THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
BOOKS BY GEORGE CREEL
IRELAND'S FIGHT FOR FREEDOM HOW WE ADVERTISED AMERICA THE WAR, THE WORLD AND WILSON
Harper y Brothers Publishers
THE ENTRY INTO PARIS
President Wilson and President Poincare
WAR, THE WORLD AND WILSON
By GEORGE CREEL
Author of
"IRELANDS FIGHT FOR FREEDOM" VHOW WE ADVERTISED AMERICA'!
HARPER &. BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE WAS. TBS WORLD AND WILSON
Copyright, xgao. by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published June. 1930
F-U
To My Mother
VIRQINIA CREEL
At every step in my life an incentive, an
inspiration and a standard — this book
is dedicated in love and gratitude
CONTENTS
CHAP. PACK
FOREWORD i
I. THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT .... 14
II. NEUTRALITY 39
III. "STRONG MEN" 59
IV. "THE ROOSEVELT DIVISIONS" 75
V. THE CASE OF LEONARD WOOD 87
VI. THE POWER AND THE GLORY 98
VII. AMERICA'S MORAL OFFENSIVES 119
VIII. THE PRESIDENT'S "PARTIZAN APPEAL" . . 133
IX. WHY THE PRESIDENT WENT TO PARIS . . 148
X. PARIS AND PROCRASTINATION 164
XI. "THE BIG FOUR" 177
XII. THE OPENING BATTLE 189
XIII. THE STAB IN THE BACK 201
XIV. THE ZERO HOUR 213
XV. MR. KEYNES'S JEREMIAD 229
XVI. WHAT MUST GERMANY PAY? 243
XVII. THE QUESTION OF COAL 258
XVIII. SHANTUNG AND HYPOCRISY 271
XIX. THE ADRIATIC TANGLE 283
XX. WERE THE FOURTEEN POINTS IGNORED? . 299
XXI. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS 310
XXII. How THE TREATY WAS KILLED .... 328
XXIII. THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION . . . 347 CONCLUSION. . ./ . . . _. . . . . . 359
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
FOREWORD
THE people of the United States are faced to^l day by a crisis more momentous than any that has gone before, for it is not America only that quivers in suspension, but the whole of that thing we know as civilization. It is a world that is molten — not the world of Macedon or Rome — but a twentieth-century world in which there are no longer the safeties of «parpT jfog 4*rrpnt reserve of barriers, its unhappy peoples thrown into confused collision by a shock that has crumpled in all four corners. And by the whirl of chance, or maybe in obedience to some inexo- rable law working behind the great screen, the task of molding is in the hands of no ancient state, confident in inherited tradition, but waits the experimental touch of a nation scarce one i hundred and forty-four years old.
The responsibilities of the United States are not a matter of speculation. Our material con- tributions, great and decisive as they were, stand dwarfed by the power and the glory that flowed from the declaration of American aims. It was
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
our idealism, put in khaki, that made the Great War a war for democracy. It was not that when it began. It was hardly that when we entered it. Military pre-eminence may occasion dispute, but the moral leadership of America is [ not subject to question.
On the instant that we drew the sword we told our own people, and all the peoples of earth, that we meant to fight a war against war, that what we sought was the "destruction of arbitrary power," "the rights of small nations,*' "the reign of law based upon the consent of the gov- erned," an end to the mad business of competitive armaments, and the substitution of discussion for bloodshed by the establishment of a League of Nations to make certain "that the combined power of free nations will check every invasion of right, and serve to make peace and justice the more secure by affording a definite tribunal of opinion to which all must submit, and by which every international readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly concerned shall be sanctioned." _» Our might struck the shackles of tyranny from \ the body of the world, but it was our pledges that set free the heart of the world. America, without dissent, indorsed these great guaranties of a new and better order, and the Allied govern- ments accepted them and hailed them as words of light and guidance. At home they gave unexampled unity and indomitable resolve; abroad they poured like wine into the war-weary veins of the Allies, won the support of neutral nations, and struck at the very foundations of
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enemy morale. The world, hopeless, despairing, turned to us as the forlorn of Galilee turned to Christ, not knowing, but believing; not asking, but trusting.
It was the giving of these pledges that won the war: it is the repudiation of these pledges that is losing the peace. What is the use of mincing words! The moral leadership that was our pride is now our shame. The peoples of earth are turning from us even as they turned to us, and in their hearts is a vaster bitterness than comes from any mere betrayal of the body. It is their hope that we have deserted: it is their dream that we have killed. "The tents have been struck, and the great caravan of humanity is again on the march," cried General Smuts. To where? And how? Ravaged by war, pes- tilence, and famine — disorganized, leaderless, desperate — the unhappy nomadism heads back to the same old morass in which mankind has struggled from the beginning, but now without the ignorances and submissiveness that made possible the ancient way, for they have seen the vision of a new world, the world that America promised.
These are the problems that face us to-day! Are we going to redeem our pledges or are we going to indorse repudiation? Will we assume proper responsibility for the majesties of aspira- tion that we called into being, or will we watch them play out as tragedies of disappointment? Shall we regain our moral leadership, pointing humanity's caravan to the high ground, or shall we trail as camp-followers, coming at last to a 2 3
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
common quicksand? President Wilson spoke truly when he said that "the forces of the world do not threaten; they operate." Ours was the voice that called these forces into being — ours is the voice that must order them. Self-preser- vation joins with self-respect in the demand, for there are compulsions of interest as well as compulsions of honor.
As a result of the Senate's course, the world to-day is as much of an armed camp as before the armistice. Germany — sullen, desperate, cha- otic— has an active army of 300,000, also a State Constabulary of 75,000, and a "Home Guard" of 600,000, both organizations composed entirely of war veterans. Against this threat, impover- ished France is compelled to keep 480,000 men under arms instead of releasing them for the task of reconstruction. The fighting force of the Bolshevists is estimated at 600,000 and Poland faces this menace with close to 500,000 men, all of whom ought to be working, Italy, instead of concentrating upon her peace problems, marches to bankruptcy with an army of half a million, and the Jugoslavs are also in battle array. The Serbs, destitute as they are, have 250,000 men in the field, and Bulgaria plots revenge with a force of 100,000. Greece, whose peace army is 30,000, now has 300,000 men under arms. The Rumanians, forced to guard against the anger of Hungary, has an army of 300,000, and Hungary, although limited to an army of 35,000, is copying the German "Home Guard" plan with success. Czechoslovakia, •eager for peace, has an army of 100,000 to guard
4
FOREWORD
against the Germans and the Magyars. Eng- land has 44,000 troops in Mesopotamia, 13,000 in Palestine, 200,000 in Ireland, and about 50,000 in Egypt, not to mention her forces of iron re- pression in India. There are 25,000 Japanese troops in Siberia, 12,000 in Manchuria, and a large force in Mongolia, while in Japan itself there is an active army of 300,000 with 1,500,000 trained reserves.
Wherever one looks, democracy is hemmed in on one side by Trade Imperialism and on the other by Bolshevism. And America, the nation that called the democratic aspiration into life and passion, refuses aid and stands aloof! Must another world war be fought to drive home the fact that humanity's one hope is in an international concert? What stands far more probable than any mere renewal of European conflict, however, is a concentration of anger and despair against the selfish well-being of \ America.
It is a situation in which every fact has all the obviousness of a wound. The Allies owe us an amount well above ten billions of dollars. Without a League of Nations, able to lift the crushing burdens of armies and navies from the backs of peoples, permitting national energies to be concentrated upon the speedy restoration of normal economic processes, there is not a chance that the United States will ever receive a cent of interest, much less a dollar of the principal. Nor is that all. Debtor nations do not love their creditor, especially when payment involves bankruptcy, and since repudiation is an ugly
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
policy to adopt in cold blood, what more natural than the release of those passions that make for hot blood? And what less difficult?
For more than a year the Senate of the United States has exhausted effort in the manufacture of enmity. It is not alone that we have stood aside from the great adventure in fraternity that we ourselves proposed, but this program of withdrawal has been companioned by a policy of studied insult. The honor of Japan has been questioned time and again, the faith of France has been impugned repeatedly, and there has been the mean insistence that self-governing dominions like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa shall be put lower in the scale of countries than those small republics of the West Indies and Central America that are our own political and commercial dependencies.
As a matter of fact, very little sophistry would be required to give united attack upon America all the sincerity and fervor of a cru- sade. A nation that preached the faith and then betrayed it! A people that pledged and then abandoned! In such a war there would be not only the cancelation of external debts without the shame of repudiation, but equally the salvation afforded by the spoils of victory. fFar-fetched, perhaps, but it must be remem- bered that we are not dealing with the ordered, cautious world of other days, but a disorganized welter driven back upon its hopes, desperate in its despairs, and unspeakably wretched in all of its conditions.
Never was choice so plain. Either a League 6
FOREWORD
of Nations, a great world partnership in world reconstruction, eager and effective in restora- tion and stabilization, abating the passions and despairs of humanity by the sanities of its justice, or else a military establishment suffi- ciently large and powerful to guard our shores against the rising storm. There is no parallel for the madness that strikes down the Peace Treaty with one vote, insulting and alienating the whole world, and with another vote reduces naval appropriations, denies universal training, wipes out our merchant marine, and utterly annihilates the aircraft program.
It is the people, as always in every great crisis, that must meet these problems and give these answers. Poisoned by partizanship, the bankruptcy of Congress is utter and absolute. Government by proxy has fallen down. It is the men and women of America who must fight the peace even as they fought the war. Not Republicans nor Democrats, not conservatives nor radicals, but the people as a whole; the countless millions who are not seen or heard, but whose energy and hopes and devotions are ] the strength of democracy.
/ ' *•• * ""1
History is not always a sure guide, but often- times it is an inspiration, and in the annals of I the Republic there are two crises that may weir be recalled. On September 10, 1787, the Con- stitutional Convention finished its labors and reported back to the various states. Six years had passed since the Treaty of Paris — barren years full of hatreds, suspicions, and distrusts
7
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
that gave victory the bitter taste of ashes. Commercial ruin and financial collapse joined to make liberty an empty word and savage forces of disintegration undermined the weak foundations of union. New Hampshire, Massa- chusetts, and Rhode Island were compelled to contend against open rebellion, the Territory of Maine discussed the advisability of setting up an independent state, mobs closed the courts of Connecticut, North Carolina had witnessed the ugly attempt to form the state of Frankland, and traitorous talk of foreign alliances bubbled like acid in many sections. The mean prides of local sovereignty had the malign force of open treason; a blind selfishness dominated every council, and tariff wars and boundary disputes were constant invitations to conflict. Connec- ticut and Pennsylvania, after actual battles, were parties to a sullen truce, and New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, as the result of clashing greeds, stood on the verge of war. f~ The Constitution, providing a central govern- ment with strength, power, and recognized authorities, was the one visible hope, if not the one obvious remedy, yet a campaign of nine months was required to secure the assent of the nine states necessary to ratification. Visionless men, more concerned with petty privileges than national welfare, denounced the document as a "triple-headed monster," and declared the whole plan "as deep and wicked a conspiracy as ever was invented in the darkest ages against the liberties of a free people." Washington was branded as a "fool" and "traitor," Franklin as
FOREWORD
a "dotard," and both were burned in effigy. Riots were actually organized to give support to the "protest of free men against the insidious restoration of monarchy," and mobs publicly kindled bonfires with copies of the "accursed proposal" that was to rob the states of their rights.
Nor was ratification, when it did come, a thing of released enthusiasm, but rather the spent victim of a gantlet. In Massachusetts there was the small majority of nineteen, in Virginia it carried by ten votes only, and in New Hampshire by eleven. New York, the ninth state, remained in convention for forty days, Governor Clinton holding two-thirds of the delegates against the Constitution for no larger reason than that it was the work of his political enemies. The unanswerable arguments of Hamilton beat down the barriers of this malignant partizanship, and the sullen Clinton was finally deserted by enough of his delegates to change the minority of twenty-seven into a majority of three.
In such manner the people of the Colonies met the first great American crisis. Unhappy days, time of sick fears and deep humiliation, with narrowest of margins for success, but still a margin wide enough for the passage of the vision that was to save the world.
In 1864, while Lincoln sat by the side of America as the one physician able to save, the sick-room filled with the same passion and clamor that sent Washington to his grave in loneliness and disillusion. Not defeat could have spelled
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
more disastrous consequences than parley or compromise, yet Greeley spoke for no incon- siderable number when he wrote to Lincoln that "our bleeding, bankrupt, almost dying country longs for peace — shudders at the prospect of fresh conscriptions, of further wholesale devasta- tions,-and of new rivers of human blood; and a wide-spread conviction that the government and its supporters are not anxious for peace, and do not improve proffered opportunities to achieve it, is doing great harm now, and is morally certain, unless removed, to do far greater in the approaching elections."
The President was charged with "feebleness and want of principle," and General Fremont declared that "if Mr. Lincoln should be nomi- nated, as I believe it would be fatal to the country to indorse a policy and renew a power which has cost us the lives of thousands of men and need- lessly put the country on the road to bank- ruptcy, there will be no other alternative but to organize against him every element of conscien- tious opposition, with the view to prevent this misfortune of his re-election."
The forces of defeatism were rich, organized, and powerful, yet Lincoln was re-elected in a passion of faith that burst the bonds of party. His policies were indorsed, the hosts of compro- mise were scattered, and well within the year there came the surrender at Appomattox that forever ended the issue of human slavery and forever lifted the indivisibility of the Union above question or debate. Thus the people of the United States met the second great American
10 •
FOREWORD
crisis, standing like iron in support of the principle that fundamental truths do not permit of truce.
* . * * * * •*•! For a third time in the history of the Republic
the people are called upon to decide organic policies — to declare their will with respect to democracy's future course. The issues are as insistent as fundamental and upon the decisions hangs the fate of the great dreams and high hopes that gave courage to Washington and Lincoln. National destiny is a fine mouth-filling phrase, but to-day it has a poignancy that must pierce veneer, striking down to those sincerities that are the soul of America.
A first task is to get back to a war footing as far as the national morale is concerned. En- thusiasm, unity, and high resolve must be regained. Just as party, creed, and color disap- peared when we massed to fight the autocratic pretensions of the Imperial German government, so must these divisions disappear to-day when the crises of reconstruction threaten our national i life. -1
It were well indeed could Washington's Fare- > well Address be cast in bronze and set in every market-place, for the Father of His Country, looking down the years, warned against the very danger that nets us now. Solemnly, force- fully, he pointed out the "baneful effects of the spirit of party," and in words of high prophetic value declared that "the alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge natural to party dissension . . . is itself a frightful despotism . . . the common
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise person to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agi- tates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another ... a fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent it bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume."
Can it be said that these evils have not come to pass? Through dreary, humiliating months we have heard the great question of world union debated as though it were a chattel mort- gage; we have seen humanity's hopes sub- ordinated to office hunger and the future of America limited to the presidential election of 1920. And, crowning infamy, the sorry chaffer- ing has been linked invariably with the names of Washington and Lincoln — the two Americans, of all our noble company, who most despised the sordid chicane of partizans. These are the things that must be swept away, even as we swept away all ignobilities of the spirit when we rallied to the defense of free institutions and gave great slogans to a despairing world.
The citizen who does not do his own thinking ^to-day is no less a traitor than the man who tried to evade the draft, and those who think in terms of party prejudice or personal advantage are America's enemies. In this hour when the fate of democracy hangs in the balance, the criminal mind is the closed mind. v
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FOREWORD
It is in the interests of public information that this book has been written. It is, frankly enough, a whole-hearted advocacy of the League of Nations, and yet a very honest attempt has been' made to subject every question to such analysis, and to make such presentation of facts, as will permit the reader to form his independent judgments. The consideration begins with our very entrance into the war because imminent issues are not intelligible unless considered in relation to causes. It works through the per- sonality of Woodrow Wilson, and away from it, because he was and is, by virtue of his office, . inevitably the source and center. — i
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
1 I"
T is the misfortune of democratic governments 1 that they tend inevitably to operate through the emotions rather than the intellectual proc- esses. The party organization, always the mo- tive power in the formation of political opinion, may have its origin in high ideals, but ultimately it becomes a business on the success of which hangs the employment or disemployment of thousands. Victory becomes the chief concern, and it follows, naturally enough, that principles are subordinated to personalities. To feel is instinctive; to think is laborious. To attack or to defend a candidate is infinitely simpler and more effective than to attack or to defend an issue, inasmuch as the one course lends itself to emotions and assertions, while the other calls for intelligence and facts. As a consequence, the present situation is not original in any de- gree, but part and parcel of an established routine. The League of Nations, the Peace Treaty, questions domestic and international, are not discussed fairly and informatively, for the very simple reason that partizan purposes are best served by a direct personal attack upon the President, designed to appeal to irrita-
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
tions and prejudices. This condition, unfor- tunate always, is rendered still more unhappy by the fact that Woodrow Wilson is, and has been from the very first, an easy target for misrepresentation and misunderstanding. ^ —
As far as appearances are concerned, there is a certain measure of justification for the repeated charges that the President is inclined to autoc- racy, preferring to "play a lone hand" instead of inviting counsel; that he is cold and lacks human warmth; that he is selfish and self- centered; that he is without capacity for friend- ship; and that he has worked disintegration by his disregard of Congress. These surface indica- tions are sufficient to the purposes of politicians, for the Great American Public has never been particularly in love with analysis.
Nothing is more true than that people do not live by bread alone; catch-phrases constitute a staple article of diet, especially in a democracy. All citizens worthy of the name talk largely of "constitutional rights," yet not one in a thou- sand has ever read the Constitution. Every four years the electorate, or such portion of it as has had the energy to register, votes for a Presi- dent of the United States, yet not one in a hun- dred thousand has any definite, authoritative conception of the office or its powers. It is these ignorances that have played so surely into ? the hands of partizans.
