Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  “We have no quarrel with the German people,” Wilson emphasized, because this “was a war determined upon as wars used to be determined upon in the old, unhappy days when people were nowhere consulted by their rulers and wars were provoked and waged in the interest of dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men who were accustomed to use their fellow men as pawns and tools.” But the actions of the German leadership demanded a global response, which included an affiliation of democratic nations. “It must be a league of honour,” he said, “a partnership of opinion.” Wilson rejoiced at the recent events in Russia and pronounced that emerging nation a “fit partner” for that league now that it had shaken off the “autocracy that crowned the summit of her political structure.”

  The United States was going to have to pay the price of going to war; and some of those costs were immediate. They included: extending “the most liberal financial credits” to those countries already fighting Germany; “the organization and mobilization of all the material resources of the country to supply the materials of war and serve the incidental needs of the nation in the most abundant and yet the most economical and efficient way possible”; the immediate equipping of the existing Navy to deal with the enemy’s submarines; and the immediate addition to the armed forces of at least 500,000 men. Toward that end, Wilson believed not in a volunteer Army but the “principle of universal liability to service,” along with authorization for additional men as soon as they were needed and could be trained. Wilson said he did not wish to borrow money to pay for all these efforts; he believed it was “our duty . . . to protect our people” through equitable taxation.

  In short, Wilson said, Germany had become an international menace, and the United States was “about to accept gauge of battle with this natural foe to liberty and shall, if necessary, spend the whole force of the nation to check and nullify its pretensions and its power.” That meant America would fight for nothing less than “the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its people, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations great and small and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience.” And then Woodrow Wilson justified going to war—with a declaration that would long resonate:

  “The world must be made safe for democracy.”

  The sentence elicited no response at first. Then Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi stopped the speech with his applause. Everybody present rapidly comprehended the importance of those eight words, and the acclamation steadily mounted. When it finally subsided, Wilson completed his thought, which was meant to define further America’s role in the conflict and to characterize the nation’s place in the world for at least the next century. The world’s peace, he continued,

  must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.

  With Lincolnesque charity, Wilson reminded his audience that for all of America’s arguments with Germany’s allies, the Imperial and Royal Government of Austria-Hungary had not actually engaged in warfare against citizens of the United States. Furthermore, Wilson reminded his fellow Americans, “We are . . . sincere friends of the German people,” including those living amongst them—unless and until they displayed any disloyalty to the United States.

  After thirty-six minutes, Wilson concluded, adapting the words of no less a reformer than Martin Luther himself. “God helping her,” Wilson said of America’s new crusade, “she can do no other.”

  All members of the three branches of government stood as one. The Senators waved their small flags wildly, all except Senator La Follette, who conspicuously stood in silence, chewing gum, with his arms folded. As the President hastily departed, Senator Lodge strode toward him, extended his hand, and said, “Mr. President, you have expressed in the loftiest manner possible, the sentiments of the American people.”

  Wilson waited for Edith to descend from the gallery, and they rode with Tumulty back to the White House. Applause accompanied them all the way home; but inside the car, they remained silent. Before the President joined his family, he and Tumulty sat for a few minutes in the Cabinet Room. “Think of what it was they were applauding,” said Wilson, utterly drained. “My message to-day was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that.”

  And then in a startling soul-baring moment, the President told Tumulty that maintaining his impartiality during the last thousand days of war had been a terrible ordeal. “From the beginning I saw the utter futility of neutrality, the disappointment and heartaches that would flow from its announcement,” he confessed, “but we had to stand by our traditional policy of steering clear of European embroilments.” While he had appeared indifferent to criticism, Wilson said few had sympathized with his situation. One person who had recognized those pressures bearing down on the President was the editor of the Republican in Springfield, Massachusetts, who had recently sent an empathic note. Wilson read its few paragraphs to Tumulty, after which he pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his eyes. And then, Tumulty recalled, the President lay his head on the Cabinet table and sobbed “as if he had been a child.”

  Reviews of the speech were reverential, its historical significance lost on nobody. Walter Lippmann, whose admiration for Wilson had been ascending, sent the President a sample of what he had just written for The New Republic: “Any mediocre politician might have gone to war futilely for rights that in themselves cannot be defended by war,” he said. “Only a statesman who will be called great could have made America’s intervention mean so much to the generous forces of the world, could have lifted the inevitable horror of war into a deed so full of meaning.” From London, Ambassador Page cabled that the pronouncement was “comparable to only two other events in our history—the achievement of our independence and the preservation of the Union.” James Gerard, America’s recently disinvited Ambassador to Germany, commented that the speech contained “a lofty idealism about it which puts this war on the plane of a crusade. No more momentous document has ever been written in the history of the world.” A nearly eighty-year-old director of the United States Chamber of Commerce called the President’s office simply to say that he had heard Lincoln speak his immortal words at the Pennsylvania battlefield. “Mr. Wilson’s address on Monday,” the director said, “will rank with the Gettysburg speech of Lincoln.”

