THE GREAT ADVENTURE
As we conferred together for the last time before the President left
Washington for the other side, I had never seen him look more weary or
careworn. It was plain to me who had watched him from day to day since the
Armistice, that he felt most keenly the heavy responsibility that now lay
upon him of trying to bring permanent peace to the world. He was not
unmindful of the criticism that had been heaped upon him by his enemies on
the Hill and throughout the country. The only thing that distressed him,
however, was the feeling that a portion of the American people were of the
opinion that, perhaps, in making the trip to Paris there lay back of it a
desire for self-exploitation, or, perhaps, the idea of garnering certain
political advantages to himself and his party. If one who held this
ungenerous opinion could only have come in contact with this greatly
overworked man on the night of our final talk and could understand the
handsome, unselfish purpose that really lay behind his mission to France
and could know personally how he dreaded the whole business, he would
quickly free himself of this opinion. Discussing the object of the trip
with me in his usually intimate way, he said: "Well, Tumulty, this trip
will either be the greatest success or the supremest tragedy in all
history; but I believe in a Divine Providence. If I did not have faith, I
should go crazy. If I thought that the direction of the affairs of this
disordered world depended upon our finite intelligence, I should not know
how to reason my way to sanity; but it is my faith that no body of men
however they concert their power or their influence can defeat this great
world enterprise, which after all is the enterprise of Divine mercy, peace
and good will."
As he spoke these fateful words, he clearly foresaw the difficulties and
dangers and possible tragedy of reaction and intrigue that would soon
exert themselves in Paris, perhaps to outwit him and if possible to
prevent the consummation of the idea that lay so close to his heart: that
of setting up a concert of powers that would make for ever impossible a
war such as we had just passed through. Indeed, he was ready to risk
everything--his own health, his own political fortunes, his place in
history, and his very life itself--for the great enterprise of peace.
"This intolerable thing must never happen again," he said.
No one more than Woodrow Wilson appreciated the tragedy of disappointment
that might eventually follow out of his efforts for peace, but he was
willing to make any sacrifice to attain the end he had so close to his
heart.
He realized better than any one the great expectations of the American
people. Discussing these expectations with Mr. Creel, who was to accompany
him, he said: "It is to America that the whole world turns to-day, not
only with its wrongs but with its hopes and grievances. The hungry expect
us to feed them, the homeless look to us for shelter, the sick of heart
and body depend upon us for cure. All of these expectations have in them
the quality of terrible urgency. There must be no delay. It has been so
always. People will endure their tyrants for years, but they tear their
deliverers to pieces if a millennium is not created immediately. Yet, you
know and I know that these ancient wrongs, these present unhappinesses,
are not to be remedied in a day or with a wave of the hand. What I seem to
see--with all my heart I hope that I am wrong--is a tragedy of
disappointment."
The President and I had often discussed the personnel of the Peace
Commission before its announcement, and I had taken the liberty of
suggesting to the President the name of ex-Secretary of State Elihu Root.
The President appeared to be delighted with this suggestion and asked me
to confer with Secretary Lansing in regard to the matter. I conferred with
Mr. Lansing, to whom the suggestion, much to my surprise, met with hearty
response. At this conference Mr. Lansing said that he and the President
were attempting to induce some members of the Supreme Court--I think it
was either Mr. Justice Day or Chief Justice White--to make the trip to
Paris as one of the Commission; but that they were informed that Chief
Justice White was opposed to the selection of a Supreme Court Judge to
participate in any conference not connected with the usual judicial work
of the Supreme Court.
After this conference I left for New York, there to remain with my father
who lay seriously ill, and when I returned to the White House the
President informed me that he and Mr. Lansing had had a further conference
with reference to the Root suggestion and that it was about concluded that
it would be inadvisable to make Mr. Root a member of the Commission. The
President felt that it would be unwise to take Mr. Root, fearing that the
reputation which Mr. Root had gained of being rather conservative, if not
reactionary, would work a prejudice toward the Peace Commission at the
outset.
Mr. Taft's name was considered, but it was finally decided not to include
him among the commissions to accompany the President.