The makers of the Constitution were not vague in their ideas of the powers or functions of the President, nor were they less than vigorous and explicit in defining them. The Fathers con-
, THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
ceived the office as the keystone in the federal arch, the one seat of administration, the true source of the central control necessary to effi- ciency. Not only was the President constituted one of the three great co-ordinate branches of government, with power to veto the legislative, but other high authorities were given him until the cry arose that his privileges ran far beyond those of the British Crown. Madison, Frank- lin, Hamilton, and their associates were not afraid of power because there was also respon- sibility to the people; their real fear was that the President had not been given sufficient strength to make him what they intended him to be — a Chief Executive in fact as well as name. These doubts were only with respect to the peace powers of the President, for when the consideration of war powers was reached, even ultra-democrats conceded the necessity of a supreme control virtually despotic in its sweep. It was the one possible answer to the well- founded criticism that a democracy, with its balance of power, could not make war, since war was one thing that called for centralized purpose
F~and instancy of decision. A President of the United States, in time of war, is either a dictator or a traitor, for dictatorship in' war is the Con-
I stitution's direct intent.
Woodrow Wilson was in no wise ignorant of the aim of the Constitutional Convention. It is to be remembered that he did not receive his nomination as a reward for the usual hack ser- vice of the partizan, but in recognition of a statesmanship evidenced in action to some
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THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
extent, but far more in voluminous writings that shot light through the confusions of govern- ment. It is only necessary to read his books to discover that his views on the functions of the President were at one with the thought and purpose of the Constitution's framers.
In Congressional Government, written in 1884, he pointed out a Chief Executive's opportunities for service, and lamented that the "high office has fallen from its first estate of dignity because its power has waned; and its power has waned because the power of Congress has become pre- dominant." The reason, as he saw it, was a steady usurpation on the part of Congress, its growing habit of "investigating and managing everything," and its effort to club the Executive into obedience by denying appropriations or refusing confirmations.
In 1879, when only twenty-three years of age, his article on "Cabinet Government in the United States" set out his belief that "there is no one in Congress to speak for the nation. Congress is a conglomeration of inharmonious elements; a collection of men representing each his neighborhood, each his local interest; an alarmingly large proportion of its legislation is 'special'; all of it is at best only a limping compromise between the conflicting interests of the innumerable localities represented."
In 1900 he said: "When foreign affairs play a prominent part in the politics and policy of a nation, its Executive must of necessity be its guide: must utter every initial judgment, take every first step of action, supply the information
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
upon which it is to act, suggest and in large measure control its conduct."
In 1911 he said: "The increasing dependence of the country upon its executive officers is thrusting upon them a double function. They must undertake the business of agitation — that is to say, the business of forming and leading opinion, and it will not be very effectual or serviceable for them to do that unless they take the next step and make bold to formulate the measures by which opinion is to be put into effect."
«— When Woodrow Wilson took office, therefore, » it was with a political philosophy fully formed — a philosophy that held the true powers of the President to be abridged at every point by the unconstitutional encroachments of the legisla- tive branch. Facing him was a Congress stub- born in its resolve to retain the prerogatives filched from a series of weak or ignorant execu- tives. The lock of wills was instant, also funda- mental, for on the outcome hung decision as to whether the President should be the servant of the people or the servant of Congress, a leader or a follower, a spokesman or an echo.
Truce was not possible; the issues were too clean cut. And Woodrow Wilson won. In peace he was the Chief Executive of the nation. In war he was the Commander-in-chief. This is as the Constitution meant it to be. He did not usurp; he merely regained. The price that he paid for victory, however, cost him heavily in popularity. Congress has ever hated and fought the President it could not rule. It was also the
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THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
case that the public, out of its profound contempt for Congress, began to feel that the President should take over the duties of the legislative branch. When he did not do so, discontent developed. If a needed law was not passed, it was Wilson that was to blame. Whatever went wrong, whether in a city, a state, the nation, or the world, there was a general feeling that Wilson should have "fixed" it. Even those most blatant in crying "Dictator!'* were pas- sionate in their indignation when the President refused to remedy the incompetencies of Con- gress by some usurpation of power. Yet the victory was worth all that it cost. Woodrow Wilson has shown the country what a President should be, and although people will undoubtedly apply the tests unconsciously, the Chief Execu- tives of the future will be measured by his standard. Never again will we rest content with mountebanks, mere partizans, nonentities, j or congressional errand-boys.
This clash of diametrically opposed concep-^ tions of power, while at the bottom of the Presi- dent's inharmonious relations with Congress, was given intensity by personal dissimilarities no less fundamental. Woodrow Wilson looks at things from the standpoint of the statesman; the average officeholder approaches government from the standpoint of machine politics. The politician is concerned only with votes, the statesman with results; the one has an eye upon the popularities of the moment, the other upon history. One of the fixed traditions of American political life is that the way to success 3 19,
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
is through compromise, and as a consequence those have been most admired and most elevated who have managed to slither their way through opposed ideas and irreconcilable ideals without commitment. In sharp contradiction, a funda- mental of the Wilson philosophy is that truces are dangerous when they are not discreditable. Where disputes are personal he is willing to search for the basis of concession, but when a vital issue is at stake he does not know the meaning of compromise. With all his soul he ^believes that principles have to be fought out.
Such a passionate conviction could not pos- sibly be turned on or off at will, as with a spigot attachment, and his direct contacts were in- evitably affected. The intellectually dishonest were loathsome to him, and not by any advan- tage of self-interest could he be induced to meet and confer with them. "We send men to prison for stealing bread," he once exclaimed, "but we send them to Congress when they steal faith." The popular habit of confusing ability with mere cunning, of letting "slickness" pass for brains, was irritating to him, and his pride as an American suffered real humiliation at see- ing men like Reed, Watson, and Penrose sitting in the Senate of the United States.
His partizanship, based upon a conception of public service rather than personal profit, was not of the ardent kind that gave any satisfaction to the members of his own party. Years ago, in an article on Mr. Cleveland, he defined him as "the sort of President the makers of the Constitution had vaguely in mind: more man
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THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
than partizan, with an independent will of his own : hardly a colleague of the Houses so much as an individual servant of the country: exer- cising his powers like a Chief Magistrate rather than like a party leader." With great questions to be decided, questions that concerned the lives and hopes of millions, the President evidenced a growing distaste for the long-winded visiting that had no larger object than the discussion of a postmastership, the party outlook in a district, or the necessity of placating this or that boss.
Had this distaste confined itself to his contacts ] with professional politicians, the injury would not have been irreparable, but it happened to be the case that the President was not elected by a party, but by a movement — a great progressivist uprising of men and women grown sick of "machines" and eager for escape from the old Civil War alignment. Every appointment to office should have been studied carefully with a view to strengthening this movement. This was what the President did not do. His keen dislike of "patronage brokers" made him hold aloof from party bosses, but he failed to accompany this attitude by any determined search for appointees with whom progressivism was a religion. Anxious to get rid of an unpleasant business, he fell more and more into the habit of depending upon the advice of those close to him, and as a consequence men were selected who satisfied neither party nor movement. Garrison, McReynolds, Gregory, Burleson, and others like them were not "machine men," but neither were they Wilson's kind. As a matter of
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
fact, every one of them was a Bourbon of Bour- bons. This haphazard method of selection, due entirely to the President's refusal to take keen and continuous personal interest in appoint- ments, worked a triple injury — it surrounded him with men who did not speak his language or think his thoughts; it alienated the leaders of his party, and it weakened and eventually | demoralized the progressivist movement.
There is this to say in his behalf, however: the treadmill activities of the White House leave its occupant little time for anything else, that is, if he has honesty and high purpose. It is rare indeed for any one to consider the Presidency in the light of a job, but it is a fact that a con- scientious Chief Executive is called upon for more downright drudgery than any other official in the world. The position still runs exactly along the lines laid down in 1787, when the population of the entire country totaled less than the census of New York to-day, with the result that the duties are a queer, impossible jumble of tre- mendous problems and absurd clerical routine calculated to break the strongest. At a mo- ment when the President is considering some vital domestic question or facing an interna- tional complication, nothing is more likely than an enforced halt while he affixes his signature one thousand times to papers that should never get beyond a third assistant secretary.
The difficulties of the place are added to by the popular point of view with regard to public servants. The head of a great corporation would not hold his position a day were he to
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THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
waste his energies in time-wasting activities designed only to advance personal popularity, yet a President is confidently expected to leave his office door open for all who choose to "drop in." America is now a world power, and Amer- ican government has become a tremendous com- plexity that centers all the ceaseless striving of 110,000,000 people, and yet the executive head of this huge corporation is expected to hold to the formula of conduct laid down in the days of / tallow dips and stage-coaches. Professional poli- i ticians are largely to blame for this, with their continual emphasis upon the office rather than -7* the task, their campaign mummeries and their buncombe about "simple, rugged Americanism." The vulgar charlatanism of campaigns has done much to confuse democracy with mere physical boisterousness, and in many minds there is an actual insistence upon hand-shaking, shoulder- clapping, and ability to remember first names as the real democratic tests.
Even had he been strong enough to stand the physical strain of such a conception, it is much to be doubted if Woodrow Wilson would have attempted to live up to this caricature. His temperament precludes the tricks of the pro- fessional office-seeker, the labored lord-of-the- manor graciousness that passes for "democracy," and his conscience forbids the fawning, time- wasting activities of the professional office-seeker. As a historian and a publicist, he had made care- ful study of the duties of the Chief Executive, and it was in 1908, long before he had thought of filling the office, that he wrote this conclusion:
23
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
No other man's day is so full as his, so full of the responsi- bilities which tax mind and conscience alike, and demand an inexhaustible vitality. The mere task of making appointments to office, which the Constitution imposes upon the President, has come near to breaking some of our Presidents down, because it is a never-ending task in a civil service not yet put upon a professional footing, con- fused with short terms of office, always forming and dis- solving. And in proportion as the President ventures to use his opportunity to lead opinion and to act as spokesman of the people in affairs, the people stand ready to over- whelm him by running to him with every question, great and small. They are as eager to have him settle a literary question as a political; hear him as acquiescently with regard to matters of expert knowledge as with regard to public affairs, and call upon him to quiet all troubles by his personal intervention. Men of ordinary physique and discretion cannot be Presidents and live, if the strain be not somehow relieved. We shall be obliged always to be picking our Chief Magistrates from among wise and prudent athletes.
He knew, therefore, that he would have to choose, at the very outset, between popularity and service. Either he could consider the office politically, disregarding duty in the interests of personal acclaim, or he could assume it as a task to be discharged in honor and high faith, thereby surrendering all hope of applause. He made his decision as an American, not as a politician. After estimating the task in terms of routine and national needs, and measuring the demand against his strength, he saw plainly that the one chance was a careful, systematic, scientific con- servation of every ounce of energy. Taking up the study of his problem with the cool detach- ment of an engineer in charge of a plant, the President and his physician worked out an iron
24
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
regimen, a fixed daily program that ordered every minute of his life with machine-like exactitude.
Certain hours for work and sleep, regular mornings for golf and regular nights for the theater, a scientific diet, and stern caution against waste effort of every kind. It was not only physical habits that were forced under rigid discipline, but mental habits as well. Never at any time disposed to solitude or reticence, but one of the most companionable men that ever lived, the President had never failed to find a large part of his pleasure in the give-and- take of conversation. The trouble was, as with every eager, vivid personality, that he gave more than he took. His talk was no mere adventure in anecdotes, but a broad sweep across the whole of life, illuminating everything that it touched. Such contacts, inevitably entailing an expenditure of nervous force, had to be surrendered. Interviews were confined to official importances, and personal approaches increasingly gave way to the submission of memoranda. In the quiet of his study every paper received the painstaking attention of the President, but even this larger efficiency failed to soothe wounded vanities. As he was permitted no excitement at meals, even eating became a business. This deprived him of one of Roosevelt's greatest assets, making the White House table a quiet affair instead of the gather- ing-place that the President would have liked.
Only his doctors knew. Not once, in all the driving years, did he confess the fight that went
25
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
on in loneliness from day to day. Some one has said that the President's greatest weakness is an utter inability to "grand-stand." This lack was never more apparent than in connection with his struggle against exhaustion. A word, a gesture, would have won him understanding and sympathy, but he would not speak it, would not make it. He won and continued to win, but victory was never assured. There was always a shadow that hung over him, always the fear that each new day might bring the added ounce of strain that could not be endured. And so each hour that he wrested from his battle was devoted to the task, not to the man.
These conditions of the President's life should serve to explain many of the inconsistencies that have baffled observers, resulting in biog- raphies that are no more than studies in con- trast. One man sees him as a thinking-machine, cold, remote, aloof, utterly devoid of animal heat, while another sees him as a man of warm impulses, intensely human, and winningly genial. Both are true pictures, one being the man, the other the President: one a normal person, impulsive and companionable, the other the creature of an iron discipline, compelled to live within himself because it was the only way in which he could live and discharge the duties imposed upon him by his official oath and his conscience.
rThe results of Woodrow Wilson's determination to serve are written in the bronze of history. The administrative record of the last eight years
26
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
is a record of accomplishment without parallel in the annals of American government. Great laws, dealing with the very fundamentals of finance, industry, tariff legislation, human wel- fare, commerce, and credit, were either con- ceived by him or else mastered by him in the interests of intelligent advocacy.
Confronted from the first by a press of prob- lems handed down from the Roosevelt and Taft administrations — faced by the necessity of end- ing the rule of Special Privilege, in no instance did he evade or ignore. Tariff revision, the Fed- eral Reserve Act, the Federal Trade Commission, rural credits, the Clayton anti-trust law, the child-labor law, the eight-hour day, workmen's compensation, development of natural resources, road-building, the Seamen's Act, the shipping bill — these were some of his measures that put foundations under honest business, defeated cruelty and injustice, threw the mantle of pro- tection over the weak and helpless, and restored the pride, the courage, and creative genius of the American people. With it all he had to meet one international complication after the other, and always there was the wretched weight \ of an enormous routine.
It did not seem possible that human strength could stand additional strain, yet when America entered the war he seemed to find new wells of energy on which to draw. Throughout the struggle he did the work of ten men. While it is true enough that no one was "close" to the President, it is also true that he himself was close to every man connected with government.
27
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
He had his hand on the pulse of each department, and his knowledge of detail was as amazing as it was often disconcerting in the hour of re- port. He did not seem able to divest himself of a feeling of personal responsibility for every soldier that he sent to France, and this virtual obsession drove him relentlessly. What the youth of America was doing appealed to him as so wonderfully fine, so shot through with a splendor of sacrifice, that he looked upon any sparing of himself as nothing short of betrayal. After a crowded day — for, despite alleged "aloof- ness," he saw people in a steady stream of five, ten, and fifteen-minute interviews — he gave his evening to the papers that stacked his desk, typing off comment, suggestion, or instructions on his own battered little machine. It took six weeks invariably to get a ruling from the State Department, but the President replied either at once with a dictated letter or else on the morning of the second day there came the small envelope with its little typewritten page, all curiously neat, signed "W. W."
I saw him many times when his face had the gray of ashes, but the one complaint that I ever heard was on the score of sleepiness. "I'm getting like Dickens's fat boy," he laughed one day. "I could go to sleep at an angle of ninety- five degrees." The importance of husbanding his energies, however, made him less and less willing to spend them upon the trivial, and the immaterial and irrelevant became increasingly unbearable. There was so much to do, and always the fear of being hampered in the doing
28
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
by some rebellion of the body. I felt always that any standing possessed by me! with the President was due to the fact that at the very outset I divined this sense of urgency. Before an interview with him, I would prepare for it just as a lawyer prepares a brief, putting each subject down in its proper order, heading and subheading, and working up the manner or presentation in order to strip away every vestige of the non-essential. Within ten seconds after shaking hands I had commenced my memoran- dum and followed it through without pause or change. So few did this. During the war I took scores of visitors to the White House, many of them men of large affairs and high reputation as executives, and it was seldom indeed that any of them drove hard and straight at the point. One man that I remember particularly had twenty minutes to present a most important matter and he did not even touch upon it until after nineteen minutes had passed.
Thomas Garrigues Masaryk, that great states- man now President of Czechoslovakia, once remarked to me on the "amazing impracticality" of America's so-called "practical men," and whimsically commented that of all the people he had met "your visionary, idealistic President is by far and away the most intensely practical." Franklin Lane had a habit of referring to him as "an idealist in action," but the only other who ever seemed to grasp this very obvious charac- teristic of the President was Charles H. Grasty, who touched on it as follows in the course of a recent article in the Atlantic Monthly:
29
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
After seeing him at Paris, I would expect him to succeed if, upon his retirement from the Presidency at sixty-four years of age, he took the highly improbable step of entering the field of industry. In a large executive position, say the presidency of the Steel Corporation, I confidently believe that he would make an unprecedented success. He has the keenest and truest sense of what is real. Irrele- vance cuts him to pieces. When he is at work on a thing that engages his interest he is like a hound on the scent. Waste of time or any kind of lost motion is like poison to him. A member of the Big Four once said to me: "Wilson works. The rest of us play, comparatively speaking. We Euro- peans can't keep up with a man who travels a straight path with such a swift stride, never looking to the right or left. We cannot put aside our habit of rambling a bit on the way."
The reason, perhaps, is found in the fact that of all our misused words, practicality has been most twisted away from its original meaning. Owing to the general habit of measuring accom- plishment in terms of profit, it has come to stand for acquisitiveness, for a certain mean shrewdness, for the successes of greed. The man who dreams the dream of tunneling a mountain so that locked waters may turn the desert into orchard, and then allows himself to be cheated of the financial reward, is "im- practical," but the glorified pawnbroker that does the cheating is hailed as "practical."
