Louis, and the platform expressed a blanket endorsement of the
achievements of his Administration. But the chief incident of that
convention was the keynote speech of Martin H. Glynn, which was based
on the text, "He kept us out of war." His recital of the long list of
past occasions in American history when foreign violations of American
rights and injuries to American interests had not led to war was
received with uproarious enthusiasm by the convention and completely
overturned the plans which had been made by the Administration managers
to emphasize the firmness of the President in defense of American
rights.
But the Republicans presently gave that issue back to them. The party
passed over Colonel Roosevelt; the memory of 1912 was still too bitter
to permit the old-line leaders to accept him. On the other hand, the
Colonel and his following had to be conciliated, so the Republican
Convention nominated Charles E. Hughes, who had viewed the party
conflict of 1912 from the neutrality of the Supreme Court bench. The
Progressive Party duly had its convention and nominated Roosevelt; and
when Roosevelt announced that Hughes's views on the preservation of
American interests were satisfactory and that the main duty was to beat
Wilson, a good many Progressives followed the Colonel back into camp. A
rump convention, however, nominated a Vice Presidential candidate, and
virtually went over to Wilson.
Justice Hughes's views on public issues were not known before he was
nominated, and on the great issue of the campaign they were never very
clearly known until after the election, when it was too late. He had
strong opinions on Democratic misgovernment and maladministration and
outspoken opinions on Mexico, but whenever he tried to say anything
about the war in Europe he used up most of his energy clearing his
throat. A large element in the American people, which was influential
out of proportion to its numbers because it included most of the
intelligent classes and most of the organs of public opinion, felt that
the President had been too weak in the face of German provocation. To
this element, chiefly in the East, Colonel Roosevelt appealed with his
denunciation of German aggression and of the President's temporizing
with Germany; but Colonel Roosevelt was not running for President.
There was another minority, considerably smaller and far less
reputable, which consisted of bitter partisans of the German cause.
This minority was fiercely against the President because he had dared
to challenge Germany at all; and though Mr. Hughes gave it no
particular encouragement, it supported him because there was nobody
else to support.
So, in the Eastern States, where anti-German sentiment was strongest,
the Democrats advocated the re-election of Wilson as the defender of
American rights against foreign aggression, while in the West he was
praised as the man who had endured innumerable provocations and "kept
us out of war." When Hughes swept everything in the East, it was
confidently assumed on election night that Wilson had been repudiated
by the country; but later reports showed that the East was no longer
symptomatic of the country's sentiment. For three days the election was
in doubt. It was finally decided by California, where the Republican
Senator whom Hughes had snubbed was re-elected by 300,000 majority,
while the Democratic electoral ticket won by a narrow margin. Wilson
had carried almost everything in the West. Those parts of the country
which lay further away from Europe and European interests had
re-elected him because he had "kept us out of War."
_Mediation Efforts, 1916-1917_
It has been stated by Count von Bernstorff that, if Hughes had been
elected, President Wilson would immediately have resigned, along with
the Vice President, after appointing Hughes as Secretary of State, in
order to give the President-elect an opportunity to come into office at
once and meet the urgent problems already pressing on the Executive.
Whether the President actually entertained any such intention or not,
it would have been a logical development of his theory of the Chief
Executive as Premier. But the President-Premier had received a vote of
confidence, and was free to deal with the new situation created by the
various peace proposals of the Winter of 1916-1917. The negotiations
which followed during December and January were obscure at the time and
are by no means clear even yet. The fullest account of them is that of
Bernstorff, whose personal interest in vindicating himself would make
him a somewhat unreliable witness even if there were nothing else
against him. And at the time, when the President's motives were unknown
to a public which had not his advantage of information as to what was
going to happen in Europe, almost every step which he took was
misconstrued, and his occasional infelicities of language aroused
suspicions which later events have shown to be entirely unjustified.
Reports of American diplomats in the Fall of 1916 indicated that the
party in Germany which favored unrestricted submarine war without
consideration for neutrals was growing in strength. It was opposed by
most of the civilian officials of the Government, including the
Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg; Jagow and Zimmermann, the successive
Foreign Secretaries, and Bernstorff, the Ambassador in Washington. But
the Admirals who supported it were gradually winning over the
all-powerful Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and it appeared only a
question of time until the promise to America of May, 1916, should be
broken. And, as Bernstorff has expressed it, the President realized
after the Sussex note there could be no more notes; any future German
aggression would have to be met by action or endured with meekness.
In these circumstances the President was driven to seek opportunity for
the mediation which he had been ready to offer, if asked, from the very
beginning of the war. But to offer mediation, so long as the war was
undecided, was a matter of extreme delicacy. The majority of
intelligent Americans were strong partisans of the allied cause and
firmly believed that that cause was bound to win in the long run. There
was a minority which had equal sympathy for Germany and equal
confidence in her ultimate success. To offer mediation while the war
was still undecided would have been to offend both of these elements,
as well as the warring nations themselves, all of which were still
confident of victory. Specifically, to offer mediation during the
course of the Presidential election would have been to drive over to
Hughes all the pro-Ally elements in America, which in the state of mind
of 1916 would have seen in such a proposal only a helping hand extended
to a Germany whose cause was otherwise hopeless.
So, though during 1916 the President would have welcomed a request for
mediation, he did not dare suggest it on his own account. And neither
side dared to propose it, for such a request would have been taken as
an admission of defeat. Nineteen hundred and sixteen was an indecisive
year, but the fortune of war gave now one side and now the other the
conviction that a few months more would bring it to complete victory.
In such circumstances the losers dared not make a proposal which would
hearten their enemies and the victors would not suggest the stopping of
the war when they hoped that a few months more would see them in a much
more favorable position.
_A Sympathetic Tribute_
_Hamilton Holt, head of a delegation that visited the White House
on October 27, 1920, in connection with the campaign advocating our
entry into the League of Nations, said in the course of his address
to President Wilson:_
_"It was you who first focused the heterogeneous and often diverse
aims of the war on the one ideal of pure Americanism, which is
democracy. It was you who suggested the basis on which peace was
negotiated. It was you, more than any man, who translated into
practical statesmanship the age-old dream of the poets, the
prophets and the philosophers by setting up a league of nations to
the end that cooperation could be substituted for competition in
international affairs._
_"These acts of statesmanship were undoubtedly the chief factors
which brought about that victorious peace which has shorn Germany
of her power to subdue her neighbors, has compelled her to make
restitution for her crimes, has freed oppressed peoples, has
restored ravaged territories, has created new democracies in the
likeness of the United States, and above all has set up the League
of Nations."_
But by December Germany's situation was more fortunate than at any time
since the early Summer. Rumania, which had come into the war three
months before, had been defeated and overrun in a spectacular campaign
which had brought new prestige to the German armies. The triumph was of
more value in appearance than in reality, for no decision had been
reached on the main fronts and none of the chief belligerents was
willing to give up. Germany was under a terrible strain, and the
civilian Government concluded that the end of 1916 offered an
opportunity to make a peace proposal, without loss of prestige, which
might lead to a settlement of the war that would leave Germany
substantially the victor. For it was known that unless some such
decisive result were soon attained the military party would unloose the
submarines in the effort to win a complete victory, and thereby bring
about complications too serious for the civilian officials to
contemplate with any sense of security.