The personnel of the Commission, as finally constituted, has been much
criticized, but the President had what were for him convincing reasons for
each selection: he had formed a high opinion of Col. E. M. House's ability
to judge clearly and dispassionately men and events; Mr. Robert Lansing as
Secretary of State was a natural choice; Mr. Henry White, a Republican
unembittered by partisanship, had had a life-long and honourable
experience in diplomacy; General Tasker Bliss was eminently qualified to
advise in military matters, and was quite divorced from the politics of
either party. The President believed that these gentlemen would cooperate
with him loyally in a difficult task.
I quote from Mr. Creel:
The truly important body--and this the President realized from the
first--was the group of experts that went along with the Commission,
the pick of the country's most famous specialists in finance, history,
economics, international law, colonial questions, map-making, ethnic
distinctions, and all those other matters that were to come up at the
Peace Conference. They constituted the President's arsenal of facts,
and even on board the _George Washington_, in the very first
conference, he made clear his dependence upon them. "You are in truth,
my advisers," he said, "for when I ask you for information I will have
no way of checking it up, and must act upon it unquestioningly. We
will be deluged with claims plausibly and convincingly presented. It
will be your task to establish the truth or falsity of these claims
out of your specialized knowledges, so that my positions may be taken
fairly and intelligently."
It was this expert advice that he depended upon and it was a well of
information that never failed him. At the head of the financiers and
economists were such men as Bernard Baruch, Herbert Hoover, Norman
Davis, and Vance McCormick. As head of the War Industries Board, in
many respects the most powerful of all the civil organizations called
into being by the war, Mr. Baruch had won the respect and confidence
of American business by his courage, honesty, and rare ability. At his
side were such men as Frank W. Taussig, chairman of the Tariff
Commission; Alex Legg, general manager of the International Harvester
Company; and Charles McDowell, manager of the Fertilizer and Chemical
departments of Armour & Co.--both men familiar with business
conditions and customs in every country in the world; Leland Summers,
an international mechanical engineer and an expert in manufacturing,
chemicals, and steel; James C. Pennie, the international patent
lawyer; Frederick Neilson and Chandler Anderson, authorities on
international law; and various others of equal calibre.
Mr. Hoover was aided and advised by the men who were his
representatives in Europe throughout the war, and Mr. McCormick, head
of the War Trade Board, gathered about him in Paris all of the men who
had handled trade matters for him in the various countries of the
world.
Mr. Davis, representing the Treasury Department, had as his associates
Mr. Thomas W. Lament, Mr. Albert Strauss, and Jeremiah Smith of
Boston.
Dr. Sidney E. Mezes, president of the College of the City of New York,
went with the President at the head of a brilliant group of
specialists, all of whom had been working for a year and more on the
problems that would be presented at the Peace Conference. Among the
more important may be mentioned: Prof. Charles H. Haskins, dean of the
Graduate School of Harvard University, specialist on Alsace-Lorraine
and Belgium; Dr. Isaiah Bowman, director of the American Geographical
Society, general territorial specialist; Prof. Allyn A. Young, head of
the Department of Economics at Cornell; George Louis Beer, formerly of
Columbia, and an authority on colonial possessions; Prof. W. L.
Westermann, head of the History Department of the University of
Wisconsin and specialist on Turkey; R. H. Lord, professor of History
at Harvard, specialist on Russia and Poland; Roland B. Dixon,
professor of Ethnography at Harvard; Prof. Clive Day, head of the
Department of Economics at Yale, specialist on the Balkans; W. E.
Lunt, professor of History at Haverford College, specialist on
northern Italy; Charles Seymour, professor of History at Yale,
specialist on Austria-Hungary; Mark Jefferson, professor of Geography
at Michigan State Normal, and Prof. James T. Shotwell, professor of
History at Columbia. These groups were the President's real
counsellors and advisers and there was not a day throughout the Peace
Conference that he did not call upon them and depend upon them.
No man ever faced a more difficult or trying job than the President, when
he embarked upon the _George Washington_ on his voyage to the other side.
The adverse verdict rendered against the President in the Congressional
elections was mighty dispiriting. The growing bitterness and hostility of
the Republican leaders, and the hatred of the Germans throughout the
country, added more difficulties to an already trying situation. America
had seemed to do everything to weaken him at a time when united strength
should have been behind him. Again I quote from Mr. Creel:
On November 27th, five days before the President's departure, Mr.
