The President replied to my cables as follows:
Paris, June 28, 1919.
TUMULTY,White House, Washington.
Please issue following statement: I am convinced that the Attorney General is right in advising me that I have no legal power at this time in the matter of the ban on liquor. Under the act of November, 1918, my power to take action is restricted. The act provides that after June 30, 1919, until the conclusion of the present war and thereafter until the termination of demobilization, the date of which shall be determined and proclaimed by the President, it shall be unlawful, etc. This law does not specify that the ban shall be lifted with the signing of peace but with the termination of the demobilization of the troops and I cannot say that that has been accomplished. My information from the War Department is that there are still a million men in the service under the emergency call. It is clear therefore that the failure of Congress to act upon the suggestion contained in my message of the twentieth of May, 1919, asking for a repeal of the Act of November 21, 1918, so far as it applies to wines and beers makes it impossible to act in this matter at this time. When demobilization is terminated my power to act without congressional action will be exercised.
When the Volstead Act reached the President, he found, upon examining it, that it in no way repealed war-time prohibition, and so he vetoed it.
In vetoing it, he admonished Congress, that "in all matters having to do with the personal habits and customs of large numbers of people, we must be certain that the established processes of legal change are followed. In no other way can the salutary object sought to be accomplished by great reforms of this character be made satisfactory and permanent."
The House of Representatives with its overwhelming "dry" majority passed the Volstead Act over the President's veto. The President clearly foresaw the inevitable reaction that would follow its passage and its enforcement throughout the country.
As the days of the San Francisco Convention approached, he felt that it was the duty of the Democratic party frankly to speak out regarding the matter and boldly avow its attitude toward the unreasonable features of the Volstead enforcement act. In his conferences with the Democratic leaders he took advantage of every opportunity to put before them the necessity for frank and courageous action. So deep were his convictions about this vital matter, that it was his intention, shortly after the passage of the Volstead Act over his veto, to send a special message to Congress regarding the matter, asking for the repeal of the Volstead Act and the passage of legislation permitting the manufacture and sale of light wines, or at least a modification of the Volstead Act, changing the alcoholic content of beer.
Upon further consideration of the matter it was agreed that it would be unwise to ask for any change at the hands of a congress that had so overwhelmingly expressed its opinion in opposition to any such modification. We, therefore, thought it wise to conserve our energies and to await the psychological moment at the Convention for putting forward the President's programme.
A few days before the Convention the President delivered to a trusted friend a copy of a proposed "wet" plank, and asked his friend to submit it to the Committee on Resolutions at the Convention in San Francisco. The tentative draft of the plank was as follows:
We recognize that the American saloon is opposed to all social, moral, and economic order, and we pledge ourselves to its absolute elimination by the passage of such laws as will finally and effectually exterminate it. But we favour the repeal of the Volstead Act and the substitution for it of a law permitting the manufacture and sale of light wines and beer.
Evidently, the trusted friend who had this matter in charge felt that the "dry" atmosphere of the Convention was unfavourable and so the President's plank, prepared by himself, was not even given a hearing before the Committee on Resolutions.
Upon his return home from Paris, the President immediately invited, in most cordial fashion, the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to confer with him at the White House. Some of those who received the invitation immediately announced that as a condition precedent to their acceptance they would insist that the conference should not be secret in character and that what would happen there should be disclosed to the public. The President quickly accepted the conditions proposed by the Republican senators and made a statement from the White House that the conditions which the conferees named were highly acceptable to him and that he was willing and anxious to give to the public a stenographic report of everything that transpired.
In view of subsequent history, the conversation between the President and Senator Harding about the distinction between "legal" and "moral" obligations, which was interesting at the time, takes on an added interest. Said Senator Harding: "If there is nothing more than a moral obligation on the part of any member of the league, what avail articles X and XI?"
The President: Why, Senator, it is surprising that that question should be asked. If we undertake an obligation, we are bound in the most solemn way to carry it out.
Senator Harding: If you believe there is nothing more to this than a moral obligation, any nation will assume a moral obligation on its own account. Is it a moral obligation? The point I am trying to get at is: Suppose something arises affecting the peace of the world, and the council takes steps as provided here to conserve or preserve, and announces its decision, and every nation in the League takes advantage of the construction that you place upon these articles and says: "Well, this is only a moral obligation, and we assume that the nation involved does not deserve our participation or protection," and the whole thing amounts to nothing but an expression of the league council.
The President: There is a national good conscience in such a matter. I should think that was one of the most serious things that could possibly happen. When I speak of a legal obligation, I mean one that specifically binds you to do a particular thing under certain sanctions. That is a legal obligation, and, if I may say so, has a greater binding force; only there always remains in the moral obligation the right to exercise one's judgment as to whether it is indeed incumbent upon one in those circumstances to do that thing. In every moral obligation there is an element of judgment. In a legal obligation there is no element of judgment.
Never before did the President show himself more tactful or more brilliant in repartee. Surrounded by twenty or thirty men, headed by Senator Lodge, who hated him with a bitterness that was intense, the President, with quiet courtesy, parried every blow aimed at him.
No question, no matter how pointed it was, seemed to disturb his serenity. He acted like a lawyer who knew his case from top to bottom, and who had confidence in the great cause he was representing. His cards were frankly laid upon the table and he appeared like a fighting champion, ready to meet all comers. Indeed, this very attitude of frankness, openness, sincerity, and courtesy, one could see from the side-lines, was a cause of discomfort to Senator Lodge and the Republicans grouped about him, and one could also see written upon the faces of the Democratic senators in that little room a look of pride that they had a leader who carried himself so gallantly and who so brilliantly met every onslaught of the enemy. The President anticipated an abrupt adjournment of the conference with a courteous invitation to luncheon. Senator Lodge had just turned to the President and said: "Mr. President, I do not wish to interfere in any way, but the conference has now lasted about three hours and a half, and it is half an hour after the lunch hour." Whereupon, the President said: "Will not you gentlemen take luncheon with me? It will be very delightful."
