Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  Stalling had become Georges Clemenceau’s greatest stratagem. He had the luxury of time, while the other world leaders had nations awaiting their returns. Wilson, especially, had fierce opposition mounting in his absence. And each day of dithering in Paris meant further starvation and destabilization in the world. By the end of his first week back at the conference table, Wilson was reaching the end of his tether. That Saturday, after hours filled with discussion of Polish borders, thirty-seven amendments to the League Covenant, and a plea from the Japanese about racial equality, an exhausted President blurted to his wife and physician, “It is hard to keep one’s temper when the world is on fire and we find delegates, such as those of the French, blocking all of the proceedings in a most stubborn manner simply by talking and without producing a single constructive idea designed to help remedy the serious situation existing.” He complained that the French now considered the League just another hedge against Germany. “They talk and talk and talk and desire constantly to reiterate points that have been already thoroughly thrashed out and completely disposed of. . . . They simply talk.”

  The next morning at eight—accompanied only by Dr. Grayson and Miss Benham and as few guards as the Secret Service would permit—the Wilsons inspected some battle sites. Without French supervision, they revisited Rheims and Vaux and Château-Thierry before proceeding to Noyon, Lassigny, and Montdidier. The Germans had left the legendary medieval château in Coucy in ruins, prompting Wilson to shake his head and decry, “What a pity that a place like this should be destroyed when there was no military or other advantage to be gained—only wantonness.” In Soissons he saw the remains of a town that had endured almost daily bombardment, forcing its inhabitants to live in cellars for months at a time. Townspeople swarmed around the local inn, where Wilson and his party took their lunch. There a French officer passed a message along that “the soldiers wanted the President to know that they were back of him and his plans of peace, and they did not want him to allow France to get a kind of peace that Clemenceau . . . [was] desirous of having made.” Upon his return to Paris that night at eight, Wilson said that the day had been instructive but “exceedingly painful.” He allowed that it had enabled him “to have a fuller conception than ever of the extraordinary sufferings and hardships of the people of France in the baptism of cruel fire through which they have passed.”

  At the Council of Four the next day, Wilson spoke of his trip, though he did not dwell on the horrors of the past. “At this moment,” he said, “there is a veritable race between peace and anarchy, and the public is beginning to show its impatience.” He told of a woman who had approached him amid the rubble of Soissons, asking, “When will you give us peace?” Seeking an answer, Wilson said they had to address the most urgent questions—reparations, the protection of France against aggression, and the Italian frontier along the Adriatic coast—without delay. He told visiting Secretary Daniels, “The only exercise I get is to my vocabulary.” Clemenceau muttered that Wilson “thought himself another Jesus Christ come upon the earth to reform men.”

  Because there was little time for recreation, Dr. Grayson urged the President to make his rounds from the “new White House” on foot, whenever possible. Wilson asked his wife to buy a map of Paris, so that he could chart different routes for himself; but within days, it fell into disuse. Grayson repeatedly implored him at least to slow the pace of his workday, but the President said, “We are running a race with Bolshevism and the world is on fire. Let us wind up this work here and then we will go home and find time for a little rest and play and take up our health routine again.” Wilson’s left cheek twitched. He was in a constant state of fatigue, his patience wearing thin.

  Wilson harped on the same refrain, that crushing Germany would only result in another war. Prefacing his remarks with sympathy from having just seen the devastation of the countryside, Wilson argued that it was his duty to bring about permanent peace conditions that would benefit the entire world. “Don’t you see,” he asked Clemenceau on March 25, 1919, “that the very program that you propose to impose, carrying with it an excessive burden of taxation for generations, would be the greatest encouragement that could be held out to the German people to go over to Bolshevism?” On March 26, he added, “We owe it to the peace of the world” to present a treaty “founded on justice.” On the twenty-seventh he said, “Our greatest error would be to give [Germany] powerful reasons for one day wishing to take revenge. Excessive demands would most certainly sow the seeds of war.” At the end of that morning’s session, Dr. Grayson asked Wilson how he was feeling. “I feel terribly disappointed,” he said. “After arguing with Clemenceau for two hours . . . he practically agreed to everything, and just as he was leaving he swung back to where we had begun.” Wilson, Lloyd George, and Orlando considered drawing up their own peace terms and departing, leaving Clemenceau’s government to live with the consequences.

  After a week of no progress in discussing reparations, the Council of Four turned again to the Saar Valley. Clemenceau insisted that its cession to France and the control of its mines had been among his country’s primary war aims and that he would not sign the Treaty without it. Wilson said that stipulation had never been disclosed. Tensions between the two leaders escalated until the Tiger growled that Wilson had become “the friend of Germany.” To the man who had mobilized a nation and sent two million men to fight by France’s side, at the cost of 100,000 American lives, this was more than Wilson could bear. His jaw tightening and his eyes burning, Wilson accused the Frenchman of deliberately stating untruths. In light of Clemenceau’s persistent refusal to cooperate, Wilson asked, “In that event, do you wish me to return home?” Looking just as furious, Clemenceau humphed that he did not wish the President to leave . . . that he would instead. With that, he turned on his heel and exited.