So on Dec. 12 Bethmann Hollweg proposed a peace conference. He
mentioned no terms which Germany would consider; he spoke in the
arrogant tones of a victor; and the total effect of his speech was to
convince the world that he was trying to influence the pacifist
elements in the allied countries rather than to bring about an end of
the war. But his step caused profound uneasiness in Washington, for he
had anticipated the action which the President had long been
considering. If Mr. Wilson could not have offered mediation before the
election, he might have tried it in November had not the German
deportation of Belgian workingmen just then aroused such a storm of
anti-German feeling in America that it would have been unsafe to take a
step which public opinion would have generally regarded as favorable to
Germany. Now that Bethmann Hollweg had anticipated him, it was evident
that any proposal which the President might make would be regarded as a
sort of second to the German motion.
Nevertheless, the situation was urgent, and the President seems to have
felt that his interposition could perhaps accomplish something which
the German initiative could not. Colonel House in the last two years
had made a number of trips to Europe as a sort of super-Ambassador to
all the powers in the endeavor to find out what their Governments
regarded as suitable terms of peace. Mr. Wilson's own interest lay
first of all in the establishment of conditions that would reduce--or,
as men would have said in 1916, prevent--the possibility of future
wars. On May 27, 1916, he had delivered a speech before the League to
Enforce Peace in which he favored the formation of an international
association for the delay or prevention of wars and the preservation of
the freedom of the seas. Later speeches contained doctrines most of
which were eventually written into the League covenant, and were based
on the central theory that all nations must act together to prevent the
next war, as otherwise they would all be drawn into it. On Oct. 26 he
had declared that "this is the last war the United States can ever keep
out of."
_The United States in the War_
_Declaration of war, April 6, 1917._
_American warships in European waters, May 4, 1917._
_First Liberty Loan offered, May 14, 1917._
_Selective Service act operative, May 18, 1917._
_First American troops in France, July 1, 1917._
_Fourteen Points speech, January 8, 1918._
_"Force to the utmost" speech, April 6, 1918._
_Americans in action at Cantigny, May 28, 1918._
_Chateau-Thierry, June 1-5, 1918._
_Marne-Aisne offensive, July 15-August, 1918._
_St. Mihiel offensive, September 12, 1918._
_Meuse-Argonne offensive, September 26-November 11, 1918._
_Austrian peace proposal, September 15, 1918._
_First German peace note, October 4, 1918._
_Armistice ending the war, November 11, 1918._
Yet the President also had ideas on the nature of the peace terms by
which the war then going on should be concluded, though he felt that no
good could be obtained by the proposal of such terms from a neutral. On
Dec. 18, accordingly, he addressed the belligerent Governments with an
invitation to state the specific conditions which each of them regarded
as essential to a just peace, in the hope that they would find they
were nearer agreement than they knew. Unfortunately, the President made
the observation that the objects of the two alliances, "as stated in
general terms to their own people and the world," were "virtually the
same." That was true; each side had said that it was fighting in
self-defense in order to preserve international justice, the rights of
nationalities, and a number of other worthy interests. But the public,
both in America and in the allied countries, saw in this renewed effort
at "impartiality of thought as well as of action" an indication that
the President saw no moral difference between the two sides. From that
moment any good result of the President's suggestion, in America or in
the allied countries, was out of the question; and if any hope had
remained, the Germans presently destroyed it. They wanted a peace
conference with no terms stated beforehand, where they could play on
the divergent interests of the allied countries; nor did they want the
President to have anything to do with the making of peace, lest, as
Bethmann Hollweg expressed it to Bernstorff, the Germans should be
"robbed of their gains by neutral pressure." So the German reply on
Dec. 26 politely observed that a direct conference between the
belligerents would seem most appropriate, which conference the German
Government proposed. For the general idea of a League of Nations the
Germans expressed their approval, but they wanted peace of their own
kind first.
The allied reply was delayed until Jan. 11, but at least it met the
President's request for details. It laid down the specifications of
what the allied powers would regard as a just peace, and the bulk of
that program was eventually to be written into the Treaty of
Versailles. But at the time, of course, it was evident that the
belligerents were further from agreement than they thought, or at any
rate than the President thought. Of such terms Germany would hear
nothing; nor would her Government give to the President, even in
confidence, its own idea of the specifications of a just peace.
So the President, determined to carry out his program in spite of all
obstacles, finally went before the Senate on Jan. 22, 1917, and laid
down some general considerations of what he thought a just peace should
be like. It was the logical next step in his effort to stop the war
before America should become involved, but it was taken under
conditions which made success impossible. As a matter of fact, the
Germans had already decided to resume the unrestricted submarine war;
the decision had been taken on Jan. 9, but was not to be announced till
Jan. 31. Moreover, in America and the allied countries public sentiment
was unprepared for anything like the speech of Jan. 22. Few people in
the United States realized the danger. Mr. Lansing had followed upon
the December note with a statement to correspondents that if the war
were not soon stopped America might be drawn into it. That was the
fact, but it depended on information unknown to the public; and though
the most natural inference was that a new crisis with Germany was at
hand no one knew exactly how to take it--particularly as Lansing, on
orders from the White House, hastened to explain that he had been
misunderstood.
Moreover, the President was still desperately striving to keep in good
understanding with the German Government, and in pursuance of this
policy James W. Gerard, the Ambassador to Germany, had declared at a
dinner in Berlin on Jan. 6 that the relations between America and
Germany had never been better than they were at that moment. This,
also, the public in the United States found it hard to understand. If
Lansing's reference to the danger of war had meant anything, what did
this mean?
So the President's address to the Senate on Jan. 22 did not and could
not have the reception that he hoped. He set forth his idea of the
necessity of a League of Nations, he declared that the peace must be
based on democratic principles and on the doctrine that was to become
famous before long under the name of self-determination. There must be
no more forcible conquests, no more bartering of unwilling populations.
The peace that ended this war, he said, must be guaranteed by a League
of Nations--of all nations; and if America was to enter that League she
must be assured that the peace was a peace worth guaranteeing.
So far every one might have followed him, in America at least; but the
President called such a peace a "peace without victory," and to the
supporters of the Allies in America, rendered suspicious by a course
whose motives they could not see, that meant a peace without allied
victory and consequently an unjust peace. Few of the President's public
addresses have been more unfavorably received.
Wilson had stated his peace terms--of course, only in general
principles; the Allies had stated theirs in detail. Except for an
article in a New York evening newspaper, inspired by Bernstorff but
bearing no mark of authority, the German terms had not even been
suggested. On the day following his Senate speech, according to
Bernstorff, the President volunteered to issue a call for an immediate
peace conference if only the Germans would state their terms. But they
did not state them until the 29th, when a note for the President's
private information detailed a program which was as obviously
unacceptable to the allied powers as the Allies' terms were to the
Germans. In any case this program had only an academic interest, for
along with it came a formal notice that unrestricted submarine war
would begin on Feb. 1.