It was evident that this invitation, so cordially conveyed, broke the ice of formality which up to that time pervaded the meeting, and like boys out of school, forgetting the great affair in which they had all played prominent parts, they made their way to the dining room, the President walking by the side of Senator Lodge. Instead of fisticuffs, as some of the newspaper men had predicted, the lion and the lamb sat down together at the dining table, and for an hour or two the question of the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles was forgotten in the telling of pleasant stories and the play of repartee.
Although, at this conference of August 19, 1919, the President had frankly opened his mind and heart to the enemies of the Treaty, the opposition instead of moderating seemed to grow more intense and passionate. The President had done everything humanly possible to soften the opposition of the Republicans, but, alas, the information brought to him from the Hill by his Democratic friends only confirmed the opinion that the opposition to the Treaty was growing and could not be overcome by personal contact of any kind between the President and members of the Foreign Relations Committee.
It is plain now, and will become plainer as the years elapse, that the Republican opposition to the League was primarily partisan politics and a rooted personal dislike of the chief proponent of the League, Mr. Wilson. His reëlection in 1916, the first reëlection of an incumbent Democratic President since Andrew Jackson, had greatly disturbed the Republican leaders. The prestige of the Republican party was threatened by this Democratic leader. His reception in Europe added to their distress. For the sake of the sacred cause of Republicanism, this menace of Democratic leadership must be destroyed, even though in destroying it the leaders should swallow their own words and reverse their own former positions on world adjustment.
An attempt was made by enemies of the President to give the impression to the country that an association of nations was one of the "fool ideas" of Woodrow Wilson; that in making it part of his Fourteen Points, he was giving free rein to his idealism. As a matter of fact, the idea did not originate with Woodrow Wilson. If its American origin were traced, it would be found that the earliest supporters of the idea were Republicans.
I remember with what reluctance the President accepted the invitation of the League to Enforce Peace, tendered by Mr. Taft, to deliver an address on May 27, 1916, at the New Willard Hotel, Washington, a meeting at which one of the principal speakers was no less a personage than Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, with Mr. Taft presiding. For many months the President had been revolving this idea in his mind and for a long time he was reluctant to accept any invitation that would seem to give approval to the idea. He patiently waited to make a complete survey of the whole world situation, to be convinced that the permanent participation of the United States in world affairs was a necessity if peace was to be secured.
It was not an easy thing to draw the President away from the traditional policy of aloofness and isolation which had characterized the attitude of the United States in all international affairs. But the invitation to discuss universal peace, urged upon the President by ex-President William H. Taft, was finally accepted.
In that speech he said: "We are participants, whether we would or not, in the life of the world, and the interests of all nations are our own; henceforth, there must be a common agreement for a common object, and at the heart of that common object must lie the inviolable rights of peoples and of mankind. We believe these fundamental things: First, that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live. Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. [This idea was substantially embodied in Article X]; and third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations."
These statements were uttered in the presence of Senator Lodge and applauded by Mr. Taft and his Republican associates gathered at the banquet.
The President, continuing his address, then gave expression to his views regarding the means to attain these ends. He was convinced that there should be an "universal association of the nations to maintain the inviolate security of the highway of the seas for the common use of all nations of the world, and to prevent any war begun either contrary to treaty agreements or without warning and full submission of the causes to the opinion of the world—a virtual guarantee of territorial integrity and political independence." And he ventured to assert, in the presence of Senator Lodge, who afterward became the leader of the opposition to these very ideas, "that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to realize these objects and make them secure against violation."
Woodrow Wilson believed that the League of Nations was the first modern attempt to prevent war by discussion in the open and not behind closed doors or "within the cloistered retreats of European diplomacy." To him the League of Nations was the essence of Christianity. Yet when he took up the advocacy of the League of Nations, Senator Lodge, the spokesman of the Republican party at the dinner of the League to Enforce Peace, became the leader in bitter opposition to it.
Senator Lodge at this very dinner on May 27, 1916, delivered the following address:
I know, and no one, I think, can know better than one who has served long in the Senate, which is charged with an important share of the ratification and confirmation of all treaties; no one can, I think, feel more deeply than I do the difficulties which confront us in the work which this league—that is, the great association extending throughout the country, known as the League to Enforce Peace— undertakes, but the difficulties cannot be overcome unless we try to overcome them. I believe much can be done. Probably it will be impossible to stop all wars, but it certainly will be possible to stop some wars, and thus diminish their number. The way in which this problem must be worked out must be left to this league and to those who are giving this great subject the study which it deserves. I know the obstacles. I know how quickly we shall be met with the statement that this is a dangerous question which you are putting into your argument, that no nation can submit to the judgment of other nations, and we must be careful at the beginning not to attempt too much. I know the difficulties which arise when we speak of anything which seems to involve an alliance, but I do not believe that when Washington warned us against entangling alliances he meant for one moment that we should not join with the other civilized nations of the world if a method could be found to diminish war and encourage peace.
It was a year ago in delivering the chancellor's address at Union College I made an argument on this theory, that if we were to promote international peace at the close of the present terrible war, if we were to restore international law as it must be restored, we must find some way in which the united forces of the nations could be put behind the cause of peace and law. I said then that my hearers might think that I was picturing a Utopia, but it is in the search of Utopias that great discoveries are made. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. This league certainly has the highest of all aims for the benefits of humanity, and because the pathway is sown with difficulties is no reason that we should turn from it.
Theodore Roosevelt, in his Nobel Prize thesis, also expressed himself as follows, with reference to an association of nations:
The one permanent move for obtaining peace which has yet been suggested with any reasonable chance of obtaining its object is by an agreement among the great powers, in which each should pledge itself not only to abide by the decisions of a common tribunal, but to back with force the decision of that common tribunal. The great civilized nations of the world which do not possess force, actual or immediately potential, should combine by solemn agreement in a great world league for the peace of righteousness.
