The young radicals who, at an earlier day, followed the progressives in their hue and cry against malefactors of great wealth, and in practical efforts to refurbish the selfgoverning process, were turning to the Russian Revolution for inspiration. John Reed, whose Ten Days that Shook the World made the October days real to thousands of Americans, became an archetype of the indignant youth of the time who failed to find any idealism in massacres at the fighting fronts or in repression of workingclass movements by the Department of Justice.
In Soviet Russia they were finding the righteous cause their fathers sought in following Wilson and Roosevelt and Bryan. To them the soviets were spontaneous selfgoverning assemblies like New England town meetings. The Soviet Government had repudiated secret diplomacy and was fostering selfdetermination of national minorities. Lenin had brought peace to the soldiers and land to the peasants. The repressions and massacres conducted in the name of the proletariat were shrugged off as temporary phenomena in the war against a host of enemies financed by capitalist governments, or as capitalist fabrications on the order of the Sisson documents.
Obstreperous and nonconformist youth, which a generation before might have listened to Woodrow Wilson with respect, was now attracted to the various socialist and syndicalist ideologies which were already beginning to harden into the Communist dogma.
The bellwether of those disillusioned with democratic methods would be Lincoln Steffens. Steffens, the most influential writer of the muckraking era, had been T.R.’s personal friend. He had glorified in print the labors of Bob La Follette in Wisconsin and of Newton Baker in Cleveland. Now Steffens, who had been the guide and philosopher of a whole generation of indigenous muckrakers and of the reform movement from coast to coast, was suddenly to make public his loss of faith in the tradition he had served for a lifetime. Stopping in after a trip to the Soviet Union, to call on his friend the sculptor Jo Davidson—whom he found fingering the clay for a bust of Bernard Baruch—Steffens was heard portentously announcing: “I have been into the future and by God it works.”
Organized labor was of two minds. Although Samuel Gompers kept the official leadership of the A.F. of L. in line behind the President, “a baneful seething,” stimulated by the Bolshevik-inspired revolutions that were sweeping Europe, continued under the surface. The foreignborn, stung by discrimination and harassment in America, dreamed of joining the triumphant uprising of the world proletariat. Repression bred resentments even among native Americans. It was hard for working men and women to forget that Debs was serving time in Atlanta.
Superficially, in spite of the deep popular misgivings of which the Republican victory at the polls was an inconvenient symptom, everything was as it had been. With the news of the armistice a sense of reprieve swept over the country. There was hardly a family that didn’t have men at the front or in training. Mothers, fathers, wives, sweethearts could take a deep breath and say to each other that their dear ones were safe. The elation of victory threw a certain halo about the figure of the President. His appeal to the crowd had never been greater. Yet mistrust was creeping in behind the cheers of the crowds.
Misgivings in the News
The Administration was losing its favorable press. Though in private, newspapermen had long been outspoken against George Creel’s highhanded performances as presidential propagandist, the treatment of Woodrow Wilson himself, even by the opposition papers, remained respectful to the point of servility. He still had devoted adherents among the ablest journalists of the time. When the critical spirit began to express itself in the editorial columns, the tone was more of sorrow than of anger.
Three days after the armistice the President astonished the nation by using his wartime powers to seize the Atlantic cables. The move was ascribed to George Creel. Editorial writers explained sarcastically that Creel was planning to use his control of the cables to censor and distort the news of the Peace Conference as his “Committee of Public Misinformation” had censored and distorted the news from the fighting fronts. Hardly a voice was raised in the President’s defense.
The flurry over the nationalization of the cables had hardly subsided before the story broke that McAdoo was resigning as Secretary of the Treasury and as Director of Railroads. The President’s soninlaw was generally considered the strongest man in the Cabinet. Mac himself never did much to disguise the fact that he was of this opinion too; he snorted to House that the rest of the cabinet members were “nothing but clerks.” Although White House intimates knew that Mac had suffered a couple of spells of illness attributed to overwork and had been discussing with the President and his confidential colonel the reasons that would soon impel him to return to private life, the news of his abrupt resignation at such a critical juncture aroused a storm of gossip.
As an apostle of free enterprise Mac was resigning in protest against the President’s policy of nationalizing public utilities. He could no longer go along with Baker’s inefficiency in the War Department as revealed by the Hughes report on the shortcomings of the airplane production program. He had thrown up his job in a peeve because the President wouldn’t appoint him to serve at the Peace Conference.
McAdoo’s resignation was the signal for a stampede of “dollar a year” men out of Washington. Business executives and industrial leaders who had been working themselves sick for no pay on the control and procurement agencies of the Washington leviathan, while out of the corner of an eye they could see their less patriotic and often less able colleagues getting rich on war profits, returned to private life in droves. Even Bernard Baruch, the President’s dear Dr. Facts, announced he was leaving the Industrial War Board at the end of the year. The President wrote him immediately that he had further work in mind for him.
