waiting to be led. But I’m talking of the politicians now. There was
no room for conviction there; each must stick to his brief. That’s
what wrecked us. Not one--not one could I get to own that the right
thing was the wise thing to do: that to be just and fear not was the
real policy which would have saved Europe--and the world.... Look
at it now! Step by step, their failure is coming home to them; but
still it is only as failure that they see it--mere human inability
to surmount insuperable difficulties: the greed, the folly, the
injustice, the blindness, the cruelty of it they don’t see. And the
people don’t teach it them. They can’t. No nation--no victorious
nation--has gotten it at heart to say, “We, too, have sinned.” Lest
such a thing should ever be said or thought, one of the terms of
peace was to hand over all the blame; so, when the enemy signed the
receipt of it, the rest were acquitted. And in that solemn farce
the Allies found satisfaction! What a picture for posterity! And
when they point and laugh, I shall be there with the rest. It’s our
self-righteousness has undone us, Tumulty; it’s that which has made
us blind and hard--and dishonest: for there has been dishonesty
too. Because we were exacting reparations for a great wrong, we
didn’t mind being unjust to the wrongdoer. And so, in Paris, we spent
months, arguing, prevaricating, manœuvring, so as to pretend that
none had had any share in bringing the evil about. When I spoke for
considerate justice, there was no living force behind me in that
council of the Nations. They wanted their revenge, and now they’ve
got it: and look what it is costing them!
(_And then the door opens, and an Attendant enters,
carrying a covered cup upon a tray. Upon this
intrusion the Ex-President turns a little grimly; but
before he can speak, Tumulty interposes._)
TUMULTY. You’ll forgive this little interruption, Governor: I got
domestic orders to see that you took it.... You will?
(_The dictatorial expression softens: with a look of mild
resignation the Ex-President touches the table for the
tray to be set down. And when the Attendant has gone,
he continues_:)
EX-PRES. No, they wouldn’t believe me when I said that to be
revengeful would cost more than to be forgiving. And still they
won’t believe that the trouble they are now in comes--not from the
destructiveness of the War, but from their own destruction of the
Peace. I had the truth in me; but I failed. I was a voice crying into
the void--a President without a people to back me: a dictator--of
words! And they knew that my time was short, and that I had no power
of appeal--because the heart of my people was not with me! If they
had any doubt before, the vote of the Senate told them.
TUMULTY. You said “the people,” Governor?
EX-PRES. The people’s choice, Tumulty. The vote _for_ the Senate, and
the vote _of_ the Senate: where’s the difference?
TUMULTY. Still, I don’t think you know how many were with you right
through: and I’m not speaking only of our own people. Over there it
was your stand gave hope to the best of them, so long as hope was
possible. But they were all so busy holding their breath, maybe they
didn’t make noise enough. Anyway--seems you didn’t hear ’em.
EX-PRES. You can’t reproach me with it, Tumulty----
TUMULTY (_expostulant_). I’m not doing that, Governor!
EX-PRES. ----more than I reproach myself. If that were true, then
it was my business to know it. But what I ought to have known I
realised too late. When I heard those shouting crowds--yes, then,
for a while, I thought it did mean--victory. But in the Conference
at Versailles--Paris--I was in another world: the shouting died out,
and I was alone.... I hadn’t expected to be alone--in there, I mean.
I had reckoned--was it wrong?--on honour counting among those in
high places of authority for more than it did. We went in pledged up
to the hilt: not in detail, not in legal terms, not as politicians,
perhaps; but as men of honour--speaking each for the honour of our
own nation. And that wasn’t enough; for whom people stand pledged
twice over--first in secret, then publicly--it’s difficult to make
them face where honour lies.
TUMULTY. You mean the secret treaties, Governor. That’s been a puzzle
to many of us: what you knew about them, I mean.
EX-PRES. Tumulty, I willed not to know them. Rumour of them reached
me, of course. Had I then given them a hearing, I might have been
charged with complicity, the silence which gave consent. Many were
anxious that I should know of them--at a time when opposition would
have been very difficult--premature, outside my province. And so--by
not knowing--I was free: and when I stated the basis of the Peace
terms, I stated them (and I was secure then in my power to do so)
in terms which should in honour have made those secret treaties no
longer tenable. There was my first great error--I acknowledge it,
Tumulty: that I believed in honour.
