarded himself as the best man for the job. But the Speaker simply refused to sell favors and buy sup-port, a scruple that did not burden his rival, William McKinley.
 William F. McKinley had a deceptive blandness. In a pleasing baritone he spoke in syrupy, forgettable platitudes, and he was known as a compromiser, a smoother-over, not as a take-charge leader. But he was a good vote-getter, winning the governor-ship of Ohio after losing out to Reed as Speaker in 1889. During the Civil War, McKinley's most notable achievement had been to drive a coffee wagon into the midst of the fighting at Antietam in order to hand out sandwiches to the combatants. He had been a brave soldier, but he had never aimed a weapon
or fired a shot— and he never bragged about his experiences or even talked about the war. He had seen war at Antietam, where more soldiers died in a single morning than in any American, battle before or since, and he hated it. McKinley's God was a loving one. Childless, he was devoted to his wife, Ida, a clinging semi-invalid prone to seizures. When she had an episode at the dinner table, he would gently drape a handkerchief across her face to conceal her twitching." McKinley's other partner in life was as crude and brutish as McKinley was gentle and decorous. Mark Hanna was a success-ful industrialist of the Gilded Age who believed that the way to get ahead was to bring together business and government, and the way to do that was to spread around cash. All questions of government in a democracy, Hanna said, were "questions of money." Hanna had plenty of money, knew how to raise more, and he used it to further the political fortunes of William McKinley. It would be misleading, however, to suggest that Hanna used McKinley as a tool of the business interests. For all his apparent spinelessness, McKinley was able to get men to do what he wanted. In his relationship with Hanna, McKinley was undoubtedly the senior partner. And though gruff, Hanna seems to have been more affectionate than manipulative toward his friend. He appreciated McKinley's innocence, his uncontrived air of virtue notwithstanding  his political flexibility. As a politician, a fellow once joked, McKinley kept his ear so close to the ground that it was "full of grasshoppers."