When President Wilson read his war message to the Congress it must
have been in the minds of many thousands who thrilled to the news
that night, that a trinity of great American presidents was about to
be completed; that a niche awaited Mr. Wilson in the same alcove with
Washington and Lincoln. Many who were impatient and restless under the
long correspondence with the Imperial German Government were willing
to acknowledge that the delay was justified; that at last the nation
was solidly behind the administration; that amid the stirring call of
trumpets partisanship would be forgotten; and that, when the world
was made safe for law and decency, Mr. Wilson would find himself in
the enjoyment of an unparalleled popularity. It did not seem possible
that he could fail. That he did fail of these hopes and expectations
is not a matter that any true lover of America can contemplate with
jubilation. Those of us who ask the greatest and the best things of
and for America can hardly be gratified by any failure that might
be construed as a sign of weakness in democracy. But Mr. Wilson’s
inability to hold the confidence of the people, to win his adversaries
to his standard, to implant himself in the affections of the mass,
cannot be attributed to anything in our political system but wholly to
his own nature. It is one of the ironies of our political life that a
man like Mr. McKinley, without distinguished courage, originality, or
constructive genius, is able, through the possession of minor qualities
that are social rather than political, to endear himself to the great
body of his countrymen. It may be, after all our prayers for great men,
that negative rather than positive qualities are the safest attributes
of a President.
It may fairly be said that Mr. Wilson is intellectually the equal
of most of his predecessors in the presidency, and the superior of
a very considerable number of them. The very consciousness of the
perfect functioning of his own mental machinery made him intolerant
of stupidity, and impatient of the criticism of those with whom it
has been necessary for him to do his work, who have, so to put it,
only asked to be “shown.” If the disagreeable business of working
in practical politics in all its primary branches serves no better
purpose, it at least exercises a humanizing effect; it is one way
of learning that men must be reasoned with and led, not driven. In
escaping the usual political apprenticeship, Mr. Wilson missed wholly
the liberalizing and broadening contacts common to the practical
politician. At times--for example, when the Adamson Law was passed--I
heard Republicans, with unflattering intonation, call him the shrewdest
politician of his time; but nothing could be farther from the truth.
Nominally the head of his party, and with its future prosperity in his
hands, he has shown a curious indifference to the maintenance of its
morale.
“Produce great men; the rest follows.” The production of great men
is not so easy as Whitman imagined; but in eight tremendous years
we must ruefully confess that no new and commanding figure has risen
in either branch of Congress. Partisanship constantly to the fore,
but few manifestations of statesmanship: such is the record. It is
well-nigh unbelievable that, where the issues have so constantly
touched the very life of the nation, the discussions could have been
so marked by narrowness and bigotry. The exercise of autocratic power
by a group pursuing a policy of frustration and obstruction is as
little in keeping with the spirit of our institutions as a stubborn,
uncompromising course on the part of the executive. The conduct of the
Republican majority in the Senate is nothing of which their party can
be proud.
Four years ago I published some reflections on the low state to which
the public service had fallen, and my views have not been changed
by more recent history. It would be manifestly unfair to lay at Mr.
Wilson’s door the inferiority of the men elected to the Congress;
but with all the potentialities of party leadership and his singular
felicity of appeal, he has done little to quicken the public conscience
with respect to the choice of administrators or representatives. It
may be said in his defense that his hours from the beginning were too
crowded to permit such excursions in political education; but we had a
right to expect him to lend the weight of his authoritative voice and
example to the elevation of the tone of the public service. Poise and
serenity of temper we admire, but not to the point where it seemingly
vanishes into indifference and a callousness to criticism. The appeal
two years ago for a Democratic Congress, that the nation’s arm might
be strengthened for the prosecution of the war, was a gratuitous slap
at the Republican representatives who had supported his war policies,
and an affront to the public intelligence, that met with just rebuke.
The cavalier discharge of Lansing and the retention of Burleson show an
equally curious inability to grasp public opinion.
V
The whole handling of the League of Nations was bungled, as most of
the Democrats I know privately admit. The end of a war that had
shaken the very foundations of the earth was a fitting time to attempt
the formation of an association of the great powers to enforce the
peaceful settlement of international disputes. Here was a matter that
spoke powerfully to the conscience and the imagination, and in the
chastened mood of a war-weary world it seemed a thing possible of
achievement. Certainly, in so far as America was concerned, it was a
project to be approached in such manner that its success could in no
way be jeopardized by partisanship. The possibility of opposition by
Democratic senators, the hostility of Republican senators, which was
not merely partisan but in certain quarters tinged with bitter personal
hatred of the President, was to be anticipated and minimized.
The President’s two trips abroad were a mistake, at least in that
they encouraged those of his critics who assailed him as an autocrat
and supreme egotist stubbornly bent upon doing the whole business in
his own way. The nation was entitled to the services in the peace
negotiations of its best talent--men strongly established in public
confidence. Mr. Wilson paid dearly for his inability to recognize
this. His own appearance at Versailles conveyed a false impression of
his powers, and the effect at home was to cause uneasiness among many
who had most cordially supported him.
The hovering figure of Colonel House has been a constant irritation
to a public uninformed as to the training or experience that set him
apart for preferment. In sending from the homebound ship an invitation
to the august Foreign Relations committee to gather at the White House
at an hour appointed and hear the good news that a league was in
prospect, the President once more displayed a lamentable ignorance of
human nature. His attitude was a trifle too much like that of a parent
returning from a journey and piquing the curiosity of his household by
a message conveying the glad tidings that he was bringing presents for
their delight. There are one hundred millions of us, and we are not to
be managed in this way.
Colonel Roosevelt might have done precisely these things and “got
away with it.” Many thousands would have said it was just like him,
and applauded. The effect of Mr. Wilson’s course was to precipitate
a prolonged battle over the league and leave it high in the air. It
hovers over the present campaign like a toy balloon floating within
reach of languid and indifferent spectators. In that part of the
country with whose feelings and temper on public matters I may pretend
to some knowledge, I do not believe that any one cares greatly about
it. The moment it became a partisan question, it lost its vitality as
a moral issue that promised peace and security to America and all the
world. Our attitude with respect to the league has added nothing to the
nation’s dignity; rather, by our wabbly course in this matter we have
done much to weaken the case for world democracy. Its early acceptance,
with reservations that would have stilled the cry of denationalization,
would have made it an achievement on which the Democratic party
might have gone to the people with satisfaction and confidence. Even
considered as an experiment of dubious practicability, it would have
been defensible at least as an honest attempt to blunt the sword of the
war god. The spirit in which we associated ourselves with the other
powers that resisted the Kaiser’s attempt to bestride the world like a
Colossus needed for its complete expression the further effort to make
a repetition of the gigantic struggle impossible.
As a people we are strongly aroused and our imagination quickened by
anything that may be viewed in a glow of spirituality; and a scheme
of peace insurance already in operation would have proved a dangerous
thing to attack. But the league’s moral and spiritual aspects have
been marred or lost. The patience of the people has been exhausted
by the long debate about it, and the pettiness and insincerity,
the contemptible evasion and hair-splitting, that have marked the
controversy over what is, in its purpose and aim, a crystallization
of the hope of mankind in all the ages. Such a league might fail;
certainly its chance of success is vastly decreased by America’s
refusal to participate.