Watching the President's mind work was like watching the drive of a perfectly tuned engine. Intellectual discipline, supplementing natural ability, has placed every faculty at his immediate call, and there is never a hint of waste nor delay. What often passes for "peremptoriness" with him is really nothing more than his habit of
30
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
thinking straight and thinking through. Having certainties of his own, he pays people the com- pliment of assuming that they themselves have equally definite conclusions, and he invites the clash of ideas. Instead of disliking argu- ment, there was never any one who had higher appreciation of the value of argument. What he does not like, to be sure, is the blithe custom of substituting mere assertions for established facts and placing reliance upon opinions rather than logic. "*v
I was in Washington from the first week of the war to the last, occupying a position that brought me into intimate contact with the head of every department, bureau, and committee, and I can say truthfully that of all those assem- bled minds the President's was the most open. This does not mean the usual catch-basin type of mind into which any passer-by may throw his mental trash, but a mind receptive to sug- gestions, one with a welcome for new ideas. He comes to his conclusions too carefully to give them up quickly, but once let his facts be dis- puted successfully and he surrenders without question. And of all the men who gathered to direct the progress of the great war machine, the President was the most modest and the most courteous. No man ever heard him utter a vainglorious word or a rude one. What was always most impressive, however, was his re- markable control over as hot a temper as ever./' burned within a human being.
A habit of emphasizing the Scotch strain in Wilson's blood has curiously obscured the fact
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
that on the paternal side his grandfather and grandmother were both Irish. Never in any one were two blood strains more apparent or more evenly balanced. The result is the very unusual combination of strength and sensi- bility. "Strong men" are too often lacking in the emotional necessities, while delicacies of perception and feeling are generally compan- ioned by a sort of wishy-washiness. The mixt- ure is likewise responsible for a very definite cross-pull, and no one is more aware of it than the President himself. As he said to me one day: "The Irish is always the first to react and its invariable command is to go ahead. The Scotch, however, is never more than a second behind, and always catches me by the coattail with the warning to wait a minute and think it over/'
As a result, his conclusions are invariably reached by a process of incubation, assisted at every point by the most painstaking study and thorough investigation. Instead of an "im- patience of counsel and failure to subject him- self to the corrective process of association," the very reverse is true. To use his own favorite phrase, he "borrows brains" wherever he finds them, and many important decisions are delayed unwisely while he waits to see persons assumed r"to have certain special knowledge. Complete information is a passion with him, and it was in this connection that Colonel House proved so valuable. Soft-spoken, selfless, unassertive, but an epitome of alertness, the colonel was a high- class sponge, with the added beauty of being
32
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
easy to squeeze. Once in possession of every 1 fact in the case, the President withdraws, com- mences the business of consideration, compari- son, and assessment, and then emerges with a decision.
This habit of thought is by no means a short cut to popularity. There is a certain vanity in all of us that makes us like to feel that our views carry weight, that our conclusions have the quality of convincing, and a certain chill is bound to come when we see views and con- clusions carted away to be sorted over with a lot of others. Also, in the case of politicians, advice usually means control. The charge that the President "dislikes advice" is simply that the President prefers to form his own conclu- sions instead of letting others form them for him.
If, however, the Scotch strain disposes him to slowness in making a decision, the Irish strain assumes command when the decision has been reached, and he brings to his advocacies a fighting spirit that takes no account of odds. Slow to take fire, he burns inextinguishably when once alight. Here again, however, the President suffers by contrast. By comparison with the opportunism and pliability of the average politician, the Wilson tenacity of pur- pose inevitably takes on the look and feel of granite.
Mental habits have a clutch as strong as the physical. As time went by, with increasing necessity for husbanding hours and energy, it was easy to see the growing dominance of the
33
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
intellectual factor in the President's equation. He came more and more to view every problem mentally, to look into the minds of men rather than into the hearts of men. America possessed him to the exclusion of Americans, and in increasing degree he gave his thought to the people as a whole rather than to individuals. A revolt against the charlatanism of politics, with its emphasis on palliatives, gave intensity to his search for causes and cures. On every side he saw politicians and papers trying to content people with thrills, and his determina- tion grew to make people think. With his mastery of language, his rare ability to give words poignancy as well as point, it would have been easy for him to dramatize himself, but he shrank from this usual political trick as unutter- ably cheap, wholly unworthy. On his trip in support of the League of Nations, for instance, it was suggested to him that it might be well to "warm up a bit," and his answer was an indig- nant refusal to "capitalize the dead." J^M. It was a course that had no other end than 9 unpopularity, for the American people prefer to confine the business of thinking to their own personal affairs. When they turn to politics it is for amusement, for excitement, for indigna- tion, but never for intellectual activity. The President, by his continual appeals to mentality rather than to the emotions, became a trial. The war, with its opportunity for intense feeling, saved him from actual disfavor for a wjiile, but the reactions of the armistice sealed his doom. People turned back definitely and irritatedly
34
THE; MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
to their own personal concerns, and the continued insistence of the President upon national and international affairs both bored and angered. Couldn't he see that they were busy! Yet only the President has lost. Every word that he said, every appeal that he cried, has found a lodgment in the hearts and minds of the men and women of the United States, and while they may dislike him for making them think, the thinking is being done. He has been, in truth, a schooj- master, and not all that we get from a teacher ever softens humanity's curious resentment atj having to be taught.
Such a type was naturally disappointing to the newspapers, and this disappointment is at the heart of the "aloofness" that grew up between the President and the Washington correspondents. They wanted drama and he refused to furnish it. They wanted something that would lend itself to "scareheads" and he responded with an "exposition." In the first years of his administration the President received the correspondents regularly. He talked to them with the utmost freedom, and the discon- tinuance of the interviews was not based upon any violation of confidence, but upon his con- viction of their futility. In the group that would stand before him were men of high character and brilliant attainments, able to talk and think on terms of equality with any statesman or great executive. Also in the group, however, were immature boys, ignorant of life in any of its larger aspects and unconcerned with issues since they were without knowledge of them. 4 35
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
These undeveloped minds played with small things and put continual emphasis upon them. They were more interested in the sheep ' on the White House lawn than in any analysis of policy, more eager to find out what the President had for dinner than to receive the explanation of a proposed law.
The principal distaste of the President, how- ever, was based upon what he termed "con- jectural journalism." He felt that the press was not interested in what had happened, or what would happen, but only in what might happen. As he phrased it, their idea of news was "the satisfaction of curiosity." Every one will admit the folly of taking the eggs from under a hen every five minutes in order to note the process of incubation, yet when great ques- tions of domestic or international import are in process of settlement, the press insists upon its right to examine them at every stage of the hatching process. This claim was abhorrent to the orderly habits of the Wilson mind, with its regard for established facts, and it became his battle to conceal decisions until they were completely formed. At Paris, as in Washing- ton, much of the complaint of press and politi- cians was due to the President's refusal to "guess."
Once he might have taken a chance on the hazards of "conjecture," once he might have endured stupidity, selfishness, low thinking, and time-wasting, once he might have thought in terms of personal popularity or partizan ad- vantage, but if ever there was such a time,
36
THE MAN AND THE PRESIDENT
it was before he became the President of the United States, a time before he sat face to face with America, heard her call and saw her needs. What happened to Woodrow Wilson was the thing that happened to Lincoln, that happened to Washington — the dream of a race, the spiritual passions of a people, the necessities of menaced liberties, joined to lift him from the homely companionships of the average to the loneliness of the type.
What is America, after all — not the America that we sing when the verses are remembered — but the America that is in the hearts of men, that is the hope of mothers, the inheritance of children? It is a light that has never failed since first it rose, a dream of ideals more glorious than armies, a vision of struggle against the injustices of life, a working theory of spiritual progress that shall make to-morrow finer and better than to-day.
No people in all history were ever less con- cerned with the material. Money is merely the symbol of achievement; our passion is progress, and high endeavor our happiness. At once pacific and militant, incurably religious yet in- cessantly questing, clamorously emotional but hard and shrewd withal, conservative and revo- lutionary in the same breath, curiously sophisti- cated and unalterably naive, freedom is the one note that brings every discord into harmony. Controlled by a law of averages for the most part, giving mediocrity an easy indulgence, it is only when danger reaches down to the soul of America that the type is demanded and evolved.
37
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
And well for these great souls if, like Lincoln, they pass on in the moment of supreme achieve- ment, for there is nothing more cruel, more savage, than a people's reaction from high t emotionalism.
II
NEUTRALITY
peace tangle will not unravel unless re- A lated to war aims, and war aims stand unsupported and somewhat overstrained unless related to the various emotional stages that marked the period of our neutrality. The web of confusion in which the nation struggles is no simple skein, but a complicated weave of every falsehood and prejudice evolved by the political and spiritual upheavals of the last six years.
One has only to read the public prints of 1914 to realize how entirely the Great War took America by surprise. Such a sudden, unpro- voked assault on the ideals of civilization was not only incomprehensible to us, but almost f ^^ incredible. Naturally, well-nigh instinctively, ; the mind of the nation reacted on the instant to old habits of thought and familiar courses of/ action.
More than any other tradition or policy, the I gospel of democracy declared by James Monroe has dominated the expanding Jife of America. Flung at the monarchies of Europe in 1823 as a grim ultimatum that their interference in the political affairs of the New World would be resisted to the death, it was equally our promise not to interfere in the wars and disputes of the
39
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
Old World. At the time no more than a simple warning, it grew in the popular mind to be an expression of national independence, the great foundation stone in the wall of American safety. It was at all times questionable whether we could have upheld the famous Doctrine in event of attack, but there was never a moment when the country would not have taken arms in its defense. The cables, the wireless, fast mails, and the growth of foreign trade all joined to end the isolation that was the very heart of the policy, but changed conditions had no power to weaken faith in its desirability and importance. Even in the Hague Conference of 1899 the dele- gates of the United States signed the arbitration convention with this proviso:
Nothing contained in this convention shall be so con- strued as to require the United States of America to depart from its traditional policy of not intruding upon, interfering with, or entangling itself in the political questions or policy or internal administration of any foreign state; nor shall anything contained in the said convention be construed to imply a relinquishment by the United States of America of its traditional attitude toward purely American questions.
We sent delegates to the Algeciras Conference called in 1906 to adjust the affairs of Morocco, but while approving the arrangement that re- sulted, we disclaimed any responsibility for the enforcement of the treaty provisions that guaran- teed the independence and integrity of Morocco. Five years later, when these guaranties were ruthlessly set aside, we affirmed our traditional
Ijattitude by refusal to enter protest.
I""" Another great American tradition, second in
40
NEUTRALITY
our hearts only to the Monroe Doctrine, was the advocacy of arbitration as a substitute for war. From the day that the thirteen original states agreed to abide by the decisions of a federal tri- bunal, Americans have had the conviction that similar agreements on the part of nations would achieve similar results. It was this plan of judicial settlements, rather than military de- cisions, that we took to The Hague in 1899 and again in 1907, and that we failed in our purpose was entirely due to the resistance of the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Defeated in our purpose, as far as international concert was concerned, our enthusiasm suffered no abate- ment. To nation after nation we carried our statement of aims, and by 1914 we had effected dual arbitration treaties with thirty countries, twenty of which had been duly ratified and ; proclaimed.
These traditions, these aspirations, were as much a part of American life as the breath of the body, and the President spoke for a whole people when he issued his proclamation of neu- trality on August 4th, supporting it later in these noble words :
Every man who really loves America will act and speak in the true spirit of neutrality, which is the spirit of im- partiality and fairness and friendliness to all concerned. . . . It will be easy to excite passion and difficult to allay it. Such divisions among us ... might seriously stand in the way of the proper performance of our duty as the one great nation at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a part of impartial mediation and speak counsels of peace and accommodation, not as a partizan, but as a friend.
41
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
This thought, springing inevitably from the
American faith in arbitration, our horror of war,
dominated all of the President's earlier speeches,
and the response of the country was sincere.
Not at the time, nor for months, was any Amer-
^Jcan right assailed, and the whole dispute seemed
\ entirely European. It was not until a full year
had passed that the full tragedy of Germany's
treatment of Belgium burned into the con-
)( sciousness of the United States, and it was an
even longer period before the full purpose of the
Imperial German government dawned upon the
I democratic mind.
It is one of the paradoxes of politics that those partizans who attack the League of Nations because it carries the danger of American en- tanglement in European affairs also declare in the same breath that America was shamed and betrayed by the President's refusal to thrust America into the World War at the time of Bel- gium's invasion. It is this falsity that must be considered at the very outset, for it is respon- sible for much of the prejudice that clouds judgment. v
The answer is simple and does not admit of challenge. It is not the right of the President of the United States to declare war, the Constitu- tion of the United States vesting that power in Congress absolutely and entirely. No con- straint of any kind rested upon Senator or Representative. It was the privilege of any single member of Congress to introduce a war resolution or to ask a protest. This power was not exercised. No resolution was introduced.
42
NEUTRALITY
Neither at the time of the German invasion of Belgium nor during the first year of the German occupation was war or protest even suggested in Congress or out of it.
Speaking on February 16, 1916, Elihu Root, then a full-fledged presidential candidate, as- serted that "the American people are entitled not merely to feel, but to speak concerning the wrong done to Belgium. The law protecting Belgium which was violated was our law and the law of every other civilized nation." Better than any one else Elihu Root knew that the United States was bound by neither law nor treaty. The Hague Declaration that the "ter- ritory of neutral powers is inviolable" contained no means of enforcement, and, as far as 1914 was concerned, nullified itself entirely by Article 20: "The provisions of the present Convention do not apply except as between contracting parties, and then only if all the belligerents are parties to the Convention." Neither Great Britain nor Serbia ever ratified the convention. What is even more to the point, Mr. Root was in the Senate for one year and six months after the invasion of Belgium and not once during that time did he open his mouth to suggest a protest.
As for Mr. Roosevelt, who devoted the latter part of 1915 and the first six months of 1916 to attacking President Wilson for his failure to pro- test in the matter of Belgium, the following article from his pen appeared in The Outlook under date of September 23, 1915:
A deputation of Belgians has arrived in this country to invoke our assistance in the time of their dreadful need.
43
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
What action our government can or will take I know not. It has been announced that no action can be taken that will interfere with our entire neutrality. It is certainly emi- nently desirable that we should remain entirely neutral and nothing but urgent need would warrant breaking our
neutrality and taking sides one way or the other.
\
Neutrality, however, argued no surrender whatsoever of American rights. In this con- nection, disputes with Great Britain gave small occasion for real alarm, as the existence of a treaty provided means of peaceful adjustment. Such was not the case with the Imperial German government, which had specifically and repeat- edly refused to enter into arbitration agreements with us. It was apparent, therefore, that dis- sensions arising between the United States and Germany held promise of grave danger, for diplomatic conversations, ineffective at best, are hopeless unless exchanged in good faith. The absence of this good faith was made mani- fest at the very outset by the organized German attempt to arouse outcry against our sale of munitions to the Allies.
rThe contention was dishonest, for as recently is the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 both Germany and Austria had sold munitions to the belligerents. Their appeals to us, therefore, "were not to observe international law, but to revise it in their interest." The stand taken by the United States was consistent not only with international law and traditional policy, but also with obvious common sense. For, as we pointed out, "if we had refused to sell munitions to belligerents we could never in
44
NEUTRALITY
time of a war of our own obtain munitions from neutrals, and the nation which had accumulated the largest reserves of war-supplies in time of peace would be assured of victory. The mili- tarist state that invested its money in arsenals would be at a fatal advantage over the free people who invested their wealth in schools. To write into international law that neutrals should not trade in munitions would be to hand over the world to the rule of the nation with the largest armament factories. Such a policy the | United States of America could not accept."1 ^
This dispute, and others like it, however, were \ merely irritating when compared to the dyna- mite contained in another historic tradition. Only second to the Monroe Doctrine has been our deep and continuing interest in the "freedom of the seas." In the early days of the Republic, long before the West opened its rich resources to our energies, we sought prosperity in the ocean lanes, and America's fast clipper ships carried our expanding commerce to every corner of the world. As a consequence, the law of the seas was of vital interest to us, and from the very outset our diplomacy has had a just mari- time code as one of its principal objectives. At every point in history we denied the theory that any nations possessed proprietary rights in world waters, and entered invariable protest against all policies of belligerents that abridged the rights of neutrals to sail the seas in peace and independence.
As in the case of the Monroe Doctrine, the
1 How the War Came to America.
45
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
"freedom of the seas" was a gospel that we were at all times ready to defend with our lives and fortunes. The civil wars of the Barbary States were of small interest to us, but when their piracies limited the liberties of ocean traffic we declared war against them. Napoleon's cam- paigns were interesting to us only as news, but his continental blockade struck down our sea rights, and in 1798 we drove our navy against the privateers of France and called Washington from his retirement to take com- mand of the army. England's war against France could be viewed with indifference, but British Orders in Council affected the lives of our citizens instantly and disastrously, and in 1812 we took arms in defense of the freedom of the seas.
The typical Americanism of the President reacted to this American tradition even as to the Monroe Doctrine, and as early as August 6, 1914, he sounded a sharp warning to the belliger- ents, despatching an identical note to all of them in which attention was called to the sea rights of neutrals. Again on February 10, 1915, as a result of Germany's proclamation of a war zone around the British Isles, President Wilson in- formed the German government that "if the commanders of German vessels of war should act upon the presumption that the flag of the United States was not being used in good faith and should destroy on the high seas an American vessel or the lives of American citizens, it would be difficult for the government of the United States to view the act in any other light than
46
NEUTRALITY
as an indefensible violation of neutral rights, . . . the government of the United States would be constrained to hold the Imperial German government to a strict accountability for^ such acts of their naval authorities and to take any steps it might be necessary to take to safeguard American lives and property and to secure to American citizens the full enjoyment of their acknowledged rights on the high seas."
Also on March 30, 1915, a long note was sent to the British government, protesting against the Order in Council of March I5th that we held to be "a practical assertion of unlimited belligerent rights over neutral commerce within the whole European area, and an almost unqualified denial of the sovereign rights of the nations now at peace." In note after note we laid down our ancient claim that the high seas are common territory to every nation.