The German Government had deliberately broken its promises of Sept. 1,
1915, and May 5, 1916. Moreover, that Government, which for months past
had been sending the President private assurances of its hearty
approval of his efforts toward peace, had by its intrusion and its
refusal to deal openly wrecked those efforts when at last he had
brought them to a head. There was only one thing to do, and the
President did it. On Feb. 3 he announced to Congress the rupture of
diplomatic relations with Germany.
But breaking of relations did not mean war. The President told Congress
that if the threat against American lives and property conveyed by the
resumption of submarine war were followed by overt acts of actual
injury to Americans he would come before Congress once more and ask for
authority to take the necessary steps to protect American interests.
But for the moment he seems to have felt that only a warning was
necessary; that the Germans, if convinced that America meant business,
would reconsider their decision. And he added, "I take it for granted
that all neutral Governments will take the same course." Logically they
should have done so, since the proclamation of submarine war was
virtually a declaration of war on all neutrals; but the European
neutrals did not dare to run the risk even if they had been so minded.
The submarines set to work and more ships were sunk, some of them ships
with American passengers. The nation began to demand war to end an
impossible situation. For the moment the President's aspirations were
more moderate, and he asked Congress in the closing days of his first
term for authority to arm American merchant ships for defense against
submarines. The bill readily passed the House and commanded the support
of seven-eighths of the Senate; but a dozen pacifists, pro-Germans and
professional obstructionists, whom the President denounced as "a little
group of willful men," filibustered it to death in the Senate in the
last hours of the session. Almost the first act of the President after
his inauguration, however, was the preparation to arm the ships by
Executive authority.
_Rural Credits_
The farmers, it seems to me, have occupied hitherto a singular
position of disadvantage. They have not had the same freedom to get
credit on their real assets that others have had who were in
manufacturing and commercial enterprises, and while they sustained
our life, they did not in the same degree with some others share in
the benefits of that life.--_From President Wilson's remarks on
signing the Rural Credits Bill, July 17, 1916._
[Illustration: (C) _Paul Thompson_
1918: The President acknowledging greetings at a
military review]
Meanwhile secret agents had discovered an attempt by the German Foreign
Office to enlist Mexican and Japanese support in the prospective war
against America by promising annexations in the Southwest and on the
Pacific Coast. Publication of this on March 1 converted a good many
Americans of the interior who had hitherto been slow to recognize the
seriousness of the German danger; and as the submarine campaign
continued and no European neutrals followed the American example, the
sentiment in favor of declaration of war grew every day.
But for the President this involved considerable logical difficulty.
From the first he had striven to maintain "impartiality of thought," or
at least of speech. He had said that the war was no concern of
America's; it would be the task of long historical research to assign
the responsibility for its outbreak; that "with its causes and objects
we are not concerned. The obscure foundations from which its tremendous
flood has burst forth we are not interested to search for and explore."
It was a war which should be ended by a peace without a victory.
Whatever meaning the President attached to these statements when he
made them, the meaning attached to them by the public was a serious
obstacle to the man who was going to have to lead the nation into war.
But he solved the dilemma by a change of base which affected the whole
political complexion of the war thereafter, which introduced a new and
overriding issue--an issue which, addressing Congress on April 2, he
introduced to the world in his most famous phrase and the most
effective of his speeches. America, he said, had no quarrel with the
German people; that people had not made the war. But the Germans were
ruled by an autocratic Government which had made neutrality impossible,
which had shown itself "the natural foe of liberty." That Government
had forced America to take up the sword for the freedom of peoples--of
all peoples, even of the German people. America must fight "to make the
world safe for democracy." On April 6, 1917, Congress declared war.
_America at War, 1917-1918_
Once committed to war, the President found behind him a nation more
thoroughly united than could ever have been hoped in the dark days of
1915. Again, as in the week after the sinking of the Lusitania, he was
the universally trusted leader of the people; and to a considerable
extent the unity of the nation at the entrance into war could be traced
back to the very policies of delay which had been so sharply
criticised. The people who had been on the side of the Allies from the
first and who had seen through German pretenses long before were now
solidly behind the President, for he had at last come over to their
views. But other and important elements which might have been hostile
two years before were now convinced of the necessity for fighting the
Germans.
And the President's call to a crusade for democracy won the support,
permanent or temporary, of many of those liberals who otherwise, in
America and the allied countries, were inclined during the whole war to
see in the Kaiser and Ludendorff the natural allies of liberalism.
There was a feeling of great ideas stirring the world in the Spring of
1917. The Russian revolution had just overthrown the most reactionary
and apparently the most firmly established of autocratic Governments,
and no one in Western Europe or America doubted that Russia would jump
in six months as far as England, France and America had painfully
toiled in two centuries, and become and remain a free democracy. If
Russia had had a revolution, might not Germany have a revolution, too?
Would not the German people, whose injuries at the hands of their own
rulers the President had so well pointed out, rise up and overthrow
those rulers and bring about a just and lasting peace? Many people in
the Spring of 1917 expected exactly that; the millennium was just
around the corner.
Moreover, it seemed that perhaps the Allies would win the war in the
field before America could get into it. A British offensive in Artois
had important initial successes, and Nivelle's bloody failure on the
Aisne was for a long time represented to the world as a brilliant
victory. War, for America, might involve a little expenditure of money,
but hardly any serious effort, according to the view widely current
among the population in the Spring of 1917; it was more than anything
else an opportunity for the display of commendable moral sentiments,
and for enthusiastic acclamations to the famous allied leaders who
presently began to come to the United States on special missions. It is
hardly too much to say that most of the American people went into this
war in the triumphant mood usually reserved for the celebration of
victory.
It may some day be regarded as one of the chief merits of the Wilson
Administration that it was not affected by this popular delusion. While
a large part of the people seemed to expect a cheap and speedy victory
by some sort of white magic, the Administration was getting ready to
work for victory. And thanks largely to the unity which had been bought
by the President's caution in the two previous years, Congress and the
people assented to measures of exertion and self-denial such as no man
could have expected America to undertake until compelled by bitter
experience.
The first step was the dispatch of American naval forces to aid the
Allies in the fight against the submarines, which for a few months were
to come dangerously near justifying the confidence that had been placed
in them. The process of naval reinforcement was slow, and not till 1918
did the American Navy become a really important factor in the
anti-submarine campaign; but every destroyer added to the allied forces
was of immediate value. The American Treasury was opened for vast
credits to the Allies, who by their enormous purchases of war materials
in the United States had created the abounding prosperity of 1916, and
had pretty nearly exhausted their own finances in doing so. More than
that, the Administration began at once to prepare for the organization
of a vast army; and faced with this most important duty of the conduct
of the war, the President took the advice of the men who knew. The army
officers knew that if America were to take a serious part in the war
the regular army and the National Guard would not be enough, nor even
Garrison's Continental Army which had been rejected in 1916. A big army
would be needed, and the right way to raise it was by conscription.