Though Wilson never had any idea of taking McAdoo to Europe, the resignation of his Secretary of the Treasury did force him to make a change in his list of delegates. With Mac gone, he would have to leave Secretary Baker, the only other cabinet member on whom he really relied, in Washington to keep the wheels of government moving during his absence. By mid November the story was in the headlines. The President was indeed planning to lead his delegation to the Peace Conference in person.
The news was received with dismay. At the State Department Lansing was quietly conducting his own canvass on the desirability of the President’s going to Europe. From Cardinal Gibbons in Baltimore to obscure Democratic precinct leaders in upper New York State the answer was negative. Old friends wrote begging Lansing to talk the President out of the notion. Many referred approvingly to the tradition that no President should leave the territory of the United States.
When Lansing respectfully presented his arguments the President intimated that he hadn’t yet quite made up his mind. Baruch was reported to be against the President’s going. Baker was against it. Secretary of Agriculture Houston, who was passionately loyal, suggested at a cabinet meeting, that though it might be fitting for the President to open the conference in person, he should then come home and leave the details to his delegates. As his way was, Wilson listened politely to all this advice and kept his own counsel; then one night he appeared without warning at Lansing’s house in the middle of a dinner party and brusquely announced to his Secretary of State that he’d made up his mind, he was going.
Echoes of these discussions and misgivings had been leaking into the nation’s press through the Washington newspapermen, who, now that the fighting had stopped, were short of sensations to report. Even the New York World, the President’s faithfulest supporter among bigcity newspapers, frowned on the idea. When the New York Times published a summary of editorials throughout the nation it was discovered that opinion was two to one against it.
His Bent Rather than My Own
From the moment House reached Paris on October 26 and set up his offices in a gray old mansion on the rue de l’Université on the Left Bank, the President and his confidential colonel exchanged incessant cables in their private code. Immediately House took his old chair on the Sup
reme War Council as the President’s personal representative.
Clemenceau greeted him like a longlost brother. “He received me with open arms. We passed all sorts of compliments. He seems genuinely fond of me,” noted House in his diary. “He thinks in the terms of the Second Empire,” he added a little later. “He doesn’t know what this new thought is about.” In spite of the illtempered old Tiger’s personal partiality, the colonel found the British more nearly in sympathy with the President’s plans. Lord Milner and Marshal Haig feared bolshevism more than they feared a German revival, and were in favor of moderate treatment of the defeated nations. Lloyd George talked first one way, then the other. He gave the impression of being more than usually flighty and irresponsible. His mind was on the coming general election back home.
While the Supreme War Council sat at Versailles, working out, amid the stiff formalities of military protocol, ever more Carthaginian armistice terms for the defeated nations, the Allied civilian leaders took refuge from the exigencies of their generals at the Quai d’Orsay. The handsome offices of Monsieur Stéphane Pichon, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, were among the few state apartments in Paris where the chauffage centrale really worked. There the prime ministers, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando, with House sitting in for President Wilson, could lounge in front of a fireplace around a large carved flattopped desk and carry on their debates in a more unbuttoned atmosphere.
House was shocked by the first meeting he attended: “Lloyd George and Clemenceau wrangled for an entire afternoon as to whether the British or the French should receive the Turks’ surrender. They bandied words like fishwives, at least Lloyd George did … It would have been humorous if it hadn’t been a tragic waste of time.”
House’s first task was to get the Fourteen Points firmly imbedded in the agenda of the peace talks which would follow. “If this is done the basis for peace will already have been made. Germany began negotiation on the basis of these terms, and the Allies have already tentatively accepted them … but it is becoming daily more apparent,” he wrote, after he’d been two days in Paris, “that they desire to get from under the obligation these terms will impose upon them in the making of the peace. If we do not use care we shall place ourselves in some such dishonorable position as Germany did when she violated her treaty obligations as to Belgium.”
There were two great sticking points. Lloyd George was skittish about freedom of the seas, and Orlando insisted upon assurances that Italy’s Adriatic aspirations would be respected. After four days of argument House reached a compromise.
He promised that before the meaning of each debatable point was finally set down in definite and practical terms both the British and the Italians would be given the chance to argue out their exceptions in direct negotiations with the United States. Furthermore, with the President’s full knowledge and consent, the colonel furnished the Allied leaders with a private and confidential document, drawn up under House’s supervision, explaining away most of the features which the European statesmen found most objectionable in the Fourteen Points. The content was subject to negotiation, the ingratiating colonel assured them, if only they accepted the slogans in their outward form.
Just as House had reached this gratifying accord with the prime ministers, at a meeting this time in House’s large parlor on the rue de l’Université, news was brought them that Austria had accepted the armistice terms. “There was great excitement,” he noted, “and clasping of hands and embracing. I said to Orlando ‘Bravo Italy’ which brought him near to tears.”
“This has been a red letter day,” House cabled the President.