Upon the President taking up the League of Nations fight, Senator Lodge drew away from it as if in fear and trembling and began discussing our responsibilities abroad, evidencing a complete change of heart. He no longer asked Americans to be generous and fearless, but said:
The hearts of the vast majority of mankind would beat on strongly without any quickening if the League were to perish altogether.
The first objection to the League of Nations, urged by Senator Lodge, was that it involved the surrender of our sovereignty. There is a striking analogy between the argument of Senator Lodge and those put forth by gentlemen in Washington's day who feared that the proposed Constitution which was designed to establish a federal union would mean danger, oppression, and disaster. Mr. Singletary of Massachusetts, Mr. Lowndes of South Carolina, Mr. Grayson of Virginia, even Patrick Henry himself, foresaw the virtual subjugation of the States through a Constitution which at that time was often called the Treaty between the Thirteen States.
As Senator Brandegee and others contended that the Covenant of the League of Nations was a "muddy, murky, and muddled document," so Mr. Williams of New York, in 1788, charged "ambiguity" against the proposed Constitution, saying that it was "absolutely impossible to know what we give up and what we retain."
Mandates and similar bogies had their counterpart in Washington's day. George Mason, fearful like Senator Sherman of Illinois in a later day, "apprehended the possibility of Congress calling in the militia of Georgia to quell disturbances in New Hampshire."
The attitude of George Washington in his day was very similar to that of Woodrow Wilson. Writing to Knox, on August 19, 1797, he said: "I am fully persuaded it [meaning the Federal Constitution] is the best that can be obtained at this time. And, as a constitutional door is open for amendment hereafter, our adoption of it, under the present circumstances of the union, is in my opinion desirable." And of the opponents of the proposed Constitution he said, "The major part of them will, it is to be feared, be governed by sinister and self-important motives."
The storm centre of the whole fight against the League was the opposition personally conducted by Senator Lodge and others of the Republican party against the now famous Article X. The basis of the whole Republican opposition was their fear that America would have to bear some responsibility in the affairs of the world, while the strength of Woodrow Wilson's position was his faith that out of the war, with all its blood and tears, would come this great consummation.
It was the President's idea that we should go into the League and bear our responsibilities; that we should enter it as gentlemen, scorning privilege. He did not wish us to sneak in and enjoy its advantages and shirk its responsibilities, but he wanted America to enter boldly and not as a hypocrite.
With reference to the argument made by Senator Lodge against our going into the League, saying that it would be a surrender of American sovereignty and a loss of her freedom, the President often asked the question on his Western trip: How can a nation preserve its freedom except through concerted action? We surrender part of our freedom in order to save the rest of it. Discussing this matter one day, he said: "One cannot have an omelet without breaking eggs. By joining the League of Nations, a nation loses, not its individual freedom, but its selfish isolation. The only freedom it loses is the freedom to do wrong. Robinson Crusoe was free to shoot in any direction on his island until Friday came. Then there was one direction in which he could not shoot. His freedom ended where Friday's rights began."
There would have been no Federal Union to-day if the individual states that went to make up the Federal Union were not willing to surrender the powers they exercised, to surrender their freedom as it were.
Opponents of the League tried to convey the impression that under Article X we should be obliged to send our boys across the sea and that in that event America's voice would not be the determining voice.
Lloyd George answered this argument in a crushing way, when he said:
We cannot, unless we abandon the whole basis of the League of Nations, disinterest ourselves in an attack upon the existence of a nation which is a member of that league and whose life is in jeopardy. That covenant, as I understand it, does not contemplate, necessarily, military action in support of the imperilled nation. It contemplates economic pressure; it contemplates support for the struggling people; and when it is said that if you give any support at all to Poland it involves a great war, with conscription and with all the mechanism of war with which we have been so familiar in the last few years, that is inconsistent with the whole theory of the covenant into which we have entered. We contemplated other methods of bringing pressure to bear upon the recalcitrant nation that is guilty of acts of aggression against other nations and endangering their independence.
The Republicans who attacked the President on Article X had evidently forgotten what Theodore Roosevelt said about the one effective move for obtaining peace, when he urged: "The nations should agree on certain rights that should not be questioned, such as territorial integrity, their rights to deal with their domestic affairs, and with such matters as whom they should admit to citizenship." They had, also, evidently forgotten that Mr. Taft said: "The arguments against Article X which have been most pressed are those directed to showing that under its obligations the United States can be forced into many wars and to burdensome expeditionary forces to protect countries in which it has no legitimate interest. This objection will not bear examination."
Mr. Taft answered the question of one of the Republican critics if ArticleX would not involve us in war, in the following statement:
How much will it involve us in war? Little, if any. In the first place, the universal boycott, first to be applied, will impose upon most nations such a withering isolation and starvation that in most cases it will be effective. In the second place, we'll not be drawn into any war in which it will not be reasonable and convenient for us to render efficient aid, because the plan of the Council must be approved by our representatives, as already explained. In the third place, the threat of the universal boycott and the union of overwhelming forces of the members of the League, if need be, will hold every nation from violating Article X, and Articles XII, XIII, and XV, unless there is a world conspiracy, as in this war, in which case the earliest we get into the war, the better.
Evidently Mr. Taft did not look upon Article X as the bugaboo that Mr.Lodge pretended it was, for he said:
Article X covers the Monroe Doctrineand extends it to the world. The League is not a super-sovereign, but a partnership intended to secure to us and all nations only the sovereignty we can properly have, i.e., sovereignty regulated by the international law and morality consistent with the same sovereignty of other nations. The United States is not under this constitution to be forced into actual war against its will. This League is to be regarded in conflict with the advice of Washington only from a narrow and reactionary viewpoint.
Mr. Herbert Hoover, now a member of Mr. Harding's Cabinet, in a speech delivered on October 3, 1919, answering the argument that America would be compelled to send her boys to the other side, said:
We hear the cry that the League obligates that our sons be sent to fight in foreign lands. Yet the very intent and structure of the League is to prevent wars. There is no obligation for the United States to engage in military operations or to allow any interference with our internal affairs without the full consent of our representatives in the League.