So the Selective Service act was introduced in Congress and passed in
May, without very serious opposition. At the very start the American
people had accepted a principle which had been adopted in the crisis of
the Civil War only after two years of disaster and humiliation. It was
the estimate of experts that this army would need a year of training
before it would be fit for the front line, and a huge system of
cantonments was hastily constructed to house the troops, while the
nucleus of men trained in the Plattsburg camps was increased by the
extension of the Plattsburg system all over the country.
For the leadership of this army General Pershing was selected, not
without considerable criticism from those who thought General Wood
deserved the position. The reasons which led to the selection of
Pershing are not yet officially known to the public, but Pershing's
record was to be a sufficient justification of the appointment.
But military and naval measures were only a part of the work needed to
win this war. Allied shipping was being sunk by the submarines at an
alarming rate, and new ships had to be provided. An enormous American
program was laid out, and General Goethals, in whom there was universal
confidence, was made head of the Emergency Fleet Corporation charged
with its execution. But Goethals could not get along with William
Denman, head of the Shipping Board, and changes of personnel were
constant through the year until in 1918 Charles M. Schwab was finally
put in chief control of the shipbuilding program.
For this and the development of the industrial program necessary for
military efficiency the support of labor was essential. Mr. Wilson now
reaped once more the benefit of a policy which had previously brought
him much criticism. His retreat before the railroad brotherhoods in
August of 1916, as well as the general policy of his Administration,
had won him the invaluable support of the American Federation of Labor,
and this good understanding, together with the unprecedented wage
scales which came into operation in most industries with the war
emergency, gave to the United States Government much more firm support
from organized labor than most of the allied countries had been able to
obtain.
But this war touched every department of human affairs. The Allies were
short of food, and one of the first achievements of the American
Government was the institution of a limited food control in the United
States, under the directorship of Herbert Hoover. Saving of food by
voluntary effort was popularized, and increased production and reduced
consumption prevented the appearance of any serious food crisis in the
allied countries. Later a fuel control was instituted under Dr. Harry
A. Garfield, and the principle of voluntary self-denial established by
the Food Administration was carried on into the field of news, where
the newspapers submitted to voluntary restriction of the publication of
news that might unfavorably affect military and naval movements. The
Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, was in general
supervision of this work, and, though it was, on the whole, unpopular
and accomplished no very useful purpose at home, it developed during
1918 a service of European propaganda which was of immense value in
heartening the Allies, informing the neutrals and discouraging the
enemy.
For all this money was needed, and in May and June the first Liberty
Loan of $2,000,000,000 was put before the public in an intensive
campaign of publicity. Mr. McAdoo proved himself an extremely able
advertiser of the public finances, and with the vigorous cooperation of
banks and business men the loan was more than 50 per cent
oversubscribed. There were other and larger loans later, but after the
success of the first one there was no doubt that they would be taken;
the first great accomplishment in national financing was almost as much
of a surprise to the public as the ready acceptance of the draft.
Early in April the railroads were put in charge of a committee of five
railroad Presidents, who were given great powers in the combination of
facilities for better service. But the system did not work well, and on
Dec. 26, 1917, the President announced the assumption by the Government
of control of the railroads for the war emergency, with Mr. McAdoo as
Director General.
Nineteen hundred and seventeen, then, saw the Wilson Administration
undertaking far heavier burdens than any previous Administration had
attempted, and meeting with a measure of success which was beyond all
prediction. The most powerful nation in the world was getting ready for
war on an enormous scale, getting ready slowly, to be sure, but with a
surprising ease and a surprising harmony. The nation which had
re-elected the President in November because he had kept it out of war
was whole-heartedly behind him from April on as he led it into war.
But great as was the President's moral authority at home, it was still
greater abroad. The principles proclaimed in his address of April 2,
and repeated and elaborated later in the year, became the creed of
almost every political element in Europe except the German military
party. The Russian revolution was still a liberalizing influence, in
the early part of the year, and self-determination began to be
proclaimed over all Europe as the central principle of any satisfactory
peace settlement. In the allied countries, where Mr. Wilson's
forbearance toward Germany had been heaped with ridicule for the last
two years, he became over night the interpreter of the ideals for which
the democratic peoples were fighting. Hereafter in any negotiations
with Germany the President by general consent acted as the spokesman of
all the allied Governments, and the peoples of the allied countries
accepted his declarations as a sort of codification of the principles
of the war. It must be left for the historian of the future to decide
how much of this deference was due to appreciation of the President's
service in clarifying the allied ideals, and how much to his position
as head of the most powerful nation in the world, whose intervention
was expected to bring victory to the Allies.
But in other countries as well, Wilson's ideals had become a dogma to
which everybody professed allegiance no matter what his views. The
President's principles, as publicly expressed in his speeches, had been
in effect a declaration of worthy ends, such as all right thinking
persons desired. He had been less concerned with the means to those
ends, and consequently all who agreed with his principles were inclined
to assert that the President's ideals were exemplified by their own
practices. In 1917 the President enjoyed the unusual experience of
seeing American liberals, British Laborites, three or four kinds of
Russian Socialists, neutral Socialists, neutral clericals, neutral
pacifists and even certain groups in the enemy countries all
proclaiming their adherence to the ideals of President Wilson.
For a time, indeed, it seemed that the war might be decided by moral
force. Beginning to take alarm at the activity of America, and not yet
certain of the effect of the Russian revolution (which was having grave
consequences in Austria-Hungary) the Germans inclined during the Summer
of 1917 to a new peace offensive. Bethmann Hollweg was dropped on July
14, and five days later a majority of the Reichstag voted for a peace
virtually on the basis of the status quo ante. In August the Vatican
issued a peace proposal suggesting a settlement on that general
principle, with territorial and racial disputes to be left for later
adjustment; and the Socialists of Europe were preparing to meet at
Stockholm for a peace conference of their own influenced by the same
ideas.
But the President had changed his opinion that America had no concern
with the causes and the objects of the war; he had had to search for
and explore the obscure foundations from which the tremendous flood had
burst forth. His Flag Day speech on June 14 showed that he was now
thinking of the political and economic aspects of the German drive for
world supremacy; and when the allied powers intrusted him with the task
of answering the Pope's peace suggestion in the name of all of them, he
declared that "we cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany
as a guarantee for anything that is to endure." The German Government
could not be trusted with a peace without victory.
That peace offensive died out in early Fall. The Germans had lost
interest, for they seemed likely to reach their objective in other
ways. Things were going badly for the Allies. The offensives in the
west had broken down and France's striking power seemed exhausted.
Italy suffered a terrific defeat in October. America was preparing, but
had not yet arrived, and the chief result of the Russian revolution had
been the collapse of the eastern front. When in November the Bolsheviki
overthrew Kerensky and prepared to make peace at any price, it was
evident that the German armies in France would soon be enormously
reinforced. So the Winter of 1917-18 saw a new peace offensive, but
this time most of the work was done by the Allies, and the object was
to detach Austria-Hungary from Germany.