TUMULTY (_reluctantly_). Yes ... I see that. But it’s the sort of
thing one can only see after it has happened. You must have got a
pretty deep-down insight into character, Governor, when you came to
the top of things over there, to the top people, I mean.
EX-PRES. (_after a pause, reflectively_). Yes, it was very
interesting, when one got accustomed to it: highly selected humanity,
representative of things--it was afraid of. There daily sat four of
us--if one counts heads only; but we were, in fact, six, or seven,
or eight characters. And the characters sprang up and choked us.
Patriots, statesmen? oh yes! but also “careerists.” Men whose future
depends on the popular vote can’t always be themselves--at least, it
seemed not; for we should then have ceased to be “representative,”
and it was as representatives that we had come. And so one would
sit and listen, and watch--one person, and two characters. Lloyd
George, when his imagination was not swamped in self-satisfaction,
was quite evangelical to listen to--sometimes. But there he was
representative--not of principles, nor of those visionary sparks
which he struck so easily and threw off like matches, but of a
successful election cry for “hanging the Kaiser” and “making Germany
pay.” And having got his majority, he and his majority had become
one. But for that, he might--he just might ... yet who can tell? That
tied him. I was alone.
TUMULTY (_coming nobly to the rescue_). Then take this from me,
Governor: for a man all alone you did wonders.
EX-PRES. I did my best; but I failed. My first mistake was when I
believed in honour; my second, when I let them shut the doors. Yes,
to that he got me to agree. Clever, clever; that was his first win.
TUMULTY. Who, Governor?
EX-PRES. (_with a dry laugh_). The man who told me he was on my side.
The reason?--a kindly means of saving faces for those whom he and I
were going to “persuade”--of making the “climb-down” easier for them!
That seemed a helpful, charitable sort of reason, didn’t it? One it
would have been hard to refuse. I didn’t; so the doors were shut to
cover defeat and disappointment over the secret treaties. Then they
had me: three against one! And their weight told--quite apart from
mere argument; for each had behind him the popular voice (and when
one lost it--you may remember--another came, and took his place).
But against me the popular voice had shut its mouth: I, too, was an
electioneer--a defeated one. Of my lease of power then, less than a
year remained. After the Senate elections I was nothing. In Paris
they knew it: and I could see in their eyes that they were glad. Yes,
_he_ was glad, too.
(_As he speaks, his head sinks in depression. There is a
pause._)
TUMULTY (_in his best sick-bed manner_). Governor, don’t you think
that you’d better rest now?
EX-PRES. (_ignoring the remark_). And so the old secret diplomacy,
balancing for power, with war as the only sure end of it, came back
to life; and I--pledged to its secrecies with the rest--I had to
stay dumb. I was a drowning man, then, Tumulty--clutching at straws,
till I became an adept at it. There, perhaps, as you say, I did do
“wonders”--of a kind: all I could, anyway. That was my plight, while
there in Paris we held high court, and banqueted, and drank healths
from dead men’s skulls. Did nobody guess--outside--what was going
on? I gave one signal that I thought was plain enough, when I sent
for the _George Washington_ to bring me home again. But, though I
listened for it then, there seemed no response. People were so busy,
you say, holding their breath; and _that_ I couldn’t hear.
TUMULTY (_zealous, in a pause, to show his interest_). Well,
Governor, well?
EX-PRES. And then, rather than let me so go and spoil the general
effect (the one power still left to me!), they began to make
concessions--concessions which, I see now, didn’t amount to much; and
so they persuaded me, and I stayed on, and signed my failure with the
rest.
TUMULTY (_for a diversion pointing to the covered cup_). Pardon me,
Governor, you must obey orders, you know. They are not mine.
EX-PRES. (_taking up the cup with a dry smile_). Executive authority
has taught me that obeying orders is much simpler than giving them:
you know when you’ve got them done. (_Removing the cover, he drains
the cup and sets it down again._) There! now let your conscience be
at rest. (_After a pause he resumes_:) Tumulty, when I faced failure,
when I knew that I had failed---- Yes; don’t trouble to contradict
me. I know, dear friend, I know that you don’t agree; and, God bless
you! I also know why.... When I knew _that_, after the whole thing
was over, and I was out again and free, do you suppose I wasn’t
tempted to go out and cry the truth (as some were expecting and
wishing for it to be cried) in the ears of the whole world?--let all
know that I _had_ failed, and so--that way at least--separate myself
from the Evil Thing which there sat smiling at itself in its Hall of
Mirrors--seeing no frustrate ghosts, no death’s heads at that feast,
as I saw them?... I came out a haunted man--all the more because
those I was amongst didn’t believe in ghosts--not then. People
who have been overwhelmingly victorious in a great war find that
difficult. But they will--some day.