And further discussing the revision of the Treaty, Mr. Hoover said:
I am confident that if we attempt now to revise the Treaty we shall tread on a road through European chaos. Even if we managed to keep our soldiers out of it we will not escape fearful economic losses. If the League is to break down we must at once prepare to fight. Few people seem to realize the desperation to which Europe has been reduced.
Tentative plans for a Western trip began to be formed in the White House because of the urgent insistence from Democratic friends on the Hill that nothing could win the fight for the League of Nations except a direct appeal to the country by the President in person.
Admiral Grayson, the President's physician and consistent friend, who knew his condition and the various physical crises through which he had passed here and on the other side, from some of which he had not yet recovered, stood firm in his resolve that the President should not go West, even intimating to me that the President's life might pay the forfeit if his advice were disregarded. Indeed, it needed not the trained eye of a physician to see that the man whom the senators were now advising to make a "swing around the circle" was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. More than once since his return from the Peace Conference I had urged him to take a needed rest; to get away from the turmoil of Washington and recuperate; but he spurned this advice and resolved to go through to the end.
No argument of ours could draw him away from his duties, which now involved not only the fight for the ratification of the Treaty, but the threatened railway strike, with its attendant evils to the country, and added administrative burdens growing out of the partisanship fight which was being waged in Congress for the ostensible purpose of reducing the high cost of living.
One day, after Democratic senators had been urging the Western trip, I took leave to say to the President that, in his condition, disastrous consequences might result if he should follow their advice. But he dismissed my solicitude, saying in a weary way: "I know that I am at the end of my tether, but my friends on the Hill say that the trip is necessary to save the Treaty, and I am willing to make whatever personal sacrifice is required, for if the Treaty should be defeated, God only knows what would happen to the world as a result of it. In the presence of the great tragedy which now faces the world, no decent man can count his own personal fortunes in the reckoning. Even though, in my condition, it might mean the giving up of my life, I will gladly make the sacrifice to save the Treaty."
He spoke like a soldier who was ready to make the supreme sacrifice to save the cause that lay closest to his heart.
As I looked at the President while he was talking, in my imagination I made a comparison between the man, Woodrow Wilson, who now stood before me and the man I had met many years before in New Jersey. In those days he was a vigorous, agile, slender man, active and alert, his hair but slightly streaked with gray. Now, as he stood before me discussing the necessity for the Western trip, he was an old man, grown grayer and grayer, but grimmer and grimmer in his determination, like an old warrior, to fight to the end.
There was another whose heroism was no less than his, Mrs. Wilson. She has since referred to the Western trip as "one long nightmare," though in the smiling face which she turned upon the crowds from Columbus to San Diego and back to Pueblo none could have detected a trace of the anxiety that was haunting her. She met the shouting throngs with the same reposeful dignity and radiant, friendly smile with which she had captivated the people of England, France, Italy, and Belgium.
At home and abroad she has always had a peculiar power to attract the populace, though she herself has never craved the spotlight. Like her husband, she finds home more congenial, and, like him, she prefers not to be written about.
In her husband's career she has played a notable rôle, the more noble because self-effacing. She has consistently disavowed intention to participate actively in public affairs, and yet in many a crisis she, out of her strong intelligence and sagacity, has been able to offer timely, wise suggestion. No public man ever had a more devoted helpmeet, and no wife a husband more dependent upon her sympathetic understanding of his problems. The devotion between these two has not been strengthened, for that would be impossible, but deepened by the President's long illness. Mrs. Wilson's strong physical constitution, combined with strength of character and purpose, has sustained her under a strain which must have wrecked most women. When the strong man broke, she nursed him as tenderly as a mother nurses a child.
Mrs. Wilson must have left the White House for that ill-omened journey with a sinking heart, for she knew, none better, that her husband was suffering from accumulated fatigue, and that he should be starting on a long vacation instead of a fighting tour that would tax the strength of an athlete in the pink of condition. For seven practically vacationless years he had borne burdens too great for any constitution; he had conducted his country through the greatest of all wars; he had contended, at times single-handed, in Paris with the world's most adroit politicians; he had there been prostrated with influenza, that treacherous disease which usually maims for a time those whom it does not kill, and he had not given himself a chance to recuperate; he had returned to America to engage in the most desperate conflict of his career with the leaders of the opposition party; and now, when it was clear even to his men friends, and much clearer to the intuition of a devoted wife, that nature was crying out for rest, he was setting out on one of the most arduous programmes of public speaking known even in our country, which is familiar with these strenuous undertakings. Mrs. Wilson's anxieties must have increased with each successive day of the journey, but not even to we of the immediate party did she betray her fears. Her resolution was as great as his.
When the great illness came she had to stand between him and the peril of exhaustion from official cares, yet she could not, like the more fortunately obscure, withdraw her husband from business altogether and take him away to some quiet place for restoration. As head of the nation he must be kept in touch with affairs, and during the early months of his illness she was the chief agent in keeping him informed of public business. Her high intelligence and her extraordinary memory enabled her to report to him daily, in lucid detail, weighty matters of state brought to her by officials for transmission to him. At the proper time, when he was least in pain and least exhausted, she would present a clear, oral resume of each case and lay the documents before him in orderly arrangement.
As woman and wife, the first thought of her mind and the first care of her heart must be for his health. Once at an acute period of his illness certain officials insisted that they must see him because they carried information which it was "absolutely necessary that the President of the United States should have," and she quietly replied: "I am not interested in the President of the United States. I am interested in my husband and his health."
With loving courage she met her difficult dilemma of shielding him as much as possible and at the same time keeping him acquainted with things he must know. When it became possible for him to see people she, in counsel with Admiral Grayson, would arrange for conferences and carefully watch her husband to see that they who talked with him did not trespass too long upon his limited energy.
When it became evident that the tide of public opinion was setting against the League, the President finally decided upon the Western trip as the only means of bringing home to the people the unparalleled world situation.