As a matter of fact our grievances against Eng- land were far more acute than those against Germany when the sinking of the Lusitania worked its tremendous revulsion in public^ feeling. Even before this tragedy, however,""| the mind of the President had freed itself from the shackles of tradition. Just as our interest in the seas had forced us into every great war, so was it a certainty that we would be drawn into the conflict then raging. Our "isolation," never anything more than fancied, was finally a proved absurdity. As for the Monro.e Doctrine, German victory meant its surrender or else its defense by armed force. These truths stood plain to the President, but with vision no less
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clear he saw also that American unity was no longer a substance, but a shadow, and that through the careless years great forces of disin- tegration had been permitted to work at will. Glib references to the "melting-pot" instead of some sane and continuous process of assimilation; intelligent nationalism split into parochial rival- ries by the dangerous growth of sectionalism.
In the days of the Colonies the Atlantic sea- board was America, but in the twentieth century it cannot truthfully be looked upon as other than a fringe. It is between the Alleghanies and the Rockies that the real America lies — an America careless of Eastern opinion when it is not con- temptuous. New England and New York might wax hysterical over a European war, but the great Middle West went its way in indifference. Added to a very intense belief that war was a medieval madness, one found also a very definite pro-Germanism. Great centers like Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Chicago were, in many respects, as Teutonic as Berlin, and from these cities poured a steady stream of propaganda that subtly influenced public opinion in favor of the German cause. It is to be remembered that Congress, the war-making body, took no action whatsoever as a result of the Lusitania tragedy, and that press and politicians, while condem- natory indeed, divided sharply on the abstract issue. The infamous German charge that the Lusitania carried ammunition "destined for the destruction of brave German soldiers'* found many supporters, and from the Middle West actually came the suggestion that Americans
48
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ought to keep off the sea. Slowly but surely the President addressed himself to the discovery of truth and the affirmation of ideals in the interests of American unity.
The feeling that great issues were at stake was not enough. There had to be the burning conviction that those issues and their proper solution were bound up with the permanent safety of America here and now and forever. War might come as a result of some outburst of national feeling, but national passions and hatred were without the necessary carrying power. The imperative thing was such deep understanding of national ideals as would fur- nish unity and indomitableness throughout the days, perhaps the years, of suffering and sacri- fice— an understanding that would reach down to the souls of one hundred millions, cross sectioning race and creed and circumstance, firing all with a common faith. One has only to read the President's notes to follow the mighty drive of an inflexible purpose. Fools laughed at them, but they will stand for all time as mile- stones in America's longest march to the heights.!
In the first Lusitania note, dated May I, 1915, we stated plainly that "the Imperial German government will not expect the government of the United States to omit any word or any act" to safeguard our rights. In the note of June 9th we said: "Whatever be the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the principal fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls that had no part or lot in
49
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
the conduct of the war, was sunk without so much as a challenge or a warning, and that men, women, and children were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare. The government of the United States is con- tending for something much greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity."
In the third note, dated July 2ist, it was as- serted clearly that "the repetition of certain acts must be regarded by the government pf the United States, when they affect American citizens, as deliberately unfriendly."
On September 1st the Imperial German govern- ment gave assurance that its submarines would sink no more liners without warning, seemingly a notable victory for international law as well as for America. The President, however, realized that the assurance rested entirely upon the honor of Germany, having no basis in legal agreement. On January 18, 1916, he set forth a declaration of principles regarding submarine attacks and asked assent to them by the warring nations. The German answer was a curt notice to all neutral powers that armed merchant- ships would be treated as war-ships and sunk without warning. Instantly and with unparalleled vigor the German propaganda organization in the United States commenced a campaign to gain popular support for the policy.
America's unreadiness for war was never more apparent than at this moment. The old cry against "traffic in human lives" was revived,
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and powerful political and business groups went so far as to urge the President to advise American citizens not to travel on armed mer- chant-ships. Mr. Bryan and the West censured the administration for being too militaristic, while Mr. Roosevelt and the Atlantic seaboard attacked on the ground of ultra-pacifism. The President's answer was specific assertion of the right of commercial vessels to carry arms in self-defense, and an equally explicit refusal to consent to the amazing theory that Americans had no right on the sea that Germany was bound to respect.
At every point in the proceedings there was clear evidence of Germany's conviction that the United States stood helpless by reason of our high percentage of citizens of German birth or descent. Relying upon the immunity afforded by this presumption of disloyalty, and in abso- lute defiance of the Lusitania pledge, a submarine torpedoed the Sussex without warning on March 24th, killing and wounding American citizens. The shot at Concord was no more explicit than the ultimatum of the President that unless Germany abandoned such methods of submarine warfare diplomatic relations would be severed at once. His speech before Congress was a more terrible arraignment of Germany than had yet been put in words, and under the scourge of this reprobation Berlin cowered and sur- rendered. Acknowledging their guilt in the matter of the Sussex, the Germans gave pledges that met the main demands of the United States. There was nothing conclusive in such a settle- 5 51
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
ment, however. The Kaiser meant it as a truce, and the President so recognized it. Even as Berlin rallied its American sympathizers to defeat his re-election, so did the President pro- _^ceed to prepare for the grapple of principles that he now felt to be inevitable. Speaking before the League to Enforce Peace on May 27, 1916, he called upon the people to face facts even as he himself had been compelled to face them. After conclusive establishment of the truth that America no longer enjoyed a "detached and distant situation," that our "isolation" was fancied, not real, he declared that the nation must stand prepared to assume the authorities and responsibilities of a world power, and set forth this new article of faith :
So sincerely do we believe these things that I am sure that I speak the mind and wish of the people of America when I say that the United States is willing to become a partner in any feasible association of nations formed in order to realize these objects and make them secure against violation.
Again speaks the typical Americanism of the man. Though bound by tradition as firmly as any ancient people, it is the salvation of America that we have the courage to blaze new trails when it is seen that the old paths are no longer trustworthy. Prior to 1916 the address of the President would have shocked and alienated, but, viewed in the red light that flowed from the battle-fields of Europe, it was recognized as truth. The approval of the nation marked the beginning of America's surrender of the illusion of isolation, the dawn of America's realization
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that freedom^ of the seas could not be separated from freedom of the land, and that the world peace of our dreams depended on our willingness to enter into a world partnership for the preser- vation of that peace. From this time on the speeches of the President were marked by certainty. He felt that he was not merely a leader, but a spokesman; that he was not sup- plying impulse, but receiving it. Throughout the whole of 1916 his words had the ring of a clarion:
We are not going to invade any nation's right, but sup- pose, my fellow-countrymen, some nation should invade our right? What then? ... I have come here to tell you that the difficulties of our foreign policy . . . daily increase in number and intricacy and in danger, and I would be derelict to my duty to you if I did not deal with you in these matters with the utmost candor, and tell you what it may be necessary to use the force of the United States to do.
America up to the present time has been, as if by de- liberate choice, confined and provincial, and it will be impossible for her to remain confined and provincial. Henceforth she belongs to the world and must act as part of the world.
The United States will never be what it has been. The United States was once in enjoyment of what we used to call splendid isolation. . . . And now, by circumstances which she did not choose, over which she had not control, she has been thrust out into the great game of mankind, on the stage of the world itself, and here she must know what she is about, and no nation in the world must doubt that all her forces are gathered and organized in the interest j of just, righteous, and humane government.
The issues of the election were clean-cut. Germany was under no delusion. Berlin knew
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that the President had come at last to exact appreciation of Potsdam's plan of world con- quest and meant to array the strength of democ- racy against it. Every force that German money and influence could control was hurled into the campaign against the President, but the people were no less aroused to the issues involved and Americanism triumphed over partizanship.
The march of events was swift and logical. On December 18, 1916, the President addressed a note to the belligerent nations in which he pointed out that each side claimed to be fighting a defensive war; each side asserted interest in the rights of small nations; each side declared itself to be "ready to consider the formation of a league of nations to insure peace and justice throughout the world." As the objects for which both sides were fighting, "stated in general terms . . . seem to be the same," the President asked the belligerent powers if it would not be possible for them to avow the "precise objects which would, if attained, satisfy them and their people." He justified the re- quest by stating that America was "as vitally and directly interested as the governments now at war" in the "measures to be taken to secure the future peace of the world."
The reception of this note will be recorded by historians as a proof of how far the statesman- ship of the modern world had fallen away from intelligence. Partizans in America berated the communication as a shameful confession of ignorance, regarding it as nothing more than an effort to "find out what the war was about."
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The British and French spokesmen, as well as the press of the two nations, were shocked at what seemed an exhibition of cold-blooded im- partiality. Yet nothing was more obvious than that the note was written directly at Ger- many, and that under the palm branch gleamed a naked sword. The President was not trying to "find out what the war was about," but the terms on which the belligerents would be willing to end it. The terms of the Allies had been stated repeatedly and frankly and were well known. Germany, on the other hand, had dealt entirely in vague generalities, sometimes threatening, sometimes mawkishly pathetic. It was the de- termination of the President to drive them out into the open. As plain as words could make it, the note denied any purpose of mediation and demanded information that would permit us to frame a definite, conclusive policy. America could stay out no longer; America did not wish to stay out longer. Our search was for worthy comrades in a battle to the death between j opposed ideals.
The whole of the President's supreme states- manship had run to this tremendous moment. Something that the bayonets of the Allies had not been able to do his words had done: Ger- many was at bay. Two decisions, and two only, were presented to the Kaiser for his choice. He could continue silent or evasive, confessing guilt of blood and guilt of plan, thereby forcing a united America into the war against him, or he could have cried "Peace" in a voice great enough to reach that Heaven against which he had
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r*.
sinned. Not in all the annals of humanity were a people ever given so wonderful an opportunity \ for spiritual and physical redemption. What if "~ Germany had said: "Let the guns be silenced. We are sick of our struggle, sick of ambitions that we now see to be cruel and impossible. Let us order a new world and build it on the rock founda- tions of justice and brotherhood. We stand ready to pay for the damage done in France and Belgium. We will right the wrongs of Alsace and Lorraine and acknowledge the national aspirations of the Poles, the Czechs, and the Serbs. We want the burden of militarism lifted from our backs and from the back of humanity, and we offer our partnership in a league of nations/'
Not in all the Central Powers, however, was there one statesman with the vision to see the necessity or the splendor of such an answer. Drunk with success, confident in the power of their tribal god, and resolute in their mad dream of world conquest, the military masters of Germany replied in their usual terms of vague- ness and evasiveness. Going before the Senate on January 22d, the President discussed the answers to his notes, and every sentence of that discussion was an arraignment of the German pretensions, a recognition that the Allied gov- ernments had come to stand for liberty and hu- man aspiration. The people had watched; the people understood. War was not only a ques- tion of time and German arrogance. The expression was not long delayed. On January 31, 1917, Berlin officially notified the linked
56
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States that "from February I, 1917, sea traffic will be stopped with every available weapon and without further notice." We were told that American passenger-steamers could con- tinue their sailings undisturbed only on condi- tion of following certain lines to certain ports and "bearing on hull and superstructure three vertical stripes, eight meters wide, each to be painted alternately white and red/'
With rare shamelessness, the German Chan- cellor informed the Imperial Diet that the reason this ruthless policy had not been employed earlier was simply because the navy wanted to wait until more submarines had been built. Our action was instant. On February jd the German ambassador was dismissed and diplo- matic relations severed.
Slowly but surely the President had led the people to high ground demanded by old ideals and new needs. The filibuster of the "fourteen wilful men" had power to kill the armed- neutrality bill, and the McLemore resolution, warning Americans not to travel on armed merchant-ships, managed to muster one hundred and fifty-two votes, but these were the last gasps of the congressional groupTtrTat drew its inspiration from blind pacifists and German disloyalists. Devotion to peace had been proved by"""afT unparalleled patience. The President's complete unmasking of the German plan had given us unity, and the people saw" at last that the war was not only a war of self-defense, but a logical continuation of the AhieTi"CaTl~§truggle * that started in 1776.
57
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
The popular response to the war message of pril 2d was a fulfilment of the President's prophecy that "There will come that day when the world will say, 'This America that we thought was full of a multitude of contrary counsels now speaks with the great volume of the heart's accord, and that great heart of America has behind it the supreme moral force of righteousness and hope and the liberty of mankind.'"
Ill
"STRONG MEN'
HTHE sweep of a century leaves nothing remem-j •*• bered but fundamentals and a few great names. Historians, writing of events that time has withered until only the fadeless essentials remain, are not concerned with the living pas- sions that colored and confused those events in the day of their happening. A contemporary chronicler may take no such privilege, for he deals with the ferment rather than the solution, and must treat of things in their present im- portance without waiting until the years have settled the question of relative value. History can afford to be a concentration of the impersonal and important, but life, as it runs along from day to day, is made up of little things, and public opinion of the moment is more controlled by passing rages, clashing vanities, and the hour's excitement than by the larger purposes that do not reveal themselves until the winds of time have blown away the smoke and ashes j of the human struggle.
America's war rush and overwhelming vic- tory, the Peace Treaty, and the League of Nations, will stand alone before the future, but to-day they move obscurely through clouds of confusion, and it is idle to consider them
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until some attempt has been made to settle the yeasty ferment of angers and resentments. Such matters as the failure to form a coalition Cabinet, the refusal to permit Mr. Roosevelt to go to France, the case of General Wood, and the President's "partizan appeal," while tran- sient and trivial in comparison with the great issues of the day, nevertheless cloud these larger questions to an extent that demands attention.
The War Message haa not ceased to echo before the cry for "strong men" burst upon the ears of the President. Raised by Republican poli- ticians as an opening wedge in the drive for a bipartizan government, it was nevertneless a slogan of direct appeal to the millions of Amer- icans who were girding themselves for service, and who wanted the assurance that civilian leadership was to be no less expert than the mili- tary direction itself. Because a coalition Cab- inet was not formed, the feeling grew that the President meant to "play a lone hand," a par- tizan hand, and its persistence as a conviction is at the bottom of much of the ugly anger that imperils our unity to-day.
It was, and is, a confusion that proceeds from the unfortunate fact that the great majority of Americans are as little familiar with their govern- ment as with their history. Because of this ignorance concerning plain facts of administra- tion it was the general opinion that the Presi- dent's refusal to form a coalition Cabinet was due to a dislike of "counsel," an unwillingness to subject himself to the independences of "ad-
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"STRONG MEN"
vice" that might result from the inclusion of Republicans in his "official family." Cabinet members are in no sense counselors or advisers to the President, nor have they ever been. They are the real executives of the administration, each one the head of a department with exact duties to discharge, and coming into regular contact with the President only for purposes of report, conference, and cohesion. The Presi- dent has the responsibility, but his Cabinet members have the power. If they fail him in faith, in loyalty, in understanding, or even in agreement, his reputation and regime are alike endangered.
Because of the general ignorance concerning history, it is the wide-spread opinion that co- alition Cabinets are customary in times of stress and that the idea has the indorsement of efficiency. Both assumptions are groundless. When urged to take Democrats into his Cabinet in 1898, President McKinley refused flatly. No less than Woodrow Wilson he had read his history and knew that the first need of a war President was a working-force trained in team- play, a close association of trusted lieutenants, not a sudden importation of strange captains. Nor did Lincoln call a coalition Cabinet into being. Yet even though all were members of his own party, he paid a bitter penalty for having selected them with reference to factional divi- sions rather than in accord with his own prefer- ences. The "strong men" of his official family were of such abounding strength that each imagined himself the President, and utter dis-
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organization was averted only by Mr. Lincoln's decision to assert his right to unquestioned obedience.
"We pretend to no state secrets," said the New York Evening Post in 1862, "but we have been told, upon what we deem good authority, that no such thing as a combined, unitary, de- liberative administration exists; that the Presi- dent's brave willingness to take all responsibility has quite neutralized the idea of a joint respon- sibility; and that orders of the highest impor- tance are issued, and movements commanded, which Cabinet officers learn of as other people do, or, what is worse, which the Cabinet officers disapprove and protest against/'
Washington, alone of all the Presidents, en- joyed the peculiar privileges of a coalition Cabinet, for when he assumed the direction of the new Republic it was his feeling that all po- litical faiths should have fair representation. As a result, Hamilton and Jefferson, opposed in every thought and principle, were handcuffed together, and their pull and haul came close to swamping the frail bark of government. Do- mestic policies waited while the two factions fought, and international relations fell into new discords while Washington studied as to how he should decide between the conflicting recom- mendations of the two rivals. Peace came only when Jefferson resigned to lead the party that was to carry his beliefs to victory.
Even if government and history both be put aside, however, a third and stronger reason is at hand to prove the impossibility of a coalition
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Cabinet. It must be admitted, as a matter of course, that a prime requisite in the choice of the new men was general agreement as to their suitability. It would not have been enough for the President to say, "These are strong men." Judgment of their strength was primarily the province of the Republican party, and second- arily the right of the Country as a whole. The demand for a coalition Cabinet was not the de- mand of the President, and therefore his idea of what constituted "strong men" was read out of court at the start.
What figures, then, stood out so boldly from the rank and file of the Republican party as to make their selection a thing of unanimous applause, a choice by acclamation ? The poverty of America's public service was never more apparent than when such a search began. An interesting essay could, and should, be written on the reasons, but for the purposes of this consideration they may be stated briefly. Our public life dooms itself to mediocrity because it offers neither reward nor honor. Alexander Hamilton, studying the results achieved by the unpaid public service of England, grafted the British plan upon our own governmental plant. In England, however, there was a leisure class, inheritors of wealth and idleness, able and willing to serve without pay as some sort of justification for their existence. In the New World it was as headless a proposition as sane men ever advanced. Lacking a leisure class, unpaid positions and nominal salaries either invited chicane or compelled impoverishment.
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To take a case in point, a member of Congress receives compensation in the sum of $8,000 a year. Out of this salary he is expected to live and entertain and also to provide the expenses of a never-ending campaign. Elected for two years only, the wretched man is forced to com- mence "running" again within a day of his election. As an indication of expense the campaign for the re-election of the Speaker of the New York State Assembly — a $1,500 office — cost $29,000.