TUMULTY. Well, Governor, and supposing you had yielded to this
“Temptation,” as you call it, what’s the proposition?
EX-PRES. This ... I had one power--one weapon, still left to me
unimpaired: to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the
truth, so help me God! And the proposition is just this: whether to
be stark honest, even against the apparent interests of the very
cause you are out to plead, is not in the long run the surest way--if
it be of God--to help it make good: whether defeat, with the whole
truth told, isn’t better than defeat hidden away and disowned, in the
hope that something may yet come of it. You may get a truer judgment
that way in the end; though at the time it may seem otherwise. Yes, I
_was_ tempted to cry it aloud--to make a clean breast of it--to say,
“We, the Governments of the People, the Democracies, the Free Nations
of the world, have failed--have lost the peace which we could have
won, because we would not give up the things which we loved so much
better--profit, revenge, our own too good opinion of ourselves, our
own self-righteous judgment of others.”... I was tempted to it; and
yet it has been charged against me that I would not admit failure
because I wanted to save my face.
TUMULTY. You have never been much scared by what people _said_,
Governor. That didn’t count, I reckon.
EX-PRES. No, Tumulty; but this did--that where all seemed dark,
I still saw light. Down there, among the wreckage, something was
left--an instrument of which I thought I saw the full future
possibility more clearly than others. I believe I do still. And my
main thought then was--how best to secure that one thing to which,
half blindly, they had agreed. To win that, I was willing to give up
my soul.
TUMULTY. It’s the Covenant, you mean, Governor?
EX-PRES. Yes, the Covenant! That at least was won--seemed
won--whatever else was lost. Some of them were willing to let me have
it only because they themselves believed it would prove useless--just
to save my face for all I had to give up in exchange. And so I--let
them “save my face” for me; let them think that it was so--just to
give this one thing its chance. And so, for that, and for that alone,
I bound myself to the Treaty--stood pledged to do my utmost to see
it through: a different thing, that, from telling the truth. Was I
wrong, Tumulty--was I wrong?
TUMULTY. No, no, Governor! You did everything a man could--under the
circumstances.
EX-PRES. I have said that often to myself: and I hope, sometimes,
that it may be true. But a man who gives up anything of the truth, as
he sees it, for reasons however good--can he ever be sure of himself
again?... It’s a new thing for me to ask another man if I have done
wrong. But that’s the way I feel: I don’t myself know. And once,
once, I was so sure--that I was right, and that I should win!
(_The situation has now become one which the friendly
Tumulty would like to control, but cannot. As a
“soul-stirring revelation of character” he finds it,
no doubt, immensely interesting; but to be thus made
Father Confessor of the man whom he has followed with
humble and dog-like devotion, knocks the bottom out
of his world altogether. Moreover, he has received
“domestic orders,” and is not properly obeying them;
and so, dominated by the stronger will, he glances
apprehensively, now and again, toward the door, hoping
that it may open and bring relief, but himself sits
and does nothing. Meanwhile, insistent and remorseless
at self-examination, the Ex-President continues to
wear himself out._)
When a man comes really to himself, Tumulty--sees clearly
within--does it help him toward seeing also what lies outside,
beyond, and ahead--make him more sure that, as regards others, he
has done right? I don’t know--I would give my life to know--if what
I did, when all else had failed, was best. The political forces,
prejudices, antagonisms, the powers of evil around me, have been so
dubiously deceiving and dark, that I do not know now whether to have
been uncompromisingly true to principle would have done any good.
Perhaps after to-day I shall know better; perhaps only now have I
become qualified to judge--a free man at last. Only in the secrecy of
my own heart--now finally removed from all the interests, ambitions,
fears, which gather about a man’s public career--I do most earnestly
and humbly pray that in this one thing I did right--not to discredit
myself too utterly in the world’s eyes, so that _that_, at least,
might live.
TUMULTY (_doing his best_). It _will_ live, Governor!
