Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  This address was as unlike his first inaugural as was the spirit infusing the occasion. In 1913 he had spoken not a word about foreign affairs, only of his optimistic domestic agenda. Now he talked almost entirely of the “tragical events of the thirty months of vital turmoil through which we have just passed,” which had made “us citizens of the world.” There could be no turning back, he said. “The shadows that now lie dark upon our path will soon be dispelled and we shall walk with the light all about us if we be but true to ourselves.” Without quite defining the mission, he said, “United alike in the conception of our duty and in the high resolve to perform it in the face of all men, let us dedicate ourselves to the great task to which we must now set our hand.”

  With that, Woodrow Wilson commenced his second term, delivering the nation to a place it could not even have imagined four years ago. While the United States was far from prepared militarily, its President had conscientiously made it ready mentally and morally to address the inevitable ordeal ahead. To clarify that task, Wilson reminded his countrymen, “We are provincials no longer.”

  12

  ARMAGEDDON

  And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come . . .

  —REVELATION, XI:18

  With the events of the inauguration behind them, Woodrow and Edith went home, where the family had gathered upstairs in the oval sitting room of the White House to watch the fireworks. Curtained off by themselves in his study, a weary First Couple invited Colonel House to sit with them. He found the President holding Edith’s hand and pressing his cheek against hers.

  After reviewing the highlights of the day, a revived President suggested that they take to the streets, where they could enjoy the new system of lights that illuminated much of Washington. Wilson had a chauffeur drive them without a Secret Service agent, despite that day’s bomb threats. A car with guards followed closely, as much of Washington turned out to admire the public buildings along Pennsylvania Avenue, all the way up to the Capitol, with its glowing dome. Within minutes, crowds on the street recognized the President and cheered. He and his wife retreated to the White House, where they talked with Colonel House until eleven.

  Two days later, Wilson was suffering from a terrible cold and exhaustion. Dr. Grayson ordered him to bed, where he remained for the better part of the next two weeks. Edith had already taken note of the conditions that tended to incite his minor collapses, “when every nerve was tense with anxiety . . . and the burdens resting on his shoulders [were] enough to crush the vitality of a giant.”

  A slight but discernible change in White House procedure occurred during his convalescence. The filibuster having defeated the armed ship bill, Wilson asked Attorney General Gregory whether he could arm merchant ships without Congressional authorization. When Gregory said yes, the White House asked Secretaries Lansing and Daniels to prepare for the new policy. Curiously, however, communications with the Secretaries passed via Mrs. Wilson. The President was learning that he could use his wife as an operative—“a blind” is how she described herself, blocking unwanted visitors and relaying essential messages in both directions. Edith sat by her husband’s bed and read the long memoranda detailing the plans for arming merchant ships. “Mr. Lansing, especially,” observed Mrs. Wilson, “saw no hope for peace and urged that we proceed on the theory that we should soon be at war with Germany.”

  Adding further confusion to a world spun out of control, the people of Russia revolted. After years of steady decimation in the war under an unheeding monarchy, the Imperial Guard mutinied, the Duma formed a provisional government, and—hopelessly fighting his “Cousin Willy,” the Kaiser—Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne, bringing three hundred years of Romanov rule to an end. While the future of that empire remained unclear, the certain death of the dynasty lent greater credence to Wilson’s conception of “war against autocracy.” It now clearly defined this war as one between Democracy and Absolutism. March 18 brought word of three torpedoed American merchant vessels, with the loss of more than a dozen lives.

  Wilson appeared at the 2:30 Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, March 20, his old genial self. Almost immediately he sought advice regarding America’s relations with Germany. With the nation in a growing state of agitation, the Cabinet found the President’s calmness sobering and reassuring. “Excitement,” Robert Lansing noted, “would seem very much out of place at the Cabinet table with Woodrow Wilson presiding.” The President gravely posed two questions: Should he summon Congress to meet before April 16, for which he had already issued a call? And what should he say?

  McAdoo answered first. He said the war seemed a “certainty,” and he could see no reason for delaying American participation. If we did not respond at once, he said, “the American people would compel action and we would be in the position of being pushed forward instead of leading, which would be humiliating and unwise.” More than supplying men, which he doubted the country could do at that time, he felt the United States could underwrite the Allies’ loans. Houston picked up the ball and said that Germany was already at war with America and that the country should not hesitate to fight back. “The quickest way to hit Germany,” he said, “is to help the Allies.” Until the United States had amassed a large Army, it could speed up the production of submarines and destroyers, build multitudes of fast ships for freight, and extend liberal credits to Germany’s enemies. War Secretary Baker said the current state of affairs demanded drastic action without delay—“that the Germans did not intend to modify in the least degree their policy of inhumanity and lawlessness,” and that such acts meant war. He advocated preparing an Army at once. Lansing said it behooved the President to appear before Congress to declare that a state of war already existed between Germany and the United States and to “enact the laws necessary to meet the exigencies of the case.” With the Russian Revolution, Lansing added, the time was ideal for entering the war, to fight for a League of Peace with no powerful autocracies among its members. With increasing excitement, he added that public sentiment was strong enough at that moment to sway Congress.