These conditions have forced the party or- ganization into complete power. Naturally enough, since it furnishes the funds and the "workers," it exercises the privilege of selection, and still more naturally its preference is for "grateful" men. The average officeholder, therefore, is of the type that is willing to act as a combination errand-boy and patronage broker. Now and then a Lincoln, a Wilson, or a Roose- velt is able to break through the iron alignment, but public office, for the most part, is the reward of a tireless enthusiastic "regularity." This theory of politics as a vast employment agency has its logical development in the perfection of slander and abuse as legitimate campaign weap- ons. As a result, public life has become a gantlet as cruel as any ever devised by savages. An officeholder has no rights that partizanship is bound to respect, and not even the common decencies are permitted to stand in the way of assault upon a candidate. Inevitably public life holds out its invitation chiefly to the mediocre or the rascal, the one so small as to
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"STRONG MEN"
be flattered by any notice, the other too shame- less to mind it.
Force and administrative genius, thereforeT^ by reason of the price that politics demands, have turned to private enterprise in increasing degree. There is no more striking characteris- tic of American life to-day than the complete divorcement of politics and business so far as genuine public service is concerned. To be sure, there are certain contacts, but the very slyness of them, and their corrupt selfishness, has done as much to discredit the "business man" in the opinion of the electorate as it has done to besmirch the politician. It is a gulf that must and will be bridged, but it was not bridged in 1917, and selection of a "captain of industry'* for the Cabinet would have forfeited the con- fidence of workers even as it would have aroused ? the distrust of the country as a whole.
These remarks, offered assertively because briefly, may explain the poverty of public life that made it impossible to find "practical statesmen" without "anxious search or perilous trial." As a matter of fact, the most careful poll of suggestions afforded no larger number of names than could be counted on the fingers of two hands. Even so, not one of the list met the primary requisite of general acceptability.
Colonel Roosevelt, while offering his services on the instant, was specific from the first in his insistence that he should be permitted to go to France at the head of a volunteer division of his own enlistment. When this request was denied he entered straightway upon the " broom-
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
stick drill" and "coffin order'* tirades that did so much to convince neutral nations and the Central Powers that America would never be able to figure in the war in a military sense. Gen. Leonard Wood, now hailed as a great administrator, was then putting entire emphasis upon his military ability, and his ambition had no other thought than to command the American Expeditionary Force when it went to France.
Mr. Taft has experienced a curious rehabilita- tion in the last few years, but in 1917 there was still keen remembrance of the fact that he had been denied re-election in 1912 because of his proved inefficiency as an Executive. The Dol- liver characterization of him as a "large body surrounded by men who knew exactly what |^they wanted" had by no means been forgotten. The President liked Mr. Taft, admired and trusted him, and meant to use him, as he did later, but not in any capacity where dynamic energy and quick decisions were necessities.
As for Charles E. Hughes, the campaign of 1916 was fresh in the minds of the people, and the revulsion of feeling against him, particularly in his own party, made it almost a certainty that his selection for a high executive post would have aroused resentment rather than enthusiasm. This general attitude extended also to Mr. William R. Willcox, chairman of the Republican National Committee.
r Campaign necessities, exercising their usual pressure, have somewhat blurred the sharp lines of Republican division, but in 1917 Senator Lodge was a rather unimportant figure, only
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"STRONG MEN"
lifted above mediocrity by the conviction of the Progressives that he was one of the operators of the "steam-roller" that had crushed them in Chicago in 1912. His selection at that time would have been resented not only by a large Senate group, headed by men like Kenyon, ^ Norris, and Borah, but by the rank and file of "| Western Republicanism.
All of these various objections were freely admitted by every person of intelligence at the time, and the one man able to elicit any una- nimity of approval was Elihu Root. As in the case of Mr. Taft and Senator Lodge, however, Mr. Root stood in the public mind as the very high priest of stand-pattism. He was not only an offense to all Democrats and Republicans of progressive thought, but no man in our public life is so absolutely distrusted by the workers of the nation. The President recognized his values*"^ as he recognized the values of Mr. Taft, but he knew in his heart, as every other sane man knew, that any elevation of Mr. Root to a high place in the war machine meant the chilling of liberal sentiment and the planting of an ugly doubt in 1 the minds of labor.
Curiously enough, the President himself de- I sired certain Cabinet changes, and was preparing to make them when war forced a surrender of the plan. Mr. Lansing, elevated to be Secretary of State at the time of Mr. Bryan's sudden resignation, was never anything but a disap- pointment. His ideas were annual, and, what was even worse, he approached every question from the standpoint of a hidebound conser- 6 67
vatism. His slow mind, unwilling and unable to cope with the midstream of life, clung like a limpet to the rocks of the backwater. The President might have endured dullness, but Mr. Lansing's utter inability to think in terms of the twentieth century made his elimination desir- able. It is also probable that a change would have been made in the office of Attorney-General, for while the President had high regard for Mr. Gregory's honesty and ability, he felt him to be a legalistic type of mind lacking alike in dynamic I values and progressivist tendencies. ••«* The other Cabinet members ranked high ' above the average. Mr. McAdoo's conduct of the Treasury had even won the grudging admira- tion of the country's great financiers, Secretary of the Interior Lane was universally popular, Secretary of Labor Wilson and Secretary of Agriculture Houston enjoyed general confidence, and the Postmaster-General had not yet for- feited popularity by his advocacy of the Postal Zone law or his enforcement of trie Espionage Act. The President knew the attack on Secre- tary Daniels to be malignant and unjust, and he had complete faith in Secretary Baker's ability to operate the War Department along lines of democracy as well as efficiency. Conditions, however, forced him to stand firm on the Cabinet as a whole. Even had he been inclined to run the grave risk of intrusting departments of government to new men, untried men, it was still the case that our public life contained no figures sufficiently commanding to win unani- mous selection. Any attempt to change would
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"STRONG MEN"
have precipitated instant and bitter disputes between parties, factions, creeds, and classes, and at a time when unity and purpose were imperative needs the country would have been distracted by the pull and haul of contending candidacies. Not only was the President wise in avoiding this danger, but he was still more prudent in guarding against the lost time and waste effort that would have inevitably resulted from the displacement of men who, whatever their failings, were still in possession of four years of practice and experience in the conduct of the executive departments of government. As a consequence, Lansing and Gregory became i fixtures along with the rest.
History, however, will record that while the ) ; President shrank from the obvious dangers of a i coalition Cabinet, he went beyond any other I in the formation of a coalition administration. It was more than ill-advised, when Chair- man Hays, Senator New, and Senator Wat- *• son wrote this daring manifesto into the Indiana Republican platform of 1918: "This is the war of no political party. This is the country's war, and we charge and de- plore that the party in powe~ is guilty of practising petty partizan politics to the serious detriment of the country's cause. We insist that this cease, and we appeal to all patriots, whatever their politics, to aid us in every way possible in our efforts to require that partizan politics be taken out and kept out of the war management."
The search for "the best man for the place" 69
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was instituted without regard to party, faction, blood strain, or creed, and the result was a composite organization in which Democrats, Republicans, and Independents worked side by side, partizanship forgotten and service the one consideration.
It stood recognized as a matter of course that the soldier selected to command our forces in France might well develop into a presidential possibility, yet this high place was given with- out question to Gen. John J. Pershing, a life- long Republican and the son-in-law of Senator Warren, one of the masters of the Republican machine.
Admiral William S. Sims, a vociferous Re- publican, was sent to English waters in high command, and while Secretary Daniels was warned at the time that Sims's partizanship was of the kind that would not recognize the obliga- tions of loyalty or patriotism, he waved the objection aside out of his belief that Sims was "the best man for the job."
For the head of the Aircraft Board, with its task of launching America's great aviation pro- gram, Mr. Howard E. Coffin, a Republican, was selected, and at his right hand Mr. Coffin placed Col. Edward A. Deeds, also a Republican of vigor and regularity. It is to be remembered also that when failure and corruption were charged against the Aircraft Board, the man appointed by the President to conduct the highly im- portant investigation was Charles E. Hughes.
Three Assistant Secretaries of War were ap- pointed by Mr. Baker — Mr. Benedict Crowell, a j
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"STRONG MEN"
Cleveland contractor; Dr. F. E. Keppel, dean of Columbia University, and Emmet J. Scott, formerly Booker Washington's secretary — and all three were Republicans. Mr. E. R. Stet- tinius of the J. P. Morgan firm and a Republican was made special assistant to the Secretary of War and placed in charge of supplies, a duty that he had been discharging for the Allies. Maj.-Gen. George W. Goethals, after his un- fortunate experience in ship-building, was given a second chance and put in the War Department as an assistant Chief of Staff. The Chief of Staff himself, Gen. Peyton C. March, was a Republican no less definite and regular than General Goethals. Mr. Samuel McRoberts, president of the National City Bank and one of the pillars of the Republican party, was brought to Washington as ch'ief of the procurement sec- tion in the Ordnance Section, with the rank of brigadier-general; Maj.-Gen. E. H. Crowder was appointed Provost-Marshal-General, although his Republicanism was well known, and no ob- jection of any kind was made when General Crowder put Charles B. Warren, the Republican National Committeeman from Michigan, in charge of appeal cases, a position of rare power.
The Emergency Fleet Corporation was virtu-
/ ally turned over to Republicans under Charles M. Schwab and Charles Piez. Mr. Vance Mc- Cormick, chairman of the Democratic National
/ Committee, was made chairman of the War Trade Board, but of the eight members the following five were Republicans: Albert Strauss
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
of New York, Alonzo E. Taylor of Pennsylvania, John Beaver White of New York, Frank C. Munson of New York, and Clarence M. Woolley of Chicago.
The same conditions obtained in the Red , Cross. A very eminent Republican, Mr. H. P. Davison, was put in supreme authority, and on the Red Cross War Council were placed ex- President Taft; Mr. Charles D. Norton, Mr. Taft's secretary while President; and Mr. Cor- nelius N. Bliss, former treasurer of the Repub- lican National Committee. Not only was Mr. Taft thus honored, but upon the creation of a \ National War Labor Board the ex-President was made its chairman and virtually empowered to / act as the administration's representative in its [ contact with industry.
Mr. Frank A. Vanderlip,*a Republican of iron regularity, was placed in charge of the War Savings Stamps Campaign, and when Mr. Mc- Adoo had occasion to name Assistant Secretaries of the Treasury he selected Prof. L. S. Rowe of the University of Pennsylvania and Mr. H. C. Leffingwell of New York.
Harry A. Garfield, son of the Republican President, was made Fuel Administrator, and Mr. Herbert Hoover, now a candidate for President ( on a platform of unadulterated Republicanism, was nominated as head of the Food Administra- tion.
The Council of National Defense was an organization of high importance and one of tremendous influence from a partizan standpoint, yet its executive body was divided as follows:
72
"STRONG MEN'*
Republicans — Howard E. Coffin, Julius Rosen- wald, Dr. Hollis Godfrey, Dr. Franklin Martin, Walter S. Gifford, Director; Democrats — Daniel Willard and Bernard M. Baruch; Independent — Samuel Gompers. >
So much for a sorry subject that should never have had to be mentioned. When judged in accordance with the facts and the evidence, the war record of the administration is remark- ably free from the shame and stain of partizan- ship. Always more concerned with party ac- ( complishment than party organization, war \ worked an even more complete forgetfulness of party lines in President Wilson, and his spirit communicated itself to the entire war machinery. It was a tremendous thing that all were called to do, and in the doing ofjthe_thing there was thought of nothing ; save America. Men and women of every party, race, creed, and cir- \ cumstance worked side by side in Washington as in the trenches, fraternity in their hearts, the glory of sacrifice in their souls, and service the one rivalry. I came into direct contact with every detail of the vast organization, and my reports from the country were daily and authoritative, and I can say truthfully that throughout the year and a half of war partizan- ship existed as the sole and undivided possession of a small congressional group.
This group, however, made up in virulence what it lacked in numbers. Every one con- nected with the drive of America's great war machine knew that there were two enemies to be fought — the Germans in front, and Penrose,
73
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
vSmoot, New, Watson, Moses, and Longworth from behind. From first to last these wretched souls thought only in terms of officehblding and office-seeking, the sordid habits of their lives blinding them to America's terrible necessities. They tore at public confidence with their daily lies, hampered executive activities by their mean obstructions, and broke many a spirit by their unscrupulous persecutions. At a time when every dollar was needed by the nation they com- menced the collection of the great campaign fund that was to restore the idyllic days of Hanna, and in an hour when the war hung in the balance they were sending Hays, their party chairman, on a coast-to-coast tour for the mobilization of the "machine." The decadence of American public life is not a matter of any argument as long as such men hold positions of prominence and power.
IV
"THE ROOSEVELT DIVISIONS
HPHE average American has no higher faith A than fair play, and not supreme statesman- ship nor administrative genius is permitted to compensate for lack of generosity in the treat- ment of a defeated rival. At the bottom of much of the feeling against Woodrow Wilson — a feeling that transfers itself unconsciously to his advocacies — is a general belief that the Presi- dent was entirely responsible for the refusal of Mr. Roosevelt's offer to enlist a volunteer force for service in France, and that his reasons were personal rather than public. He is judged as having failed in magnanimity and the resulting prejudice has had a wide sweep. -^v
As a matter of fact, Mr. Roosevelt's offer was • never brought to the official notice of the Presi- dent until Mr. Roosevelt called in person, and Mr. Roosevelt did not present his request to the President until after it had been rejected by the Secretary of War on the recommenda- tions of the General Staff. Instead of being moved by any personal ill will, the whole inclina- tion of the President was to overrule the General Staff in Mr. Roosevelt's favor, and even when he realized that the iron necessities of war forbade
75
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
such a course he confessed a deep and sincere
I regret.
^~ It was on February 2, 1917, two months before America entered the conflict, that Mr. Roosevelt first wrote to the Secretary of War, requesting permission to raise a division of infantry and a divisional brigade of cavalry. Mr. Baker, reply- ing under date of February 9th, and again on March 2Oth, pointed out that the enlistment of such divisions was expressly prohibited by Congress unless directly sanctioned, and stated also that "a plan for a very much larger army than the force suggested by your telegram has been proposed for the action of Congress when- ever required. Militia officers of high rank will naturally be incorporated with their commands, but the general officers for all our forces are to be drawn from the regular army." Mr. Roose- velt, answering on March 23d, made the point that he was "a retired commander-in-chief of the United States army," and referred to General Young, General Sumner, and Leonard Wood for opinion as to his "fitness for the command of troops."
i The plan referred to by the Secretary of War was based upon the principle of compulsory military service and every force of the adminis- tration was committed to it. The President, Mr. Baker, and the entire Cabinet, no less than the General Staff, were as iron in the resolve that the criminal wastes and inefficiencies of the volunteer system should not be permitted to discount America's determination. On April yth, the day after the war declaration, Mr. Baker
76
"THE ROOSEVELT DIVISIONS"
informed the House Committee on Military Affairs that the Selective Service law was abso- lutely essential, and the President followed with the statement that "the safety of the nation depended upon the measure." The answer of Congress was a stubborn demand that the volunteer system be given a fair test before any adoption of conscription.
Mr. Roosevelt came to Washington on April nth to urge the acceptance of his volunteer divisions, and telephoned the President for an appointment that was instantly made. The two men, strangely enough, had never met before, and during the forty-five minutes of the inter- view official Washington held its breath. At the end of that time Mr. Roosevelt emerged in high good humor, informed the waiting corre- spondents that the President had received him with "the utmost courtesy and consideration" and would doubtless "come to a decision in his own good time." Mr. Wilson himself said nothing, and that was, and is, the trouble.
As a matter of fact, it is to his utter failure , to appreciate the compulsions of curiosity that the President disappoints most deeply. He himself is entirely lacking in the intense interest in personal things that dominates the life of the average man and woman. He never gossips, and while his conversation is always brilliant and amazingly stimulating, it has none of the salt of the " he-said-and-I-said " chit-chat that constitutes 90 per cent, of human talk. Much of this is due to the forward-looking habit of his mind, its preoccupation with things to be
77
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
done, rather than things that have been done, but part of it is a very definite preference for ideas above personalities. Happening to call at the White House the very next day, it was natural to expect that some mention would be made of the famous interview, but not a word was volunteered by the President. When I finally took the liberty of asking about it, how- ever, he talked freely and interestedly, giving a very vivid picture of the meeting. My keenest impression at the time was the President's appreciation of Mr. Roosevelt's intense virility, picturesque personality, and love of fighting.
One of the first remarks made by Mr. Roose- velt was to the effect that if 'he were given per- mission to go to France "he'd promise not to come back." Although put forward jocularly, the President refused to let even a hint of past disagreements creep into the talk, and the two approached each other finally in a spirit of abso- lute frankness. Mr. Roosevelt made a strong, convincing case for his plan to enlist four volun- teer divisions, pointing out the speed with which they could be raised, the enthusiasm that would be aroused, and the necessity for convinc- ing the Allies that America was in the war with men as well as money.
[ The President, in answer, explained the pro- / visions of the Selective Service law, and cited Mr. Roosevelt's own bitter attacks upon the criminality of the volunteer system. He dwelt on the obvious fact that the opposition of Con- gress undoubtedly reflected the sentiment of the country in large degree, and was of the opinion
78
"THE ROOSEVELT DIVISIONS"
that it would be no easy matter to wean the people away from their most cherished tradition. Any sign of compromise would be the signal for defeat, and to make one exception, even for an ex-President, was to open the gates to every politician with an ounce of military knowledge. His desk, he said, was piled high with requests from war veterans, Indian-fighters, Texan Rangers, and Southern "colonels," none of them, as a matter of course, able to compare with Mr. Roosevelt in position or popularity, yet each one a volcano of courage and sincerity. He had the conviction that the attitude of Congress was largely due to their desire to accommodate this spirit, but it was an accommodation that could not end in anything but disaster. The war in France was no "Charge of the Light Brigade," but the grim subordination of human valor to the cold-blooded science of killing. Moreover, it was a "boys* war." Tragic, to be sure, but middle age must realize that the strain and fatigue of the trenches were for the 'twenties. Mr. Roosevelt was willing to admit that his volunteer divisions might not prove a material contribution to the struggle, but he stood firm on the proposition that their "moral effect" would be of incalculable value. James Bryce and General Joffre alike had advised him of the necessity of stimulating the Allied morale, and he challenged Mr. Wilson to point out a quicker, surer way than the spectacle of an ex-President of the United States entering France at the head of a division of men of proved reputation for courage and achievement.