EX-PRES. It _may_. But in what hands have I had to leave it? To men
who have no faith in it, to men who dislike it, to men who will try
persistently, sedulously, day in, day out, to turn it back to their
own selfish ends. There, in those hands, its fate will lie--perhaps
for a generation to come. And it is only by faith in the common
people, not in their politicians, that I dare look forward and hope
that the instrument--blunt and one-sided though it be now--may yet
become mighty and two-edged and sharp, a sword in the hand of a
giant--of one whose balances are those of justice, not of power. But
_I_ shan’t see it, Tumulty; it won’t be in my day. If America had
come in, I should! That was the keystone of my policy: that gone, my
policy has failed. That was my faith--is still; for faith can live on
when policies lie dead. Think what it might have been! America, with
that weapon to her hand, could have shaped the world’s future, made
it a democracy of free nations--image and superscription no longer
Cæsar’s--but Man’s. That--that was what I saw!
TUMULTY. Perhaps they saw it too, Governor. If they did, it might
help to explain matters.
EX-PRES. The Covenant was the instrument--and would have sufficed. So
organised, America’s voice in all future contentions would have been
too strong, and just, and decisive to be gainsayed. Then life would
have been in it, then it would have prospered and become mighty. It
would have meant--within a generation from now--world-peace. Of that
I had a sure sense: it would have come. To make that possible, what
I had to yield to present jealousies, discords, blindness, was of
no account--only look far enough! For there, in the future, was the
instrument for correcting them--the people’s vote for the first time
internationally applied. And I had in me such faith that America,
secure of her place in the world’s councils, would have wrought to
make justice international, and peace no longer a dream! Was I wrong,
Tumulty, was I wrong?
TUMULTY (_expanding himself_). No man who believes in America as much
as I do will ever say you were wrong, Governor.
EX-PRES. But when America stood out--when the Senate refused to
ratify--then I _was_ wrong. For then, what I had backed--all that
remained then--was a thing of shreds and patches. Nobody can think
worse of the Treaty than I do with America out of it, with the
Covenant left the one-sided and precarious thing it now is. Had
we only been in it--the rest wouldn’t have mattered. Call it a
dung-heap, if you like; yet out of it would have sprung life. It
may still; but _I_ shan’t see it, Tumulty; and that vision, which
was then so clear, has become a doubt. Was I wrong--was I wrong to
pretend that I had won anything worth winning? Would it not have been
better to say “I have failed”?
TUMULTY. Forgive me, Governor: you are looking at things from a
tired-out mind. That’s not fair, you know.
EX-PRES. But if you knew, oh, if you knew against what odds I fought
even to get that! They knew that they had got me down; and the only
card left me at last was their own reluctance to let a discredited
President go back to his own people and show them his empty hands,
and tell them that he had failed. So a bargain was struck, and this
one thing was given me, that peradventure it might have life--if I,
for my part, would come back here and plead the ratification of the
Treaty which they--and I--had made. Could I have done that with any
effect, had I said that in almost everything I had failed?
TUMULTY. Chief, I think you did right. But I still feel I’m up a
back street. How could things have come to fail as much as they did?
After all, it was a just war.
EX-PRES. Tumulty, I have been asking myself whether there can be
such a thing as a “just war.” There can be--please God!--there must
be sometimes a just _cause_ for war. When one sees great injustice
done, sees it backed by the power of a blindly militarised nation,
marching confidently to victory, then, if justice has any place in
the affairs of men, there is sometimes just cause for war. But can
there be--a just war? I mean--when the will to war takes hold of a
people--does it remain the same people? Does war in its hands remain
an instrument that can be justly used? Can it be waged justly? Can
it be won justly? Can it, having been won, make to a just peace?
No! Something happens: there comes a change; war in a people’s mind
drives justice out.... Can soldiers fight without “seeing red”--can
a nation? Not when nations have to fight on the tremendous scale
of modern war. Then they are like those monstrous mechanisms of
long-range destructiveness, which we so falsely call “weapons of
precision,” but which are in fact so horribly unprecise that, once
let loose, we cannot know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence,
of virtue, they are going to destroy. You find your range, you
fix your elevation, you touch a button: you hear your gun go off.
And over there, among the unarmed--the weak, the defenceless, the
infirm--it has done--what? Singled out for destruction what life or
lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?--you do not know. So with nations,
when once they have gone to war; their imprecision becomes--horrible;
though the cause of your war may be just.
