"A matter of extreme urgency": Theodore Roosevelt, Wilhelm II, and the Venezuela Crisis of 1902 - United States-Germany conflict over alleged German expansionistic efforts in Latin America

Naval War College Review, Spring, 2002 by Edmund Morris

As von Holleben struggled with this frightening information, diplomatic strains were developing between London and Berlin. Lord Lansdowne, the British foreign secretary, found himself in a difficult position-King Edward VII was expressing annoyance at being allied with Germany against a negligible South American power, whereas the German ambassador, Count Paul von Metternich, was insisting that the kaiser would not arbitrate. Lansdowne thought the whole Venezuelan question might best be referred to Washington for arbitration by the president of the United States. But the Wilhelmstrasse would not budge.

It was now Tuesday, 16 December. Fewer than twenty-four hours remained before Roosevelt's deadline. In New York, von Holleben visited Wall Street to check the latest fluctuations of German-American and Latin American opinion. In London, the British cabinet approved Lord Lansdowne's American-arbitration proposal, thus driving a wedge into the alliance. In Washington, the Roosevelt cabinet met in closed session. In San Juan, Puerto Rico, a fast torpedo boat stood ready to rush any emergency orders to Admiral Dewey. Admiral Taylor alerted naval intelligence to communicate with the fleet only in cipher, and he instructed his aides that the Caribbean maneuvers were no longer a proper subject for public discussion. Nevertheless, reporters soon learned that Dewey's battleship squadron was now headed from Culebra for Trinidad, only sixty miles from Venezuela.

By now the German ambassador's absence from Washington was causing comment along Embassy Row. He was scheduled to attend an evening reception at the British embassy, and protocol clearly required that he make an appearance. But when the time came, von Holleben was not to be seen. Neither were his military and naval attaches. They too had slipped out of town, to join him in New York. From there, before midnight, certain words flashed to Berlin. Roosevelt was never to know exactly in what terms von Holleben transmitted the American threat of war, only that the threat got through-on a night when the transatlantic cable became so electric with communications that even the Times of London was denied access. The evidence suggests that von Holleben's cable was burned after reading, in approved German security fashion.

The reaction in Berlin was immediate. On 17 December, the Reichstag decided to accept arbitration, acting secretly and in such haste that urgings from Secretary Hay in Washington and Metternich in London were redundant on receipt. TR's deadline passed in peace.

The Venezuelan episode was not over, and the blockade was not officially to end until a settlement was reached in a protocol signed in February 1903, but a massive release of tension was felt in governments on both sides of the Atlantic.

On 19 December 1902, Germany and Britain formally invited Roosevelt to arbitrate their claims against Venezuela. TR said he would think about it and left town with his children to spend a day or two in the pinewoods of Northern Virginia. His secretary announced that the president had been under great strain, "both mentally and physically. . . in the Venezuela crisis." (13) This was the nearest that Roosevelt ever got to a public acknowledgment that there had indeed been a crisis involving himself.