Many years later, when Roosevelt and I discussed this episode we
cast about for reasons to account for the Kaiser's sudden
back-down. We concluded that after the first interview Holleben
either did not cable to Berlin at all, or he gave the message
with his own comment that it was all a bluff. After the second
interview, he consulted Buenz, the German Consul-General at New
York, who knew Roosevelt well and knew also the powerfulness of
Dewey's fleet. He assured Holleben that the President was not
bluffing, and that Dewey could blow all the German Navy, then in
existence, out of the water in half an hour. So Holleben sent a
hot cablegram to Berlin, and Berlin understood that only an
immediate answer would do.
Poor, servile, old bureaucrat Holleben! The Kaiser soon treated
him as he was in the habit of treating any of his servile
creatures, high or low, who made a fiasco. Deceived by the
glowing reports which his agents in the United States sent to
him, the Kaiser believed that the time was ripe for a visit by a
Hohenzollern, to let off the pent-up enthusiasm of the
German-Americans and to stimulate the pro-German conspiracy here.
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