In a more intimate room at the State Department in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay was secretly meeting with a guest.

The secretary of state Hay took office in October, largely because the former secretary of state, William Rufuss Day, was born by law and was not well-versed in the affairs of the diplomatic community, so he was succeeded by the former ambassador to the United Kingdom.

And after the new Secretary of State Hay took over, he also performed well, and tried his best to ensure that US interests did not suffer too much damage during the Paris peace talks, so he was still the one who came out to negotiate the purchase of ships with Italy.

"Ambassador Dagty, my country is very sincere this time, would you like to ask the ambassador to see our quotation?"

With that, the new Secretary of State handed a quotation to Ambassador Dagotty.

For Ambassador Daggerty, this negotiation with the United States is an opportunity for him, and it is well known that the importance of diplomatic ambassadors is determined by the status of the country to which he is stationed and his relations with his country.

Take Italy as an example, the ambassador to Germany and the ambassador to the United Kingdom are definitely the two highest-ranked ambassadors in the diplomatic system, followed by the ambassadors of Austria, France and Russia to the three countries, which are in the second echelon, and then the three countries of Qing, the United States and Japan are in the third echelon, and the rest are the ambassadors of other countries.

And Italy and the United States have not intersected much over the years, so for Daggerty, this purchase of ships by the United States is an opportunity for him, an opportunity for the Roman princes to see their abilities, and he must go all out for this.

Receiving the quotation from Secretary of State Hay, Daggety frowned at the sight.

"Your Excellency, this offer from your country does not show enough sincerity at all, and I need not send it back to Rome at all, and I can tell you now that it will not make Rome agree at all. The price is too low, you are directly buying all of my country's new ships, and you need to consider the many risks and other hidden costs that our country bears for this. ”

Ambassador Dagti is naturally confident in being able to say this, because this quotation is really insufficient. In this quotation, the United States offered a high price of $5.5 million each for the three Italian Genoa-class battleships, and for the Garibaldi-class, it offered $7.2 million. The price given by the United States is the price set on the basis of the Italian selling price plus 10%.

And in addition to these six warships, the United States also paid for a complete set of drawings for these two warships, the total price of which reached 42 million dollars.

Even the deep-pocketed U.S. government has a hard time coming up with so much money at once, which can almost be used as 60% of the U.S. Navy's military spending.

As for why the US government is willing to pay such a high price for the purchase and packaging of Italian warships, in addition to the formality, there is also the willingness of the US Navy. The U.S. Navy, which had just fought with the Spanish and Italian navies operating Italian warships, had a very high opinion of the Italian warships, believing that the defeat in this battle was due to the performance of their own warships.

The Indiana-class battleship is garbage, and various problems occur frequently in naval battles, so it leads to a big loss in three fights and two battles. As for the Pennsylvania-class patrol not to mention, compared with the opponent's world's No. 1 patrol Garibaldi, the shoes are not worthy, and the difference in both firepower output and protection in naval battles is very different, this gap makes the brave US Navy officers and men scold their mothers.

In addition, the officers and men of the US Navy did not trust the three Illinois-class battleships still under construction in their own shipyards, saying that they were just modified versions of the Indiana class, and that they were still rubbish when they were modified.

Therefore, the U.S. government must also consider the needs of its own naval officers and soldiers.

However, the goodwill of the United States Government could not be understood by Ambassador Dagotty, who also took out a quotation and said it. "Your Excellency Secretary of State Hai, this is our country's offer for the sale of warships, and I would like to ask you to look at it."

Hay took the Italian offer, which was much higher than the offer given by the U.S. government, and the price of the first six warships was about 20% higher than that given by the United States. For example, the Genoa-class battleships directly offered $6.5 million, while the Garibaldi-class cruisers were as high as $8.4 million, and the total price was pushed up to $54 million.

This is a full $12 million gap, which makes Secretary of State Hay frown. "Ambassador Daggerty, your country's offer is too high, and the gap is too big."

"How can it be considered high?"

As soon as he heard that Secretary of State Hay did not directly say that he could not afford it, Dagotty knew that there was a play and immediately defended it. "Your country needs to understand the difficulties of our country, first of all, in the sale of warships, if our country ......"

In Ambassador Daggerty's explanation, Italy was willing to take the risk of selling these six warships to the United States. First of all, the Italian Navy will have at least two years of window period for capital warships, and if a country with little difference in naval strength from Italy declares war on Italy, then it is impossible for Italy to win the war after the lack of capital warships. In addition, at present, the officers and men of the Italian Navy are already familiar with the warships, and the United States has bought these six warships, so this will be a waste of the energy and funds that the Italian Navy has already paid for this.