  The afternoon session resumed as though the morning exchange had never occurred. “Knowing the President as I do,” however, Robert Lansing wrote, “I am sure that he will not forgive, much less forget, this affair. From now on he will look upon Clemenceau as an antagonist. He will suspect his every suggestion and doubt his honesty. The President is a wonderful hater.” Clemenceau, who coughed profoundly throughout the proceedings, showed contrition only in saying that he would never forget “that our American friends . . . came here to assist us in a moment of supreme danger.” But he expressed his conviction that Wilson was naïve in seeking justice for the Germans. “Do not believe that they will ever forgive us,” he said; “they only seek the opportunity for revenge. Nothing will destroy the rage of those who wanted to establish their domination over the world and who believed themselves so close to succeeding.”

  The exchange that day summed up the peace talks in a nutshell. Where Wilson had idealistically maintained that “there is throughout the entire world a passion for justice,” Clemenceau argued the realpolitik of the world based on experience. “The history of the United States is a glorious history,” he said, “but short. A century for you is a very long period; for us it is a little thing. I have known men who saw Napoleon with their own eyes.” The discussion turned to the historic tug-of-war over Alsace, which, Lloyd George reminded, dated as far back as 1648. Upon hearing that, Orlando spoke up at last, insisting they must exclude such historical arguments; “otherwise,” he said, “Italy could, if she wished, claim all the former territories of the Roman Empire.” Wilson laughed; Clemenceau did not.

  On Monday the Big Four returned to the coal mines. They discussed a promising proposal of France’s owning the mines and administering the territory under a League mandate with a plebiscite in fifteen years to determine the nationality of the region. And then they agreed upon some Polish borders. But soon Clemenceau had backslid to his “interminable arguments.” Dr. Grayson watched Wilson as he attempted to keep the conversation on point, but it was “very plain that the constant strain of trying to make men work, who had no desire to work, along the lines necessary was havin
g its effect on the President.” He was turning peevish. “I think the President is becoming unreasonable, which does not make for solutions,” Colonel House imparted to his diary.

  After another day bogged down in verbiage, Wilson spoke to House on the telephone for close to an hour, complaining about Clemenceau’s stubbornness. House sensed that Wilson was feeling isolated, that having given him his League of Nations, everyone was prepared to hang him out to dry. In passing, the President said that he did not think Paul Mantoux, the recording secretary and interpreter, liked him; and then in a completely unguarded moment, he said, “Indeed, I am not sure that anybody does.”

  On Thursday, April 3, 1919—after an early afternoon visit from King Albert of Belgium—the President excused himself from the Council of Four meeting and staggered to his room. His doctor found him suffering from intense pains in his back and head, severe coughing spells, considerable upset in his “equatorial zone,” and a fever of 103 degrees. Because he did not want anybody to interpret his absence as a sign of quitting, Wilson advised Grayson to announce that he had taken to his bed. At first, Grayson announced only that the President was suffering from a severe cold. Although he would subsequently diagnose this baffling illness as the onset of influenza, doctors have studied Wilson’s symptoms over the decades and come to various conclusions. Some suggest that the President suffered from some other viral infection, as there had been no cases of Spanish influenza reported in Paris that spring, and most of his symptoms subsided within days. On the other hand, several doctors noted that influenza viruses attack not only pulmonary organs but also the heart and brain; and, along with his difficulty breathing, Wilson also endured an infection of the prostate and bladder. Strangely, despite a lethargy that lingered for weeks, he displayed a contradictory impulse to carry on without a “care in the world”—signs of anosognosia, a mental condition in which the disabled is unaware of his disability. That led some doctors to consider a case of encephalitis, which was known to cause changes in personality and periodic spurts of heightened energy. Wilson’s history of cerebral vascular disease also suggests a small stroke. One other possible label has been assigned to Wilson’s condition, one as mysterious as it is unsettling.

  Dementia is seldom diagnosed in its earliest stages because its manifestations are almost imperceptible at the onset. In retrospect, however, one can often trace its development. Early signs of the condition include apathy toward former enthusiasms, increased impatience, self-absorption to the point of insensitivity toward others, and a creeping sense of compulsive as well as suspicious behavior. Most of those symptoms were, in fact, chronic attributes of Woodrow Wilson, and the rest could be credited to a man with little leisure time, a President anxious to return to the Oval Office, from which he had been absent for close to half a year. But Wilson’s current and future symptoms justify its consideration.

  Theories have abounded for a century—none of which can be certified, though this much can be asserted: Woodrow Wilson had suffered for more than twenty years from hypertension and progressive cerebral vascular disease, which had resulted in small strokes; he had increasingly become aware of his own absentmindedness—enough to ask that memoranda of important conversations be written—a state he referred to as his “leaky” brain. And that metaphor might just have pinpointed the true nature of his neurological condition, that he had long been suffering from “lacunar infarctions”—a trickling of blood in the brain from lesser blood vessels—rather than an occlusion of a major vein or artery. Whatever the case, in April 1919, at a moment of physical and nervous exhaustion, Woodrow Wilson was struck by a viral infection that had neurological ramifications.

