CHAPTER IX
1910-1911-1912
The visits of Mr. John R. Mott to the Scandinavian countries were events; his was a name to conjure with. When an intimation of his coming appeared in the papers, our Legation was bombarded with requests for the opportunity of meeting him. 'We must,' my wife often said, 'make it understood that every American of good repute shall be welcome in our house; and it is our mission to give our Danish friends an opportunity to meet him.'
The Danes came to know this and, whenever there was an American in Copenhagen worth while—I do not mean merely having what is called 'social position'—we were always glad to arrange that the right persons should meet. We were not socially indiscriminate, but we were certainly eclectic. We wanted Mr. Mott for three meals a day, but he was always, like Martha, so busy about many things, that we could only secure him for a short breakfast or something like that, with one of his warmest admirers, Count Joachim Moltke, who is devoted to the moral improvement of young men, and Chamberlain and Madame Oscar O'Neill Oxholm. The only rift in the lute of the affection of certain Danish ladies for my wife was that she allowed Mr. Mott to leave Copenhagen on various occasions without 'making an occasion' for them to meet him. Among these ladies were Mademoiselle Wedel-Hainan, one of the ladies in-waiting to the Queen Dowager, and others interested in the cultivation of reverence for Christianity among their compatriots. The result of Mr. Mott's masterly work was shown when the war broke out. The 'red-blooded' who formerly looked at the Young Men's Christian Association as rather effeminate and effete must, in view of what it has done in Europe, forever close their lips.
At this time, in 1909, we had expectations of another visitor. Cardinal Gibbons almost promised to make the Northern trip; he would come to Copenhagen, it was intimated in a Baltimore newspaper. Great interest was shown among these agreeable Athenians, the cosmopolitan Danes. The question of etiquette bothered me; Sweden had still remote relations with the Holy See, though the Catholic religion is still practically proscribed in that country. At least, the King of Sweden writes, I think, a letter once a year to his 'cousin,' the Pope, or is it to his 'cousins,' the Cardinals; but Denmark, though very liberal since 1848 in its religious attitude, has not such vaguely official relations. I was informed that no Cardinal had visited Denmark since the Reformation. I made inquiries in the proper quarters at once. Of course, I might give Cardinal Gibbons his rank as a Prince of the Church, and even the most exalted who should go in after him at our dinner would be pleased. He could not come. His one hasty trip to Europe, after his friends had raised my hopes of his visiting us, was to be present at the Conclave that elected Benedict XV. Pius X. had died of a broken heart, and the heart of the Cardinal was sore and troubled at the horrors thrust upon the world. What he has done to fill our army and navy with courageous men contemporaneous history shows.
But the great visit, the epoch, which dulled even the glories of the coming of the Atlantic Squadron, was that of ex-President Roosevelt. To the Danes it was almost as if Holger Dansker, who, as everybody knows, is waiting in the vaults of Hamlet's castle at Elsinore to protect Denmark, had burst into the light.
From the European point of view, which took no account of our home politics, ex-President Roosevelt was not only the most important figure in America, but in the world, and the most picturesque. Even under the New Democracy, men will probably count more than nations in the minds of our brethren across the sea. However large collectiveness may loom in the future, there will be some man or other who will show above it, who will be a part greater than the whole. Mr. Roosevelt had made the Panama Canal possible; he had succeeded when De Lesseps had failed; he had forced, more than any other President before him, the respect of Europe; the Radicals wanted to greet him because he had curbed the power of the capitalists; kings and prime ministers welcomed him because they—even the Kaiser—feared his potentialities. That he would be the next President of the United States nobody in Europe doubted. These people were not welcoming, as they thought, a man like General Grant, who had merely done a great thing. The American who was coming was not only a man of splendid past, but one with a future that was rising up like thunder. You can imagine the excitement in Copenhagen when it was announced that he would pay that city a short visit. From Copenhagen he was to go to Christiania to make a Nobel Prize speech. The death of Björnson occurred just at this time; it was mourned in both Norway and Denmark as a national loss; but even this did not affect the reception of the ex-President.
'We would have rejoiced in our sorrow for nobody else,' the Norwegian Minister said.
King Frederick VIII. had made all his arrangements to go to the Riviera; his health was not good. He sent for me; he was doubtful whether the rumours of Mr. Roosevelt's visit were well founded or not.
'If he comes, this most distinguished citizen of yours, I will see that he is received with the greatest courtesy; I will do as much for him as if he were an Emperor. He and his family shall be given the Palace of Christian VII. during their stay. My son, the Crown Prince, will go to greet him; I regret, above all things, that I cannot be here.'
Mr. and Mrs. Roosevelt came; he saw; he conquered, but Mrs. Roosevelt won all hearts. The young folks, Kermit and Ethel, fled from all gaieties and ceremonies and explored the town; if I remember they courted not the smiles of kings and princes; but they searched intensively for [specimens] of old pewter.