(_Tumulty gives a profound nod, paying his chief the
compliment of letting it be seen that he is causing
him to think deeply._)
That’s what happened here. Do you remember, did you realise, Tumulty,
what a power my voice was in the world--till we went in?--that,
because I had the power to keep them back from war (for there my
constitutional prerogative was absolute), even my opponents had to
give weight to my words. They were angry, impatient, but they had
to obey. And, because they could not help themselves, they accepted
point by point my building up of the justice of our cause. They
didn’t care for justice; but I spoke for the Nation then; and, with
justice as my one end, I drove home my point. And then--we went in.
After that, justice became vengeance. When our men went over the
trenches, fighting with short arms, “_Lusitania!_” was their cry: and
they took few prisoners--you know that, Tumulty.
(_Over that point the Ex-President pauses, though Tumulty
sees no special reason why he should pause._)
The _Lusitania_ had been sunk, and still we had not gone to war, and
no crowds came to cry it madly outside the White House as they might
have done--if that was how they felt then. The _Lusitania_ lies at
the bottom of the sea. There are proposals for salving her; but I
think that there she will remain. The salving might tell too much.
TUMULTY. You mean that talk about fuse caps being on board might have
been true? Would it matter now?
EX-PRES. Yes. It was a horrible thing in any case--disproportionate,
like most other acts of war--and it did immeasurable harm to those
who thought to benefit. But this--I still only guess--might do too
much good--bring things a little nearer to proportion again, which
the Treaty did not try to do.... What I’ve been realising these
last two years is a terrible thing. You go to war, you get up to it
from your knees--God driving you to it--unable, yes, unable to do
else. Your will is to do right, your cause is just, you are a united
nation, a people convinced, glad, selfless, with hearts heroic and
clean. And then war takes hold of it, and it all changes under your
eyes; you see the heart of your people becoming fouled, getting
hard, self-righteous, revengeful. Your cause remains, in theory,
what it was at the beginning; but it all goes to the Devil. And the
Devil makes on it a pile that he can make no otherwise--because
of the virtue that is in it, the love, the beauty, the heroism,
the giving-up of so much that man’s heart desires. That’s where he
scores! Look at all that valiance, that beauty of life gone out to
perish for a cause it knows to be right; think of the generosity of
that giving by the young men; think of the faithful courage of the
women who steel themselves to let them go; think of the increase of
spirit and selflessness which everywhere rises to meet the claim.
All over the land which goes to war that is happening (and in the
enemy’s land it is the same), making war a sacred and a holy thing.
And having got it so sanctified, then the Devil can do with it almost
what he likes. That’s what he has done, Tumulty. If angels led horses
by the bridle at the Marne (as a pious legend tells), at Versailles
the Devil had his muzzled oxen treading out the corn. And of those--I
was one! Yes; war muzzles you. You cannot tell the truth; if you did,
it wouldn’t be believed. And so, finally, comes peace; and over that,
too, the Devil runs up his flag--cross-bones and a skull.
TUMULTY (_struggling in the narrow path between wrong and right_).
But what else, Governor, is your remedy? We had to go to war; we were
left with no choice in the matter.
EX-PRES. No, we _had_ no choice. And what others had any
choice?--what people, I mean? But that is what everyone--once we
were at war--refused to remember. And so we cried “_Lusitania!_”
against thousands of men who had no choice in the matter at all.
Remedy? There’s only one. Somehow we must get men to believe that
Christ wasn’t a mad idealist when He preached His Sermon on the
Mount; that what He showed for the world’s salvation then was not a
sign only, but the very Instrument itself. We’ve got to make men see
that there’s something in human nature waiting to respond to a new
law. There are two things breeding in the world--love and hatred;
breeding the one against the other. And there’s fear making hatred
breed fast, and there’s fear making love breed slow. Even as things
now are, it has managed--it has just managed to keep pace; but only
just. If men were not afraid--Love would win.
That, I’ve come to see, is the simple remedy; but it’s going to be
the hardest thing to teach--because all the world is so much afraid.
(_And then, the worn, haggard man, having thus talked
himself out, there enters by the benign intervention
of Providence a Gracious Presence, more confident than
he in her own ruling power. She moves quietly toward
them, and her voice, when she speaks, is corrective of
a situation she does not approve._)
THE PRESENCE. Mr. Tumulty ... my dear.
(_Resting her hands on the back of the Ex-President’s
chair, she surveys them benevolently but critically.
Then her attention is directed to the covered cup
standing on its tray._)
Have you taken your----
EX-PRES. My medicine? Yes. Your orders came through, and have been
obeyed.
THE PRESENCE. It wasn’t medicine. I made it myself.
EX-PRES. Then I beg its pardon--and yours.