Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  The George Washington arrived in Boston Harbor in a fog, but Woodrow Wilson had never been so clear. Even though he had been absent from his desk longer than any President in history, he knew the political realities that awaited. He asked Tumulty to explain to the local authorities that his immediate duty was “to get to Washington and take hold of my work there.” He had hoped to minimize all formalities and, if possible, even eliminate having to speak, for fear of giving his visit a political taint. Tumulty trimmed the schedule to a reception at the pier, a private luncheon, and a short public address; to do any less, he suggested, would not only embarrass the local officials but would also disappoint the many thousands who would assemble to greet Wilson. “Your arrival awaited in Boston with splendid and entirely non-partisan enthusiasm,” he explained.

  Boston declared Monday the twenty-fourth a local holiday in honor of the President’s return. An estimated 200,000 Bostonians cheered him and the fifty-car procession along most of the three-mile route from the pier to the Copley Plaza Hotel. For security reasons, some of the streets were roped off and emptied, with a sharpshooter standing atop every block of buildings along the way. After lunch, Wilson went to Mechanics Hall, not having imagined the throngs that were waiting. By the time Republican Governor Calvin Coolidge had introduced him to the crowd of seven thousand, with a surprising pledge to support the President in his plans if it meant an end to war, Wilson’s adrenaline was pumping.

  He delivered an especially deft speech, masking its politics in patriotism and addressing any concerns about his long absence. “I have been very lonely . . . without your comradeship and counsel,” he told the enthusiastic crowd. He said the proudest fact he could report was “that this great country of ours is trusted throughout the world”; and he said the Conference was moving slowly due to “the complexity of the task which is undertaken.” The Europe he left was full of hope, he said, “because they believe that we are at the eve of a new age of the world, when nations will understand one another. . . . If America were at this juncture to fail the world, what would come of it?”

  Anticipating the donnybrook ahead, Wilson explained that he had not gone to Europe merely to spout idealism. “We set this nation up to make men free,” he said, “and we did not confine our conception and purpose to America, and now we will make men free. If we did not do that, all the fame of America would be gone, and all her power would be dissipated.” Throwing off the gloves, he said, “I have fighting blood in me, and it is sometimes a delight to let it have scope.”

  To sustained applause, Wilson exited the hall for South Station. After brief whistle-stop speeches in Providence, Rhode Island, and New London and New Haven, Connecticut, Wilson went to sleep, awakening in Washington. He went directly to the White House, where he signed the large number of documents that had piled up in his absence. That afternoon, he presided over a Cabinet meeting, at which he detailed the chicanery with which he had to deal in Paris. Although his detractors suggested that the Europeans were duping him at the Peace Conference, Wilson was, in fact, wise to their subterfuge from the start. He knew that the French were constantly trying to weaken his position by coercing the press to emphasize the power of Republican opinion in the United States or by exaggerating fears of a renewed German offensive. At the same time, he was parrying not only the Allies’ insistence upon extensive German reparations but also their entreaties to forgive their own respective debts. And though the spreading threat of Bolshevism had been enough for him to authorize the Bullitt mission, Wilson felt that much of the reported chaos in Russia was exaggerated.

  On February 26, his second night back in the White House, Wilson hosted the dinner Colonel House had recommended, that of members of Congress on their respective foreign affairs committees. For the first time in two years, the White House was illuminated as though for a state dinner. But the lights did little to brighten the mood of half the guests. Promptly at eight, thirty-four legislators were directed to the State Dining Room. After the meal, Henry Cabot Lodge escorted Edith Wilson, the only woman present, to the East Room, where chairs were set up in an elongated circle. As the President took his place at the top of the oval, his wife took her leave. He opened the discussion with an informal statement, explaining that the other world leaders had “agreed upon the need and the importance of forming a League of Nations, of doing something practical to bind the nations together”—to prevent any flare-ups of the past war and the ignition of any future wars. With that, he said, “Ask anything you want to know, gentlemen, and ask it as freely as you wish.” They did—until midnight.

  Wilson fielded questions about disarmament, the Monroe Doctrine, and what some considered a surrender of American sovereignty. Wilson explained that the Executive Council of the proposed League could issue no order without unanimity and that any such orders must be submitted to each of the governments represented on the council. With every country overseeing every other, any arms race would be limited and transparent. He suggested that the sanctity of the Monroe Doctrine must be maintained, that the century-old policy was the bedrock of the Covenant. Wilson asserted that any attempts to eliminate war would require some sacrifice, each nation yielding something for the greater good of the whole world. And while he showed great respect for the power of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to withhold its approval of a treaty, he expressed the hope that the present draft of the Covenant would not face radical changes from the committee, as it had been framed to mutual satisfaction by fourteen nations. Wilson imposed no limits on what his guests might say to the press. But everyone in the East Room recognized the political importance of this issue. While winning the war may have occurred on the Democrats’ watch, the Republicans were not about to let them co-opt the peace.