Roosevelt had cried this message to Europe, plain intimation that the
Republican majority in the Senate would support the Allies in any
repudiation of the League of Nations and the Fourteen Points:
"Our allies and our enemies and Mr. Wilson himself should all
understand that Mr. Wilson has no authority whatever to speak for the
American people at this time. His leadership has just been
emphatically repudiated by them. The newly elected Congress comes far
nearer than Mr. Wilson to having a right to speak the purposes of the
American people at this moment. Mr. Wilson and his Fourteen Points and
his four supplementary points and his five complementary points and
all his utterances every which way have ceased to have any shadow of
right to be accepted as expressive of the will of the American people.
"He is President of the United States. He is a part of the treaty-
making power; but he is only a part. If he acts in good faith to the
American people, he will not claim on the other side of the water any
representative capacity in himself to speak for the American people.
He will say frankly that his personal leadership has been repudiated
and that he now has merely the divided official leadership which he
shares with the Senate."
What Mr. Roosevelt did, in words as plain as his pen could marshal,
was to inform the Allies that they were at liberty to disregard the
President, the League of Nations, and the Fourteen Points, and that
the Republican party would stand as a unit for as hard a peace as Foch
chose to dictate.
As the President left his office on the night of his departure for New
York, preparatory to sailing for the other side, he turned to me and said:
"Well, Tumulty, have you any suggestions before I leave?" "None, my dear
Governor," I replied, "except to bid you Godspeed on the great journey."
Then, coming closer to me, he said: "I shall rely upon you to keep me in
touch with the situation on this side of the water. I know I can trust you
to give me an exact size-up of the situation here. Remember, I shall be
far away and what I will want is a frank estimate from you of the state of
public opinion on this side of the water. That is what I will find myself
most in need of. When you think I am putting my foot in it, please say so
frankly. I am afraid I shall not be able to rely upon much of the advice
and suggestions I will get from the other end."
Before the President left he had discussed with me the character of the
Peace Conference, and after his departure I kept him apprised by cable of
opinion in this country. Appendix "A", which contains this cabled
correspondence shows how he welcomed information and suggestion.
[Illustration:
The Secretary thinks the President would like to read this letter.
(Manuscript: Thank you, what's his game?
W. W.
Dear Tumulty
I have not sufficient confidence in the man.
W. W.)
Dear Tumulty,
There is absolutely nothing new in Root's speech and I do not see any
necessity to answer it. Certainly I would not be willing to have so
conspicuous a representative of the Administration as Mr. Colby take
any notice of it. Let me say again that I am not willing that answers
to Republican speakers or writers should emanate from the White House
or the Administration.
The President.
C.L.S.
Some characteristic White House memoranda]
As my duty held me in Washington, I am dependent upon others, especially
Mr. Creel and Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, a member of the President's official
family, for a connected narrative of events in Europe.
Speaking of his attitude in the trials that confronted the President on
the other side, Mr. Baker said:
No one who really saw the President in action in Paris, saw what he
did in those grilling months of struggle, fired at in front, sniped at
from behind--and no one who saw what he had to do after he came home
from Europe in meeting the great new problems which grew out of the
war--will for a moment belittle the immensity of his task, or
underrate his extraordinary endurance, energy, and courage.
More than once, there in Paris, going up in the evening to see the
President, I found him utterly worn out, exhausted, often one side of
his face twitching with nervousness. No soldier ever went into battle
with more enthusiasm, more aspiration, more devotion to a sacred cause
than the President had when he came to Paris; but day after day in
those months we saw him growing grayer and grayer, grimmer and
grimmer, with the fighting lines deepening in his face.
Here was a man 63 years old--a man always delicate in health. When he
came to the White House in 1913, he was far from being well. His
digestion was poor and he had a serious and painful case of neuritis
in his shoulder. It was even the opinion of so great a physician as
Dr. Weir Mitchell, of Philadelphia, that he could probably not
complete his term and retain his health. And yet such was the iron
self-discipline of the man and such was the daily watchful care of
Doctor Grayson, that instead of gradually going down under the
tremendous tasks of the Presidency in the most crowded moments of our
national history, he steadily gained strength and working capacity,
until in those months in Paris he literally worked everybody at the
Peace Conference to a stand-still.