At the Executive offices we at once set in motion preparations for the Western trip. One itinerary after another was prepared, but upon examining it the President would find that it was not extensive enough and would suspect that it was made by those of us—like Grayson and myself—who were solicitious for his health, and he would cast them aside. All the itineraries provided for a week of rest in the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, but when a brief vacation was intimated to him, he was obdurate in his refusal to include even a day of relaxation, saying to me, that "the people would never forgive me if I took a rest on a trip such as the one I contemplate taking. This is a business trip, pure and simple, and the itinerary must not include rest of any kind." He insisted that there be no suggestion of a pleasure trip attaching to a journey which he regarded as a mission.
As I now look back upon this journey and its disastrous effects upon the President's health, I believe that if he had only consented to include a rest period in our arrangements, he might not have broken down at Pueblo.
Never have I seen the President look so weary as on the night we left Washington for our swing into the West. When we were about to board our special train, the President turned to me and said: "I am in a nice fix. I am scheduled between now and the 28th of September to make in the neighbourhood of a hundred speeches to various bodies, stretching all the way from Ohio to the coast, and yet the pressure of other affairs upon me at the White House has been so great that I have not had a single minute to prepare my speeches. I do not know how I shall get the time, for during the past few weeks I have been suffering from daily headaches; but perhaps to-night's rest will make me fit for the work of tomorrow."
No weariness or brain-fag, however, was apparent in the speech at Columbus, Ohio. To those of us who sat on the platform, including the newspaper group who accompanied the President, this speech with its beautiful phrasing and its effective delivery seemed to have been carefully prepared.
Day after day, for nearly a month, there were speeches of a similar kind, growing more intense in their emotion with each day. Shortly after we left Tacoma, Washington, the fatigue of the trip began to write itself in the President's face. He suffered from violent headaches each day, but his speeches never betrayed his illness.
In those troublous days and until the very end of our Western trip the President would not permit the slightest variation from our daily programme. Nor did he ever permit the constant headaches, which would have put an ordinary man out of sorts, to work unkindly upon the members of his immediate party, which included Mrs. Wilson, Doctor Grayson, and myself. He would appear regularly at each meal, partaking of it only slightly, always gracious, always good-natured and smiling, responding to every call from the outside for speeches—calls that came from early morning until late at night—from the plain people grouped about every station and watering place through which we passed. Even under the most adverse physical conditions he was always kind, gentle, and considerate to those about him.
I have often wished, as the criticisms of the Pullman smoking car, the cloak room, and the counting house were carried to me, picturing the President's coldness, his aloofness and exclusiveness, that the critics could for a moment have seen the heart and great good-nature of the man giving expression to themselves on this critical journey. If they could have peeped through the curtain of our dining room, at one of the evening meals, for instance, they would have been ashamed of their misrepresentations of this kind, patient, considerate, human-hearted man.
When he was "half fit," an expression he often used, he was the best fellow in the little group on our train—good-natured, smiling, full of anecdotes and repartee, and always thinking of the comforts and pleasure of the men gathered about him. The illness of a newspaper man, or of one of the messengers or conductors, or attachés of the train was a call to service to him, and one could find the President in one of the little compartments of the train, seated at the bed of a newspaper man or some attaché who had been taken ill on the trip. There is in the President a sincere human sympathy, which is better than the cheap good-fellowship which many public men carefully cultivate.
It was on the Western trip, about September 12th, while the President,with every ounce of his energy, was attempting to put across the League ofNations, that Mr. William C. Bullitt was disclosing to the Committee onForeign Relations at a public hearing the facts of a conference betweenSecretary Lansing and himself, in which Mr. Bullitt declared that Mr.Lansing had severely criticized the League of Nations.
The press representatives aboard the train called Mr. Bullitt's testimony to the President's attention. He made no comment, but it was plain from his attitude that he was incensed and distressed beyond measure. Here he was in the heart of the West, advancing the cause so dear to his heart, steadily making gains against what appeared to be insurmountable odds, and now his intimate associate, Mr. Lansing, was engaged in sniping and attacking him from behind.
On September 16th, Mr. Lansing telegraphed the following message to thePresident:
On May 17th, Bullitt resigned by letter giving his reasons with which you are familiar. I replied by letter on the 18th without any comment on his reasons. Bullitt on the 19th asked to see me to say good-bye and I saw him. He elaborated on the reasons for his resignation and said that he could not conscientiously give countenance to a treaty which was based on injustice. I told him that I would say nothing against his resigning since he put it on conscientious grounds, and that I recognized that certain features of the Treaty were bad, as I presumed most everyone did, but that was probably unavoidable in view of conflicting claims and that nothing ought to be done to prevent the speedy restoration of peace by signing the Treaty. Bullitt then discussed the numerous European commissions provided for by the Treaty on which the United States was to be represented. I told him that I was disturbed by this fact because I was afraid the Senate and possibly the people, if they understood this, would refuse ratification, and that anything which was an obstacle to ratification was unfortunate because we ought to have peace as soon as possible.
When the President received this explanation from Mr. Lansing, he sent for me to visit with him in his compartment. At the time I arrived he was seated in his little study, engaged in preparing his speech for the night's meeting. Turning to me, with a deep show of feeling, he said: "Read that, and tell me what you think of a man who was my associate on the other side and who confidentially expressed himself to an outsider in such a fashion? Were I in Washington I would at once demand his resignation! That kind of disloyalty must not be permitted to go unchallenged for a single minute. The testimony of Bullitt is a confirmation of the suspicions I have had with reference to this individual. I found the same attitude of mind on the part of Lansing on the other side. I could find his trail everywhere I went, but they were only suspicions and it would not be fair for me to act upon them. But here in his own statement is a verification at last of everything I have suspected. Think of it! This from a man whom I raised from the level of a subordinate to the great office of Secretary of State of the United States. My God! I did not think it was possible for Lansing to act in this way. When we were in Paris I found that Lansing and others were constantly giving out statements that did not agree with my viewpoint. When I had arranged a settlement, there would appear from some source I could not locate unofficial statements telling the correspondents not to take things too seriously; that a compromise would be made, and this news, or rather news of this kind, was harmful to the settlement I had already obtained and quite naturally gave the Conference the impression that Lansing and his kind were speaking for me, and then the French would say that I was bluffing."