  Republican Senator Frank Brandegee of Connecticut assured reporters that nothing Wilson said that night changed his opinion about the League of Nations. “I am against it,” he told The New York Times, “as I was before.” An indifferent Henry Cabot Lodge thought the dinner was perfectly pleasant; but, he noted in his diary, “We went away as wise as we came.” And while Lodge had chosen not to confront Wilson in his own house, he noted that “the President’s performance under Brandegee’s very keen and able cross-examination was anything but good.”

  Two days later, Lodge delivered a long speech in the Senate, shredding the Covenant article by article. “My effort,” Lodge later recounted, “. . . was to try, by showing the objections to the League proposed, to make it apparent that the thing to do was to make peace and deal with the League later when we could take our time in doing so, and thereby to demonstrate the League should not be yoked with the treaty of peace and thus create the risk of dragging them both down together.” Lodge asked his colleagues, “What is it that delays the peace with Germany?” And then he answered his own question: “Discussions over the League of Nations; nothing else. Let us have peace now, in this year of grace 1919. That is the first step to the future peace of the world. The next step will be to make sure if we can that the world shall have peace in the year 1950 or 2000.”

  While the President was still in residence and the Sixty-fifth Congress still in session, Lodge took aggressive action. With no time to launch a full-scale resolution against the League, he circulated among Republican Senators and Senators-elect (not yet eligible to vote) a round-robin letter pledging opposition to the League. He gathered thirty-seven signatures. While not a binding document, it publicly demonstrated that the President faced serious opposition. Adding insult to that injury, the Republicans invoked a filibuster in the Congress’s final hours, allowing certain appropriations simply to wither without approval. The only reason Wilson had even sailed home from France was to sign eleventh-hour bills. Bringing the body to a screeching halt served only to humiliate him. The Republicans signified that Wilson’s resumed absence from Washington would only rile an even unfriendlier Sixty-sixth Congress. More irritated than chagrined, Wilson left the Capitol a
nd proclaimed: “A group of men in the Senate have deliberately chosen to embarrass the administration of the Government. . . . It is plainly my present duty to attend the Peace Conference in Paris. It is also my duty to be in close contact with the public business during a session of the Congress. I must make my choice between these two duties, and I confidently hope that the people of the country will think that I am making the right choice.”

  In his time home, Wilson had been able to complete just one significant piece of business—the appointment of a new Attorney General. From the moment Thomas Gregory had announced his intention to step down from the office, Tumulty had recommended former Congressman A. Mitchell Palmer, a strong supporter of the Administration—a man of intelligence and integrity. For over a year, he had acted as the nation’s Alien Property Custodian, seizing and sometimes selling “enemy property.” Gregory advised against appointing him Attorney General, as had House, who found the glad-handing Palmer overbearing. In this politically challenging moment, Wilson listened more to his two savviest Cabinet members, Burleson and Daniels, as well as party chairman Vance McCormick, all of whom strongly endorsed Palmer as progressive, fearless, and “effective on the stump.” This Swarthmore-educated Pennsylvania Quaker, who used “thee” and “thou,” seemed a welcome addition to a heavily Southern Cabinet. He was also levelheaded, especially when it came to the incendiary issues of sedition. While he had been aggressive in his seizure of German-owned property during the war, he also sought to release ten thousand German aliens in government custody; and he had opposed the local raids of the American Protective League as America was entering the war, publicly pronouncing the organization “a grave menace.” Within days of his return to the White House, Wilson had announced his selection of Palmer, but in its session-end filibuster, the Senate took one more dig at the President by failing to approve him.

  The Department of Justice required particularly strong leadership in that moment. With the war over, the Administration faced a number of vital issues, including the matter of clemency toward America’s “political prisoners.” In his final days in office, the hard-nosed Gregory had received a number of communications referring to the Espionage Act. He maintained that not one person had been convicted for “mere expression of opinion” but that all had been convicted at trials by jury of willful violations of the law whose aim was to prevent “deliberate obstruction to the prosecution of the war.” Since the end of the war, Gregory had reconsidered all those convicted and found several no longer deserved their sentences. He asked Wilson to review individual cases, if not the entire policy; and the President hoped to put a new Attorney General immediately in place to do the same. Wilson recommended to Postmaster General Burleson that it was also time to reconsider their position in combating sedition. “I cannot believe that it would be wise to do any more suppressing.”

  Congress closed on March 4, and Wilson boarded a train at Union Station that day at two o’clock, returning to the George Washington in Hoboken. He made two stops along the way. The first was in Philadelphia, where he went to Jefferson Hospital to visit his daughter Jessie and his newborn grandson. The President delighted in the plump infant, who was yawning as his eyes remained closed. “With his mouth open and his eyes shut,” Wilson said, “I predict that he will make a Senator when he grows up.” The Presidential entourage continued its journey, reaching New York City, where he addressed a capacity crowd at the Metropolitan Opera House, sharing the great stage with none other than former President Taft, who spoke in favor of the League. When it was Wilson’s turn to speak, a band struck up George M. Cohan’s signature tune, and Wilson told the enthusiastic crowd, “I will not come back ‘till it’s over, over there.’”