  The outcome of the ensuing Congressional debate was never in doubt. The Senate began the discussion early on April 4 and voted that night—82 to 6 in favor of war. The House debate opened the following morning and dragged into the early morning hours of April 6, with some 150 members having their say. Although corralling every vote was hardly a necessity, this particular issue had the rare distinction of seeing virtually every member in his seat. During the first roll call, however, one voice in the back row failed to make itself heard—that of Jeannette Rankin of Montana, the first woman elected to the House of Representatives, in her first month in office. She had endured a long, excruciating day: the National American Woman Suffrage Association had lobbied hard for her to vote for war, to demonstrate that women could be as hawkish as men; and the Congressional Union, representing another faction of suffragists, urged her to show that women were doves. She seemed to vacillate until former Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon walked over to the Democratic Representative and said, “Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country in the American Congress. I shall not advise you how to vote, but you should vote one way or the other—as your conscience dictates.” When the roll was called for the second time, the Clerk of the House went to Rankin’s side to record her choice. “I want to stand by my country,”
she said, “but I cannot vote for war.” It was close to 4 a.m. when all the votes were tallied—373 to 50.

  At lunch the next day, Good Friday, the President was informed that a printed copy of the War Resolution—signed by Vice President Marshall and Speaker Clark—was on its way from the Congress. Wilson rushed through his meal and exited the State Dining Room just as the messenger arrived at Ike Hoover’s office. The staff discussed moving to the President’s study, but Wilson said he would sign it right there, at the usher’s desk. “Stand by me, Edith,” he said as she handed him a gold pen he had given her. His jaw clenched as he affixed his bold signature to the parchment. He rose from his chair, returned the pen to Edith, and excused himself. Executive clerk Rudolph Forster informed the reporters waiting in the executive offices; and a naval officer in the West Wing went outside and wigwagged to another officer in the window of the Navy Department building that the President had signed the resolution. In an instant, wireless operators were transmitting the news to the world. For only the fourth time, the United States of America had declared war on a foreign nation; and Woodrow Wilson was commanding unprepared forces—just 300,000 men, fewer than 10,000 of whom were officers. The German General Staff ranked the United States militarily “somewhere between Belgium and Portugal.”

  Weeks later, Wilson drafted his five-sentence last will and testament. The President left all his property to “my beloved wife Edith for her lifetime,” with the request that she distribute Ellen’s personal articles—such as clothing, jewelry, and art—to his daughters, and an additional stipulation that Margaret Wilson receive $2,500 annually so long as she remained unmarried. Upon Edith’s death, the estate was to benefit his children equally.

  • • •

  The day after war was declared, the President wrote a memorandum for himself, a list of measures he hoped Congress would pass in order to “put the country in a thorough state of defense and preparation for action.” They included not only fortifying the existing military bills but also amending policies related to shipping, the Federal Reserve, the railroads, and interstate commerce. He believed the nation needed to unify behind a single set of principles, and a single leader. “My mother did not raise her boy to be a War President,” Wilson said after a Cabinet meeting, “—but it is a liberal education!”

  The naval forces of the United States mobilized immediately, putting every government ship—the commissioned fleet, reserve warships, Coast Guard and Lighthouse Service boats—into active service. In a related action, the United States government seized ninety-one German-owned vessels—twenty-seven in New York harbor, including the George Washington. It was a merchant fleet with an estimated value of $100 million and the capacity to transport forty thousand troops—tonnage that would have required a year to manufacture. Most of the ships were not immediately seaworthy. In anticipation of the war declaration, the German crews inflicted wounds on their own vessels, sawing off bolt heads, which would require weeks to replace. By nightfall, more than one thousand Germans—including ship captains and cooks and musicians—were peaceably interned on Ellis Island, where they awaited deportation.

  The President issued a proclamation to the American people, which the nation’s newspapers carried on their front pages. Because, as he put it, the “entrance of our own beloved country into the grim and terrible war for democracy and human rights” created “so many problems of national life and action,” he immediately presented an anxious nation “earnest counsel.” This remarkable appeal outlined for the people not only the immediate problems before them but also the many types of “service and self-sacrifice” in which every one of his fellow countrymen could engage.

  Besides fighting, the most basic task was to supply food—for Americans at home as well as fighting men abroad, along with the starving people of the nations “with whom we have now made common cause.” Once adequately fed, America could consider the rest of the operations of the war—manpower, materiel, machinery, even mules. Wilson said all American industries must be made “more prolific and more efficient than ever,” that the industrial forces of the country would become “a great international . . . army . . . engaged in the service of the nation and the world, the efficient friends and saviors of free men everywhere.”