It is so easy and cheap to judge people, even presidents, without
knowing the problems they have to face. So much of the President's
aloofness at Paris, so much of his unwillingness to expend energy upon
unnecessary business, unnecessary conferences, unnecessary visiting--
especially the visitors--was due directly to the determination to
husband and expend his too limited energies upon tasks that seemed to
him essential.
As I say, he worked everybody at the Peace Conference to a standstill.
He worked not only the American delegates, but the way he drove the
leisurely diplomats of Europe was often shameful to see. Sometimes he
would actually have two meetings going on at the same time. Once I
found a meeting of the Council of the Big Four going on in his study,
and a meeting of the financial and economic experts--twenty or thirty
of them--in full session upstairs in the drawing room--and the
President oscillating between the two.
It was he who was always the driver, the initiator, at Paris: he
worked longer hours, had more appointments, granted himself less
recreation, than any other man, high or low, at the Peace Conference.
For he was the central figure there. Everything headed up in him.
Practically all of the meetings of the Council of Four were held in
his study in the Place des États-Unis. This was the true capitol of
the Peace Conference; here all the important questions were decided.
Everyone who came to Paris upon any mission whatsoever aimed first of
all at seeing the President. Representatives of the little,
downtrodden nationalities of the earth--from eastern Europe, Asia, and
Africa--thought that if they could get at the President, explain their
pathetic ambitions, confess their troubles to him, all would be well.
While the President was struggling in Europe, his friends in America had
cause for indignation against the course adopted by the Republican
obstructionists in the Senate, which course, they saw, must have a serious
if not fatal effect upon developments overseas. Occurrences on both sides
of the Atlantic became so closely interwoven that it is better not to
separate the two narratives, and as Mr. Creel, upon whose history I have
already drawn, tells the story with vigour and a true perception of the
significance of events, I quote at length from him:
The early days of February, 1919, were bright with promise. The
European press, seeming to accept the President's leadership as
unshakable, was more amiable in its tone, the bitterness bred by the
decision as to the German colonies had abated. Fiume and the Saar
Basin had taken discreet places in the background with other deferred
questions, and the voice of French and English and Italian liberalism
was heard again. On February 14th the President reported the first
draft of the League constitution--a draft that expressed his
principles without change--and it was confirmed amid acclaim. It was
at this moment, unfortunately, that the President was compelled to
return to the United States to sign certain bills, and for the
information of the Senate he carried with him the Covenant as agreed
upon by the Allies.
We come now to a singularly shameful chapter in American history. At
the time of the President's decision to go to Paris the chief point of
attack by the Republican Senators was that such a "desertion of duty"
would delay the work of government and hold back the entire programme
of reconstruction. Yet when the President returned for the business of
consideration and signature, the same Republican Senators united in a
filibuster that permitted Congress to expire without the passage of a
single appropriation bill. This exhibition of sheer malignance,
entailing an ultimate of confusion and disaster, was not only approved
by the Republican press, but actually applauded.
The draft of the League Constitution was denounced even before its
contents were known or explained. The bare fact that the document had
proved acceptable to the British Empire aroused the instant antagonism
of the "professional" Irish-Americans, the "professional" German-
Americans, the "professional" Italian-Americans, and all those others
whose political fortunes depended upon the persistence and
accentuation of racial prejudices. Where one hyphen was scourged the
year before a score of hyphens was now encouraged and approved. In
Washington the President arranged a conference with the Senators and
Representatives in charge of foreign relations, and laid the Covenant
frankly before them for purposes of discussion and criticism. The
attitude of the Republican Senators was one of sullenness and
suspicion, Senator Lodge refusing to state his objections or to make a
single recommendation. Others, however, pointed out that no express
recognition was given to the Monroe Doctrine; that it was not
expressly provided that the League should have no authority to act or
express a judgment on matters of domestic policy; that the right to
withdraw from the League was not expressly recognized; and that the
constitutional right of the Congress to determine all questions of
peace and war was not sufficiently safeguarded.