I am convinced that only the President's illness a few days later prevented an immediate demand on his part for the resignation of Mr. Lansing.
That there was no real devotion on the part of Mr. Lansing for thePresident is shown by the following incident.
A few days after the President returned from the West and lay seriously ill at the White House, with physicians and nurses gathered about his bed, Mr. Lansing sought a private audience with me in the Cabinet Room. He informed me that he had called diplomatically to suggest that in view of the incapacity of the President we should arrange to call in the Vice- President to act in his stead as soon as possible, reading to me from a book which he had brought from the State Department, which I afterward learned was "Jefferson's Manual," the following clause of the United States Constitution:
In case of the removal of the President from office, or his death, resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the said office, the same shall devolve upon the Vice-President.
Upon reading this, I coldly turned to Mr. Lansing and said: "Mr. Lansing, the Constitution is not a dead letter with the White House. I have read the Constitution and do not find myself in need of any tutoring at your hands of the provision you have just read." When I asked Mr. Lansing the question as to who should certify to the disability of the President, he intimated that that would be a job for either Doctor Grayson or myself. I immediately grasped the full significance of what he intimated and said: "You may rest assured that while Woodrow Wilson is lying in the White House on the broad of his back I will not be a party to ousting him. He has been too kind, too loyal, and too wonderful to me to receive such treatment at my hands." Just as I uttered this statement Doctor Grayson appeared in the Cabinet Room and I turned to him and said: "And I am sure that Doctor Grayson will never certify to his disability. Will you, Grayson?" Doctor Grayson left no doubt in Mr. Lansing's mind that he would not do as Mr. Lansing suggested. I then notified Mr. Lansing that if anybody outside of the White House circle attempted to certify to the President's disability, that Grayson and I would stand together and repudiate it. I added that if the President were in a condition to know of this episode he would, in my opinion, take decisive measures. That ended the interview.
It is unnecessary to say that no further attempt was made by Mr. Lansing to institute ouster proceedings against his chief.
I never attempted to ascertain what finally influenced the action of the President peremptorily to demand the resignation of Mr. Lansing. My own judgment is that the demand came as the culmination of repeated acts of what the President considered disloyalty on Mr. Lansing's part while in Paris, and that the situation was aggravated by Mr. Lansing's notes to Mexico during the President's illness.
When I received from the President's stenographer the letter to Mr. Lansing, intimating that his resignation would not be a disagreeable thing to the President, I conferred with the President at once and argued with him that in the present state of public opinion it was the wrong time to do the right thing. At the time the President was seated in his invalid chair on the White House portico.
Although physically weak, he was mentally active and alert. Quickly he took hold of my phrase and said, with a show of the old fire that I had seen on so many occasions: "Tumulty, it is never the wrong time to spike disloyalty. When Lansing sought to oust me, I was upon my back. I am on my feet now and I will not have disloyalty about me."
When the announcement of Lansing's resignation was made, the flood-gates of fury broke about the President; but he was serene throughout it all. When I called at the White House on the following Sunday, I found him calmly seated in his bathroom with his coloured valet engaged in the not arduous task of cutting his hair. Looking at me with a smile in his eye, he said: "Well, Tumulty, have I any friends left?" "Very few, Governor," I said. Whereupon he replied: "Of course, it will be another two days' wonder. But in a few days what the country considers an indiscretion on my part in getting rid of Lansing will be forgotten, but when the sober, second thought of the country begins to assert itself, what will stand out will be the disloyalty of Lansing to me. Just think of it! Raised and exalted to the office of Secretary of State, made a member of the Peace Commission, participating in all the conferences and affixing his signature to a solemn treaty, and then hurrying to America and appearing before the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate to repudiate the very thing to which he had given his assent."
During the illness of the President his political enemies sought to convey the impression that he was incapacitated for the duties of his office. As one who came in daily contact with him I knew how baseless were these insinuations. As a matter of fact, there was not a whole week during his entire illness that he was not in touch with every matter upon which he was called to act and upon which he was asked to render judgment. The White House files contain numerous memoranda showing his interest in all matters to which department heads felt it incumbent to call his attention during his illness. One of the most critical things upon which he passed was the question of the miners' strike, which resulted in the beginning from an injunction suit by the Attorney General, Mr. Palmer, to restrain the miners from carrying out their purpose to strike. This was one of the most critical situations that arose during his illness and with which he daily kept in touch.
Uncomplainingly the President applied himself to the difficult tasks of the Western trip. While the first meeting at Columbus was a disappointment as to attendance, as we approached the West the crowds grew in numbers and the enthusiasm became boundless. The idea of the League spread and spread as we neared the coast. Contrary to the impression in the East, the President's trip West was a veritable triumph for him and was so successful that we had planned, upon the completion of the Western trip, to invade the enemy's country, Senator Lodge's own territory, the New England States, and particularly Massachusetts. This was our plan, fully developed and arranged, when about four o'clock in the morning of September 26, 1919, Doctor Grayson knocked at the door of my sleeping compartment and told me to dress quickly, that the President was seriously ill. As we walked toward the President's car, the Doctor told me in a few words of the President's trouble and said that he greatly feared it might end fatally if we should attempt to continue the trip and that it was his duty to inform the President that by all means the trip must be cancelled; but that he did not feel free to suggest it to the President without having my cooperation and support. When we arrived at the President's drawing room I found him fully dressed and seated in his chair. With great difficulty he was able to articulate. His face was pale and wan. One side of it had fallen, and his condition was indeed pitiful to behold. Quickly I reached the same conclusion as that of Doctor Grayson, as to the necessity for the immediate cancellation of the trip, for to continue it, in my opinion, meant death to the President. Looking at me, with great tears running down his face, he said: "My dear boy, this has never happened to me before. I felt it coming on yesterday. I do not know what to do." He then pleaded with us not to cut short the trip. Turning to both of us, he said: "Don't you see that if you cancel this trip, Senator Lodge and his friends will say that I am a quitter and that the Western trip was a failure, and the Treaty will be lost." Reaching over to him, I took both of his hands and said: "What difference, my dear Governor, does it make what they say? Nobody in the world believes you are a quitter, but it is your life that we must now consider. We must cancel the trip, and I am sure that when the people learn of your condition there will be no misunderstanding." He then tried to move over nearer to me to continue his argument against the cancellation of the trip; but he found he was unable to do so. His left arm and leg refused to function.
