_Pretoria, South Africa, January 8, 1921._
It has been suggested that I should write a short estimate and
appraisal of the work of President Wilson on the termination of his
Presidency of the United States of America. I feel I must comply with
the suggestion. I feel I may not remain silent when there is an
opportunity to say a word of appreciation for the work of one with whom
I came into close contact at a great period and who rendered the most
signal service to the great human cause.
There is a great saying of Mommsen (I believe) in reference to the
close of Hannibal's career in failure and eclipse: "On those whom the
gods love they lavish infinite joys and infinite sorrows." It has come
back to my mind in reference to the close of Wilson's career. For a few
brief moments he was not only the leader of the greatest State in the
world; he was raised to far giddier heights and became the center of
the world's hopes. And then he fell, misunderstood and rejected by his
own people, and his great career closes apparently in signal and tragic
defeat.
_Position of Terrible Greatness_
What is the explanation for this tremendous tragedy, which is not
solely American, which closely concerns the whole world? Of course,
there are purely American elements in the explanation which I am not
competent to speak on. But besides the American quarrel with President
Wilson there is something to be said on the great matters in issue. On
these I may be permitted to say a few words.
The position occupied by President Wilson in the world's imagination at
the close of the great war and at the beginning of the peace conference
was terrible in its greatness. It was a terrible position for any mere
man to occupy. Probably to no human being in all history did the hopes,
the prayers, the aspirations of many millions of his fellows turn with
such poignant intensity as to him at the close of the war. At a time of
the deepest darkness and despair, he had raised aloft a light to which
all eyes had turned. He had spoken divine words of healing and
consolation to a broken humanity. His lofty moral idealism seemed for a
moment to dominate the brutal passions which had torn the Old World
asunder. And he was supposed to possess the secret which would remake
the world on fairer lines. The peace which Wilson was bringing to the
world was expected to be God's peace. Prussianism lay crushed; brute
force had failed utterly. The moral character of the universe had been
signally vindicated. There was a universal vague hope in a great moral
peace, of a new world order arising visibly and immediately on the
ruins of the old. This hope was not a mere superficial sentiment. It
was the intense expression at the end of the war of the inner moral and
spiritual force which had upborne the peoples during the dark night of
the war and had nerved them in an effort almost beyond human strength.
Surely, God had been with them in that long night of agony. His was the
victory; His should be the peace. And President Wilson was looked upon
as the man to make this great peace. He had voiced the great ideals of
the new order; his great utterances had become the contractual basis
for the armistice and the peace. The idealism of Wilson would surely
become the reality of the new order of things in the peace treaty.
_Saved the "Little Child"_
In this atmosphere of extravagant, almost frenzied expectation he
arrived at the Paris Peace Conference. Without hesitation he plunged
into that inferno of human passions. He went down into the Pit like a
second Heracles to bring back the fair Alcestis of the world's desire.
There were six months of agonized waiting, during which the world
situation rapidly deteriorated. And then he emerged with the peace
treaty. It was not a Wilson peace, and he made a fatal mistake in
somehow giving the impression that the peace was in accord with his
Fourteen Points and his various declarations. Not so the world had
understood him. This was a punic peace, the same sort of peace as the
victor had dictated to the vanquished for thousands of years. It was
not Alcestis; it was a haggard, unlovely woman with features distorted
with hatred, greed and selfishness, and the little child that the woman
carried was scarcely noticed. Yet it was for the saving of the child
that Wilson had labored until he was a physical wreck. Let our other
great statesmen and leaders enjoy their well-earned honors for their
unquestioned success at Paris. To Woodrow Wilson, the apparent failure,
belongs the undying honor, which will grow with the growing centuries,
of having saved the "little child that shall lead them yet." No other
statesman but Wilson could have done it. And he did it.
_People Did Not Understand_
The people, the common people of all lands, did not understand the
significance of what had happened. They saw only that hard, unlovely
Prussian peace, and the great hope died in their hearts. The great
disillusionment took its place. The most receptive mood for a new start
the world had been in for centuries passed away. Faith in their
governors and leaders was largely destroyed and the foundations of the
human government were shaken in a way which will be felt for
generations. The Paris peace lost an opportunity as unique as the great
war itself. In destroying the moral idealism born of the sacrifices of
the war it did almost as much as the war itself in shattering the
structure of Western civilization.
And the odium for all this fell especially on President Wilson. Round
him the hopes had centered; round him the disillusion and despair now
gathered. Popular opinion largely held him responsible for the bitter
disappointment and grievous failure. The cynics scoffed; his friends
were silenced in the universal disappointment. Little or nothing had
been expected from the other leaders; the whole failure was put to the
account of Woodrow Wilson. And finally America for reasons of her own
joined the pack and at the end it was his own people who tore him to
pieces.
