The telephone in the Taft residence was more severely relegated than in the most severe English manor house. It was located in a small closet off the butler’s pantry and only that worthy manservant would deign – with hands properly gloved – to touch it. It was therefore not remarkable that no-one in the house heard its persistent ringing, nor exceptional that the Colonel in charge of the night shift at the War Department should have dispatched a courier before placing the call. At age forty-seven Taft was a relatively young man for his demanding post but his slow movements and deliberate speech overlay a powerful intellect. Inventiveness was foreign to him, nor was formulating policy pleasing to him; instead his was a lawyer’s mind, a clerical grasp of minutae and precedent.
It was rare for him to be awoken, even now that the country was at war and hundreds of thousands of American soldiers were in combat on distant continents. Taft very sensibly took the position that the generals knew the business of fighting better than he, and deferred most time-sensitive matters to General Adna Chaffee. But the Chief of the Army Staff was in Europe overseeing Funston’s offensive, and in that circumstance the War Department had decided to err upon the side of caution – hence the unheeded bell of the telephone and the insistent ringing of the house bell at the front door.
William Galen Taft was soundly asleep when the butler came to wake him. His wife had years before repaired to a separate bedroom to escape the elephantine bugling of his snores, night-time noises amplified rather than muffled by his too-abundant flesh. Taft considered himself to be a moderate man in all aspects save that of food, which he consumed with the worshipful adoration of a fanatic priest whose altar was a sideboard. Dinner the evening before had been eight courses, each with its own wine – Taft was fond of champagne, which he therefore reserved for special occasions – and center-pieced by roast pheasants, of which Taft had consumed three. It was difficult then for the butler to tactfully awaken a man so soundly asleep – a man who slept the deep and untroubled sleep of those whose life is a paean of contentment.
He was of course eventually awakened, though more time must pass before he would be alert, vertical and garbed in more than his pyjamas. The butler had roused the rest of the staff before ascending the stairs to his master’s chamber, so hot coffee and fresh muffins with butter and jam were waiting in the study when Taft lumbered down the main staircase. The courier had declined to sample either beverage or pastry and was waiting with an envelope which Taft slit with a letter-opener of Madagascan rosewood. The message was neither long nor complex yet Taft stood pondering it at some length, working out the implications with deliberation.
“Will there be a reply, sir?” the courier inquired, rather anxious to get some coffee for himself whether in this house or somewhere else.
“Yes.” Taft waited a long minute more before tapping the message to his forehead, almost as if that would speed the transfer of information. “Be seated, son. Have some coffee – take a biscuit. I will write up my reply… two, I think. Once you have delivered the one to Colonel Pruitt, with my compliments, you are to take the other to the Executive Mansion. You may leave it with a clerk there; no necessity to awaken the President.”
The butler laid out writing implements on Taft’s meticulously ordered desk while a maid poured coffee and served the pastries. Following Taft’s example the courier took two; it was looking to be a long morning with only a dim prospect of another breakfast at the White House to relieve the hours until lunch, and the courier had a young soldier’s appetite.
“This first is to Colonel Pruitt. Deliver it to his hand only. Say that I will be able to receive him at ten o’clock, in my office at the War Department, should he require a consultation. This one is for the President or one of his staff only – not to be delivered to a member of the mansion’s staff. You need not await a reply.”
Taft sat for a quarter-hour at his desk, staring out at the dark street that bent in a circle around the equestrian statue of Winfield Scott. It was taken from his service in the Mexican War; in later life Scott would no more have been able to ride horseback than Taft himself. He drank his coffee, now cool, and sampled a pastry, but even this could not console him. At last he grasped the ivory handle between a giant thumb and forefinger, delicately shaking the tiny silver bell that invariably fetched a servant.
“Dawkins, I desire you to send for Mister Reimers. Harry has the address, I believe.” Harry was the coachman who lived in the little house behind the Taft residence. Once he had served the needs of two houses, but Taft’s official duties had required his services full-time. He would not thank Dawkins for waking him before dawn, but it seemed there would be little peace for anyone this morning. “Ask Mister Reimers to come here immediately, if it is convenient. I should like to speak with him before I go in to the office.”
Dawn had come and gone, pastel colors deepening to the whites and golds of full morning sunshine before Dawkins was able to usher Friedrich Reimers into Taft’s study. The short, dapper man was no longer Swiss nor Austrian nor German but could trace his family and business contacts into all three areas. He had served in the armies of Bavaria, Austria and Imperial Germany before emigrating to Texas. Roosevelt had met him nearly a decade ago on a hunting trip, had taken a liking to the soldier-turned-cattle baron, and consulted him whenever business brought him east. Taft saw the mindset of the German General Staff as an opaque mystery (and that of the American generals as only slightly more comprehensible) and found that talking to Reimer helped him better grasp why the Germans did what they did. He laid out the contents of the message for Reimer with little hesitation: even if the man’s oft-expressed contempt for the new Kaiser was a sham, it would be hard for him to convey any useful information to the enemy in a timely manner.
“They are massing for a stroke,” Reimer said at last, fingers steepled beneath a moustache gone white but still clipped with military precision. “The, how do you say, appreciation of your Colonel Pruitt is quite prescient... I would judge it to be plausible. It would be entirely in keeping with good practice to hide the movement of a large body of troops in this way. Some of them are undoubtedly headed for France – but for this they would not require the use of railways so near to your lines. So the movement is made openly but the misdirection - the art of the trick - is more subtle. What you see hides what is to come.” He deliberated for a moment longer, gaining time to think by clipping and warming a cigar. “It is perhaps too early in the day for a cigar, but…” Reimer shrugged. “With your permission?” Once the cigar was lit he drew meditatively on it, then shrugged again.
“You have had matters your own way for many months. The Generals have been unsure of their best response, hampered by commitments in what would have been more important theaters. But now, you have landed all your troops. You have linked up your beach-heads in Belgium and Holland and Ostfriesland. You have moved your reserves and telegraphed your next likely moves. And so…” he exhaled, thin streams of smoke trickling from his nostrils. “They have decided the time is propitious. They will strike. This is, how do you say, the common practice in kriegspiel – in war practice. If your enemy masses for a blow, strike quickly somewhere else. You may pierce a thinly-held defense, or at the least throw off your opponent’s aim and timing.”
Reimer looked out the window, then returned his gaze to Taft’s face. “Geography is all; it determines everything. If your blow is in the east it must follow the line of the Elbe – you have not said so, but it must be. Their riposte will be screened by the Rhine. I think it likely to be on the east bank, but I cannot say for certain. If they split your front at Kleves, then they will strike for the Baltic – or Amsterdam – or fall upon any isolated troops in Belgium. But this is their answer. You may threaten Berlin, or take it – that will not sway the Generals. It may panic the civil servants, but they are not the masters of Germany in wartime. This is the answer of the Generals, Mister Taft. They will not beat, nor parry – but lunge instead.”
He smiled around his cigar. "En garde!"