The item of principal interest in the long-range bombardment of
speeches on war aims by which the statesmen of the various powers
conducted this exchange of views was the proclamation of the famous
Fourteen Points, in which the President for the first time put his
ideas as to the conditions of a just peace into somewhat specific form.
The origin of this program, which was eventually to become the basis of
the peace treaty, is still a matter of conjecture. Lloyd George on Jan.
5, 1918, had stated war aims in some respects identical with those
which the President embodied in the Fourteen Points three days later. A
good deal of the program had been included in the allied statement of
Jan. 11, 1917, but the Fourteen Points were somewhat more moderate.
They seemed to be, indeed, a rather hasty recension of old programs in
the effort to modify allied aspirations so that Austria would accept
them; for while the Fourteen Points professed to contain the scheme of
a just peace, they were set forth as a step in the endeavor to persuade
Austria to desert her ally. As it happened, Austria could not have
deserted Germany even if she had desired; and, in any event, the effort
to compromise was quite impracticable. The section referring to
Austrian internal problems, for instance, proposed a solution which the
Austrian Government had rejected only a few weeks before, and which the
Austrian subject nationalities would no longer have been willing to
accept
Whatever the origin of the Fourteen Points, their immediate effect was
slight. The Austrians, and to a lesser extent the Germans, professed
interest, but it was soon apparent that the Germans at least were not
ready to approach the allied point of view. And the Treaty of
Brest-Litovsk, forced upon Russia on March 3, was in such stark
contrast with the benevolent professions of German statesmen that the
President realized that nothing could be gained by debate and
compromise. On April 6, in a speech at Baltimore, he declared that only
one argument was now of use against the Germans--"force to the utmost,
force without stint or limit." The process of conversion from the
viewpoint of January, 1917, was complete.
As a matter of fact, however, the application of force had already
begun. On March 21 Ludendorff had opened his great offensive in France
which was to bring the war to a German victory, and for the next few
months Foch, and not Wilson, was the dominant personality among the
Allies. And for a time it seemed that however much America had
contributed to the moral struggle between the alliances, she would be
able to furnish comparatively little force. The winter of 1917-18 had
been full of humiliations. The railroad disorganization which had led
to the proclamation of Government control at the end of December was
being cleared up only slowly. The Fuel Administration was in an even
worse tangle, and in January business and industry had to shut down for
several days throughout the whole Eastern part of the country in order
to find coal to move food trains to the ports. Great sums of money and
enormous volumes of boasting had been expended on airplane construction
without getting any airplanes. Hundreds of millions had been poured
into shipyards and ships were only beginning to come from the ways. The
richest nation in the world allowed hundreds of its soldiers to die in
cantonment hospitals because of insufficient attention and inadequate
supplies. Artillery regiments were being trained with wooden guns and
only 150,000 Americans, many of them technical troops, were in France.
The Secretary of War, called before a Congressional committee to answer
questions on these shortcomings, had created the impression that he
either did not know that anything was wrong or did not care. On Jan. 19
Senator Chamberlain, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military
Affairs, declared that "the military establishment of the United States
has broken down; it has almost stopped functioning," and that there was
"inefficiency in every bureau and department of the Government." The
next day he introduced bills for a War Cabinet and a Director of
Munitions, which would practically have taken the military and
industrial conduct of the war out of the President's hands.
The President met the challenge boldly with the declaration that
Senator Chamberlain's statement was "an astonishing and unjustifiable
distortion of the truth," and must have been due to disloyalty to the
Administration. Chamberlain's reply, while admitting that he might have
overstated his case, was a proclamation of loyalty to his
Commander-in-Chief and an appeal for getting down to the business of
winning the war.
_The Fourteen Points_
_President Wilson's program for the world's peace was outlined in
the Fourteen Points, which constituted part of an address delivered
before Congress January 8, 1918, as follows:_
_No Private Understandings_
1 OPEN COVENANTS of peace, openly arrived at, after which there
shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but
diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
_Freedom of the Seas_
2 ABSOLUTE FREEDOM of navigation upon the seas outside territorial
waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed
in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of
international covenants.
_No Economic Barriers_
3 THE REMOVAL, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the
establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the
nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its
maintenance.
_Reduce National Armaments_
4 ADEQUATE GUARANTEES given and taken that national armaments will
be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.
_Colonial Claims_
5 A FREE, open minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of all
colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle
that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests
of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the
equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.
_Russian Territory_
6 THE EVACUATION of all Russian territory and such a settlement of
all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest
cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her
an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent
determination of her own political development and national policy
and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free
nations under institutions of her own choosing, and, more than a
welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may
herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations
in the months to come will be the acid test of their good-will, of
their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own
interests and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.
_Restoration of Belgium_
7 BELGIUM, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and
restored without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she
enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act
will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the
nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined
for the government of their relations with one another. Without
this healing act the whole structure and validity of international
law is forever impaired.
_Alsace-Lorraine to France_
8 ALL FRENCH territory should be freed and the invaded portions
restored and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the
matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the
world for nearly fifty years, should be righted in order that peace
may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
_New Frontiers for Italy_
9 A READJUSTMENT of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along
clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
_Autonomy in Austria-Hungary_
10 THE PEOPLES of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we
wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest
opportunity of autonomous development.
_Rumania, Serbia and Montenegro_
11 RUMANIA, SERBIA and MONTENEGRO should be evacuated; occupied
territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the
sea, and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another
determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines
of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the
political and economic independence and territorial integrity of
the several Balkan States should be entered into.
_Autonomy in Turkey_
12 THE TURKISH portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be
assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are
now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of
life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous
development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a
free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under
international guarantees.
_For an Independent Poland_
13 AN INDEPENDENT Polish State should be erected which should
include the territory inhabited by indisputably Polish populations,
which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea and
whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity
should be guaranteed by international covenant.
_League of Nation_
14 A GENERAL association of nations must be formed under specific
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guaranties of
political independence and territorial integrity to great and small
States alike.
But the war did not go on into 1919. If America could contribute no
aircraft and guns to the campaign of 1918, she could at least
contribute men. The emergency of March and April brought forth a
prodigious effort, and soldiers began to be shipped across the Atlantic
by hundreds of thousands. By July 4 there were a million, before the
end of the year over 2,000,000; and they could fight. At the end of the
Summer the Germans realized that the war was lost; and realizing it,
they turned back to President Wilson's mediation which they had
rejected eighteen months before, and to the Fourteen Points which had
been looked on so coldly in the previous Winter.
The first move was made by the Austrians, who on Sept. 15 proposed a
conference for a "preliminary and non-binding" discussion of war aims.
The President refused the next day, with the observation that America's
war aims had been stated so often that there could be no doubt what
they were. But it was evident that more peace proposals would follow,
and on Sept. 27 the President delivered an address in the Metropolitan
Opera House in New York in which his latest conception of the duties of
the Peace Conference was set forth. He had realized that peace without
victory was unsafe in view of the character of the German Government;
it must be a peace with guarantees, for nobody would trust the Germans.