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
The President agreed to this, but held firmly that the situation demanded more than a gesture. As he saw it, Europe inclined to the belief that America was a country of large flourishes, and nothing would confirm this feeling more surely than the dramatic arrival of a body whose general unreadiness must soon become apparent. He demurred also to the imposing list of officers that Mr. Roosevelt requested, urging that it deprived the new draft army of the very men that it would most need. His principal and unalterable objection, however, was based upon the fact that any exception for the benefit of Mr. Roosevelt would imperil the adoption and operation of the Selective Service bill upon which the administration depended. He urged Mr. Roosevelt to put his powerful influence be- hind the draft bill, and asked him as a personal favor to see certain members of Congress for purposes of conversation.
Against the decision Mr. Roosevelt hurled all the weight of his personality, and while the President made no promises, he was persuaded to the point of agreeing to make the matter the subject of discussion with the Secretary of War and the General Staff. At every point he tried to give Mr. Roosevelt the sense of deep sym- pathy with his wish, his full understanding of a very natural ambition. At the moment, I saw for myself how all that was ardent in the Presi- dent, the adventurousness that made him want to be a sailor in his youth, went out to Mr. Roosevelt and his dream of leading the first Americans across the water to fight in the land of Lafayette and
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"THE ROOSEVELT DIVISIONS"
Rochambeau. What a crown to a picturesque, colorful, and ever strenuous career! What finer death, if death should come! Every impulse of the President supported Mr. Roosevelt's re- quest, and it was the one time when his emotional processes interfered in any degree with cool, intellectual analysis of the values of a proposi- tion. Not then only, but a score of times*"] thereafter I saw him show an almost passionate envy for the men lucky enough to spend their strength of body and strength of patriotism in the supreme exaltation of the battle-field, and it was this feeling of his own that gave him i appreciation of Theodore Roosevelt's desire.
After some discussion of the probability of domestic disaffection and the general situation on the western front, the two parted in genuine- ness, and Mr. Roosevelt set to work at once on the conversion of Congressmen to the draft plan. He failed, however, for an informal poll of the House Committee on Military Affairs, taken April i6th, showed that the volunteer system still possessed a majority. It was then that the President sent for the House leaders and informed them flatly that the administra- tion would not "yield an inch of any essential part of the program for raising an army by conscription." He recited our own experience in the war with Spain, and presented facts that proved the volunteer plan to be directly respon- sible for England's early disasters. As a con- sequence, the House passed the Selective Service bill on April 29th, although only after a debate of intense bitterness.
Si
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
In the mean time Mr. Roosevelt had in no wise abated his demand for permission to raise the volunteer divisions, nor had the Secretary of War and the General Staff changed their minds in any degree. During Mr. Roosevelt's stay in Washington Mr. Baker called upon him personally, and, as a result of the interview, wrote him a letter on April 1 3th that contained this definite refusal:
Co-operation between the United States and the Entente Allies has not yet been so far planned as that any decision has been reached upon the subject of sending an expedi- tionary force; but should any force be sent, I should feel obliged to urge that it be placed under the command of the ablest and most experienced professional military man in our country, and that it be officered by and composed of men selected because of their previous military training, and, as far as possible, actual military experience. My judgment reached this conclusion for the reason that any such expedition will be made up of young Americans who will be sent to expose their lives in the bloodiest war yet fought in the world, and under conditions of warfare in- volving applications of science to the art, of such a char- acter that the very highest degree of skill and training and the largest experience are needed for their guidance and protection. I could not reconcile my mind to a recom- mendation which deprived our soldiers of the most experi- enced leadership available, in deference to any mere senti- mental consideration, nor could I consent to any expedition being sent until its members have been seasoned by most thorough training for the hardships which they would have to endure. I believe, too, that should any expeditionary force be sent by the United States, it should appear from the very aspect of it that military considerations alone had determined its composition, and I think this appear- ance would be given rather by the selection of the officers from the men of the army who have devoted their lives exclusively to the study and pursuit of military matters
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"THE ROOSEVELT DIVISIONS"
and have made a professional study of the recent changes in the art of war. I should, therefore, be obliged to with- hold my approval from an expedition of the sort you propose.
The entire correspondence, beginning Febru- ary 2d and ending May nth, was printed by Mr. Roosevelt in the Metropolitan Magazine for August, 1917, and is available for reference and study. While the Secretary of War assumed full responsibility for the refusal, Mr. Roosevelt knew well that the decision was the decision of the General Staff, and his letter of April 22d was a direct attack upon "well-meaning military men of the red-tape and pipe-clay school, who are hidebound in the pedantry of that kind of wooden militarism which is only one degree worse than its extreme opposite, the folly which believes that an army can be improvised between sunrise and sunset." With acid in every word he commented upon the fact that the large number of men who rise high in the army "owe more to the possession of a sound stomach than to the possession of the highest qualities of head and heart," and flatly urged the Secre- tary to regard his military advisers as unwise counselors.
Mr. Roosevelt's point of view was that of the civilian, and it is impossible for the civilian not to feel sympathy with it. About the de- cisions of every General Staff there is a certain effect of class arrogance, a sort of contemptuous disregard for everything except their own opin- ions, that inevitably arouses the anger of the layman. At the same time there must be 7 83
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
understanding of Mr. Baker's position. The members of the General Staff were, by our law, his duly constituted advisers in all military matters, and to overrule them in a fundamental policy at the very outset was to invite bitter- ness and disorganization. Because of this con- dition, and by reason of his own intense advocacy of compulsory service, he stood firm in his refusal of Mr. Roosevelt's petition.
Returning to Congress, the favorable vote of the House on April 29th transferred the battle to the Senate. All hope of swift action was killed almost instantly by the adoption of an amendment that gave Mr. Roosevelt the right to raise four volunteer divisions. The Republi- can leaders — Lodge, Harding, Penrose, Curtis, and Weeks — led the fight, and the debate was marked by a tone of ugly and disturbing parti- zanship. The House refused to concur in the amendment, a deadlock resulted, and for two weeks this single question paralyzed the war effort of an embattled nation. On May I5th, however, a compromise was reached, the Senate agreeing to withdraw the mandatory feature of the amendment, making it optional with the President to accept or request the four volunteer divisions offered by Mr. Roosevelt.
By reason of the transfer of the dilemma from the Congress to the White House, the President was confronted with this situation: to refuse Mr. Roosevelt was to give an impression of ungenerousness, an effect of partizan narrow- ness; on the other hand, to authorize the volun- teer enlistment of four divisions was to upset
84
the whole machinery of the draft, to make a flagrant exception that would inevitably anger and alienate the supporters of the volunteer system, and, worst of all, to serve notice upon the General Staff that its recommendations were at all times subject to personal and political considerations. His statement of May 5th did not attempt to evade the issue, but met it decisively. After setting June 5th as registra- tion-day, and announcing the choice of Gen. John J. Pershing to head an Expeditionary Force that would sail for France at the earliest possible date, the President took position in support of the General Staff and the unfaltering execution of the Selective Service law. It would have been his pleasure, he said —
to pay Mr. Roosevelt the compliment and the Allies the compliment of sending to their aid one of our most distinguished public men, an ex-President who has ren- dered many conspicuous public services and proved his gallantry in many striking ways. But this is not the time or the occasion for compliment or for any action not calcu- lated to contribute to the immediate success of the war. The business now in hand is undramatic, practical, and of scientific definiteness and precision. I shall act with regard to it at every step and in every particular under expert advice from both sides of the water. That advice is that the men most needed are men of the ages con- templated in the draft provision of the present bill, not men of the age and sort contemplated in the section which authorizes the formation of volunteer units, and that for the preliminary training of the men who are to be drafted we shall need all of our experienced officers. Mr. Roose- velt told me, when I had the pleasure of seeing him a few weeks ago, that he would wish to have associated with him some of the most effective officers of the regular army. He named many of these whom he would desire to hare
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
designated for the service, and they were men who can- not possibly be spared from the too small force of officers at our command for the much more pressing and necessary duty of training regular troops to be put into the field in France and Belgium as fast as they can be got ready. The first troops to France will be taken from the present forces of the regular army, and will be under the command of trained soldiers only. The responsibility for the suc- cessful conduct of our part in this great war rests upon me. I could not escape it if I would. I am too much interested in the cause we are fighting for to be interested in anything but success. The issues involved are too immense for me to take into consideration anything whatever except the best, the most effective, and most immediate means of military action.
THE CASE OF LEONARD WOOD
EMOTIONAL excitement causes a certain suspension of the mental processes, and when national feeling is at high pitch the im- portant and unimportant almost invariably suffer curious inversion. America sent more than two million soldiers across the Atlantic to engage in a struggle that meant the life or death of free institutions, yet throughout that trying time, when the issue hung in the bal- ance, there were papers and people whose in- terest had no larger manifestation than the fortunes of Gen. Leonard Wood. At. this very time of writing the man himself is a conspicu- ous figure in public life by reason of the fact that he was kept at home in a training-camp instead of being permitted to match his military genius against the abilities of Hindenburg and Ludendorff.
General Wood was not sent to France for the very good reason that Gen. John J. Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Forces, did not ask to have him sent, plain in- dication that he was neither needed nor wanted in France. The decision was not the decision of the President nor the Secretary of War nor the
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
Chief of Staff, but the weighed judgment of General Pershing, the soldier selected for the high post of field command, and given full power even as he was held to full responsibility. All of the generals in charge of American training- camps were sent to France in the summer of 1917, not only that they might see for them- selves the goal to which they were pointed, the style of fighting, and the kind of soldiers that would have to be made, but equally for the pur- pose of permitting General Pershing to pass upon their personalities, character, and abilities. The generals returned from their pilgrimage, applied themselves to the work of turning raw boys into fit defenders, and in due time Pershing sent to the Chief of Staff a list of the commanders that he desired to accompany their divisions to France when the stage of embarkation should be reached. The name of Gen. Leonard Wood was not on the list.
As chairman of the Committee on Public In- formation, with duty to stimulate and guard the national morale, I made it my business to inquire into the facts in the case. At the time of General Pershing's departure for France I knew, as did every one else in government, that it had been made plain to him that he would not be hampered by home meddling. Even as he was held to full responsibility, so was he given full power in the selection of those men upon whom he would have to depend. His list, therefore, was ap- proved as a matter of course, and went into the War Department files until further action should be demanded. As I remember it, the whole
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THE CASE OF LEONARD WOOD
trouble arose from the fact that General March treated the circumstance as one of military routine entirely, utterly failing to realize its political importance. Instead of informing Gen- eral Wood at once that he had not been chosen to go to France, he followed the established procedure and waited for the completion of the training period before issuing orders to the division commanders. General Wood, however, left Camp Funston in advance of the division and without waiting to receive his orders. General March sent them to him in New York, and in consequence there was an appearance of eleventh-hour action, an effect of jerking General Wood from the very deck of the trans- port.
As a matter of course, General Wood carried his complaint to the President and was told plainly that the list would not be revised in the personal interest of any soldier or politician. When the President took office in 1913 the one army man that he knew was Gen. Hugh L. Scott. " Wood was then Chief of Staff, and, owing to many and bitter complaints against him, the President sent for Scott and asked for information and advice with respect to the re- tention of Wood. General Scott, a generous and kindly man, urged the President to take no action, and Wood was permitted to remain in the office until his term expired in 1914. Throughout that period the atmosphere of the War Depart- ment was one of spite and jealousy and intrigue. When Wood took command of the Department of the East in 1914, there was no change in
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
strategy or tactics. At all times the President was explicit with regard to Wood. His sense of justice had been outraged by the political elevation of a doctor over the heads of sol- diers who had given laborious years to the study and practice of their profession, and his sense of taste was offended by the spectacle of a soldier in uniform plying the trade of a poli- tician. He felt that this allowance of special privilege, this grant of immunity to insult and insubordination, struck a blow at the discipline of the army.
As for Mr. Baker's views, no one knew at the time nor does any one know to-day. At the outbreak of war there was plain evidence that the Secretary of War had decided upon a policy of impersonality, a sort of judicial detachment that would lift him above the human wrangle, permitting him to make his decisions unin- fluenced either by likes or dislikes. This policy worked out in his case as it works out in every case. He went to absurdities of fairness - in dealing with his enemies, in order to avoid the charge of prejudice, and swung back to an ex- treme of unfairness where his friends were concerned in order to guard against the sus- picion of being swayed by his preferences. As a consequence Leonard Wood looked after his personal interests during the war, even as he has been allowed to make a presidential cam- paign in the uniform of a major-general of the army of the United States. Mr. Baker's silence, to be sure, lends itself to a finer, nobler view, and I have always thought that it was the
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THE CASE OF LEONARD WOOD
right one. Had he spoken, telling of General Pershing's list and the fact that Wood's name did not appear upon it, he would have escaped attack, but America might have suffered. It mattered little that the Secretary of War should be attacked and abused, but it was an entirely different matter for the commander-in-chief of the American forces in France, face to face with crisis, to be dragged into a domestic political wrangle.
All of which would not be deserving of at- tention but for certain curious exaggerations in the public mind that have given both the man and the incident an importance out of all proportion to value. It is by his un- canny ability to create these exaggerations that Wood rose above the average to which he seemed doomed by his mediocrities, and is to-day a national figure. The American habit of dissociating public and private busi- ness, treating political affairs as an emotional relaxation rather than an importance, has resulted in many incredibilities, some tragic, some humorous, but it is doubtful if in all history there is record of anything so utterly incredible as the story of Leonard Wood.
The reputation of Wood is built upon as- sumption rather than fact, on clever suggestion rather than provable statement. His military genius is made a matter of general belief by reason of constant allusion to Indian campaigns in which he played heroic part, assuming com- mand of an infantry battalion after it had "lost
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
its last officer," and conducting himself in such manner as to win a medal of honor; also upon his achievements in the war with Spain, when he led the Rough Riders to victory at San Juan Hill. His administrative genius rests upon his record in Cuba from 1899 to 1902, where, ac- cording to one of his biographers, he built so* permanently that he left behind him "an inde- pendent proud democracy" strong to withstand the storms of revolution. This record, when taken to pieces, is seen to be an absurd jumble of baseless claims.
According to the War Department records, Wood entered the military service as a "contract surgeon," a civilian employee entirely without military status. During June and July, 1886, he was assigned to duty under Capt. H. W. Lawton of the 4th Cavalry, at that time in the field in pursuit of Geronimo. In addition to the cavalry, Captain Lawton had under him a small detachment of infantry, about eighteen or twenty in number, that had been sent to him without any officers.
On July 2d, when the need arose to have this small body captained by some one, Doctor Wood asked for the command and was given it, and for twenty-eight days was by way of being an officer. It was in this period that the historic encounter took place that gives Doctor Wood his claim to a niche in the Hall of Fame. The following extract from the official report of Captain Lawton sets forth the facts as they were seen by that officer at the time:
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THE CASE OF LEONARD WOOD
EN ROUTE TO FORT MARION, FLA.,
September p, 1886.
SIR, — I have the honor to submit the following report of operations against Geronimo's and Natchez's bands of hostile Indians made by the command organized in com- pliance with the following order:
On the 6th of July the command, consisting of infantry and scouts, marched from Oposura. No officer of infantry having been sent with the detachment, and having no officers with the command except Second-Lieutenant Brown, 4th Cavalry, commanding scouts, and Second- Lieutenant Walsh, 4th Cavalry, commanding cavalry, Assistant-Surgeon Wood was, at his own request, given command of the infantry.
The work during June having been done by the cavalry, they were too much exhausted to be used again without rest, and they were left in camp at Oposura to recuperate.
On the 1 4th of July a runner was sent back by Lieutenant Brown of the scouts, with the information that the camp had been located and that he would attack at once with his scouts, asking for the infantry to be sent forward to his support. I moved forward with the infantry as rapidly as possible, and did not reach Lieutenant Brown until after he had entered the hostile camp. The attacking party had been discovered and all the hostiles escaped. Their animals and camp equipage, with a large amount of dried beef, etc., fell into our hands, but the hostiles scat- tered and escaped on foot.
• ••••••
H. W. LAWTON, Captain 4th Cavalry. ADJUTANT-GENERAL, DEPARTMENT OF ARIZONA.
It will thus be seen that Captain Lawton, writing at the time, did not look upon the twenty infantrymen as a "battalion," but
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
merely as a detachment; that he stated clearly that officers were not sent to him with the
. detachment, and that no attempt was made by him to claim that Wood and the infantry were present at the attack upon the Indian camp, but, on the contrary, there is explicit admission that they did not reach the place of encounter until after its occupation by the scouts and after the flight of every Indian.
s~ It was not until January 5, 1886, that Doctor Wood ceased to be a civilian employee, on that date receiving an appointment from Massachu- setts as Assistant Surgeon in the United States army. From this point on nothing is heard of him until 1898, when he emerged into the limelight as the personal physician of President McKinley and the valued medical adviser of Secretary of War Alger. In March, when it was a certainty that we would go to war with Spain, the country and the army were stunned by the announcement that Doctor Wood had been awarded the medal of honor "for distin- guished conduct in campaign against the Apache Indians in 1886 while serving as medical and • line officer of Captain Lawton's expedition."
Russell A. Alger has much to answer for, what with "embalmed beef," paper shoes, and fever camps, and other peccadilloes, but it cannot be held against him that he ever permitted the obligations of public service to interfere with proper rewards for true Republicanism. Not only did his enthusiasm blaze back across the long stretch of twelve years, but by its light he was able to see the occurrence far more
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THE CASE OF LEONARD WOOD
vividly than even Captain Lawton, on the ground at the time. Instead of a "detachment" of eighteen or twenty men, Secretary Alger saw Doctor Wood's command as a "battalion"; not only had officers been sent with this detach- ment, contrary to Captain Lawton's report, but the noble souls had "died of exposure," permitting Doctor Wood to leap forward to fill all of the vacant posts; the affair at the Indian camp was no skirmish, but a "battle," and Doctor Wood, instead of being miles away, was in the very forefront of the attack.