  The President asked Lansing to lower his voice. He did not want people in the corridor overhearing their discussion. He remained unsure how to introduce the Russian situation into this American decision. Lansing said those were not causes to go to war; but he believed the character of the autocratic German government—“as manifested by its deeds of inhumanity, by its broken promises, and by its plots and conspiracies against this country”—pertained. Wilson absorbed all of Lansing’s words, saying only, “Possibly.”

  Lansing argued that the sinking of a few American ships, even with the loss of American lives, did not provide a sound enough basis to declare war. The “duty of this and every other democratic nation to suppress an autocratic government like the German . . . because it was a menace to the national safety of this country and of all other countries with liberal systems of government,” however, did.

  “We have not yet heard from Burleson and Daniels,” said the President in a professorial tone. With reluctance, the Postmaster General expressed regrets about having to abandon neutrality but agreed that if the President did not take action, the people would force it. “I do not care for popular demand,” Wilson said. “I want to do right, whether popular or not.” And so Burleson urged an immediate declaration of war—and, he added, “I want it to be understood that we are in the war to the end, that we will do everything we can to aid the Allies and weaken Germany with money, munitions, ships and men, so that those Prussians will realize that, when they made war on this country they woke up a giant which will surely defeat them.” He recommended the issuance of $5 billion in bonds. Wilson turned to the other side of the table and said, “Well, Daniels?”

  The eyes of the Secretary of the Navy filled with tears. The most pacifistic of the Cabinet members and a friend of Bryan’s, he took his colleagues aback when he announced that he too favored war. “Having tried patience,
” he said, there was “no course open to us except to protect our rights on the seas.” The President’s faced dropped.

  Once everyone had spoken his piece—all starting from different positions but ending with the same conclusion—the President said, “Well, gentlemen. I think that there is no doubt as to what your advice is. I thank you.” As the Secretaries adjourned, Wilson asked Burleson and Lansing to remain, so that he could inquire when he might ask Congress to convene should he decide to do so. Two Mondays hence would be the earliest possible date, they explained. “Thus ended a Cabinet meeting the influence of which may change the course of history,” Lansing wrote in a memorandum to himself. “The ten councillors of the President had spoken as one,” he said, “and he—well, no one could be sure that he would echo the same opinion and act accordingly.” Fifty newsmen waited in the outer executive offices for word about the meeting; but the Secretaries could not say much because they honestly did not know how Wilson would act. They revealed only that he would probably call Congress into extra session within the next two weeks. The President attended the vaudeville show at Keith’s Theatre that night.

  Over the next several days, the President got outside of the White House as much as possible—not fleeing his responsibilities so much as freeing himself so that he could think. He played golf and took long automobile rides. When he had business to conduct with Cabinet members, he went to their offices—on foot. Wilson was not completely alone, of course: the Secret Service accompanied him. And so did Edith. Observed Thomas Brahany, the chief clerk of the White House staff, “I think this is the first time in American history that a President’s wife has accompanied the President in a purely business call on a Cabinet Officer.”

  On Friday, March 30, Woodrow Wilson was ready to prepare his remarks to Congress. He knew his next public utterance would alter the world. For this momentous address, he summoned the country’s most successful speechwriter, one of its foremost historians, one of its first political scientists, one of its most elegant wordsmiths, a spiritual thinker to provide moral grounding, and, finally, his most trusted stenographer to get it all down on paper. There in the second-story study, Woodrow Wilson sat alone.

  Actually, Edith was in the room with him, decoding cipher messages for her husband. They closed the office door with orders that nobody was to disturb him. He started with an outline, graduated to a shorthand draft, which he corrected in shorthand and longhand, and then put his fingers to the keys of his Hammond typewriter. The Wilsons lunched alone, after which Edith took him for an hour’s ride in the park. And then it was back to the desk for ten hours over the course of the weekend, finishing after church on Sunday.

  Upon the completion of the speech, Edith recalled, Wilson summoned a newspaper friend, Frank I. Cobb, editor of the New York World. “I’d never seen him so worn down,” the journalist said. “He looked as if he hadn’t slept, and he said he hadn’t.” Indeed, Wilson had wrestled with the situation over several nights. “He tapped some sheets before him,” added Cobb, “and said that he had written a message and expected to go before Congress with it as it stood. He said he couldn’t see any alternative, that he had tried every way he knew to avoid war.” And then the boy who had grown up in the battle-ravaged South added, “I think I know what war means. . . . Is there anything else I can do?” Cobb said Germany had forced his hand.

