was hardly more than a name in Europe, and it was not a synonym for
statecraft. His ethical objections to the rule of Huerta in Mexico, his
attempt to engraft democratic principles there, and the anarchy that
came of it were matters of history. But the President of the nation to
whose unbounded generosity and altruism the world owes a debt of
gratitude that can only be acknowledged, not repaid, deservedly enjoyed
a superlative measure of respect from his foreign colleagues, and the
author of the project which was to link all nations together by ties of
moral kinship was literally idolized by the masses. Never has it fallen
to my lot to see any mortal so enthusiastically, so spontaneously
welcomed by the dejected peoples of the universe. His most casual
utterances were caught up as oracles. He occupied a height so far aloft
that the vicissitudes of everyday life and the contingencies of politics
seemingly could not touch him. He was given credit for a rare degree of
selflessness in his conceptions and actions and for a balance of
judgment which no storms of passion could upset. So far as one could
judge by innumerable symptoms, President Wilson was confronted with an
opportunity for good incomparably vaster than had ever before been
within the reach of man.
Soon after the opening of the Conference the shadowy outlines of his
portrait began to fill in, slowly at first, and before three months had
passed the general public beheld it fairly complete, with many of its
natural lights and shades. The quality of an active politician is never
more clearly brought out than when, raised to an eminent place, he is
set an arduous feat in sight of the multitude. Mr. Wilson's task was
manifestly congenial to him, for it was deliberately chosen by himself,
and it comprised the most tremendous problems ever tackled by man born
of woman. The means by which he set to work to solve them were
startlingly simple: the regeneration of the human race was to be
compassed by means of magisterial edicts secretly drafted and sternly
imposed on the interested peoples, together with a new and not wholly
appropriate nomenclature.
In his own country, where he has bitter adversaries as well as devoted
friends, Mr. Wilson was regarded by many as a composite being made up
of preacher, teacher, and politician. To these diverse elements they
refer the fervor and unction, the dogmatic tone, and the practised
shrewdness that marked his words and acts. Independent American opinion
doubted his qualifications to be a leader. As a politician, they said,
he had always followed the crowd. He had swum with the tide of public
sentiment in cardinal matters, instead of stemming or canalizing and
guiding it. Deficient in courageous initiative, he had contented himself
with merely executive functions. No new idea, no fresh policy, was
associated with his name. His singular attitude on the Mexican imbroglio
had provoked the sharp criticism even of friends and the condemnation of
political opponents. His utterances during the first stages of the World
War, such as the statement that the American people were too proud to
fight and had no concern with the causes and objects of the war,[55]
when contrasted with the opposite views which he propounded later on,
were ascribed to quick political evolution--but were not taken as
symptoms of a settled mind. He seemed a pacifist when his pride revolted
at the idea of settling any intelligible question by an appeal to
violence, and a semi-militarist when, having in his own opinion created
a perfectly safe and bloodless peace guarantee in the shape of the
League of Nations, he agreed to safeguard it by a military compact which
sapped its foundation. He owed his re-election for a second term partly,
it was alleged, to the belief that during the first he had kept his
country out of the war despite the endeavors of some of its eminent
leaders to bring it in; yet when firmly seated in the saddle, he
followed the leaders whom he had theretofore with-stood and obliged the
nation to fight.
As chief of the great country, his domestic critics add, which had just
turned victory's scale in favor of the Allies, Mr. Wilson saw a superb
opportunity to hitch his wagon to a star, and now for the first time he
made a determined bid for the leadership of the world. Here the idealist
showed himself at his best. But by the way of preparation he asked the
nation at the elections to refuse their votes to his political
opponents, despite the fact that they were loyally supporting his
policy, and to return only men of his own party, and in order to silence
their misgivings he declared that to elect Republican Senators would be
to repudiate the administration of the President of the United States at
a critical conjuncture. This was urged against him as the inexpiable
sin. The electors, however, sent his political opponents to the Senate,
whereupon the President organized his historic visit to Europe. It might
have become a turning-point in the world's history had he transformed
his authority and prestige into the driving-power requisite to embody
his beneficent scheme. But he wasted the opportunity for lack of moral
courage. Thus far American criticism. But the peoples of Europe ignored
the estimates of the President made by his fellow-countrymen, who, as
such, may be forgiven for failing to appreciate his apostleship, or set
the full value on his humanitarian strivings. The war-weary masses
judged him not by what he had achieved or attempted in the past, but by
what he proposed to do in the future. And measured by this standard, his
spiritual statue grew to legendary proportions.