Evidently the medal of honor also carried with it the award of Seven League Boots, for from this time on the strides of Doctor Wood were many and mighty. On May 8, 1898, scarce six weeks after receiving the magic medal, he was made commanding colonel of the 1st U. S. Volunteer Cavalry; on July 8th he was made a brigadier-general for services at Las Guasimas and San Juan Hill, and on December 7th he was made a major-general. ,.
There is not any large need for consideration ) of Wood's Cuban War record, for even his biographers admit that it is confined to two battles. There is public testimony to the effect that he did not participate personally in the battle of San Juan Hill, as it is a matter of mili- tary record that he owed his rescue at Las Guasimas to the courage of colored troops. The point of importance, however, lies in these undisputed facts: that the military record of Leonard Wood rests upon the command of twenty men for twenty-eight days during which but one
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engagement was fought and in which he played no part, and upon several months of service in Cuba, where, even if the San Juan Hill claim is allowed, he participated in but two battles. On the strength of this record he was made a major-general in the regular army of the United States by Roosevelt in 1903, chief of staff by President Taft in 1910, urged for commander- in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force in 1917, and boomed for the Presidency in 1920 I on a Prussian platform.
^ The Wood reputation as a "great administra- / tor" rests upon foundations no less flimsy. As a matter of course he made Cuba a better place in which to live. Not only were conditions at a point where improvement was the one possible change, but he had with him the very flower of America's sanitarians and municipal experts.
House-cleaning, however, is not "administra- tive genius." Street-sweeping, while important, is scarcely the sole concern of a President of the United States. The thing by which Wood's governorship must be judged, in the light of his aspirations, is the permanency of the structure that he built. He went into Cuba when the ground was clear and he had a free hand backed by all the power of the United States. What was the result? The structure that he raised fell to pieces in exactly four years. In July, 1906, revolution rocked the island to a demorali- zation as complete as any ever suffered before, and in September of that year American troops landed for a second intervention. For three
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years we kept our soldiers and administrators in charge of Cuban affairs, and when they left in 1909 they had builded so well that the re- public endures to this day, a period of eleven years as compared to the four years' life of the former creation. And in this second interven- j tion Leonard Wood had no part or lot.
VI
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
A PROFOUND sense of unnecessariness is ** bound to check many post-war explanations, even as it imparts a perfunctory quality to those that are made, for, after all, the complete answer to every charge of fault, failure, and mis- conduct is given by the fact of victory as swift as it was decisive. In the hour when the fate of free nations hung uncertainly the organized major force of America struck the blow that crushed the mightiest military organization in history. Not one pennyweight of credit is to be taken away from the Allies, war-weary after four terrible years, but at the time we entered the struggle the Germans were in positions of virtual dominance on every front — insolent, as- sured, powerful. Twenty months from Amer- ica's declaration of war their arrogance was bowed, their leaders in flight, their ultimatums changed to pleas.
It was inevitable that politicians would seek to ignore this fact of victory, but that a whole people should shut their eyes to splendid achieve- ment will undoubtedly excite the puzzled atten- tion of the historians of the future. A more amazing, incomprehensible change has never been suffered by a race. The day of the armis-
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tice America stood on the hilltops of glory, proud in her strength, invincible in her ideals, acclaimed and loved by a world free of an an- cient fear at last: to-day we writhe in a pit of our own digging, despising ourselves and de-^ spised by the betrayed peoples of earth. Instead of unity a vast disintegration, instead of enthu- siasm an intolerable irritation, instead of fixed purpose a strange and bewildering indecision. I A certain reaction was natural and is perfectly """ understandable. After a year and a half of intense emotionalism, with every life keyed to service and sacrifice, taut nerves were bound to go slack. With people picking up old threads and finding them sadly tangled, a high degree of irritability was a foregone conclusion. The natural has long since been left behind, however, and it is the stage of obsession that has been reached. Criticism has changed to vile abuse, and the shining arch of victory goes unseen while snooping hundreds crawl around the base, hope- fully searching for cracks and flaws. Heroes pushed aside by camp-followers, men most applauded whose partizanship drips like acid on the war record of America, and statesmanship discarded for the pull and haul of parochial politicians. The common decencies of patriotism call a halt before the wells of public opinion are poisoned beyond all cleansing!
It is our pride as a people that we must re- cover— a pride that springs from no effervescence of conceit, but a pride bed-rocked in supreme accomplishment. It was not alone that we did the thing we set out to do, but in the doing we 8 99
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established records of energy, initiative, and determination that have no parallel in history. The Allies had only faint hope of aid from our man-power, while the Germans themselves were confident that they would have ample time to win the war before America could possibly prove a factor in the fighting. They stimulated their morale, civil as well as military, by repeated assurances that "the Yankees" could not raise an army; that even if it were raised it could not be trained properly; that even if raised and trained it could not be transported.
Within a month from the declaration of war the traditional policy of the nation was reversed by the enactment of the Selective Service Act. A vast machinery of registration was created that ran without a hitch, and on June 5th more than 10,000,000 men were registered quickly and efficiently.
Thirty-two encampments — virtual cities, since each had to house 40,000 men — were built in ninety days from the driving of the first nail, complete in every municipal detail, a feat de- clared impossible, and which will stand for allj time as a building miracle.
In June, scarcely two months after the Presi- dent's appearance before Congress, General Pershing and his staff reached France, and on July 3d the last of four groups of transports landed American fighting-men in the home of Lafayette and Rochambeau. On October loth our soldiers went on the firing-line.
Training-camps for officers started in June, and in August there were graduated 27,341
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successful aspirants, ready to assume the tasks of leadership.
What was the situation in France? Every possible port pre-empted, every mile of railroad used to its uttermost capacity, supplies sufficient for French forces only, and an utter lack of proper housing facilities for the Americans who were to come. A tidewater port was the best that we could get, great docks had to be built, our own railroad lines had to be constructed; there were storage depots to build, and 13,000 foresters, equipped with the latest American inventions in lumbering machinery, had to go into the woodlands of France and cut down the trees for barracks, railroad ties, and construc- tion timber. Not in any degree was it the case that our problem was merely to get men to France. Not only did we have to get them there, but we also had to build our own debarka- tion facilities, our own transportation, our own housing, hospitals, ordnance bases, etc., and we had to devise the stable mechanism that would keep supplies of every kind flowing steadily across 3,000 miles of water. And it was done!
Shipping was an abandoned craft. It had to be revived, workmen trained and yards built; yet such were our ingenuities that by November I, 1918, the transport service of the army alone numbered 431 ships, totaling over 3,000,000 deadweight tons.
In June 12,261 troops and 2,798 marines were embarked. In December embarkations had reached 50,000 a month. In March the number had grown to 84,000. Then came what Europe
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called "America's transport miracle." In April the embarkations were 1 18,637; m May, 245,950; in June, 278,756; in July, 306,185. At the time of the armistice the total embarkations amounted to 2,045,169 troops and 30,665 marines.
The first shipment of supplies was about 16,000 tons in June, 1917. By October we were shipping 750,000 tons a month. Altogether we shipped 5,153,000 tons of supplies to our soldiers in France, 95 per cent, of it in American bottoms.
Ships had to be altered to carry the 1,145 locomotives that we sent; there were problems in connection with the shipping of flat-cars "ready to run"; there was also a cross- channel fleet that had to be assembled, but these things were all done, not slowly, but at top speed.
With what result? Before our aid was deemed a possibility we were relieving French and English divisions in quiet sectors; in May, 1918, a year after our declaration of war, we fought side by side with veterans at Cantigny; in June we met the Germans hand to hand in Belleau Wood and proved ourselves their masters; in July, with the Germans almost at the gates of Paris, we disdained the general retreat and won the battle of Chateau-Thierry, a victory that was the turning-point of the war.
In September we wiped out the St.-Mihiel salient, held by the Germans against every attack for four long years; in October we dealt the Prussians that succession of terrible hammer blows — twenty-eight American divisions in the firing-line — that drove them back up the Meuse
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until we entered the outskirts of Sedan and definitely cut the German supply line. That was the war's end!
Is it in the face of these glories and tremendous achievements that we are to whine and nag and meanly quarrel?
Our achievements on the high seas were no less notable than those on land. The navy of the United States, held up to derision as a junk- pile, proved an invincible first line of defense, not only guarding the shores of America, but able also to send fighting-craft of every kind to English waters, South American waters, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea. Our navy guarded over two million men on the way to Prance; our navy escorted tonnage to France with a loss of only 0.009 Per cent, and tonnage out of France with a loss of 0.013 Per cent.
Our destroyers proved themselves in the war zone, our mine-layers dropped the submarine bar- rages that made the North Sea safe, our officers, with their courage, initiative, and inventive genius, gave new force to the fight against the U-boats.
The greatest single constructive agency of naval warfare, which did more to break the German naval morale than any other one thing, was the mine-barrage across the North Sea, a sweep of 230 miles. In April, 1917, within a few days after the United States entered the war, the Bureau of Ordnance proposed such a bar- rage, the General Board of the Navy approved, and we drove it through against the doubt and opposition of the British Admiralty, who, not
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having thought of it during three years of war, insisted that the idea was without merit.
S
In the "Summary of Activities of United States Naval Forces Operating in European Waters," made up and issued from Admiral Sims's headquarters in London, it was stated that "a total of over 256 attacks by United States vessels occurred. In 183 of these cases there was definite chart evidence of a submarine in the vicinity."
^ Disregarding the numerous reports of sighting /submarines or periscopes which were classed as doubtful or problematical, the records of the Armed Guard Section contain reports of 227 encounters of armed American merchant-ships with submarines, in 193 of which the attacks were successfully combated. Thirty-four U-boats were reported damaged by Armed Guard gun- fire, of which there was evidence that several were sunk. Of the 227 encounters, 44 were surface engagements, some of them long-con- t tinued gun-fire contests.
One of the most notable and successful naval actions, after this country entered the war, was the attack on the Austrian naval base at Durazzo, October 2, 1918. In this operation a flotilla of American submarine-chasers, under command of Capt. Charles P. Nelson and Lieut.-Com. E. H. Bastedo, took a prominent part, leading the way and clearing the path of mines, sinking one submarine, and damaging and apparently destroying another U-boat; screening larger ships from torpedo attack, going to the aid of a British cruiser which was
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torpedoed, and taking under escort an enemy hospital-ship — all this under heavy fire during bombardment from the Austrian forts. A num- ber of engagements with enemy submarines by United States naval vessels operating from Gib- raltar were also reported. Another report compiled and issued by Admiral Sims's head- quarters in London stated that "between the dates of their arrival in European waters and signing of the armistice United States battle- ships were attacked six times by enemy sub- marines, and on one occasion the New York collided with a submarine." y
It is in the face of this record, in the face of his own admissions, that Admiral Sims an- nounces: "Our navy was not in this war in a fighting-sense. We were acting as motor- lorries behind the army, except that we were on the water. There was no fighting on the sea."
A better witness is Mr. Herbert Hoover, who in his testimony before the Senate stated flatly that at the time of America's entrance into the war the German submarine campaign had brought the Allies to "the border-line of starvation," and that it was our vigorous and instant co-operation that crushed the U-boat menace. — I
Aircraft achievements, so bitterly attacked by partizan malice throughout the war, show no less fine and inspiring when subjected to fair analysis. An April 6, 1917, the United States had 3 small aviation-fields, 55 training-'planes, only 4 of which were in use, and an air personnel
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of 65 officers and 1,120 men. By the time of the armistice we had 34 aviation-fields, and our aviation training-schools had graduated 8,602 men from elementary courses and 4,028 from advanced courses. More than 5,000 pilots and observers were sent overseas.
From July 24, 1917, when the appropriation was made, up to the time of the armistice, there were produced in the United States more than 8,000 training-'planes and more than 16,000 training-engines.
Of De Havilland 4*8, the observation and day bombing-'planes, 3,227 were completed and 1,885 shipped overseas for work at the front.
Of Liberty engines, 13,574 were completed, 4,435 shipped to the American Expeditionary Forces, and 1,025 delivered to the Allies.
By orders placed in France and Italy at the outset of the war, for all of which we paid, and for many of which we furnished the materials, we received from these sources 3,800 service- 'planes, in which we put American fliers.
In nineteen months we were able to display a machine built in America, of American materials, built by American labor, and of American design, of each of the types used on the battle-fronts in Europe, and each of them as good as, if not better than, any other made anywhere else in the world.
In our nineteen months we did more than was done by any other belligerent nation in its first nineteen months. Our second year of war equaled England's record in her third.
We gave to the world its greatest airplane 106
THE POWER AND THE GLORY
engine — the Liberty. We produced typical American machines that were acknowledged j to be the superior of Europe's best.
The Allies, after three years of war, had developed only one machine-gun that could be successfully synchronized to fire through a re- volving airplane propeller. In twelve months we produced two, both susceptible to quantity production.
We invented new airplane cameras, electric- heated clothing for aviators in high -altitude work, also the oxygen mask, equipped with tele- phone connections that enabled the flier to endure any altitude without losing speaking-contact with his fellows.
We developed the military parachute to a degree of safety undreamed of by Europeans. During the entire war there was not a casualty due to parachute failure.
We developed in quantity the wireless airplane telephone that placed the flier in easy and instant communication with his ground station and his I commander in the air.
At the time of the armistice the American air force on the firing-line numbered forty-five squadrons with an equipment of 740 'planes, and these squadrons played great parts in the battles of Chateau-Thierry, St.-Mihiel, and the Meuse-f Argonne. We brought down 755 enemy 'planes in open combat.
In plain words, at the time of the armistice, after only nineteen months of effort, we had training-'planes, De Havilland 4*5, and Liberty engines in quantity production, and we were
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ready with the Lepere, a two-place fighting- machine built around a Liberty engine, and held by the greatest experts in the world to be the last word in clean-cut perfection.
The story of our aircraft is the story of the whole war; for not only does it take in the tre- mendous grapple with problems as new as huge and imperative, but it also brings into promi- nence those impatiences and intolerances that are the manifestations of our youth as a nation. When we want a thing we want it, and woe to those who commit the unforgivable crime of disappointment. Perhaps this has figured as an asset in our fight for success, and yet there is something very brutal about the quality, a certain definite unfairness that borders on cold- blooded cruelty. Our climb to greatness is thick with the shattered reputations of men who dreamed splendidly and wrought hugely, yet, failing in the time or manner of delivery, were cast aside, while others came forward to reap the credit of vision, struggle, and achievement.
When we entered the war and turned to the building of aircraft it was much as though the Babylonians had been called upon suddenly to construct automobiles. The secrecies of belliger- ents had kept our automotive engineers from keeping abreast with the myriad changes and improvements; only one or two factories had any equipment for the new industry, few workers were familiar with the thousand and one delicate operations of 'plane manufacture, and the bulk of necessary material was all in the raw. It was not known that forty-five trained
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men were necessary to keep one 'plane in the air, that each 'plane had to have an extra engine as well as a multitude of spare parts, that flying- fields constituted a problem all their own, and that the constant play of extraordinary inventive genius made junking a daily occupation.
None of these considerations had any weight with the American people, however. We wanted to become the world's greatest airplane power overnight, and that was \ all there was to it! The Joint Army and Navy Technical Board caught the spirit and announced that they must have 22,000 training and battle 'planes in twelve months, which, counting extra engines and spare parts, meant a total of 40,000 in one year. Twining vine leaves in its own hair, the Senate voted $640,000,000 for aircraft production, and the spree was on.
Let it be remembered also that even the order for what amounted to 40,000 'planes in one year did not appease the editorial and fireside ex- perts. Such as these demanded that America must have 50,000 'planes in the air at one time, and Admiral Peary never became reconciled to any smaller figure. Many editors refused to admit any difference between airplanes and "flivvers," and grew querulous at the delay in turning out hourly batches.
Even to this day I marvel at the courage of the men who went up against that stone wall of expectation, and even more do I admire the superb enthusiasm, the invincible optimism, that never failed to illumine the darkest hours. Never a whine out of them, never a moment's
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pause to search for alibis, but always the in- sistence, "We can do it because it's just got to be done."
Howard Coffin was the man with vision enough to see down to the very heart of American genius and energy; Deeds, Waldon, and Mont- gomery put solid foundations under the vision; Vincent and Hall conceived and built the Liberty motor, and to their call came others who joined to write a record of romantic achievement that ought to be put into school readers for the inspiration of children. First, there was the problem of the spruce and the fir that go into the wingbeams and other 'plane parts. In many cases, stands of timber had to be surveyed and railroads built to connect them with mills. Special saws had to be designed, and experts trained in the selection and judging of logs. The usual processes of seasoning were too slow, and new kiln processes had to be developed to dry out the lumber more quickly, and yet in such manner as to preserve its strength.
On top of everything labor troubles developed, and the whole production of spruce and fir was threatened with stoppage. Col. Bruce P. Disque was materialized, and before he got through he had organized 75,000 lumbermen into the Loyal Legion of Loggers, every man pledged to give his best to the government.
Castor-oil was recognized as the one satis- factory lubricant for airplane motors. The supply was not sufficient, and we secured from Asia a quantity of castor beans large enough to seed 100,000 acres.
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THE POWER AND THE GLORY
When we entered the war it was supposed that the only possible fabric for covering the flying surfaces of a 'plane was linen. England, ' after promising to meet all our requirements from Ireland's supply of flax, fell down on the job. To meet the need, the Bureau of Standards developed a fabric of long-fiber cotton that was even superior to linen. Over 10,000,000 yards were woven and delivered to the government, which, put end to end, would have stretched from California to France.
