Beschreibung:

ROOSEVELT, THEODORE, President. Typed letter signed ("Theodore Roosevelt") as President, to President of the University of California at Berkeley Benjamin I. Wheeler, Oyster Bay, 21 June 1907. 1½ pages, 4to, White House stationery, on pages 1 and 4 of a four page sheet, with two emendations in TR's hand . A CONFRONTATION WITH JAPAN? A fine letter on the severe tensions between the United States and Japan: "...It is not of importance whether the fleet is in the Pacific or Atlantic, but it is important that it shall be steadily increasing in size and that it shall all be kept in one place, so far as the fighting ships are concerned, if there is the least chance of a breaking out of hostilities. If Congress will keep on building up the fleet I think I can guarantee you against a bombardment...but [if Congress] had stopt [ sic ] the upbuilding of the fleet (and it had been stopt [ sic ] when I became President) you would have been in danger of a bombardment now..." Although Roosevelt had mediated the Russo-Japanese Treaty of 1905, relations with Japan deteriorated, compounded by trade rivalries, a wave of anti-Japanese hysteria in California and concerns over Japanese naval strength. Later that year, Roosevelt ordered the Navy's "Great White Fleet" to sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific as a show of strength: "this audacious flourish was meant to remind the Japanese that the United States had the world's second largest fleet" (N. Miller, Theodore Roosevelt , p. 480). The tension was disarmed when the Japanese invited the U.S. fleet to visit Japan.