I then realized that the President's whole left side was paralyzed. Looking at me he said: "I want to show them that I can still fight and that I am not afraid. Just postpone the trip for twenty-four hours and I will be all right."
But Doctor Grayson and I resolved not to take any risk, and an immediate statement was made to the inquiring newspaper men that the Western trip was off.
Never was the President more gentle or tender than on that morning. Suffering the greatest pain, paralyzed on his left side, he was still fighting desperately for the thing that was so close to his heart—a vindication of the things for which he had so gallantly fought on the other side. Grim old warrior that he was, he was ready to fight to the death for the League of Nations.
In the dispatches carried to the country, prepared by the fine newspaper men who accompanied us on the trip, it was stated that evidences of a breakdown on the part of the President were plainly visible in the speech he delivered at Pueblo.
I had talked to him only a few minutes before the delivery of that speech, and the only apparent evidence that he was approaching a breakdown was in his remark to me that he had a splitting headache, and that he would have to cut his speech short. As a matter of fact, this last speech he made, at Pueblo, on September 25, 1919, was one of the longest speeches delivered on the Western trip and, if I may say so, was one of the best and most passionate appeals he made for the League of Nations.
Many things in connection with the Pueblo meeting impressed themselves upon me. In the peroration of the speech he drew a picture of his visit on Decoration Day, 1919, to what he called a beautiful hillside near Paris, where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery given over to the burial of the American dead. As he spoke of the purposes for which those departed American soldiers had given their lives, a great wave of emotion, such as I have never witnessed at a public meeting, swept through the whole amphitheatre. As he continued his speech, I looked at Mrs. Wilson and saw tears in her eyes. I then turned to see the effect upon some of the "hard-boiled" newspaper men, to whom great speeches were ordinary things, and they were alike deeply moved. Down in the amphitheatre I saw men sneak their handkerchiefs out of their pockets and wipe the tears from their eyes. The President was like a great organist playing upon the heart emotions of the thousands of people who were held spell-bound by what he said.
It is possible, I pray God it may not be so, that the speech at Pueblo was the last public speech that Woodrow Wilson will ever make, and I, therefore, take the liberty of introducing into this story the concluding words of it:
What of our pledges to the men that lie dead in France? We said that they went over there not to prove the prowess of America or her readiness for another war but to see to it that there never was such a war again. It always seems to make it difficult for me to say anything, my fellow citizens, when I think of my clients in this case. My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent upon a similar errand.
Again, and again, my fellow citizens, mothers who lost their sons in France have come to me and, taking my hand, have shed tears upon it not only, but they have added: "God bless you, Mr. President!" Why, my fellow citizens, should they pray God to bless me? I advised the Congress of the United States to create the situation that led to the death of their sons. I ordered their sons overseas. I consented to their sons being put in the most difficult parts of the battle line, where death was certain, as in the impenetrable difficulties of the forest of Argonne. Why should they weep upon my hand and call down the blessings of God upon me? Because they believe that their boys died for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and palpable objects of the war. They believe, and they rightly believe, that their sons saved the liberty of the world. They believe that wrapped up with the liberty of the world is the continuous protection of that liberty by the concerted powers of all the civilized world. They believe that this sacrifice was made in order that other sons should not be called upon for a similar gift—the gift of life, the gift of all that died— and if we did not see this thing through, if we fulfilled the dearest present wish of Germany and now dissociated ourselves from those alongside whom we fought in the war, would not something of the halo go away from the gun over the mantelpiece, or the sword? Would not the old uniform lose something if its significance? These men were crusaders. They were going forth to prove the might of justice and right, and all the world accepted them as crusaders, and their transcendent achievement has made all the world believe in America as it believes in no other nation organized in the modern world. There seems to me to stand between us and the rejection or qualification of this treaty the serried ranks of those boys in khaki, not only those boys who came home, but those dear ghosts that still deploy upon the fields of France.
My friends, on last Decoration Day I went to a beautiful hillside near Paris, where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery given over to the burial of the American dead. Behind me on the slopes was rank upon rank of living American soldiers, and lying before me on the levels of the plain was rank upon rank of departed American soldiers. Right by the side of the stand where I spoke there was a little group of French women who had adopted those graves, had made themselves mothers of those dear ghosts by putting flowers every day upon those graves, taking them as their own sons, their own beloved, because they had died in the same cause—France was free and the world was free because America had come! I wish some men in public life who are now opposing the settlement for which these men died could visit such a spot as that. I wish that the thought that comes out of those graves could penetrate their consciousness. I wish that they could feel the moral obligation that rests upon us not to go back on those boys, but to see the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good their redemption of the world. For nothing less depends upon this decision, nothing less than the liberation and salvation of the world.
Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I believe that men will see the trust, eye to eye and face to face. There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.
On June 25, 1919, I received from President Wilson the following cabled message:
My clear conviction is that the adoption of the treaty by the Senate with reservations will put the United States as clearly out of the concert of nations as a rejection. We ought either to go in or stay out. To stay out would be fatal to the influence and even to the commercial prospects of the United States, and to go in would give her a leading place in the affairs of the world. Reservations would either mean nothing or postpone the conclusion of peace, so far as America is concerned, until every other principal nation concerned in the treaty had found out by negotiation what the reservations practically meant and whether they could associate themselves with the United States on the terms of the reservations or not.