  The President had long been a hero to his valet, and his sudden display of behavioral changes troubled Ike Hoover. Generally predictable in his actions, Wilson began blurting unexpected orders, often reversing his own household policies. Because his secretaries and innermost staff worked unusually long hours, Wilson had placed use of the automobiles at their disposal, urging them to see Paris whenever possible; suddenly, after that first weekend in bed, he issued orders that the cars were thereafter off-limits except for official use. Ike Hoover said Wilson also became “obsessed with the idea that every French employee about the place was a spy for the French Government.” He sometimes stopped speaking when the help was present because he had convinced himself that all the domestics understood English and were reporting his conversations to Clemenceau, even though the Secret Service found only one servant who spoke any English. Twice he created a scene over pieces of furniture that had suddenly disappeared, which nobody else in the household had observed. He began to require a Secret Service agent to guard his office when he was not present; and he now placed papers from his desk into a strongbox. Recalling the President’s puzzling behavior, Ike Hoover said, “We could but surmise that something queer was happening in his mind” and that “he was never the same after this little spell of sickness.”

  Seeing no reason for the Conference to recess, Wilson designated House to take his place, even though the Colonel no longer held his complete confidence. With the meetings held downstairs from his bedroom, Wilson could not imagine House’s allowing the conversations to drift too far from his principles. But the next day, Wilson insisted the meeting be moved upstairs to the sitting room off his bedroom, in and out of which House would pop like a character in a French farce. The Colonel boasted more than once that he could move the proceedings along with much greater dispatch than the President himself, and Ray Baker saw why: “The Colonel sides with the group which desires a swift peace on any terms,” while “the President struggles almost alone to secure some constructive & idealistic result out of the general ruin.”

  With Wilson temporarily out of commission, Clemenceau and Lloyd George tried to chip away at his position on reparations. The British Prime Minister turned House’s head with flattery, suggesting that it was better for him to conclude this particular round of the peace talks than the President. Sensing after three days that the talks were straying from his righteous path, Wilson asked that the Conference be held right in his bedroom. “To lie in bed and think of problems that you cannot pitch into and dispose of naturally make the mind more active and prevents sleeping,” the convalescent explained to his doctor. “When you can handle them in person it is easy enough to dismiss them after you go to bed. To know that I am responsible for them and cannot take part in the proceedings makes me restless.” He claimed that a little overexertion made him feel better. Having a number of issues he wanted to sort out, he asked Grayson to summon Bernard Baruch. And to make the arrangements for gathering his advisers one afternoon, he turned to his wife. “Can’t I tell Colonel House to do it?” Edith asked. And Woodrow emphatically replied, “No.”

  Practically everything about House now irritated the President. By Monday, April 7, Wilson’s temperature was normal, and with a clear head, he asked Grayson, “Do you see any change in House[?] . . . He does not show the same free and easy spirit; he seems to act distant with me as if he has something on his conscience.” Grayson was loath to agree, but he did not hesitate to speak his mind regarding House’s son-in-law, Gordon Auchincloss, who had come to be considered something of a joke because of his exalted opinion of himself. Even the President had heard that Auchincloss made constant digs behind his back and had commented that “little Woody’s” fortunes at the bargaining table were because of his father-in-law. Wilson told Edith and Dr. Grayson that he no longer wished Auchincloss to conduct any business in his name.

  The problem had deeper implications. Not only was Auchincloss feeding stories to the press that exaggerated Colonel House’s importance at the peace talks, but House began to believe them. One afternoon Edith Wilson read an article in an American paper that described House as “the brains of the Commission.” At that moment, the Colonel arrived for a conference with the President, who was not available. After some friendly conversation, Edith asked House if he
had been aware of any of the “awful attacks on Woodrow,” such as the one before her. After she read several paragraphs aloud, House blushed and asked if her husband had seen the article. When Edith said he had not, the Colonel suddenly said that he had to leave, taking the newspaper with him. Later she related the story to Dr. Grayson, who suggested not only that Auchincloss was stirring up the stories but also that House himself was feeding self-serving tips to the press. “I don’t believe it, Dr. Grayson,” said Edith, who had always questioned House’s loyalty, “for if it were true Colonel House would be a traitor.” Grayson told her that he had caught House talking to a journalist and posing on the roof of the Crillon for a photographer. The moment House saw Grayson, he hastily departed. Edith told Woodrow about her encounter with the Colonel, omitting the information Grayson had given her. “Oh, if Colonel House had only stood firm while you were away none of this would have to be done over,” she lamented. “I think he is a perfect jellyfish.” Wilson replied, “Well, God made jellyfish, so, as Shakespeare said about a man, therefore let him pass, and don’t be too hard on House. It takes a pretty stiff spinal column to stand against the elements centred here.”