The President, in answer, gave it as his opinion that these points
were already covered satisfactorily in the Covenant, but that he would
be glad to make the language more explicit, and entered a promise to
this effect. Mr. Root and Mr. Taft were also furnished with copies of
the Covenant and asked for their views and criticism, and upon receipt
of them the President again gave assurance that every proposed change
and clarification would be made upon his return to Paris. On March
4th, immediately following these conferences, and the day before the
sailing of the President, Senator Lodge rose in his place and led his
Republican colleagues in a bold and open attack upon the League of
Nations and the war aims of America. The following account of the
proceedings is taken from the _Congressional Record_:
_Mr. Lodge_: Mr. President, I desire to take only a moment of the time
of the Senate. I wish to offer the resolution which I hold in my hand,
a very brief one:
Whereas under the Constitution it is a function of the Senate to
advise and consent to, or dissent from, the ratification of any treaty
of the United States, and no such treaty can become operative without
the consent of the Senate expressed by the affirmative vote of two
thirds of the Senators present; and
Whereas owing to the victory of the arms of the United States and of
the nations with whom it is associated, a Peace Conference was
convened and is now in session at Paris for the purpose of settling
the terms of peace; and
Whereas a committee of the Conference has proposed a constitution for
the League of Nations and the proposal is now before the Peace
Conference for its consideration; Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate of the United States in the discharge of its
constitutional duty of advice in regard to treaties, That it is the
sense of the Senate that while it is their sincere desire that the
nations of the world should unite to promote peace and general
disarmament, the constitution of the League of Nations in the form now
proposed to the Peace Conference should not be accepted by the United
States; and be it
Resolved further, That it is the sense of the Senate that the
negotiations on the part of the United States should immediately be
directed to the utmost expedition of the urgent business of
negotiating peace terms with Germany satisfactory to the United States
and the nations with whom the United States is associated in the war
against the German Government, and that the proposal for a League of
Nations to insure the permanent peace of the world should be then
taken up for careful and serious consideration.
I ask unanimous consent for the present consideration of this
resolution.
_Mr. Swanson_: I object to the introduction of the resolution.
_Mr. Lodge_: Objection being made, of course I recognize the
objection. I merely wish to add, by way of explanation, the following:
The undersigned Senators of the United States, Members and Members-
Elect of the Sixty-sixth Congress, hereby declare that, if they had
had the opportunity, they would have voted for the foregoing
resolution:
Henry Cabot Lodge James E. Watson
Philander C. Knox Thomas Sterling
Lawrence Y. Sherman J. S. Frelinghuysen
Harry S. New W. G. Harding
George H. Moses Frederick Hale
J. W. Wadsworth, Jr. William E. Borah
Bert M. Fernald Walter E. Edge
Albert B. Cummins Reed Smoot
F. E. Warren Asle J. Gronna
Frank B. Brandegee Lawrence C. Phipps
William M. Calder Selden P. Spencer
Henry W. Keyes Hiram W. Johnson
Boies Penrose Charles E. Townsend
Carroll S. Page William P. Dillingham
George P. McLean I. L. Lenroot
Joseph Irwin France Miles Poindexter
Medill McCormick Howard Sutherland
Charles Curtis Truman H. Newberry
L. Heisler Ball
I ought to say in justice to three or four Senators who are absent at
great distances from the city that we were not able to reach them; but
we expect to hear from them to-morrow, and if, as we expect, their
answers are favourable their names will be added to the list.
A full report of this action was cabled to Europe, as a matter of
course, and when the President arrived in Paris on March 14th, ten
days later, he was quick to learn of the disastrous consequences. The
Allies, eagerly accepting the orders of the Republican majority, had
lost no time in repudiating the President and the solemn agreements
that they had entered into with him. The League of Nations was not
discarded and the plan adopted for a preliminary peace with Germany
was based upon a frank division of the spoils, the reduction of
Germany to a slave state, and the formation of a military alliance by
the Allies for the purpose of guaranteeing the gains. Not only this,
but an Allied army was to march at once to Russia to put down the
Bolshevists and the Treaty itself was to be administered by the Allied
high command, enforcing its orders by an army of occupation. The
United States, as a rare favour, was to be permitted to pay the cost
of the Russian expedition and such other incidental expenses as might
arise in connection with the military dictatorship that was to rule
Europe.
While primarily the plan of Foch and the other generals, it had the
approval of statesmen, even those who were assumed to represent the
liberal thought of England being neck-deep in the conspiracy.