Europe, when the President touched its shores, was as clay ready for the
creative potter. Never before were the nations so eager to follow a
Moses who would take them to the long-promised land where wars are
prohibited and blockades unknown. And to their thinking he was that
great leader. In France men bowed down before him with awe and
affection. Labor leaders in Paris told me that they shed tears of joy in
his presence, and that their comrades would go through fire and water to
help him to realize his noble schemes.[56] To the working classes in
Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth
would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his humane doctrine as
their sheet-anchor of safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said, "If
President Wilson were to address the Germans, and pronounce a severe
sentence upon them, they would accept it with resignation and without a
murmur and set to work at once." In German-Austria his fame was that of
a savior, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering
and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. A touching instance of this
which occurred in the Austrian capital, when narrated to the President,
moved him to tears. There were some five or six thousand Austrian
children in the hospitals at Vienna who, as Christmas was drawing near,
were sorely in need of medicaments and much else. The head of the
American Red Cross took up their case and persuaded the Americans in
France to send two million dollars' worth of medicaments to Vienna.
These were duly despatched, and had got as far as Berne, when the French
authorities, having got wind of the matter, protested against this
premature assistance to infant enemies on grounds which the other
Allies had to recognize as technically tenable, and the medicaments were
ordered back to France from Berne. Thereupon Doctor Ferries, of the
International Red Cross, became wild with indignation and laid the
matter before the Swiss government, which undertook to send some
medicaments to the children, while the Americans were endeavoring to
move the French to allow at least some of the remedies to go through.
The children in the hospitals, when told that they must wait, were
bright and hopeful. "It will be all right," some of them exclaimed.
"Wilson is coming soon, and he will bring us everything."
Thus Mr. Wilson had become a transcendental hero to the European
proletarians, who in their homely way adjusted his mental and moral
attributes to their own ideal of the latter-day Messiah. His legendary
figure, half saint, half revolutionist, emerged from the transparent
haze of faith, yearning, and ignorance, as in some ecstatic vision. In
spite of his recorded acts and utterances the mythopeic faculty of the
peoples had given itself free scope and created a messianic democrat
destined to free the lower orders, as they were called, in each state
from the shackles of capitalism, legalized thraldom, and crushing
taxation, and each nation from sanguinary warfare. Truly, no human being
since the dawn of history has ever yet been favored with such a superb
opportunity. Mr. Wilson might have made a gallant effort to lift society
out of the deep grooves into which it had sunk, and dislodge the secular
obstacles to the enfranchisement and transfiguration of the human race.
At the lowest it was open to him to become the center of a countless
multitude, the heart of their hearts, the incarnation of their noblest
thought, on condition that he scorned the prudential motives of
politicians, burst through the barriers of the old order, and deployed
all his energies and his full will-power in the struggle against sordid
interests and dense prejudice. But he was cowed by obstacles which his
will lacked the strength to surmount, and instead of receiving his
promptings from the everlasting ideals of mankind and the inspiriting
audacities of his own highest nature and appealing to the peoples
against their rulers, he felt constrained in the very interest of his
cause to haggle and barter with the Scribes and the Pharisees, and ended
by recording a pitiful answer to the most momentous problems couched in
the impoverished phraseology of a political party.
Many of his political friends had advised the President not to visit
Europe lest the vast prestige and influence which he wielded from a
distance should dwindle unutilized on close contact with the realists'
crowd. Even the war-god Mars, when he descended into the ranks of the
combatants on the Trojan side, was wounded by a Greek, and, screaming
with pain, scurried back to Olympus with paling halo. But Mr. Wilson
decided to preside and to direct the fashioning of his project, and to
give Europe the benefit of his advice. He explained to Congress that he
had expressed the ideals of the country for which its soldiers had
consciously fought, had had them accepted "as the substance of their own
thoughts and purpose" by the statesmen of the associated governments,
and now, he concluded: "I owe it to them to see to it, in so far as in
me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and
no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my
full part in making good what they offered their lives and blood to
obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend
this."[57] No intention could well be more praiseworthy.
Soon after the _George Washington_, flying the presidential flag, had
steamed out of the Bay on her way to Europe, the United Press received
from its correspondent on board, who was attached to Mr. Wilson's
person, a message which invigorated the hopes of the world and evoked
warm outpourings of the seared soul of suffering man in gratitude toward
the bringer of balm. It began thus: "The President sails for Europe to
uphold American ideals, and literally to fight for his Fourteen Points.
The President, at the Peace Table, will insist on the freedom of the
seas and a general disarmament.... The seas, he holds, ought to be
guarded by the whole world."
