The President sought associates less to help craft his peace plan than to execute it. He presumed Colonel House’s participation, though a few of House’s recent comments had made him look twice at the man he had once called his “second personality.” He found Secretary of State Lansing unimaginative but dutiful, and his absence would have presented an overt diplomatic breach. He thought Secretary McAdoo, who had literally made the American trains run on time during the war, while also heading the Treasury Department and overseeing domestic and international war loans, would be enormously useful applying his expertise to prostrated Europe; but, after years of public service, McAdoo was exhausted and so were his financial assets. Three days after the Armistice, he tendered his resignation to his father-in-law. He and Nell would leave for a three-month holiday in Santa Barbara before settling in New York, where he would launch a lucrative law practice and contemplate a run for the Presidency. It would be an ambition Wilson would never fully support. He believed McAdoo was a man of action and that the next President would inherit a world that required a man of reflection. Wilson replaced his son-in-law at the Treasury with Congressman Carter Glass.
Although Secretary Baker was inexpert in military matters, his proficiency during the war would have made him a worthy counselor at the talks. But with Lansing absent, McAdoo departing, and the sudden announcement by Attorney General Gregory that he would be tendering his resignation for “pecuniary” reasons, everybody thought it best to keep Baker in the Cabinet Room, where he could keep a steady hand on the rudder. He recommended General Tasker Bliss, who had served as the Army’s chief of staff and on the Supreme War Council in France.
The final chair became somewhat controversial, as Wilson hoped to provide at least the suggestion of nonpartisanship. Because the Senate had to approve all treaties, several prominent Republicans in the upper house were mentioned, Henry Cabot Lodge chief among them. He was not only the leading Republican Senator, but he also chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His well-known enmity toward the President kept anybody from seriously considering the idea, though pundits ever since have suggested that if chosen, he would have ensured passage of the Treaty.
Recognizing that he would have enough foreign adversaries to contend with at the conference table, Wilson chose not to borrow trouble by commissioning his bitterest foe. Beyond that, he believed the Constitution prohibited appointing Lodge, or any other legislator, because of the stipulation that “no Senator or Representative shall, during the time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil office under the authority of the United States, which shall have been created.”
Wilson’s opponents would further question the President’s right even to negotiate a treaty, but as he had stated as a college professor, a President “may guide every step of diplomacy and to guide diplomacy is to determine what treaties must be made.” The Senate possessed the power to disapprove of a treaty, but the executive branch of the American government could dictate its terms.
Tumulty recommended Elihu Root—TR’s Secretary of State, a former United States Senator, and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. But Wilson worried about Root’s conservatism and his aggressive opposition to the Administration’s early policy of neutrality. William Howard Taft was also considered, but the idea of a former President serving as an aide to a sitting President seemed awkward for both parties.
Eventually, Wilson settled on a seasoned diplomat, Henry White—who had served in Roosevelt’s administration as the First Secretary in London under Ambassador Hay and subsequently as TR’s Ambassador to Italy and then to France. Roosevelt called him the “most useful man in the entire diplomatic service.” Republicans—Lodge among them—immediately denounced the appointment as cosmetic, dismissing White as a Republican in name only. With the delegation filled, Woodrow Wilson prepared for Paris. A page from one of his own books reminded him that “the initiative in foreign affairs, which the President possesses without any restriction whatever, is virtually the power to control them absolutely.” The Senate—even Democrats—already felt Wilson was freezing them out.
In the course of a long conversation about postwar hopes, Wilson received advice from Stockton Axson, who recommended that he gather at the White House all the leaders in the American war effort, Democrats and Republicans alike. He hoped Wilson might imbue them with a sense of his personal gratitude and then say “that the worst and hardest was yet to come . . . in the readjustment of the world,” and “that their cooperation, their loyalty to the country, and to the great cause, will be even more needed then, than it was during the war.” Edith looked up from her knitting and concurred. Axson insisted that Wilson could have the leaders from both sides of the aisle eating out of his hand. Wilson acknowledged the wisdom of the notion but said there was no place large enough to hold that many people. Axson recommended the East Room. The President nodded and even conceded that it “would be a step that would help to suppress party opposition.” But he never acted upon the idea, and antagonism festered.