Not a single party to the cabal had any doubt as to its success. Was
it not the case that the Republican Senators, now in the majority,
spoke for America rather than the President? Had the Senators not
stated formally that they did not want the League of Nations, and was
the Republican party itself not on record with the belief that the
Allies must have the right to impose peace terms of their own
choosing, and that these terms should show no mercy to the "accursed
Hun"? ... The President allowed himself just twenty-four hours in
which to grasp the plot in all its details, and then he acted,
ordering the issuance of this statement:
"The President said to-day that the decision made at the Peace
Conference in its Plenary Session, January 25, 1919, to the effect
that the establishment of a League of Nations should be made an
integral part of the Treaty of Peace, is of final force and that there
is no basis whatever for the reports that a change in this decision
was contemplated."
...On March 26th, it was announced, grudgingly enough, that there
would be a league of nations as an integral part of the Peace Treaty.
It was now the task of the President to take up the changes that had
been suggested by his Republican enemies, and this was the straw that
broke his back. There was not a single suggested change that had
honesty back of it. The League was an association of sovereigns, and
as a matter of course any sovereign possessed the right of withdrawal.
The League, as an international advisory body, could not possibly deal
with domestic questions under any construction of the Covenant. No
power of Congress was abridged, and necessarily Congress would have to
act before war could be declared or a single soldier sent out of the
country. Instead of recognizing the Monroe Doctrine as an American
policy, the League legitimized it as a world policy. The President,
however, was bound to propose that these plain propositions be put in
kindergarten language for the satisfaction of his enemies, and it was
this proposal that gave Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and their associates
a new chance for resistance. All of the suggested changes were made
without great demur until the question of the Monroe Doctrine was
reached, and then French and English bitterness broke all restraints.
Why were they expected to make every concession to American prejudice
when the President would make none to European traditions? They had
gone to the length of accepting the doctrine of Monroe for the whole
of the earth, but now, because American pride demanded it, they must
make public confession of America's right to give orders. No! A
thousand times no! It was high time for the President to give a little
consideration to French and English and Italian prejudices--time for
him to realize that the lives of these governments were at stake as
well as his own, and that Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Sonnino had
parliaments to deal with that were just as unreasonable as the
Congress of the United States. If the President asked he must be
willing to give.
As if at a given signal, France renewed her claim for the Rhine Valley
and the Saar Basin; Italy clamoured anew for Fiume and the Dalmatian
coast; and Japan, breaking a long silence, rushed to the fore with her
demand for Shantung in fee simple and the right of her nationals to
full equality in the United States.
Around this time the President fell suddenly ill and took to his bed. That
the illness was serious is evidenced by the following letter which Doctor
Grayson wrote me:
Paris, 10 April 1919.
DEAR MR. TUMULTY:
While the contents of this letter may possibly be somewhat out of date
by the time it reaches you, nevertheless you may find something in it
of interest.
This has been one of the most complexing and trying weeks of my
existence over here. The President was taken violently sick last
Thursday. The attack was very sudden. At three o'clock he was
apparently all right; at six he was seized with violent paroxysms of
coughing, which were so severe and frequent that it interfered with
his breathing. He had a fever of 103 and a profuse diarrhoea. I was at
first suspicious that his food had been tampered with, but it turned
out to be the beginning of an attack of influenza. That night was one
of the worst through which I have ever passed. I was able to control
the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious. Since
that time he has been gradually improving every day so that he is now
back at work--he went out for the first time yesterday. This disease
is so treacherous, especially in this climate, that I am perhaps over-
anxious for fear of a flare-back--and a flare-back in a case of this
kind often results in pneumonia. I have been spending every minute of
my time with him, not only as physician but as nurse. Mrs. Wilson was
a perfect angel through it all.
Sincerely,
CARY T. GRAYSON.
Continuing the narrative Mr. Creel writes:
On April 7th, the President struggled to his feet and faced the
Council in what everyone recognized as a final test of strength. There
must be an end to this dreary, interminable business of making
agreements only to break them. An agreement must be reached once for
all. If a peace of justice, he would remain; if a peace of greed, then
he would leave. He had been second to none in recognizing the wrongs
of the Allies, the state of mind of their peoples, and he stood as
firmly as any for a treaty that would bring guilt home to the Germans,
but he could not, and would not, agree to the repudiation of every war
aim or to arrangements that would leave the world worse off than
before. The _George Washington_ was in Brooklyn. By wireless the
President ordered it to come to Brest at once.