  After breakfast the next morning, Wilson passed to the Public Printer a sealed envelope containing the draft of his self-typed address, and he asked Tumulty to notify Congress that he was prepared to appear as soon as the two houses could organize. He spent the rest of the morning playing golf with Edith. In the afternoon, he walked across the West Executive Avenue from the White House to the State, War, and Navy Building (a grand monstrosity of an edifice, later called the Executive Office Building) to brief Secretaries Lansing and Daniels. Later that day, American Ambassador Sharp further justified the Administration’s course of action when he notified Washington that a U-boat had torpedoed the freighter Aztec, the first armed American merchantman, taking a dozen lives.

  Tension spread. Sensing what lay ahead, seven pacifists from Boston confronted their senior Senator, Henry Cabot Lodge, as he was leaving a committee room. Their spokesman approached Lodge and said his constituents opposed entering the war. Lodge disagreed, replying, “National degeneracy and cowardice are worse than war.” The young man said that anyone who wanted to go to war was a coward; and with that, the sixty-seven-year-old Senator called the man a liar and threw a punch, sending him to the floor. Similar arguments broke out across the nation. In the White House, Wilson gave his speech a dry run, reading it to Colonel House. The Colonel admired it immensely, not least of all because he felt it contained concepts he had been urging upon the President since the war began—differentiating between the German government and the German people, demanding the same codes of honor and morals for nations as for individuals, stating that the United States should not join a league of nations of which an autocracy was a member. But the speech, regardless of House’s or anyone else’s contribution, was pure Woodrow Wilson. Whether or not he was the first to utter them, the ideas and ideals were his. At 6:30, the two joined Wilson’s family for a small dinner, during which the war was not discussed.

  At 8:10 the household left the Executive Mansion, followed ten minutes later by the President and Mrs. Wilson, accompanied by Tumulty and Dr. Grayson. Despite a light spring rain, cheering crowds lined the streets all the way to the Capitol, where searchlights illuminated the massive flag atop the bright dome. Two troops of United States cavalry in dress uniform with sabers drawn greeted the President at the entrance to the House of Representatives. The members had been in session all day; and now, after an hour’s respite, they returned to the great chamber. In a semicircle directly before the Speaker’s desk sat the entire Supreme Court—Chief Justice White front and center—without robes. The Cabinet flanked them in the front row to the Speaker’s left; the diplomatic corps—including the Ambassador of newly elected President Carranza of Mexico—in evening dress, filled the seats behind. It was the first time the foreign envoys as a cohort had been invited to the great hall. Led by Vice President Marshall, the Senate entered, almost every man carrying or wearing a small American flag. The press and special invited guests packed the gallery, 1,500 people all together. Edith sat with her mother and Margaret Wilson in the front row of the balcony. At 8:32 the Speaker’s voice announced the President of the United States. The Justices were the first to rise and cheer, leading a two-minute ovation—the greatest welcome Wilson had received in all his visits to the chamber. The audience settled into silence so deep, Edith said one could hear only the sound of people breathing.

  The President appeared nervous at first. He looked pale; his voice quavered, and his fingers trembled. In plain terms, Wilson explained the reason for this extraordinary session: “There are serious, very serious, choices of policy to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibility of making.” For several minutes, the audience was silent, as Wilson calmly recited a list of recent German atrocities. He pointed out that some of the unarmed ships that had been sunk were carrying relief to stricken Belgians, that there had been not only violations of international law but a disregard for human life, and that property “can be paid for; the lives of peaceful and innocent people cannot be.” The “present German submarine warfare against commerce,” he insisted, was nothing less than “a war against all nations” and a “challenge to all mankind.”

  Each nation, Wilson said, must decide for itself how to meet that challenge. “Our motive,” he asserted, “will not be revenge or the victorious assertion of the physical might of the nation, but only the vindication of right, of human right, of which we are only a single champion.” Armed neutrality, he declared, was no longer an option. “There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making,” he said
to the utterly still audience: “We will not choose the path of submission—”

  The chamber erupted in cheers. Chief Justice White dropped the big soft hat he had been holding so that he could raise his hands in the air and clap. The applause spread from the floor to the galleries. At last the President, having found his voice, continued from the point at which he had been interrupted:

  —and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

  With a profound sense of the solemn and even tragical character of the step I am taking and of the grave responsibilities which it involves, but in unhesitating obedience to what I deem my constitutional duty, I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German government to be in fact nothing less than war against the government and people of the United States; that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps not only to put the country in a more thorough state of defense but also to exert all its power and employ all its resources to bring the Government of the German Empire to terms and end the war.

  Justice White sprang to his feet, triggering an even greater ovation. He fought back tears.

  The President was in full command as he cogently articulated how this had become a war of necessity for America. “Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its peoples,” he said, “and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic government backed by organized force which is controlled wholly by their will, not by the will of their people.”