Since then the world knows what to think of the literal fighting at the
Peace Table. The freedom of the seas was never as much as alluded to at
the Peace Table, for the announcement of Mr. Wilson's militant
championship brought him a wireless message from London to the effect
that that proposal, at all events, must be struck out of his program if
he wished to do business with Britain. And without a fight or a
remonstrance the President struck it out. The Fourteen Points were not
discussed at the Conference.[58] One may deplore, but one cannot
misunderstand, what happened. Mr. Wilson, too, had his own fixed aim to
attain: intent on associating his name with a grandiose humanitarian
monument, he was resolved not to return to his country without some sort
of a covenant of the new international life. He could not afford to go
home empty-handed. Therein lay his weakness and the source of his
failure. For whenever his attitude toward the Great Powers was taken to
mean, "Unless you give me my Covenant, you cannot have your Treaty," the
retort was ready: "Without our Treaty there will be no Covenant."
Like Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, who, having built his palace
at Ecbatana, surrounded it with seven walls and permanently withdrew his
person from the gaze of his subjects, Mr. Wilson in Paris admitted to
his presence only the authorized spokesmen of states and causes, and not
all of these. He declined to receive persons who thought they had a
claim to see him, and he received others who were believed to have none.
During his sojourn in Paris he took many important Russian affairs in
hand after having publicly stated that no peace could be stable so long
as Russia was torn by internal strife. And as familiarity with Russian
conditions was not one of his accomplishments, he presumably needed
advice and help from those acquainted with them. Now a large number of
Russians, representing all political parties and four governments, were
in Paris waiting to be consulted. But between January and May not one of
them was ever asked for information or counsel. Nay, more, those who
respectfully solicited an audience were told to wait. In the meanwhile
men unacquainted with the country and people were sent by Mr. Wilson to
report on the situation, and to begin by obtaining the terms of an
acceptable treaty from the Bolshevik government.
The first plenipotentiary of one of the principal lesser states was for
months refused an audience, to the delight of his political adversaries,
who made the most of the circumstance at home. An eminent diplomatist
who possessed considerable claims to be vouchsafed an interview was put
off from week to week, until at last, by dint of perseverance, as it
seemed to him, the President consented to see him. The diplomatist,
pleased at his success, informed a friend that the following Wednesday
would be the memorable day. "But are you not aware," asked the friend,
"that on that day the President will be on the high seas on his way back
to the United States?" He was not aware of it. But when he learned that
the audience had been deliberately fixed for a day when Mr. Wilson would
no longer be in France he felt aggrieved.
In Italy the President's progress was a veritable triumph. Emperors and
kings had roused no such enthusiasm. One might fancy him a deity
unexpectedly discovered under the outward appearance of a mortal and now
being honored as the god that he was by ecstatic worshipers. Everything
he did was well done, everything he said was nobly conceived and worthy
of being treasured up. In these dispositions a few brief months wrought
a vast difference.
In this respect an instructive comparison might be made between Tsar
Alexander I at the Vienna Congress and the President of the United
States at the Conference of Paris. The Russian monarch arrived in the
Austrian capital with the halo of a Moses focusing the hopes of all the
peoples of Europe. His reputation for probity, public spirit, and lofty
aspirations had won for him the good-will and the anticipatory blessings
of war-weary nations. He, too, was a mystic, believed firmly in occult
influences, so firmly indeed that he accepted the fitful guidance of an
ecstatic lady whose intuition was supposed to transcend the sagacity of
professional statesmen. And yet the Holy Alliance was the supreme
outcome of his endeavors, as the League of Nations was that of Mr.
Wilson's. In lieu of universal peace all eastern Europe was still
warring and revolting in September and the general outlook was
disquieting. The disheartening effect of the contrast between the
promise and the achievement of the American statesman was felt
throughout the world. But Mr. Wilson has the solace to know that people
hardly ever reach their goal--though they sometimes advance fairly near
to it. They either die on the way or else it changes or they do.
It was doubtless a noble ambition that moved the Prime Ministers of the
Great Powers and the chief of the North American Republic to give their
own service to the Conference as heads of their respective missions. For
they considered themselves to be the best equipped for the purpose, and
they were certainly free from such prejudices as professional traditions
and a confusing knowledge of details might be supposed to engender. But
in almost every respect it was a grievous mistake and the source of
others still more grievous. True, in his own particular sphere each of
them had achieved what is nowadays termed greatness. As a war leader Mr.
Lloyd George had been hastily classed with Marlborough and Chatham, M.
Clemenceau compared to Danton, and Mr. Wilson set apart in a category to
himself. But without questioning these journalistic certificates of fame
one must admit that all three plenipotentiaries were essentially
politicians, old parliamentary hands, and therefore expedient-mongers
whose highest qualifications for their own profession were drawbacks
which unfitted them for their self-assumed mission. Of the concrete
world which they set about reforming their knowledge was amazingly
vague. "Frogs in the pond," says the Japanese proverb, "know naught of
the ocean." There was, of course, nothing blameworthy in their
unacquaintanceship with the issues, but only in the offhandedness with
which they belittled its consequences. Had they been conversant with the
subject or gifted with deeper insight, many of the things which seemed
particularly clear to them would have struck them as sheer inexplicable,
and among these perhaps their own leadership of the world-parliament.