_Must Wait for Judgment_
Will this judgment, born of momentary disillusion and disappointment,
stand in future, or will it be reversed? The time has not come to pass
final judgment on either Wilson or any of the other great actors in the
drama at Paris. The personal estimates will depend largely on the
interpretation of that drama in the course of time. As one who saw and
watched things from the inside, I feel convinced that the present
popular estimates are largely superficial and will not stand the
searching test of time. And I have no doubt whatever that Wilson has
been harshly, unfairly, unjustly dealt with, and that he has been made
a scapegoat for the sins of others. Wilson made mistakes, and there
were occasions when I ventured to sound a warning note. But it was not
his mistakes that caused the failure for which he has been held mainly
responsible.
Let us admit the truth, however bitter it is to do so, for those who
believe in human nature. It was not Wilson who failed. The position is
far more serious. It was the human spirit itself that failed at Paris.
It is no use passing judgments and making scapegoats of this or that
individual statesman or group of statesmen. Idealists make a great
mistake in not facing the real facts sincerely and resolutely. They
believe in the power of the spirit, in the goodness which is at the
heart of things, in the triumph which is in store for the great moral
ideals of the race. But this faith only too often leads to an optimism
which is sadly and fatally at variance with actual results.
_Says Humanity Failed_
It is the realist and not the idealist who is generally justified by
events. We forget that the human spirit, the spirit of goodness and
truth in the world, is still only an infant crying in the night, and
that the struggle with darkness is as yet mostly an unequal struggle.
Paris proved this terrible truth once more. It was not Wilson who
failed there, but humanity itself. It was not the statesmen that failed
so much as the spirit of the peoples behind them. The hope, the
aspiration for a new world order of peace and right and
justice--however deeply and universally felt--was still only feeble and
ineffective in comparison with the dominant national passions which
found their expression in the peace treaty. Even if Wilson had been one
of the great demi-gods of the human race, he could not have saved the
peace. Knowing the Peace Conference as I knew it from within, I feel
convinced in my own mind that not the greatest man born of woman in the
history of the race would have saved that situation. The great hope was
not the heralding of the coming dawn, as the peoples thought, but only
a dim intimation of some far-off event toward which we shall yet have
to make many a long, weary march. Sincerely as we believed in the moral
ideals for which he had fought, the temptation at Paris of a large
booty to be divided proved too great. And in the end not only the
leaders but the peoples preferred a bit of booty here, a strategic
frontier there, a coal field or an oil well, an addition to their
population or their resources--to all the faint allurements of the
ideal. As I said at the time, the real peace was still to come, and it
could only come from a new spirit in the peoples themselves.
_Wilson Had to Be Conciliated_
What was really saved at Paris was the child--the covenant of the
League of Nations. The political realists who had their eye on the loot
were prepared--however reluctantly--to throw up that innocent little
sop to President Wilson and his fellow idealists. After all, there was
not much harm in it, it threatened no present national interest, and it
gave great pleasure to a number of good unpractical people in most
countries. Above all, President Wilson had to be conciliated, and this
was the last and the greatest of the fourteen points on which he had
set his heart and by which he was determined to stand or fall. And so
he got his way. But it is a fact that only a man of his great power and
influence and dogged determination could have carried the covenant
through that Peace Conference. Others had seen with him the great
vision; others had perhaps given more thought to the elaboration of the
great plan. But his was the power and the will that carried it through.
The covenant is Wilson's souvenir to the future of the world. No one
will ever deny that honor.
_Great Creative Document_
The honor is very great, indeed, for the covenant is one of the great
creative documents of human history. The peace treaty will fade into
merciful oblivion and its provisions will be gradually obliterated by
the great human tides sweeping over the world. But the covenant will
stand as sure as fate. Forty-two nations gathered round it at the first
meeting of the League at Geneva. And the day is not far off when all
the free peoples of the world will gather around it. It must succeed,
because there is no other way for the future of civilization. It does
not realize the great hopes born of the war, but it provides the only
method and instrument by which in the course of time those hopes can be
realized. Speaking as one who has some right to speak on the
fundamental conceptions, objects and methods of the covenant, I feel
sure that most of the present criticism is based on misunderstandings.
These misunderstandings will clear away, one by one the peoples still
outside the covenant will fall in behind this banner, under which the
human race is going to march forward to triumphs of peaceful
organization and achievements undreamt of by us children of an
unhappier era. And the leader who, in spite of apparent failure,
succeeded in inscribing his name on that banner has achieved the most
enviable and enduring immortality. Americans of the future will yet
proudly and gratefully rank him with Washington and Lincoln, and his
name will have a more universal significance than theirs.
[Illustration: THE NOBLE PEACE PRIZE 1920
WITHOUT THE ADVICE AND CONSENT OF THE SENATE.
KIRBY IN THE NEW YORK _World_
"We die without distinction if we are not willing to die the death
of sacrifice. Do you covet honor? You will never get it by serving
yourself. Do you covet distinction? You will get it only as a
servant of mankind."
--Woodrow Wilson's Address
at Swarthmore College
Oct. 5, 1913.]
_Woodrow Wilson_