But it must be a peace of impartial justice, "involving no
discrimination between those to whom we wish to be just and those to
whom we do not wish to be just," and the guarantee must be provided by
a League of Nations which the Peace Conference itself--and not a
subsequent general conference, as the President had held in the days of
his neutrality--must organize. The development was logical; nearly all
the American powers had entered the war, and neutrals were far less
numerous than in 1916. And he argued that the League of Nations must be
formed at the Peace Conference, to be "in a sense the most essential
part" of its work, because it was not likely that it could be formed
after the conference, and if formed during the war it would only be an
alliance of the powers associated against Germany.
The Germans apparently thought these pronouncements offered some hope.
Their Government was hastily being covered with a false front of
democratic institutions to suit his insistence, and on Oct. 4 the new
Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, appealed to the President to call a
peace conference at once, the basis of peace to be the Fourteen Points
and conditions set forth in the President's later addresses,
specifically that of Sept. 27. There ensued an interchange of notes
lasting throughout an entire month, in which the President acted
nominally as intermediary between the Germans and the Allies, though
actually he was in constant touch with allied statesmen. What began as
a duel of diplomatic dexterity presently developed into a German
diplomatic rout as the German armies, retreating everywhere, drew
nearer and nearer German soil. Positions which the German Government
had hoped to defend were successively abandoned; the Germans agreed to
accept without argument the Fourteen Points, with discussion at the
conference limited only to details of their practical application, and
to recognize the alterations which had been made in some of them by
subsequent decisions of the American Government. They accepted the
President's insistence that a peace conference must be conditional on
an armistice which would imply complete evacuation of allied territory
and the assurance of "the present supremacy" of the allied armies, and
they strove desperately to convince him that the democratization of the
German Government was real. Delegates went to Marshal Foch to discuss
the armistice terms, and on Nov. 5 the Allies formally notified the
President that they accepted the Fourteen Points, with the reservation
of the freedom of the seas and subject to a definition of the
restitution which the Germans must make for damage done.
On the same day sailors of the German High Sea Fleet, ordered out to
die fighting in a last thrust at the British, mutinied and began a
revolution that spread all over the empire. From the balcony of the
Imperial Palace in Berlin Karl Liebknecht proclaimed the republic; the
Kaiser fled across the Dutch border between two days; and on Nov. 11
the fighting ended and the Germans submitted to the terms imposed by
Marshal Foch.
_Peace Conference and Treaty, 1919_
So the war had been ended by the military defeat of the Germans. In
arranging the preliminaries of peace Mr. Wilson's influence had been
dominant. But the personal aspect of his triumph was far more imposing
in 1918 than it could possibly have been in 1916. Had his mediation
ended the war before America entered it would have been bitterly
resented in the allied countries and by American sympathizers of the
Allies. But in the interval the President had appeared as the leader of
the nation which furnished the decisive addition to allied strength
that brought the final victory; he had at last condemned in strong
terms the German Government, toward which he had to maintain a neutral
attitude earlier in the war, and he had had the satisfaction of seeing
that Government overthrown at last when the German people realized that
it had cost them more than it was worth. So now the war was ended in
victory, but still ended by Wilson's mediation, and moreover on terms
which he himself had laid down--another triumph that would have been
unthinkable two years earlier. In November, 1918, Woodrow Wilson was
exalted in the estimation of the world more highly than any other human
being for a century past, and far more highly than any other American
had ever been raised in the opinion of the peoples of Europe.
But he had just suffered a surprising defeat at home. It became evident
to Democratic leaders in the early Fall of 1918 that they were likely
to lose the Congressional elections. Democratic leadership in the House
of Representatives had been so notoriously incompetent that most of the
war measures had had to be carried through under the leadership of
Republicans, and there was grave dissatisfaction with some of the
members of the Cabinet. The appeals of Democrats in danger were heard
sympathetically at the White House, and on Oct. 25 the President had
issued a statement asking the people to vote for Democratic
Congressional candidates "if you have approved of my leadership and
wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at
home and abroad." He admitted that the Republicans in Congress had
supported the war, but declared that they had been against the
Administration and that the time was too critical for divided
leadership. It was the sort of appeal that any European Premier might
have made upon "going to the country," and the President ended with the
statement that "I am your servant and will accept your judgment without
cavil."
If this statement had never been issued, the results of the ensuing
election might not have been accepted as a repudiation of the
President. But he had made it a "question of confidence," to borrow a
term from European politics, and the result was disastrous. The
elections gave the Republicans a majority of thirty-nine in the lower
house and a majority of two in the Senate, which by a two-thirds vote
would have to ratify the peace treaty which the Executive would
negotiate. In such a situation a European Premier would, of course,
have had to resign, but the President of the United States could hardly
resign just as the war was coming to an end. The attempt to fit the
parliamentary system into the framework of the American Constitution
had failed. The President made no comment on the outcome of the
election, but he continued to be the unembarrassed spokesman of America
in affairs at home and particularly abroad. It soon became known that
he intended to go to the Peace Conference in person--at the request, it
was intimated, of Clemenceau and Lloyd George. The criticism of this
plan was by no means confined to Republicans, but the President
persisted in it. There was a widespread demand for a non-partisan Peace
Commission, but the apparent concession which the President finally
made to this sentiment--the appointment of Henry White, long out of the
diplomatic service and never very active in politics, as the sole
Representative on a commission of five--satisfied the bulk of
Republican sentiment not at all. It should be observed however, that
behind the five official delegates there was a host of experts--military,
economic, legal and ethnological--some of whom did very important
service at the conference; and in the selection of this body no party
lines had been drawn.
On December 4 the President sailed from New York on an army transport,
accompanied by Mrs. Wilson and by a whole caravan of savants loaded
down with statistics and documents. He left a nation whose sentiment
was divided between sharp resentment and a rather apprehensive hope for
the best, but he landed on a continent which was prepared to offer to
Woodrow Wilson a triumphal reception such as European history had never
known. The six weeks between his landing at Brest and the opening of
the Peace Conference were devoted to a series of processions through
England, France and Italy, in which the Governments and the people
strove to outdo each other in expressing their enthusiasm for the
leader of the great and victorious crusade for justice and democracy.
Sovereigns spiritual and temporal and the heads of Governments heaped
him with all the honors in their power, and crowds of workingmen stood
for hours in the rain that they might see him for a moment at a
railroad station. Even from neutral Holland, divided Ireland and
hostile Germany came invitations to the President, and he would
probably have been received by those peoples as enthusiastically as by
British, French and Italians.
For the war had been ended on the basis of the ideals of President
Wilson. Those ideals had been expressed in vague and general terms, and
every Government thought that its own war aims coincided with them.