Sir William Wiseman was among the first to congratulate him. Wiseman, a slender active little man, hid a great deal of intrigue behind a frank and open countenance. Heading the British secret services in Washington during the better part of the war he had seen to it that he should become a familiar of the confidential colonel’s. His usefulness as bosom friend to the President’s chief adviser can hardly have been lost on his superiors at Whitehall. In Paris his function again was that of private British liaison man with Colonel House.
“Wiseman and my other friends,” noted House exuberantly under the date of November 4, “have been trying to make me believe that I have won one of the greatest diplomatic triumphs in history. That is as it may be. The facts are I came to Europe for the purpose of getting the Entente to subscribe to the President’s peace terms. I left a hostile and influential group in the United States frankly saying they did not approve the President’s terms … On this side I found the Entente governments as distinctly hostile to the Fourteen Points as the people at home. The plain people generally are with the President … it is not with the plain people we have to deal … I have had to persuade, I have had to threaten.” House’s threat was that Wilson would ask Congress to make a separate peace—“but the result is worth all my endeavors … I am glad the exceptions were made, for it emphasizes the acceptance of the Fourteen Points.”
House’s cables caused jubilation at the White House. “Proud of the way you are handling the situation,” cabled the President. Both the President and his confidential colonel felt they had taken the first step towards redeeming Woodrow Wilson’s pledge to the peoples of the world.
The Tiger Takes a Trick
Leaving Foch to exercise his vindictiveness to the utmost, now that the rest of the central powers were hors de combat, in dictating an armistice to the Germans, the civilian leaders fell to discussing the location for the conference which was to impose a peace on Europe. Before House left for France he and the President had decided on Lausanne. They were taking it for granted that the conference must be held in a neutral country. Andrew Carnegie wrote Wilson suggesting The Hague, but when the Kaiser sought asylum in Holland that country was ruled out. Lloyd George started by suggesting the Spanish beachresort of San Sebastian. Orlando, the Italian prime minister, told House he would agree on any suitable city, preferably in Switzerland. House and Lloyd George settled on Geneva. All the while Clemenceau was quietly insisting on Versailles.
The day House cabled President Wilson for his approval of Geneva, the newspapers carried sensational news of a general strike in Switzerland. The Bolsheviks were repaying the hospitality of the Swiss during their years of exile by subsidizing revolutionary agitators there. Though the strike proved a flash in the pan Wilson took fright and cabled House that Switzerland was “saturated with every poisonous element.” Clemenceau described the advantages of Paris hotels and of the stately huge buildings at Versailles. Allied statesmen were worn out from years of strain and effort, they were already in Paris: why move? They settled on Paris from sheer lassitude. To House’s surprise Wilson readily agreed. Clemenceau had his way.
House confided his disappointment to his diary: “It will be difficult enough to make a just peace, and it will be almost impossible to do so while sitting in the atmosphere of a belligerent capital.”
That left the final question to be decided between House and the President. On what terms should Wilson attend? Wilson had all along insisted that he must preside over the opening sessions. House’s suggestion, like Houston’s, was that the President should attend the preliminaries and then turn the detail work over to plenipotentiaries. It had been decided that the four victorious powers, Italy, France, Great Britain and the United States, should each be represented by a commission of five. House jotted down in private that he would like to be chairman of the American commission himself, with McAdoo and Herbert Hoover as his chief assistants.
Clemenceau’s first thought when he heard that President Wilson was surely coming to Paris was that the arrival of another head of state would give Poincaré a chance to take the chair. That would never do; the Tiger intended to preside.
Lloyd George and Orlando were equally flustered. They feared Wilson would be hard to deal with. They dreaded the prospect of his appealing over their heads to their people back home. When they communicated their doubts to the colonel, H
ouse affably assured them that they would not find the President stiff and dictatorial in personal relations. Quite the contrary, House declared, he always found him amenable to advice.
The Americans whom House consulted in Paris were equally opposed to the President’s trip, but for different reasons. Frank Cobb got up an impassioned memorandum on the subject:
“The moment President Wilson sits at the council table with these Prime Ministers and Foreign Secretaries he has lost all the power that comes from distance and detachment … In Washington President Wilson has the ear of the whole world. It is a commanding position, the position of a court of the last resort of world democracy … He can go before Congress and appeal to the conscience and hope of mankind … This is a mighty weapon, but if the President were to participate personally in the proceedings, it would be a broken stick.”
Mindful of his determination “to follow his bent rather than my own” in representing Wilson in Paris, House, who knew how the President and Mrs. Wilson were looking forward to a state visit to Europe, felt he could not oppose the President’s coming. He employed all his diplomatic finesse in wording a cable to the White House: “If the Peace Congress assembles in France Clemenceau will be presiding officer. If a neutral country had been chosen, you would have been asked to preside. Americans whose opinions are of value are practically unanimous in the belief it would be unwise of you to sit in the Peace Conference. They fear that it would involve a loss of dignity and your commanding position. Clemenceau has just told me that he hopes you will not sit in the Congress because no head of a state should sit there. The same feeling prevails in England. Cobb cables that Reading and Wiseman voice the same view. Everyone wants you to come over and take part in the preliminary conference.”
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