  In the face of worldwide industrialization, Wilson urged a recultivation of America’s agricultural roots. The supreme need of the nation just then was “an abundance of supplies, and especially of foodstuffs.” Wilson urged America to “correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness” and to increase her harvests. Almost overnight, male high school students were released from class, allowed to earn diplomas by manning the family farms. In the cities and suburbs, “Victory Gardens” cropped up almost overnight, as the people began planting vegetables in their backyards and on their rooftops. In Washington, the government offered its unoccupied property to anyone who would farm it; along the Potomac Drive, where cherry blossoms would later bloom, society ladies tended edible gardens. Every housewife was further exhorted to practice strict economy in all her spending, even beyond household purchases, for that would put her “in the ranks of those who serve the nation.” Curbing excess, Wilson decreed, was a public duty—“a dictate of patriotism which no one can now expect ever to be excused or forgiven for ignoring.”

  That applied especially to businesses. Wilson cautioned America’s middlemen—whether they were handling foodstuffs or factory goods—that the “eyes of the country will be especially upon you.” The country, he said, expected its businessmen to “forego unusual profits, to organize and expedite shipments of supplies of every kind.” To the American merchant, he suggested a simple motto: “Small profits and quick services.” He begged all editors to publish this appeal; he urged advertising agencies to resound its message; he hoped clergymen would consider these themes worthy of homilies. From his own bully pulpit, Wilson said, “The supreme test of the nation has come. We must all speak, act, and serve together!”

  Unity became the driving force behind all Wilson’s actions in making the nation ready to fight. The President was determined to centralize as many of the agencies and industries as possible under a single command. That meant training a nation of rugged individuals to come together as one, in working for their common cause. He appointed men of all political persuasions to scores of new positions, based solely on ability, regardless of their political histories. An air of nonpartisanship in the capital would allow the Congress to enact two dozen major pieces of legislation in the next year—each of which helped put the nation on war footing, changing the very character of the country.

  Loyalty was the standard by which Wilson measured every one of his countrymen, starting with those in his administration. Despite Edith’s dislike for Tumulty’s commonness, Wilson could not deny his decade of unimpeachable devotion. Although Colonel House scarcely veiled his pretensions to power, he had never refused the President, and he possessed expertise in foreign affairs that nobody else in the Administration did. And though Dr. Grayson had made an “indelicate and objectionable” request for an admiralship, Wilson promoted him over many who had served longer, largely because he could never dismiss his personal allegiance to the man who had introduced him to his wife. Edith confidentially divulged her dislike for the President’s son-in-law—finding him ambitious and “thoroughly selfish”; but Secretary McAdoo had consistently proved himself the ablest member of the Cabinet, proactive and persuasive. Now Wilson called upon him to serve as the controller of European war loans and as Chairman of the Federal Farm Loan Bureau, General Manager of the Liberty Loans, and Chairman of the War Finance Corporation.

  Transportation provides the lifeblood of a nation, and as 1917 wore on, Wilson came to grips with the fact that the United States simply had no continental railway system. It also lacked a sufficient number of railcars and the capital to build more. The Anti-Trust Act of 1890 prohibited the major companies from merging competing lines or making rate ag
reements among themselves. “Federal control of the railroads was, in fact, inevitable,” McAdoo later wrote of the situation; but neither Wilson nor anybody else in the Administration wanted to put his hand on the throttle. By year’s end Wilson felt compelled to say “that it is our duty as the representatives of the nation to do everything that is necessary to do to secure the complete mobilization of the whole resources of America by as rapid and effective means as possible.” He seized the railroads with nothing more than a proclamation.

  The Army Appropriations Act of the prior year had not only earmarked money to augment America’s fighting force but had also authorized the President to exercise federal control whenever emergency war measures were required. Opposition immediately voiced the fear that this marked the first step of government ownership of the railroads. The Administration readily pointed out that in England, where private corporations owned the railways, the government had taken control the day His Majesty had declared war on the Kaiser; France, Italy, and Germany also exerted the same control. Wilson explained to the nation, “Only under government administration can an absolutely unrestricted and unembarrassed common use be made of all tracks, terminals, terminal facilities and equipment of every kind.”

  Based on his earlier experience building the Manhattan tunnels, McAdoo recommended several railroad executives, any of whom might run this new Railroad Administration. After discussing the list, Wilson asked McAdoo himself to direct the operation. “I don’t want to urge it,” Wilson said. “I am merely asking if you think you could undertake it?” Upon reflection, McAdoo said that he could, and that the problems were more than questions of transportation. “It is a matter of finance as well as of operation,” he said. With one hand running the trains and the other holding the Treasury’s money, McAdoo was inclined to think it would be less of a burden for him to be in charge himself than working with somebody else. Two million railroad workers were suddenly in his employ, as McAdoo became the first man to consider the nation’s 240,000 miles of railway lines as a whole. By consolidating services, McAdoo eliminated a superfluous one-sixth of the nation’s passenger-train miles, enhancing efficiency and saving more than $100 million; the railway-car shortage of 1917 would become a surplus a year later; a coal famine was averted through greater efficiency; and McAdoo increased the pay for practically every railroad worker to a “decent living wage.” Nobody objected until the war was over, when the railroads were returned to private hands and political opponents accused him of throwing money around so that the workers would elect him President of the United States.