What they lacked, however, might in some perceptible degree have been
supplied by enlisting as their helpers men more happily endowed than
themselves. But they deliberately chose mediocrities. It is a mark of
genial spirits that they are well served, but the plenipotentiaries of
the Conference were not characterized by it. Away in the background some
of them had familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were
wont to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight of
the world-stage were gritless and pithless.
As the heads of the principal governments implicitly claimed to be the
authorized spokesmen of the human race and endowed with unlimited
powers, it is worth noting that this claim was boldly challenged by the
peoples' organs in the press. Nearly all the journals read by the masses
objected from the first to the dictatorship of the group of Premiers,
Mr. Wilson being excepted. "The modern parasite," wrote a respectable
democratic newspaper,[59] "is the politician. Of all the privileged
beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however,
there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent
by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted
with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he
is unacquainted." Another French journal[60] wrote: "In truth it is a
misfortune that the leaders of the Conference are Cabinet chiefs, for
each of them is obsessed by the carking cares of his domestic policy.
Besides, the Paris Conference takes on the likeness of a lyrical drama
in which there are only tenors. Now would even the most beautiful work
in the world survive this excess of beauties?"
The truth as revealed by subsequent facts would seem to be that each of
the plenipotentiaries recognizing parliamentary success as the source of
his power was obsessed by his own political problems and stimulated by
his own immediate ends. As these ends, however incompatible with each
other, were believed by each one to tend toward the general object, he
worked zealously for their attainment. The consequences are notorious.
M. Clemenceau made France the hub of the universe. Mr. Lloyd George
harbored schemes which naturally identified the welfare of mankind with
the hegemony of the English-speaking races. Signor Orlando was inspired
by the "sacred egotism" which had actuated all Italian Cabinets since
Italy entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his
name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest
enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over
his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration
of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed
together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab
crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the
load remained where it was.
A lesser but also a serious disadvantage of the delegation of government
chiefs made itself felt in the procedure. Embarrassing delays were
occasioned by the unavoidable absences of the principal delegates whom
pressure of domestic politics called to their respective capitals, as
well as by their tactics, and their colleagues profited by their absence
for the sake of the good cause. Thus all Paris, as we saw, was aware
that the European chiefs, whose faith in Wilsonian orthodoxy was still
feeble at that time, were prepared to take advantage of the President's
sojourn in Washington to speed up business in their own sense and to
confront him on his return with accomplished facts. But when, on his
return, he beheld their handiwork he scrapped it, and a considerable
loss of time ensued for which the world has since had to pay very
heavily.
Again, when Premier Orlando was in Rome after Mr. Wilson's appeal to
the Italian people, a series of measures was passed by the delegates in
Paris affecting Italy, diminishing her importance at the Conference, and
modifying the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of London. Some of
these decisions had to be canceled when the Italians returned. These
stratagems had an undesirable effect on the Italians.
Not the least of the Premiers' disabilities lay in the circumstance that
they were the merest novices in international affairs. Geography,
ethnography, psychology, and political history were sealed books to
them. Like the rector of Louvain University who told Oliver Goldsmith
that, as he had become the head of that institution without knowing
Greek, he failed to see why it should be taught there, the chiefs of
state, having attained the highest position in their respective
countries without more than an inkling of international affairs, were
unable to realize the importance of mastering them or the impossibility
of repairing the omission as they went along.
They displayed their contempt for professional diplomacy and this
feeling was shared by many, but they extended that sentiment to certain
diplomatic postulates which can in no case be dispensed with, because
they are common to all professions. One of them is knowledge of the
terms of the problems to be solved. No conjuncture could have been less
favorable for an experiment based on this theory. The general situation
made a demand on the delegates for special knowledge and experience,
whereas the Premiers and the President, although specialists in nothing,
had to act as specialists in everything. Traditional diplomacy would
have shown some respect for the law of causality. It would have sent to
the Conference diplomatists more or less acquainted with the issues to
be mooted and also with the mentality of the other negotiators, and it
would have assigned to them a number of experts as advisers. It would
have formed a plan similar to that proposed by the French authorities
and rejected by the Anglo-Saxons. In this way at least the technical
part of the task would have been tackled on right lines, the war would
have been liquidated and normal relations quickly re-established among
the belligerent states. It may be objected that this would have been a
meager contribution to the new politico-social fabric. Undoubtedly it
would, but, however meager, it would have been a positive gain. Possibly
the first stone of a new world might have been laid once the ruins of
the old were cleared away. But even this modest feat could not be
achieved by amateurs working in desultory fashion and handicapped by
their political parties at home. The resultant of their apparent
co-operation was a sum in subtraction because dispersal or effort was
unavoidably substituted for concentration.