By the time Wilson tried to rally the Congress behind him in his sixth Annual Message on the State of the Union, the lawmakers felt marginalized. He entered the overflowing chamber on December 2, 1918, to what one onlooker called an “ominous silence.” Even delivering a patriotic speech did little to thaw his audience. Starting with an evaluation of the nation’s war effort, Wilson attributed most of its success to “the mettle and quality of the officers and men we sent over and of the sailors who kept the seas, and the spirit of the nation that stood behind them.” He singled out various bureaus and constituencies that had contributed to the nation’s success—especially America’s women. He spoke of the specific challenges ahead as the country returned to a peacetime economy. Still, little received applause, even when his supporters tried to incite an ovation. Secretary Daniels found the Congressional reserve nothing short of “churlish.” But one diplomat’s wife, who viewed the proceedings through her opera glasses, wrote in her diary that “the President’s complete disregard of the Senate following on top of his very tactless appeal to the country to return a Democratic Congress, has made him just about as thoroughly and completely unpopular in his own country as any president has been or could be.”
Wilson concluded his speech by announcing his intention to leave for Paris. He reminded the Congress that the Central empires had accepted the bases of peace that he had outlined to the Congress the prior January and that they were ideals for which American soldiers had fought. Now, he explained, “I owe it to them to see to it, so far as in me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and no possible effort omitted to realize them.” Wilson said it was his duty to “play my full part in making good what they offered their life’s blood to obtain.”
Toward that end, Wilson said in parting, “May I not hope . . . that in the delicate tasks I shall have to perform on the other side of the sea . . . I may have the encouragement and the added strength of your united support?” Emphasizing the magnitude of his undertaking, he assured the lawmakers, “I am the servant of the nation. I can have no private thought or purpose of my own in performing such an errand.” He said he would make his absence as brief as possible, hoping to return having translated into action “the great ideals for which America has striven.”
Even before Wilson had exited the Capitol, it was clear that both the House and Senate were divided. His valedictory wishes felt labored, and the response was the “ice bath” the Republicans had promised. One Washington Brahmin, Caroline Astor Drayton Phillips, kept her eye on Edith Wilson as she departed, and it was the first time the woman had seen the First Lady look “pale and stern and terribly sad.” The next day, Republicans in both houses did what they could to constrain the President. Senator Knox of Pennsylvania offered a resolution that would limit America’s role at the Peace Conference to those matters germane to America’s entry into the war, which would postpone discussions involving laws of the
sea and a League of Nations. Senator Sherman of Illinois denounced the President for leaving the country and asked his colleagues to declare his absence “an inability to discharge the powers and duties” of his office. More than that, he accused Wilson of “an act of legislative and executive sabotage against the government” so long as Congress was in session and domestic conditions were unstable.
Amid such hostility, the President still possessed the ability to exude what some considered a spiritual glow. No fan of Wilson, Mrs. Phillips, for one, had felt “a sensation of light and warmth” when the President had spoken. “My heart and mind became filled with confidence in the President, with faith in his ideals,” she wrote in her diary. As Woodrow Wilson boarded his midnight train for Hoboken, Mrs. Phillips foresaw for him a “hard and bitter fight at the Peace Congress.” She felt “that he was sacrificing all personal ambition to obtain what he believes to be a paramount necessity for the world.” She believed “that he will reveal the . . . sub-conscious ideal, which lies in the souls of men all over the world, for something far better than we have ever known.”
And so the George Washington set sail on December 4 and landed in France on the thirteenth. Woodrow Wilson had jettisoned any doubts the dissidents might have instilled about the world’s readiness for his ideals. The unprecedented sendoff in New York harbor made him feel that failure to achieve his goals was not an option. He proceeded to the historic receptions in Brest and Paris and London, which only boosted his confidence. On New Year’s Eve, the President and First Lady rode the Royal Train to Dover and crossed the Channel; and then the President of France’s train took them from Calais to Paris. The next morning he played his first game of golf on French soil at St. Cloud; and in the afternoon he called a conference of the members of the American Mission at the Hôtel de Crillon, where they were quartered. With a few weeks before the official meetings got under way, Wilson consented to one more state visit.
