Lisa, completely agree about the limp response of the British. A little interesting background gleaned from Michael Oren’s magnificent Power, Faith, and Fantasy. Ion Perdicaris had fled the U.S. to avoid military service in the Civil War and had apparently renounced his citizenship. “That fact,” writes Oren, “if publicized would not only weaken Roosevelt’s leverage on Raisuli but might prove particularly embarrassing in an election year. Such pitfalls might have deterred a different president, but this one responded by ordering a task force of seven warships to steam toward the Moroccan coast.” Perdicaris was freed after the Moroccan sultan paid Raisuli his ransom. Not exactly the stuff of later legend, but a successful gambit nonetheless.