Behind all our differences, in the party (as, with such big issues,
couldn't be avoided)--well; they didn't cut so deep as they seemed to.
They were all proud of you, even though we couldn't always agree. Of
course there've been exceptions.
EX-PRES. I don't want to judge the exceptions now (as perhaps I have done
in the past) more hardly than I judge myself ... Tumulty, I've failed.
TUMULTY (_extenuatingly_.) In a way--yes: for a time, no doubt.
EX-PRES. Absolutely.
TUMULTY. I don't agree.
EX-PRES. Because you don't know.
TUMULTY. Governor, I know a good deal.
EX-PRES. Oh, yes; you've been a right hand to me--all through. Others
weren't. So I had to leave them alone, and--be alone. When I made that
choice, it seemed not to matter: my case was so strong--and I had such
faith in it! It was that did for me!
TUMULTY. Chief, I'm not out to argue with you--to make you more tired than
you are already. But if I don't say anything, please don't think I'm
agreeing with you.
EX-PRES. I'm accustomed to people not agreeing with me, Tumulty.... Yes:
too much faith--not in what I stood for, but in myself: perhaps--though
there I'm not so sure--perhaps too little in others. To some I gave too
much: and the mischief was done before I knew.
TUMULTY. You don't need to name him, President.
EX-PRES. I don't need to name anyone now. Sometimes a man may know his own
points of weakness too well--guard against them to excess, be overcautious
because of them; and then, trying to correct himself, just for once he's
not cautious enough. But where I failed was in getting the loyalty and
cooperation of those who didn't agree with me so thoroughly as you did.
And I ought to have done it; for that is a part of government. Your good
executive is the man who gets all fish into his net. I failed: I caught
some good men, but I let others go. There was fine material to my hand
which I didn't recognise, or didn't use so well as I should have done. I
hadn't the faculty of letting others think for me: when I tried, it went
badly; they didn't respond. So--I did all myself.
TUMULTY (_airing himself a little_). You always listened to
_me_, Governor.
EX-PRES. Yes, Tumulty, yes. And you weren't offended when I--didn't pay
any attention.
TUMULTY. When you _had_ paid attention, you mean.
EX-PRES. Perhaps I do. My way of paying attention has struck others
differently. They think I'm one who doesn't listen--who doesn't want to
listen. It's a terrible thing, Tumulty, when one sees and knows the truth
so absolutely, but cannot convince others. That's been my fate: to be so
sure that I was right (I'm as sure of that now as ever) and yet to fail.
Here--there--it has been always the same. I went over to Paris thinking to
save the Peace: there came a point when I thought it was saved; it would
have been had the Senate backed me--it could have been done then. But when
I put the case to which already we stood pledged, I convinced nobody. They
did not want justice to be done.
TUMULTY. But you had a great following, Governor. You had a wonderful
reception when you got to Paris.
EX-PRES. Yes: in London too. It seemed then as if people were only 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, manoeuvring, 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 Caesar'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.