_Two pictures are in my mind. First, the Hall of Representatives
crowded from floor to gallery with expectant throngs. Presently it
is announced that the President of the United States will address
Congress. There steps out to the Speaker's desk a straight,
vigorous, slender man, active and alert. He is sixty years of age,
but he looks not more than forty-five, so lithe of limb, so alert
of bearing, so virile. It is Woodrow Wilson reading his great war
message. The other picture is only three and a half years later.
There is a parade of Veterans of the Great War. They are to be
reviewed by the President on the east terrace of the White House.
In a chair sits a man, your President, broken in health, but still
alert in mind. His hair is white, his shoulders bowed, his figure
bent. He is sixty-three years old, but he looks older. It is
Woodrow Wilson. Presently, in the procession there appears an
ambulance laden with wounded soldiers, the maimed, the halt and the
blind. As they pass they salute, slowly reverently. The President's
right hand goes up in answering salute. I glanced at him. There
were tears in his eyes. The wounded is greeting the wounded; those
in the ambulance, he in the chair, are alike, casualties of the
Great War._
_From address by Joseph P. Tumulty_
_Thursday, Oct. 28, 1920_
When the armistice was signed one of the most eminent of living British
statesmen gave it as his opinion that the war had lasted two years too
long, and that the task of salvaging an enduring peace from the wreck
had become well-nigh insuperable. It will always be one of the
fascinating riddles of history to guess what the result would have been
if Mr. Wilson's final proposals for mediation had been accepted. The
United States would not have entered the war, and a less violent
readjustment of the internal affairs of Europe would probably have
resulted. There would have been no Bolshevist revolution in Russia and
no economic collapse of Europe. Nor is it certain that most of the
really enduring benefits of the Treaty of Versailles could not have
been as well obtained by negotiation as they were finally obtained
through a military victory which cost a price that still staggers
humanity.
Be that as it may, the German Government, now fighting to maintain the
dynasty and the Junker domination, took the issue out of Mr. Wilson's
hands. Ten days after his "peace without victory" address the German
autocracy put into effect its cherished programme of ruthless submarine
warfare. The only possible answer on the part of the United States was
the dismissal of Count von Bernstorff the German Ambassador, and from
that time war between the United States and Germany was only a matter
of days. But Mr. Wilson had achieved the great purpose that he had
formulated two years before. He had been balked in his efforts at
mediation, but he had united the American people on the issues of the
conflict. He had demonstrated to them that their Government had exerted
every honorable means to avoid war and that its hands were clean. There
was no uncertainty in their own minds that the responsibility for the
war rested solely on Germany, and Mr. Wilson now purposed to write the
terms of peace with the sword.
_A Call to a Crusade_
Mr. Wilson's War Address on the night of April 2, 1917, was the most
dramatic event that the National Capitol had ever known. In the
presence of both branches of Congress, of the Supreme Court, of the
Cabinet and of the Diplomatic Corps, Mr. Wilson summoned the American
people not to a war but to a crusade in words that instantaneously
captivated the imagination of the Nation:
But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for
the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for
democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a
voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of
small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert
of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and
make the world at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our
lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that
we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come
when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the
principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which
she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.
This was not Woodrow Wilson, the intellectual aristocrat, who was
speaking, but Woodrow Wilson, the fervent democrat, proclaiming a new
declaration of independence to the embattled peoples.
No sooner had Congress declared war than Mr. Wilson proceeded to
mobilize all the resources of the Nation and throw them into the
conflict. This war was different from any other war in which the United
States had ever engaged, not only by reason of its magnitude but by
reason of the necessity for coordinating American military plans with
the military plans of the Allies. The Allies were not quite agreed as
to what they desired of the United States, aside from unlimited
financial assistance, and the solution of the general problem depended
more or less on the trend of events.
The test of any war policy is its success, and it is a waste of time to
enter into a vindication of the manner in which the Wilson
Administration made war, or to trouble about the accusations of waste
and extravagance, as if war were an economic process which could be
carried on prudently and frugally. The historian is not likely to
devote serious attention to the partisan accusations relating to Mr.
Wilson's conduct of the war, but he will find it interesting to record
the manner in which the President brought his historical knowledge to
bear in shaping the war policies of the country.