Speaking of which, Dagotti continued. "Therefore, the sale of these warships cannot be compared with the previous sales by our country, because it will disrupt the deployment and planning of our navy, and the cost of this cannot be paid by our country."

But despite what Ambassador Dagtty said, Hay is also a diplomat. It was impossible to accede to Daggety's request in this way, and after a ridiculous conversation, Ambassador Dagetti left.

Both of them knew that this time it was just a matter of informing each other of prices to see the difference between the two.

After Ambassador Daggety left, Secretary of State Hay left the room and moved to the next room without taking two steps.

There are quite a few people in this room, President McKinley, Secretary of the Navy Lewis, Secretary of the Treasury Lehmann? Gage, presidential adviser Roosevelt, and others were here.

That's right, this Roosevelt is the former Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt, who is quite tenacious in political vitality like an immortal little power, and his previous successive performances have made President McKinley admire him very much, so he has become an adviser again.

"Everyone heard the conversation I had with the Italian ambassador just now, and the Italian asked for a very high price, which is not easy to talk about."

Hay took a glass of water from Roosevelt's advisers, took a sip, and spoke to those present.

"I heard the Italian request, and the price of $54 million is really too high."

"I don't think I can talk about much, and the price of $50 million at most is the limit." Hay interjected at this point.

Treasury Minister Lehmann? Gage turned his head to Secretary of the Navy Lewis, who was silent. "Can't your navy reduce the number of purchases, for example, just buy two battleships, and two for patrolling, so that you can save at least 1,400 dollars, and you can do a lot of things with such a large amount of money."

The words of the Secretary of the Treasury drew the attention of everyone else to the Secretary of the Navy, and even the President looked at him.

In the face of public concern, Secretary Lewis immediately defended. "Ladies and gentlemen, as I said before, the Navy needs at least six warships to protect our interests from harm. And in view of the fact that the warships built by our country are not highly evaluated among the officers and men of the Navy, at this time we must buy six warships. Italy has exactly six of them, and four of them are ready for immediate use, which is very important. You must know that we are facing off against the Japanese warships in Hawaii with six protective cruisers, which are at an absolute disadvantage in terms of the balance of forces, and we need these warships to immediately expand our sea forces. ”

As soon as Secretary Lewis's words fell, the Roosevelt adviser, who loved the Navy, added.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the main reason we purchased six Italian warships was to show our country's toughness and to show our strength. In Hawaii we were in a confrontation with Japan, in Panama our negotiations with the French on the canal were very unsmooth, and France's attitude towards our country was completely two before the war with Spain.

And, as with the British, negotiations have come to a standstill, and from these signs we can see that our country has fallen into a state of atrophy in foreign affairs and cannot expand its own interests for the United States. This is due to our underestimation of the difficulty of the war with Spain. And this underestimation will need to be compensated for with more effort and money, or the United States of America will be mired in a diplomatic quagmire. ”

In Roosevelt's account, the sequelae of the current defeat of the United States are all revealed, and it is obvious that in Roosevelt's view, the United States should not be entangled in the issue of money at present, but should give priority to expressing its own attitude. That's right, it is the attitude that is the most important, and even if the war is lost, the United States should express its own attitude. It doesn't matter if we lose, let's fix it and start over.

In Roosevelt's view, this is the manifestation of the American spirit, to let all countries know that it is not important that you win me once, the important thing is that I can rely on my unique conditions in North America to continue to fight you, once if it fails, twice, and if it doesn't work twice, three times. It was with this self-confidence that many of the early sages of the founding of the People's Republic of China were able to lead the United States of America, which was formed by the thirteen states, to become one of the world's great powers spanning two oceans in less than a hundred years.

"Roosevelt was right, we have to make our voices heard, we can't be intimidated by a setback, the United States of America is not intimidated by difficulties, it should face them bravely."

President McKinley, who had participated in the Civil War, interjected at this time, and his words were the final decision on this ship purchase.

"Well, I'll talk to the Italian ambassador." Secretary of State Hay also took over the topic.

"It's very good, but we still have to negotiate some prices, and the U.S. government is not rich enough to satisfy the appetite of the poor."

President McKinley made a rare quip.

Well, it seems that negotiations on the purchase of ships by the United States are imperative, and it depends on how much the secretary of state can negotiate.