Every people, suddenly released from the long and terrible strain of
the war, thought that all its troubles were suddenly to be ended by the
principles of President Wilson. Jugo-Slavs and Italians claimed Istria
and Fiume, and each felt itself supported by the principles of
President Wilson. To Frenchmen those principles meant that Germany must
pay for the war forced on France, and to Germans they meant that a
ruined France and an uninvaded Germany could start again on the same
footing.
The Peace conference that began on January 18 was bound to disillusion
a great many people, including President Wilson himself. Principles had
to be translated into practice, and every effort to do so left one
party to the dispute, if not both, convinced that the principles had
been betrayed. The treaty which was eventually produced led American
liberals to complain that the President had surrendered to European
imperialism, and brought from such Republicans as still admired the
Allies the complaint that he had betrayed allied interests at the
promptings of pacifism. Equally diverse opinions might have been
obtained from all types of extremists in Europe. The Fourteen Points
were susceptible of varying interpretations, according to individual
interests; and at the very outset the American delegates found some of
the allied leaders contending that they need not be considered, since
the Germans had surrendered, not because they regarded the principles
of President Wilson as just, but because they had been beaten. There
was undoubtedly a great deal of truth in this contention, but the
American delegates succeeded in holding the conference to the position
that having accepted the German surrender on certain terms it would
have to abide by those terms. The terms had to be interpreted, however,
and every agreement on the details led to a protest from somebody that
the President had abandoned the Fourteen Points.
All this, together with the growing Republican opposition at home which
was making itself heard in Europe, led to a rapid decline in the
President's prestige. So long as it was a question of generalities he
was the moral leader of the peoples of the world, but after a few weeks
of getting down to particulars he was only the head of the peace
delegation of a single State--and a State in which there was already
serious opposition to his policy. This altered standing was made
evident toward the end of April, when a protracted disagreement with
the Italian delegation over the Adriatic question led the President to
issue a declaration of his position which was virtually an appeal to
the Italian people over the heads of their own representatives. Nowhere
had the President been received with more enthusiasm than in his trip
through Italy four months before; but now Dr. Orlando, the Italian
Premier, went home and promptly got a virtually unanimous vote of
confidence from his Parliament, which was supported by the overwhelming
majority of the people.
The treaty was finally signed on June 28, and the President left at
once for home to take up the fight to get it through the Senate--a
fight which, it was already apparent, would be about as hard as the
struggle to get any treaty evolved at all out of the conflicting
national interests in Paris. There was a demonstration for him at Brest
as he left French soil, but nothing like the enthusiasm that had
greeted his arrival. This was perhaps the measure of his inevitable
decline in the estimation of Europe; it remained to be seen how he
stood at home. As early as January 1, before the Peace Conference met,
Senator Lodge, Republican leader in the Senate, had declared that the
conference ought to confine itself to the Peace Treaty and leave the
League of Nations for later discussion.
On February 14, after the first reading of the League covenant, the
President had made a hurried trip home to talk it over with the Senate
Committee on Foreign Relations--a committee that had been loaded up
with enemies of the League of Nations. The members of the committee
dined with him at the White House on February 26, and the covenant was
discussed for several hours. But the President could not convert the
doubters; on March 3 Senator Lodge announced that thirty-seven
Republican Senators were opposed to the League in its present form, and
that they regarded a demand for its alteration as the exercise of the
Senate's constitutional right of advice on treaties. The President took
up the challenge, and on the following day, just before sailing back to
Paris, he declared in a public address that the League and treaty were
inextricably interwoven; that he did not intend to bring back "the
corpse of a treaty," and that those who opposed the League must be deaf
to the demands of common men the world over.
The fight was now begun. Some modifications were made in the covenant
in the direction of meeting criticisms by Elihu Root, but it was
adopted. On July 10 the treaty was laid before the Senate and referred
to the Committee on Foreign Relations, which at once began to hear
opinions on it. The President himself appeared before the committee on
August 19. Outside the Senate party lines were breaking up; the Irish
and German elements who had come into line during the war, but had felt
that their interpretation of President Wilson's ideals had been
violated by the treaty, were aligned in support of the Republican
opposition; and a certain element of the Democratic Party which
inclined to admire the theory of traditional isolation found itself in
harmony with the Republicans. On the other hand, many moderate
Republicans supported the President, chief among them Mr. Taft; and in
the churches and colleges support of the League commanded an
overwhelming majority.
Convinced that the people were behind him against the Senate, or would
be behind him if they understood the issue, the President left
Washington on September 3 for another appeal to the country. Declaring
that if America rejected the League it would "break the great heart of
the world," he went to the Pacific Coast on a long and arduous speaking
tour, another request, in effect, for a vote of confidence for his work
as Premier. The effort was too much; he broke down at Wichita, Kan., on
September 26, and was hurried back to the White House, where for weeks
he lay disabled by an illness whose nature and seriousness were
carefully concealed at the time, and even yet but imperfectly
understood. Meanwhile the treaty had been reported out of committee,
and the offering of a multitude of amendments, all of which were
defeated, led eventually to the drawing up of the "Lodge reservations,"
finally adopted on November 16.
Nobody knew how sick the President was, but Senator Hitchcock, who had
led the fight for the treaty in the Senate, saw him on November 18 and
was told that in the President's opinion the Lodge reservations
amounted to nullification of the treaty. So the Democrats voted against
the treaty. Lodge's refusal to accept Wilson's treaty was as unshakable
as Wilson's refusal to accept Lodge's treaty. When the special session
ended and the regular session began the President eventually yielded a
little and consented to interpretative reservations proposed by Senator
Hitchcock. But this would not satisfy the Republicans; and on March 20
the rejected treaty was finally sent back to the White House.
_The Closing Year, 1920-1921_
The President's recovery was slow, and the first incidents of his
return to the management of public affairs were rather startling, in
view of the abrupt manner with which he resumed the direction of
executive policy. During his illness the Cabinet had met from time to
time and in a fashion had carried on the routine work of the executive
department. Had it not done so, had the gravity of the President's
illness been generally known, the demand which was heard for an
explanation of the constitutional reference to the "disability of the
President" and an understanding of the circumstances under which the
Vice-President might assume the office would have been much stronger.
There was a good deal of apprehension, therefore, when Secretary of
State Lansing resigned, and the published correspondence showed that
the President had regarded his action in calling Cabinet meetings as a
usurpation of Presidential authority. It was evident from the
correspondence that another and perhaps stronger reason for the
President's disapproval had been the action of the Secretary in
conducting a Mexican Policy on his own initiative, during the
President's illness, which showed considerable divergence from the
President's own. Nevertheless, the manner of the action caused some
uneasiness and there was much surprise when Mr. Lansing was replaced by
Bainbridge Colby, a comparatively recent proselyte from the Progressive
Party.
There was still further uncertainty as to the condition of the
President when he re-entered with a series of rather sharp notes into
the Adriatic controversy, which England, France and Italy had been
trying to settle, without consulting the Jugoslavs, during his illness;
and a letter to Senator Hitchcock on March 8, asserting that the
militarist party was at that time in control of France, aroused grave
misgivings on both sides of the Atlantic. These, however, were
unjustified; the President's improvement, though gradual, continued.