The voluntary system and the draft system had both been discredited in
the Civil War, so Mr. Wilson demanded a Selective-Service Act under
which the country could raise 10,000,000 troops, if 10,000,000 troops
were needed, without deranging its essential industries. It had taken
Mr. Lincoln three years to find a General whom he could intrust with
the command of the Union armies. Mr. Wilson picked his Commander in
Chief before he went to war and then gave to Gen. Pershing the same
kind of ungrudging support that Mr. Lincoln gave to Gen. Grant. The
Civil War had been financed by greenbacks and bond issues peddled by
bankers. Mr. Wilson called on the American people to finance their own
war, and they unhesitatingly responded. In the war with Spain the
commissary system had broken down completely owing to the antiquated
methods that were employed. No other army in time of war was ever so
well fed or so well cared for as that of the United States in the
conflict with Germany.
_Wilson as a War President_
Mistakes there were in plenty, both in methods and in the choice of
men, and errors of judgment and the shortcomings that always result
from a lack of experience, but the impartial verdict of history must be
that when everything is set forth on the debit side of the balance
sheet which can be set forth Mr. Wilson remains the most vigorous of
all the war Presidents. Yet it is also true that history will concern
itself far less with Mr. Wilson as a war President than with Mr. Wilson
as a peace-making President. It is around him as a peace-making
President that all the passions and prejudices and disappointments of
the world still rage.
Mr. Wilson in his "peace without victory" address to the Senate
previous to the entrance of the United States into the war had sketched
a general plan of a cooperative peace. "I am proposing, as it were," he
said, "that the nations with one accord should adopt the doctrine of
President Monroe as the doctrine of the world." He returned to the
subject again in his War Address, in which he defined the principles
for which the United States was to fight and the principles on which an
enduring peace could be made. The time came when it was necessary to be
still more specific.
In the winter of 1918 the morale of the Allies was at its lowest ebb.
Russia had passed into the hands of the Bolsheviki and was preparing to
make a separate peace with Germany. There was widespread discontent in
Italy, and everywhere in Europe soldiers and civilians were asking one
another what they were really fighting for. On January 8 Mr. Wilson
went before Congress and delivered the address which contained the
Fourteen Points of peace, a message which was greeted both in the
United States and in Europe as a veritable Magna Charta of the nations.
Mr. Wilson had again become the spokesman of the aspirations of
mankind, and from the moment that this address was delivered the
thrones of the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs ceased to be stable.
Ten months later they were to crumble and collapse. Before the
armistice was signed on Nov. 11, 1918, Mr. Wilson had overthrown the
doctrine of Divine right in Europe. The Hapsburgs ran away. The Kaiser
was compelled to abdicate and take refuge in exile, justifying his
flight by the explanation that Wilson would not make peace with Germany
while a Hohenzollern was on the throne. This was the climax of Mr.
Wilson's power and influence and, strangely enough, it was the dawn of
his own day of disaster.
For nearly six years Mr. Wilson had manipulated the Government of the
United States with a skill that was almost uncanny. He had turned
himself from a minority President into a majority President. He had so
deftly outmanoeuvred all his opponents in Congress and out of Congress
that they had nothing with which to console themselves except their
intensive hatred of the man and all that pertained to him. Then at the
very summit of his career he made his first fatal blunder.
Every President in the off-year election urges the election of a
Congress of his own party. That is part of the routine of politics, and
during the campaign of 1918 Mr. Wilson's advisers urged him to follow
the precedent. What they forgot and he forgot was that it was no time
for partisan precedents, and he allowed his distrust of the Republican
leaders in Congress to sweep him into an inexcusable error that he, of
all men, should have avoided. The Sixty-fifth Congress was anything but
popular. The Western farmers were aggrieved because the price of wheat
had been regulated and the price of cotton had not. The East was
greatly dissatisfied with the war taxes, which it regarded as an unfair
discrimination, and it remembered Mr. Kitchin's boast that the North
wanted the war and the North would have to pay for it. There was
general complaint from business interests against the Southern
Democratic control of the legislative department, and all this
sentiment instantly crystallized when the President asked for another
Democratic Congress. Republicans who were loyally supporting the
Administration in all its war activities were justly incensed that a
party issue had been raised. A Republican Congress was elected and by
inference the President sustained a personal defeat.
Misfortunes did not come singly in Mr. Wilson's case. Following the
mistake of appealing for the election of a Democratic Congress he made
an equally serious mistake in the selection of his Peace Commission.
To anybody who knows Mr. Wilson, who knows Mr. Lloyd George, who knows
Mr. Clemenceau, nothing could be sillier than the chapters of Keynes
and Dillon in which they undertake to picture the President's unfitness
to cope with the European masters of diplomacy. Mr. Wilson for years
had been playing with European masters of diplomacy as a cat plays with
a mouse. To assume that Mr. Wilson was ever deceived by the transparent
tactics of Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Clemenceau is to assume the
impossible. It would be as easy to conceive of his being tricked and
bamboozled by the United States Senate.