Italy hoped to show its appreciation of the United States and, in so doing, curry favor with the man who would soon determine many of its new borders. At the government’s insistence, the Wilsons rode from Paris in the King of Italy’s train—with its china and glassware bearing Italian arms and its servants in royal scarlet livery. Crowds lined the tracks across Italy; and when it stopped at one small town, the Mayor compared the President’s visit to “the second coming of Christ.”
The Royal Train reached the Eternal City at 9:30 on the morning of January 3, 1919. “The reception in Rome,” recalled Secret Service agent Edmund Starling, “exceeded anything I have ever seen in all my years of witnessing public demonstrations. The people literally hailed the President as a god—‘The God of Peace.’” The people of Rome filled the cobblestone streets with flowers, and a blizzard of white roses fell from the windows above as Wilson rode through hysterical mobs who were shouting, singing, and weeping. Wilson addressed the Italian Parliament, the nation’s press, King Victor Emmanuel III and Queen Elena, and their guests at a state dinner at the Quirinal Palace. The Mayor of Rome honored Wilson with citizenship of his city. Ike Hoover had witnessed the French and English receptions for the President; but the Italians, he observed, seemed “to consider him as another Savior come to earth.”
The next day, Wilson and his entourage faced more hysteria at the only venue that then seemed worthy of his presence—the Vatican. The majordomo escorted him through dozens of chambers, past colorfully costumed Swiss Guards and courtiers, until he arrived at a small throne room. At the tinkling of a bell, the diminutive Pontiff, dressed all in white except for his red sandals, entered. Accompanied only by a pair of interpreters, Benedict XV took the President by the hand into the Papal study for a brief private conversation—the first meeting between an American President and a Pope. Strangely, by the time the President had left the Vatican, the crowd had vanished. The officials later told Wilson that the police had dispersed the multitudes because of a potential threat of a riot. But later, Wilson explained to Edith that the government had broken up the demonstration for fear that the President might try to enlist the people’s support for his Fourteen Points—to which Italy had agreed as the basis of the Armistice but to which it did not necessarily intend to adhere.
The First Couple left Rome the next morning, stopping in Genoa and Turin (where a thousand mayors from Piedmont gathered to greet the President) and Milan (where the Wilsons attended a performance of Aida at La Scala). Of all the places they had visited, Milan provided the apotheosis. Beyond the overwhelming crowds, observed Grayson, “there was a reverence everywhere that touched the President deeply.” People lit votive candles before his picture. “There is bound to be a reaction to this sort of thing,” Wilson told his doctor. “I am now at the apex of my glory in the hearts of these people, but they are thinking of me only as one who has come to save Italy, and I have got to pool the interests of Italy with the interests of all the world, and when I do that I am afraid they are going to be disappointed and turn about and hiss me.”
Wilson recognized that once the international conference began, it would be every world leader for himself, advancing his own country’s agenda. Upon his arrival in Paris, Wilson returned to his supreme priority. He pulled out his draft of a Covenant for the League of Nations, to which he now added finishing touches.
Theodore Roosevelt—who that very week had complained to a newspaper editor about Wilson’s being a “silly doctrinaire at times and an utterly selfish and cold-blooded politician always”—would have had plenty to say in the impending debate. But on January 6, 1919, he fell silent, dying in his sleep. The State Department drafted a proclamation for the President to sign, but Wilson felt it was inadequate. He enhanced the tribute to his longtime rival, praising the Colonel’s war record and his awakening the nation “to the dangers of private control which lurked in our financial and industrial systems.” The President ordered suitable military honors at his funeral and the display of flags at half-staff at the White House and departmental buildings. In addition to the Vice President’s temporary new duties of running the Cabinet meetings, Wilson asked Marshall to represent him at both TR’s private and state memorial services.