The President consistently held to the principle involved in this statement. To his mind the reservations offered by Senator Lodge constituted a virtual nullification on the part of the United States of a treaty which was a contract, and which should be amended through free discussion among all the contracting parties. He did not argue or assume that the Covenant was a perfected document, but he believed that, like our American Constitution, it should be adopted and subsequently submitted to necessary amendment through the constitutional processes of debate. He was unalterably opposed to having the United States put in the position of seeking exemptions and special privileges under an agreement which he believed was in the interest of the entire world, including our own country. Furthermore, he believed that the advocacy for reservations in the Senate proceeded from partisan motives and that in so far as there was a strong popular opinion in the country in favour of reservations it proceeded from the same sources from which had come the pro-German propaganda. Before the war pro-German agitation had sought to keep us out of the conflict, and after the war it sought to separate us in interest and purpose from other governments with which we were associated.
By his opposition to reservations the President was seeking to prevent Germany from taking through diplomacy what she had been unable to get by her armies.
The President was so confident of the essential rightness of the League and the Covenant and of the inherent right-mindedness of the American people, that he could not believe that the people would sanction either rejection or emasculation of the Treaty if they could be made to see the issue in all the sincerity of its motives and purposes, if partisan attack could be met with plain truth-speaking. It was to present the case of the people in what he considered its true light that he undertook the Western tour, and it was while thus engaged that his health broke. Had he kept well and been able to lead in person the struggle for ratification, he might have won, as he had previously by his determination and conviction broken down stubborn opposition to the Federal Reserve system.
So strong was his faith in his cause and the people that even after he fell ill he could not believe that ratification would fail. What his enemies called stubbornness was his firm faith in the righteousness of the treaty and in the reasonableness of the proposition that the time to make amendments was not prior to the adoption of the Treaty and by one nation, but after all the nations had agreed and had met together for sober, unpartisan consideration of alterations in the interest of all the contracting parties and the peace and welfare of the world.
Even when he lay seriously ill, he insisted upon being taken in his invalid chair along the White House portico to the window of my outer office each day during the controversy in the Senate over the Treaty. There day after day in the coldest possible weather I conferred with him and discussed every phase of the fight on the Hill. He would sit in his chair, wrapped in blankets, and though hardly able, because of his physical condition, to discuss these matters with me, he evidenced in every way a tremendous interest in everything that was happening in the Capitol that had to do with the Treaty. Although I was warned by Doctor Grayson and Mrs. Wilson not to alarm him unduly by bringing pessimistic reports, I sought, in the most delicate and tactful way I could, to bring the atmosphere of the Hill to him. Whenever there was an indication of the slightest rise in the tide for the League of Nations a smile would pass over the President's face, and weak and broken though he was, he evidenced his great pleasure at the news. Time and time again during the critical days of the Treaty fight the President would appear outside my office, seated in the old wheel chair, and make inquiry regarding the progress of the Treaty fight on Capitol Hill.
One of the peculiar things about the illness from which the President suffered was the deep emotion which would stir him when word was brought to him that this senator or that senator on the Hill had said some kind thing about him or had gone to his defense when some political enemy was engaged in bitterly assailing his attitude in the Treaty fight. Never would there come from him any censure or bitter criticism of those who were opposing him in the fight. For Senator Borah, the leader of the opposition, he had high respect, and felt that he was actuated only by sincere motives.
I recall how deeply depressed he was when word was carried to him that the defeat of the Treaty was inevitable. On this day he was looking more weary than at any time during his illness. After I had read to him a memorandum that I had prepared, containing a report on the situation in the Senate, I drew away from his wheel chair and said to him: "Governor, you are looking very well to-day." He shook his head in a pathetic way and said: "I am very well for a man who awaits disaster," and bowing his head he gave way to the deep emotion he felt.
A few days later I called to notify him of the defeat of the Treaty. His only comment was, "They have shamed us in the eyes of the world." Endeavouring to keep my good-nature steady in the midst of a trying situation, I smiled and said: "But, Governor, only the Senate has defeated you. The People will vindicate your course. You may rely upon that." "Ah, but our enemies have poisoned the wells of public opinion," he said. "They have made the people believe that the League of Nations is a great Juggernaut, the object of which is to bring war and not peace to the world. If I only could have remained well long enough to have convinced the people that the League of Nations was their real hope, their last chance, perhaps, to save civilization!"
I said, by way of trying to strengthen and encourage him at this, one of the critical moments of his life—a moment that I knew was one of despair for him—"Governor, I want to read a chapter from the third volume of your 'History of the American People,' if it will not tire you." He graciously gave his assent and I took from under my arm the volume containing an account of the famous John Jay treaty, in the defense of which Alexander Hamilton was stoned while he stood defending it on the steps of the New York City Hall. There was, indeed, a remarkable similarity between the fight over the John Jay treaty and the Versailles Treaty. I read an entire chapter of Woodrow Wilson's "History of the American People," including the passage:
Slowly the storm blew off. The country had obviously gained more than it had conceded, and tardily saw the debt it owed Mr. Jay and to the administration, whose firmness and prudence had made his mission possible. But in the meantime things had been said which could not be forgotten. Washington had been assailed with unbridled license, as an enemy and a traitor to the country; had even been charged with embezzling public moneys during the Revolution; was madly threatened with impeachment, and even with assassination; and had cried amidst the bitterness of it all that "he would rather be in his grave than in the presidency."
The country knew its real mind about him once again when the end of his term came and it was about to lose him. He refused to stand for another election. His farewell address, with its unmistakable tone of majesty and its solemn force of affection and admonition, seemed an epitome of the man's character and achievements, and every man's heart smote him to think that Washington was actually gone from the nation's counsels.
When I concluded reading this chapter, the President's comment was, "It is mighty generous of you to compare my disappointment over the Treaty with that of Washington's.You have placed me in mighty good company."