_The Peace Commission_
Mr. Wilson needed strong Republican representation on the Peace
Commission not to reinforce him in his struggles with his adversaries
at Paris but to divide with him the responsibility for a treaty of
peace that was doomed in advance to be a disappointment. Although the
popular sentiment of Europe was almost passionate in its advocacy of
President Wilson's peace program, all the special interests that were
seeking to capitalize the peace for their own advantage or profit were
actively at work and were beginning to swing all the influence that
they could command on their various Governments. It was inevitable from
the outset that Mr. Wilson could never get the peace that he had
expected. The treaty was bound to be a series of compromises that would
satisfy nobody, and when Mr. Wilson assumed all the responsibility for
it in advance he assumed a responsibility that no stateman who had ever
lived could carry alone. Had he taken Mr. Root or Mr. Taft or both of
them with him the terms of the Treaty of Versailles might have been no
different, but the Senate would have been robbed of the partisan
grievance on which it organized the defeat of ratification.
Day after day during the conference Mr. Wilson fought the fight for a
peace that represented the liberal thought of the world. Day after day
the odds against him lengthened. The contest finally resolved itself
into a question of whether he should take what he could get or whether
he should withdraw from the conference and throw the doors open to
chaos. The President made the only decision that he had a moral right
to make. He took what he could get, nor are the statesmen with whom he
was associated altogether to blame because he did not get more. They
too had to contend against forces over which they had no control. They
were not free agents either, and Mr. Smuts has summed up the case in
two sentences:
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.
All the passions and hatreds bred of four years of merciless warfare,
all the insatiable fury for revenge, all the racial ambitions that had
been twisted and perverted by centuries of devious diplomacy--these
were all gathered around the council table, clamorous in their demand
to dictate the terms.
Mr. Wilson surrendered more than he dreamed he was surrendering, but it
is not difficult to follow his line of reasoning. The League of Nations
was to be a continuing court of equity, sitting in judgment on the
peace itself, revising its terms when revision became necessary and
possible, slowly readjusting the provisions of the treaty to a calmer
and saner state of public mind. Get peace first. Establish the League,
and the League would rectify the inevitable mistakes of the treaty.
It is a curious commentary on human nature that when the treaty was
completed and the storm of wrath broke, all the rage, all the
resentment, all the odium should have fallen on the one man who had
struggled week in and week out against the forces of reaction and
revenge and had written into the treaty all that it contains which
makes for the international advancement of the race.
_Why The Treaty Was Beaten_
Into that record must also go the impressive fact that the Treaty of
Versailles was rejected by the United States Senate, under the
leadership of Henry Cabot Lodge, not because of its acknowledged
defects and shortcomings, not because it breathed the spirit of a
Carthaginian peace in its punitive clauses, but because of its most
enlightened provision, the covenant of the League of Nations, which is
the one hope of a war-racked world.
When people speak of the tragedy of Mr. Wilson's career they have in
mind only the temporary aspects of it--the universal dissatisfaction
with the treaty of peace, his physical collapse, his defeat in the
Senate and the verdict at the polls in November. They forget that the
end of the chapter is not yet written. The League of Nations is a fact,
whatever the attitude of the United States may be toward it, and it
will live unless the peoples of the earth prove their political
incapacity to use it for the promotion of their own welfare. The
principle of self-determination will remain as long as men believe in
the right of self-government and are willing to die for it. It was
Woodrow Wilson who wrote that principle into the law of nations, even
though he failed to obtain a universal application of it. Tacitus said
of the Catti tribesmen, "Others go to battle; these go to war," and Mr.
Wilson went to war in behalf of the democratic theory of government
extended to all the affairs of the nations. That war is not yet won,
and the Commander in Chief is crippled by the wounds that he received
on the field of action. But the responsibility for the future does not
rest with him. It rests with the self-governing peoples for whom he has
blazed the trail. All the complicated issues of this titanic struggle
finally reduce themselves to these prophetic words of Maximilian
Harden: "Only one conqueror's work will endure--Wilson's thought."
Woodrow Wilson on this morning of the fourth of March can say, in the
words of Paul the Apostle to Timothy:
"_For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is
at hand._
"_I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have
kept the faith._"
Copyright 1921, New York _World_.
_The Covenant of the League of Nations_