The gesture was conclusive as far as England and France were
concerned. Lloyd George swung over instantly to the President's side,
and on the following day Le Temps carried this significant item:
"Contrary to the assertions spread by the German press and taken up by
other foreign newspapers, we believe that the Government has no
annexationist pretensions, openly or under cover, in regard to any
territory inhabited by a German population. This remark applies
peculiarly to the regions comprised between the frontier of 1871 and
the frontier of 1814."
Again, in the lock of wills, the President was the victor, and the
French and English press, exhausted by now, could only gasp their
condemnation of Clemenceau and Lloyd George.
The statement of Mr. David Hunter Miller, the legal adviser of the
American Peace Commission, with reference to the debate on the Monroe
Doctrine, in which the President played the leading part, is conclusive on
this point. Mr. Miller speaks of the President's devotion to the Monroe
Doctrine in these words:
But the matter was not at an end, for at the next meeting, the last of
all, the French sought by amendment to obtain some definition, some
description of the Monroe Doctrine that would limit the right of the
United States to insist upon its own interpretation of that Doctrine
in the future as in the past. The French delegates, hoping for some
advantage for their own proposals, urged such a definition: and at
that last meeting I thought for a moment, in despair, that President
Wilson would yield to the final French suggestion, which contained
only a few seemingly simple words: but he stood by his position
through the long discussion, and the meeting and the proceedings of
the Commission ended early in the morning in an atmosphere of
constraint and without any of the speeches of politeness customary on
such an occasion.
Of all the false reports about the President's attitude none was more
erroneous than the combined statements that he was lukewarm about the
Monroe Doctrine and that he declined to ask for or receive advice from
eminent Americans outside of his own party.
In Appendix "B" there will be found a series of letters and cable
messages, too long for insertion in the chapter, which will support the
statement that he not only listened to but had incorporated in the
Covenant of the League of Nations suggestions from Mr. Taft, including
important reservations concerning the Monroe Doctrine, and suggestions
from Mr. Root as to the establishment of an International Court of
Justice.
Former-President Taft had intimated to me a desire to make certain
suggestions to Mr. Wilson, and, upon my notification, Mr. Wilson cabled me
that he would "appreciate Mr. Taft's offer of suggestions and would
welcome them. The sooner they are sent the better." Whereupon, Mr. Taft's
suggestions were cabled to the President together with Mr. Taft's
statement that, "My impression is that if the one article already sent, on
the Monroe Doctrine, be inserted in the Treaty, sufficient Republicans who
signed the Round Robin would probably retreat from their position and vote
for ratification so that it would carry. If the other suggestions were
adopted, I feel confident that all but a few who oppose any league would
be driven to accept them and to stand for the League."
Mr. Taft's recommendations were in substance incorporated in the Covenant
of the League of Nations.
Emphasizing further the President's entire willingness to confer with
leading Republicans, even those outside of official relationship, on March
27, 1919, Mr. Polk, Acting Secretary of State, dispatched to Secretary of
State Lansing, for the President, proposed amendments offered by Mr. Root
to the constitution of the League of Nations, involving the establishment
of a Court of Justice. Immediately upon receipt of Mr. Polk's cable, the
President addressed to Colonel House, a member of the Peace Commission,
the following letter, marked "Confidential."
Paris. March 30, 1919.
MY DEAR HOUSE:
Here is a dispatch somewhat belated in transmission stating Mr. Root's
ideas as to amendments which should be made to the Covenant. I think
you will find some of these very interesting. Perhaps you have already
seen it.
In haste.
Affectionately yours,
WOODROW WILSON.
COLONEL E. M. HOUSE,
Hotel Crillon,
Paris.
A comparison of the suggestions presented by Mr. Taft and Mr. Root, which
will be found in the Appendix, with the existing Covenant of the League of
Nations, will readily convince any person desiring to reach the truth of
the matter, that all the material amendments proposed by these eminent
Republicans which had any essential bearing on the business in hand were
embodied in the Covenant of the League of Nations as brought back by
President Wilson.