  He explained how the last war could have been avoided if Germany had stopped to consider that Great Britain would ally with France and Russia. He said that the League of Nations was meant to serve as a signpost, “as a notice to all outlaw nations that not only Great Britain, but the United States and the rest of the world, will go in to stop enterprises of that sort.”

  After the speech, the Wilsons were ferried across the river to the Hoboken wharves, where they boarded their ship. The President was exhausted from having driven himself harder in the last three months than at any other time in his life. But he remained awake until past midnight, at which time he derived great satisfaction in commissioning A. Mitchell Palmer as his Attorney General through the power of a recess appointment.

  Somebody observed that it had been exactly thirteen weeks since Wilson had first boarded the George Washington, a good omen that was not lost on Dr. Grayson. Except for another shipboard cold and fever during the eight-day crossing, Wilson had remained remarkably healthy in all that time. After examining him that week, Grayson found all his vital signs “unusually good” for a man of sixty-two. Even Ray Stannard Baker marveled not only at Wilson’s strength—especially upon learning of the gastric and neurological conditions that had plagued him for years—but also his ability to disconnect from strife. Some days the President watched five hours of moving pictures. Confining himself to his cabin, where he slept or played a variation of solitaire called canfield, the President self-diagnosed his current bouts of neuralgia and an attack on his “equatorial zone” as nothing more than “a retention of gases generated by the Republican Senators,” which he said were “enough to poison any man.” Ray Baker further observed that Wilson was “a good hater—& how he does hate those obstructive Senators.” He realized the President was now inclined to “stand by the Covenant word for word as drawn, accepting no amendment, so that the 37 of the round-robin will be utterly vanquished.”

  Wilson faced an even greater threat to his blood pressure. Colonel House’s communiqués from Paris had become worrisome, to say the least. In one report, House had suggested that the issue of the League was still in play; in another he wrote of Clemenceau’s requesting certain restraints against the republics on the west bank of the Rhine. Another noted that everything in Wilson’s absence had “been speeded up.” All together, the wireless dispatches from the Continent suggested that House had overstepped in his role just as the French had overreached. Wilson urged withholding even provisional consent to policy decisions until his arrival.

  The George Washington could not deliver him to France fast enough. For several more days, Wilson remained at sea, anxiously playing solitaire.

  14

  GETHSEMANE

  Then commeth Iesus with them vnto a place called Gethsemane . . .

  —MATTHEW, XXVI:36

  And being in an agonie, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling downe to the ground.

  —LUKE, XXII:44

  The George Washington reached Brest at 7:45 in the evening of March 13, 1919. For reasons of security—and the French government’s desire to withhold any further accolades for the American President—the reception was reduced to a diplomatic minimum. The welcoming committee included only a few dignitaries, including Colonel House. With little fanfare, the Wilsons boarded the special train and were on their way to Paris by 10:30. Wilson and House huddled privately in his stateroom while Edith retired to hers. The President listened to his most trusted adviser report the latest French attempts to detach the League Covenant from the Peace Treaty and to create a Rhenish Republic, a buffer state between France and Germany. Before his return to America, Wilson had told House he would not tolerate the latter, which would “absolutely denude Germany of everything she had and allow Bolshevism to spread throughout that country.”

  A little after midnight, Edith heard the Colonel leave. She opened the connecting door to Woodrow’s compartment. “The change in his appearance shocked me,” she recalled later. “He seemed to have aged ten years, and his jaw was set in that way it had when he was making superhuman effort to control himself.” Without saying a word, he held out his hand, which she grasped. “What is the matter?” she asked. “
What has happened?”

  “House,” he said, smiling sardonically, “has given away everything I had won before we left Paris. He has compromised on every side, and so I have to start all over again and this time it will be harder, as he has given the impression that my delegates are not in sympathy with me.” In Wilson’s absence, the Colonel had apparently had his first taste of power. House explained that upon learning the American press opposed linking the League to the Treaty, he had made executive decisions relinquishing certain points, for fear that the Conference would withdraw its approval. “So,” Woodrow told Edith, “he has yielded until there is nothing left.”

  She stood there, holding her husband’s hand, dumbfounded—if only because she believed the majority of the American press supported the League. At last, Woodrow threw back his head, and Edith saw a steely glint in his eyes. “Well,” he said, “thank God I can still fight, and I’ll win them back or never look these boys I sent over there in the face again. They lost battles—but won the War, bless them. So don’t be too dismayed.” The Wilsons sat and talked for several hours, as the train rushed through the night toward Paris.

  Wilson conferred again with House in the morning. Although the Colonel’s diary reflects little of the President’s displeasure, Wilson was clearly distraught. “Your dinner to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a failure as far as getting together was concerned,” he told House. He spoke with “considerable bitterness” of his treatment that night at the hands of Senator Lodge, who had refused to ask any questions or even “to act in the spirit in which the dinner was given.” House maintained that the dinner had at least spiked criticism that Wilson was acting unilaterally, failing to consult the Senate about foreign affairs. House expressed no culpability in his diary, only that “the President comes back very militant and determined to put the League of Nations into the Peace Treaty.”