But the work of the Executive during 1920 was far less important than
in previous years, for the interest of the country was concentrated on
the Presidential election.
On January 8 a letter from the President had been read at the Jackson
Day dinner in Washington, in which he refused to accept the Senate's
decision on the treaty as the decision of the nation. "If there is any
doubt as to what the people of the country think about the matter," he
added, "the clear and single way out is ... to give the next election
the form of a great and solemn referendum." Once more, as in 1918, the
President had asked for a verdict on his leadership. There was some
perturbation among the Democratic leaders, for into a Presidential
election so many issues enter that it would be difficult to regard it
as a referendum on any particular issue. It might have been so accepted
if the President himself had come forward as a candidate for a third
term, but there was no sign from the White House as to his attitude on
this issue, and there was no spontaneous demand for him outside. The
leading candidate during the pre-convention campaign was William G.
McAdoo, the President's son-in-law, who had resigned as Secretary of
the Treasury and Director General of Railroads after making a
successful record during the war, and before the criticism of the
Wilson Administration as a whole had become acute. McAdoo had the
powerful support of organized labor and most of the Federal
office-holders, but whether or not he had the support of the White
House no man knew. The Republicans assumed it for their own purposes,
and Senator Lodge's keynote speech at the Chicago Convention was full
of denunciations of the "Wilson dynasty"; but if McAdoo were Wilson's
candidate the President showed no sign of knowing it.
That McAdoo was not nominated, however, can be ascribed very largely to
his relationship to the President and the suspicion that he was the
President's candidate. The Democratic Convention at San Francisco
adopted a platform praising and indorsing the President's record in all
details. The convention had to do that; the President's record was the
party's record. Homer Cummings as Temporary Chairman kept the
convention cheered up by a keynote speech of eulogy of that record,
which moved the assembled Democrats to such enthusiasm that Secretary
of State Colby, who had not been a Democrat long enough to know much
about the behavior of the species, declared that at any movement that
day the rules could have been suspended and the President renominated
by acclamation. But when the convention came down to the work of
nomination the President was not considered, and the delegates devoted
themselves to finding the most available man who had not had any
connection with the Administration. James M. Cox was finally nominated
on Woodrow Wilson's record and sent out to the great and solemn
referendum.
Aside from a formal proclamation of unity of ideals and intentions with
the candidate, the White House took practically no part in the
campaign. Not until October, when a delegation of pro-League
Republicans called at the White House, was it known that the
President's health had temporarily taken a turn for the worse and that
active participation would have been impossible. It could hardly have
affected the result very much in either direction.
Whether or not the President had intended to turn over the Government
to Hughes in November, 1916, he did nothing so unkind to Harding in
November, 1920. The President-elect was allowed plenty of time to try
to choose his Cabinet and his policies, but the Administration had
gradually withdrawn from all connection with European affairs, and it
was made known soon after Congress met in December that nothing would
be done which might embarrass the new Administration in its handling of
foreign relations and interrelated problems.
The history of Woodrow Wilson's Administration virtually ends with the
rejection of the treaty; but the business of government had to be
carried on through the final year. During 1920 old issues that had long
been hidden behind the war clouds came out into the open again. Obregon
overthrew Carranza and entered into power in Mexico, but the Wilson
Administration maintained neutrality during the brief struggle.
Ambassador Fletcher had resigned, but Henry Morgenthau, appointed to
succeed him, did not obtain the confirmation of the Senate, and the new
Administration had not been formally recognized at the end of President
Wilson's term. A controversy over the status of American oil rights was
one of the chief impediments to recognition, though Obregon's general
attitude was far more friendly to America than that of Carranza.
The President in November announced the boundaries of Armenia, which he
had drawn at the request of the European Allies. But these boundaries
were of no particular interest by that time, since the Turks and the
Bolsheviki were already partitioning Armenia; and the mediation between
the Turks and Armenians which the Allies requested the President to
undertake was forestalled by the Bolshevist conquest of the remnant of
the country. The Adriatic dispute, in which the President had taken
such a prominent part in 1919, was finally settled without him by
direct negotiation between Italy and Jugoslavia. In one other
international problem, however, that of Russia, the United States
Government still exerted some influence. The President during 1918 had
showed more willingness to believe in the possibility of some good
coming out of Bolshevist Russia than most of the European Governments,
and the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia took no active part in
the fighting there. At the Peace Conference the President had been
willing to call the various Russian parties to the Prinkipo conference,
but nothing came of this; and America eventually took up a middle
ground toward Russia. While the British seemed ready to make friends
with the Bolsheviki and the French remained irreconcilably hostile, the
American Government--whose policy was fully set forth in a note of
August 10, 1920--refused to attack them, but also to have any dealings
with them. This policy was much criticised as being purely negative,
but toward the end of Mr. Wilson's Administration both England and
France were tending to follow it through the force of circumstances,
England's effort to find a basis of trade relations with Bolshevist
Russian being as futile as France's support of anti-Bolshevist
revolutionary movements.
The Republicans and their Irish supporters in the 1920 campaign revived
the old demand for the exemption of American shipping from the Panama
Canal tolls, but this and various other differences with England which
arose toward the end of Mr. Wilson's Administration were left over for
settlement by the new President. More urgent, however, was another
ancient issue now revived--the California land question. In 1917, when
America was just entering the war and could not afford any dangerous
entanglements on the Pacific, the Lansing-Ishii agreement was
negotiated with Japan. By this the United States recognized Japan's
"special interests" in China, particularly in "the parts to which her
territory is contiguous," while both powers professed agreement on the
principles of Chinese independence and territorial integrity, and the
open door. However necessary this concession in order to protect an
exposed flank in time of war, it was regarded with much alarm by
friends of China, whose wrath was later aroused by the action of the
President at the Peace Conference in agreeing to the cession of
Shantung to Japan. There was a renewed antagonism between American and
Japanese interests in certain quarters, and the American Army in
Siberia, if it did nothing else, at least kept the Japanese from
seizing Vladivostok until the Americans had left.
With this background, the situation created by the revival of
anti-Japanese agitation in California seemed more or less disquieting,
but when a more stringent land law was enacted by the Californians in
November negotiations between the two Governments began at once and are
still going on at the close of the Administration with good prospect of
agreement.
The President's unpopularity had been so violently expressed by the
election of November 2 that it was bound to be mitigated soon after,
and this natural reaction was aided by the failure of the Republican
Congress to accomplish anything in the short session and by
President-elect Harding's slowness in deciding among candidates offered
for the Cabinet and policies put forward for his attention. As
President Wilson prepared to turn over the executive duties to his
successor there was already evidence that the American public was
returning to a greater appreciation of his services. As a token of the
estimation in which he was still held by the more intelligent circles
abroad, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him in December, 1920; and
European statesmen who had opposed him at the Peace Conference were
already expressing surprise at learning that Mr. Harding believed that
the League of Nations was dead.
_Copyright_ New York _Times_.
_Published through the courtesy of the New York Times._