The absence of Wilson’s most persistent critic did not lessen opposition to the President’s policies. In fact, Henry Cabot Lodge doubled his own efforts. Two weeks before Roosevelt died, Lodge had sat with him, discussing the proposed league. Neither man subscribed to such a global plan. Opposed to Wilson’s direction, Roosevelt had said just before his death, “Let each nation reserve to itself and for its own decision, and . . . make it perfectly clear that we do not intend to take a position of an international Meddlesome Mattie. The American people do not wish to go into an overseas war unless for a very great cause, and where the issue is absolutely plain.”
To anybody abroad, such talk seemed petty. The Armistice was in effect, but the devastation was part of every European’s life. The great victory for Democracy had left millions of lives in disarray, with many of its cities wanting reconstruction amid the rubble of the fallen autocratic empires. Parts of two continents would have to be built from scratch: revolutions had created seventeen new constitutional republics; and ten new nations had declared their independence and were struggling to find their footing in constitutional governments. People rejoiced at being rid of their dictators, but they yearned for stability. Communists said they could offer as much to the Russians, and the Germans continued to consider that alternative for themselves.
Since his arrival in Europe, Woodrow Wilson had delivered seven formal speeches, each full of high-minded ideals and inspiration. When adviser Herbert Hoover suggested that Wilson must not ignore “the shapes of evil inherent in the Old World system,” the President replied that a new spirit infused all of humanity. Hoover agreed. He did not hyperbolize when he stated, “Woodrow Wilson had reached the zenith of intellectual and spiritual leadership of the whole world, never hitherto known in history.”
• • •
Across the Seine from the Place de la Concorde stood a two-story edifice of the Second Empire, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, known simply by its location—the Quai d’Orsay. Its ground floor contained a succession of heavily gilded reception rooms with high ceilings and tall windows, each salon more splendid than the last. This would become the theater for the great diplomatic drama about to unfold.
While more than two dozen nations would make up the Peace Conference, the principals realized the need for a smaller leadership group if they were to accomplish anything. The heads of government and the foreign ministers of France, Great Britain, Italy, the United States, and Japan formed the Council of Ten. On Sunday, January 12, 1919, the leading players engaged in two full dress rehearsals at the Quai d’Orsay: at 2:30 the Supreme War Council met to discuss an extension of the Armistice; and at 4 p.m. the Council of Ten convened to discuss the ground rules for the upcoming plenary sessions, at which all the invited nations would be seated. The afternoon allowed everybody to get a feel for the room and one another. It was quickly recognized that the crucial arguments concerned a quartet of nations and that their leaders could best resolve those matters in private conversations, in an aptly named Council of Four.
The most towering personality in this foursome belonged to the diminutive Georges Clemenceau. Seventy-seven and sporting a bristling white walrus mustache, the French Prime Minister was a lifelong Radical Republican who had become a physician, a writer-publisher, and a political prisoner all before turning twenty-four. To evade further harassment, he had sailed for America, where he learned English, started a medical practice in New York City, sent articles to Paris newspapers, and taught French and horseback riding at a girls’ school in Stamford, Connecticut, only to marry one of his students. He returned to Paris and politics, as both a public official and a newspaper publisher, who was derided and later redeemed for printing “J’Accuse,” Émile Zola’s historic defense of the falsely persecuted Captain Alfred Dreyfus. In 1906, he became the seventy-second Prime Minister of France for three years and was reinstated as the eighty-fifth eight years later. Because of a skin condition, he almost always wore gloves. John Maynard Keynes, then a young economist advising the British delegation, later noted that Clemenceau—a friend of Claude Monet—“felt about France what Pericles felt of Athens—unique value in her, nothing else mattering.” He maintained that Clemenceau was “a foremost believer in the view of German psychology which thinks that the German understands and can understand nothing but intimidation, that he is without generosity or remorse in negotiation”—that one must never conciliate, only dictate to a German. The Gallic leader sought security and revenge; and for his longtime ferocity as his nation’s advocate, France nicknamed him “the Tiger.”
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