Then there was the difficulty of "dope," a sort of varnish with which the cotton covering had to be filled in order to stretch it tight and give a smooth surface. We figured that our dope had to be made from acetone and its kin- dred products. But the world's supply of ace- tone was insufficient to meet the demand, and so it was that the government had to enter into \ a partnership for the establishment of ten large factories for the production of acetone.
All the aeronautic experts of the world were convinced that mahogany was the one suitable wood for propellers. Our supply was scant, so we conducted experiments with walnut, oak, cherry, and ash, and by improved seasoning processes gained results as splendid as with mahogany.
Then there was the question of the engine. The slightest observation showed that the European engines were being scrapped with alarming regularity, owing to constant better- ments. It would have been folly indeed to equip our factories for the production of machines
in
that we knew would be out of date by the time we commenced to produce in quantity.
Colonel Deeds and his associates reached the decision that the thing for America to do was to produce an engine of her own that would be so far ahead of all others as to be safe from any danger of scrapping. Jesse G. Vincent and E. J. Hall, each in his own way, had been working on an engine, and the two were asked to give up their individual experiments and pool their inventive genius for the good of America. Mr. Hall and Mr. Vincent, with Colonel Deeds and Colonel Waldon beside them, set to work on May 29, 1917. As fast as the detail drawings were made they went at top speed to the twelve factories among which the work was divided. The greatest engineers in the country went over the plans in detail, practical production men were then called in, and even builders of the machine- tools were called for counsel. As fast as the various parts were turned out they were rushed to the Packard Company for assembling.
On July 14, 1917, the first 8-cylinder Liberty engine was delivered in Washington, and on August 25th the 12-cylinder Liberty passed its hard fifty-hour test successfully. | A good engine in six weeks and the best in f the world in three months ! And delivery in series ) began in five months! It stands as an achieve- ment absolutely without parallel. The best ever done by any other country was a year.
Is all this miracle to be discounted because "there was not speed enough"? All the honest pride that should be ours to be buried in queru-
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lousness because we were promised delivery on Thursday and did not get it until Saturday?
As in the case of mobilization, building, ship- ping, and aircraft, the provision of rifles, machine- guns, ammunition, and ordnance presented problems as new as stupendous. We had enough Springfield rifles on hand to equip an army of 1,000,000, but their intricate construction made immediate quantity production an impossibility. Yet quantity production of ammunition for the Springfields was possible. American initiative met the problem by changes that not only simplified and improved the British Enfield, but fitted it for the use of the Springfield cartridge. This modified Enfield came into quantity production in August, 1917, and at the time of the armistice the output had reached a total of 2,300,000. Added to this was a produc- tion of 300,000 Springfields. In the matter of ammunition we produced 3,500,000,000 rounds of our own as compared to 100,000,000 rounds that we bought from the French arid British.
Congress, in 1912, sanctioned the allowance of four machine-guns to a regiment. When America entered the war the use of machine- guns had developed to 336 machine-guns per regiment. To meet initial needs we bought Hotchkiss machine-guns and Chauchat auto- matics from the French, but at the same time started work on the perfection of a gun of our own that would be "better than the best." The answer of American inventive genius was the "light" Browning and the "heavy" Browning, admittedly superior to anything possessed either
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
by the Allies or the Germans. Both types were brought into production in February and April, 1918, and at the time of the armistice 227,000 had been delivered.
With respect to artillery, it was decided at the outset that speed and effectiveness alike pointed to the wisdom of using guns of French manufacture. Not only was French artillery the best, but French production outran the demand. Inventions of our own were perfected, however, and manufacture pushed, with the re- sult that the armistice found America producing complete artillery units sufficient for every need. Great plants had to be erected for the manu- facture of high explosives, whole industries had to be taken over, the production of toxic gases called for government ownership and operation, and each day demanded new exhibitions of in- ventive genius and driving initiative. With what results ?
At the time of the armistice we were pro- i ducing gas more rapidly than England, France, or Germany.
At the end of the war American production of smokeless powder was 45 per cent, greater than the French and British production combined.
At the end of the war American production of high explosives was 40 per cent, greater than Great Britain's and nearly double that of France.
Out of every 100 days that our combat divi- sions were in line in France they were supported by their own artillery for 75 days, by British artillery for 5 days, and by French for \% days.
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Of the remaining \%]4 days that they were in line without artillery, 18 days were in quiet sectors, and only ^ of I day in each 100 vwas in active sectors. ^.
Greatest source of pride, however, is the care \ that every fighting-man received. From first to last not an "embalmed-beef" horror such as shamed the Spanish-American War, not a case of "paper-soled shoes," not a single duplica- tion of the "fever camps'* that brought unneces- sary grief into thousands of American homes in M
1898. The death-rate per 1,000 during the war with Spain was 26. In the war just ended the death-rate per 1,000 was 6.4 in the United States, and 4.7 in the American Expeditionary Force, and it must be remembered that even these percentages were made much larger by . the influenza epidemic that swept the country. No soldiers of any nation ever received such care. Among the 39,000 officers of the Medical Corps were the best :aen of the profession — the greatest specialists in every line — and not even the sons of the rich in civil life were given more painstaking attention than that bestowed j '• upon the humblest private.
Nor was this all. The War Risk Insurance Bureau, originated and administered by Secre- tary McAdoo, made the government of the United States the largest and safest insurance company in the world, and at the same time a "helping hand" that went out to the wives and children of the fighting-men. In the very first year of its operation the Bureau wrote 4,000,000 policies in an amount exceeding $40,- 9 115
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
000,000,000 and distributed $450,000,000 to the dependent families of soldiers and sailors.
Honesty is no less a glory. In addition to $10,000,000,000 loaned to the Allies, the govern- ment expended more than $27,000,000,000 for, the prosecution of the war, a sum as large as1 the total expenses of the federal government \ from 1783 to 1917. Although this huge amount ! was disbursed in the hurry and confusion of war, the utmost zeal of congressional commit- ! tees has been unable to unearth graft or serious ' misconduct on the part of responsible officials or of the citizens who responded to the call of the administration. The completeness of these in- vestigations may be judged by the fact that they have cost the taxpayers more than $2,000,000 to date. When the scandals and shames of 1898 are remembered, a great satisfaction can be taken in the honor and faith of 1917 and 1918. r~ Raising $37,000,000,000 was a task faced by 6 as many new and difficult problems as were met with in aircraft and ordnance. Billions were an immediate necessity, and Secretary McAdoo met the emergency by the inspiration of short- time certificates of indebtedness, followed im- mediately by the announcement of bond issues. The financiers of the country naturally assumed that these issues would be floated through the banks on the usual commission basis, but Secre- tary McAdoo had the courage and vision to conceive a plan that would save money even as it would manufacture war spirit. Coining the name "Liberty Loan," he went straight to the people, and although the idea was fought with
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bitterness, each of five bond issues was over- subscribed. It was likewise the genius of Mc- Adoo that conceived the idea of War Savings and Thrift Stamps, a plan that made the smallest child a partner of the government in the pros- I ecution of the war.
A wonderful achievement, whether taken as a whole or subjected to piecemeal analysis. The committee appointed by President McKiniey to examine the conduct of the war with Spain prefaced its report by asking the people to remember that "the task of mobilizing, training, and equipping 275,000 men was of such massive proportions that all of the criticisms and com- ments that were made in regard to it must be read with regard to the size of the task." Only nineteen years later America was called upon, almost overnight, to mobilize, train, equip, and maintain an army of 5,000,000 men — to send 2,000,000 of them across the Atlantic — and met that call without one of the scandals or failures that shamed the record of 1898. *^
Glory in the highest, and, what is best, glory * enough for all. By no means was it the war of an administration or the war of a party. In the tremendous accomplishment Republicans and Democrats stood shoulder to shoulder, partizan- ship forgotten, nothing, remembered save that they weje Ar^ejirans. Nor wUs it merely the war of soldiers and sailors. Behind the trenches and the battle-ships stretched the army of the second lines, the men, women, and children of the United States, serving and sacrificing with no less devotion than the fighting-force itself. <
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These are things to remember when partizanship deals only in sneers and detraction. The future of America is not limited to the presidential campaign of 1920, and the hopes of that future are linked inseparably to the prides and resolves born of unparalleled achievement.
VII
AMERICA'S MORAL OFFENSIVES
REAT and splendid as were the military 1 achievements of the United States, they were not more effective than the projectile force of American ideals. No credit may be taken from the 2,000,000 men in khaki who beat back German might at Chateau-Thierry and St.- Mihiel, and whose presence and courage gave heart to the Allied armies in an hour of despair, but there were moral victories no less far-reaching and conclusive. Our war aims, declared in the various state papers of the President, gave us domestic unity, won us the friendship and sup- port of neutral nations, and crumbled the foun- dation of fear and lies that upheld the evil structure of Prussian militarism. Sent by cable and wireless to every corner of earth, translated into every tongue, printed by the millions on native presses, the pronouncements of the Presi- dent had the force of armies, conquering the mind of mankind and delivering humanity from age-old bondages. As long as the world lasts, these addresses, of singular power and beauty^ will stand as the ultimate exposition of human faith in the practicability of liberty, justice, and j fraternity. ^_
It is to be remembered that the Great War was 119
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not a war for democracy when it commenced, nor even at the time we entered it. Trade imperialism ruled the world in 1914 and the breakdown of civilization was the logical result of theories of government that put weakness at the mercy of greed. Ireland, India, and Egypt struggled in the grip of the British Em- pire; France held Morocco; Italy clutched Tripoli; England and Russia strangled Persia; in China and Africa the French, English, and Germans were rival annexationists; Russia kept the Poles, the Finns, and the Ruthenes in sub- jection; the Austro-Hungarian Alliance enslaved Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Slovenes, and Jugo- slavs; Japan ruled Korea and parts of Man- churia; and Germany exercised brutal sway over kingdoms and colonies. Wherever one looked there was a cynical disregard of human rights, an almost blasphemous exaltation of the privi- leges of trade.
It was merely the case that the Imperial Ger- man government came to disdain the slow and undramatic processes of "peaceful penetration." Its masters, unbalanced by the incantations and prophecies of militarism's high priests and drunk in contemplation of colossal power, reverted suddenly to the savage methods of tribalism and resolved upon one great blow that should give them world dominion. Through the eyes of hate and paranoia, they saw Belgium annexed, France crushed, occupation of the Channel ports, Serbia reduced to vassalage, and the rest of the Balkan States instructed in obedience; Turkey, Austria-Hungary, and Italy
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mere suzerainties; Asia and Africa left helpless for the taking; Russia, England, and America to be dealt with at leisure. A dream of mad- men, perhaps, but one that had every chance of success. gf
The disclosure of these purposes, the very/ ferocity of the sudden and unprovoked assault, and the horror of German war practices inevi- tably placed the Allies in the finer position of standing for civilization, humanity, and inter- national law. Their struggle, however, was essentially one of self-defense and remained just that, not a leader having the vision to grasp the necessity of a new and better order as a substitute for the outworn system of balanced power, responsible not only for the present madness, but equally certain to breed other wars if continued. President Wilson was under no illusions. He knew that France and Prussia were once in alliance, that Italy was the ally of Germany in 1914, that England had always hated Russia and feared her, that England and France were ready to fight over Fashoda in 1900, and he saw at the end of the war, even in event of Allied victory, nothing more conclusive than realignments and new "balances of power." Out of his soul's rebellion against the sorry drama of despair and futility he harked back to the innate idealism of the race and brought forth his p7dp7>?al"T6l>~'a: "League ^oT Nations, a world partnership of self-governing peoples in the interests of justice, liberty, and a peace of permanence. The idea itself was as old as Christ, but it was not until the President's
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address of May 27, 1916, that it took shape and form in the heart of sick and hopeless humanity.
*"L Again on December i8th, in his note to the { belligerent nations, Woodrow Wilson showed that he was looking beyond the war to the peace, and that the compelling interest of America was in some settlement that would guard the world against a recurrence of barbarism. The war we entered must be a war against war, and the whole purpose of the note was to lift the thought of the world above the accepted and habitual. The President knew well where Ger- many stood; what he wanted was to force the Allies to take higher, firmer ground. The plan succeeded. The Imperial German government answered in the terms and spirit of Attila; the reply of the Allies showed grasp of the American aspiration and full sympathy with it. Of supreme significance was the declaration of "whole- hearted agreement with the proposal to create a League of Nations which shall assure peace and justice throughout the world." The address of the President to the Senate on January 22, 1917, transformed the war from a struggle between dynasties to a holy war in behalf of imperishable ideals, even as it marked the flowering of his individual patriotism into the genius of the race. It was to a world that the President spoke, and it was the world that answered this noble outline of a Peace of the People:
I am proposing, as it were, that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Monroe as the
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doctrine of the world; that no nation should seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but that every people should be left free to determine its own polity, its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, the little along with the great and powerful.
I am proposing that all nations henceforth avoid en- tangling alliances which would draw them into com- petitions of power, catch them in a net of intrigue and selfish rivalry, and disturb their own affairs with influences intruded from without. There is no entangling alliance in a concert of power. When all unite to act in the same sense and with the same purpose, all act in the common interest and are free to live their own lives under a common protection.
Mere agreements may not make peace secure. It will be absolutely necessary that a force be created as a guaran- tor of the permanency of the settlement so much greater than the force of any nation now engaged or any alliance hitherto formed or projected that no nation, no probable combination of nations, could face or withstand it. If the peace presently to be made is to endure, it must be a peace made secure by the organized major force of man- kind.
The War Message of April 2d had in it nothing I of the tentative. Sure of his ground at last, confident alike in the idealism of America and in the aroused vision of Allied peoples, the President declared that —
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquests, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for our- selves, 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.
The right is more precious than peace, and we shall ^
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fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own govern- ments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free people as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make ' the world itself at last free.
The projectile force of the President's idealism, its full military value, may be measured by the fact that between April 6 and December 8, 1917, sixteen states, great and small, declared war against Germany or severed diplomatic relations with her. From the very first the Allies accepted the President as their spokesman. Shrewd for all their cynicism, they saw that the old order was out of tune and favor, and that Mr. Wilson spoke the language of a new order, that his was the gift of understanding human hopes, and they sat silent when his voice was lifted. The papal overtures of August, 1917, were answered by the President alone, and again the world thrilled to the assertion of unconquerable resolve in connection with the establishment of a peace of justice and permanence.
The last months of 1917 marked the zero hour for the Allied cause so far as military opera- tions were concerned. The great German-Aus- trian counterdrive into Italy was quickly followed by the overthrow of Kerensky, Lenin's instant submission to Germany, and the infamous Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. With the flourish of the con- queror, Count Czernin laid down a set of peace terms in behalf of the Central Powers, and it was the answer of the President on January 8,
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1918, that shot light through the falling dark- ness. In the declaration of America's peace terms there was a certainty and confidence that carried reassurance to the Allies even as it struck mightily at the weak foundations of Austria- Hungary. The "program of the world's peace'* was set forth in Fourteen Points that were im- mediately accepted by the world as great commandments.1
Speaking on July 4th, at Mount Vernon, he formulated the fundamental principles for which we were fighting in four supplementary points:
There can be but one issue. The settlement must be final. There can be no compromise. No half-way decision would be tolerable. No half-way decision is conceivable. These are the ends for which the associated peoples of the world are fighting and which must be conceded them before there can be peace:
(1) The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere that can separately, secretly, and of its single choice dis- turb the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be presently destroyed, at the least its reduction to virtual impotence.
(2) The settlement of every question, whether of terri- tory, of sovereignty, of economic arrangement, or of politi- cal relationship, upon the basis of the free acceptance of that settlement by the people immediately concerned and not upon the basis of the material interest or advantage of any other nation or people which may desire a different settlement for the sake of its own exterior influence or mastery.
(3) The consent of all nations to be governed in their conduct toward each other by the same principles of honor and of respect for the common law of civilized society that govern the individual citizens of all modern states in their relations with one another; to the end that all promises and covenants may be sacredly observed, no private plots
1 For full text see Chapter XX. 125
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or conspiracies hatched, no selfish injuries wrought with impunity, and a mutual trust established upon the hand- some foundation of a mutual respect for right.
(4) The establishment of an organization of peace which shall make it certain that the combined power of free nations will check every invasion of right and serve to make peace and justice the more secure by affording a definite tribunal of opinion to which all must submit and by which every international readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly concerned shall be sanctioned.
In the New York address of September 27th the President touched again upon the funda- mentals of peace, seeking to bed-rock them in the granite of a universal and explicit under- standing. He said then:
And, as I see it, the constitution of that League of Na- tions and the clear definition of its objects must be a part, is in a sense the most essential part, of the peace settlement itself. It cannot be formed now. If formed now, it would be merely a new alliance confined to the nations associated against a common enemy. It is not likely that it would be formed after the settlement. It is necessary to guarantee the peace; and the peace cannot be guaranteed as an after- thought. The reason, to speak in plain terms again, why it must be guaranteed is that there will be parties to the peace whose promises have proved untrustworthy, and means must be found in connection with the peace settle- ment itself to remove that source of insecurity. It would be folly to leave the guaranty to the subsequent voluntary action of the governments we have seen destroy Russia and deceive Rumania.
These twenty-three specific points, taken together, constituted President Wilson's peace charter for the world, and the unqualified in- dorsement of the Allies gave them binding
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authority. Not until the renascence of trade imperialism at Paris in February, 1919, was there the slightest disposition to question either the feasibility of a League of Nations or the con- tractual obligation to make it a primary and integral part of the Peace Treaty itself.
The full force of the President's "moral offen- sives" now commenced to be felt. It was not only that they had won the "verdict of mankind," but, driving into the Central Powers as well, they disintegrated military and civilian morale, and forced the fears that made autocratic governments sue for peace. On October 5th, scarcely more than a week after the President's address of September 27th, the Germans begged an armistice, and on October 7th the Austro- Hungarian government presented a similar plea. It may be stated at this point, in answer to the charges of a "lone hand" and "bad faith," that every detail of the correspondence that followed was known to the Allied leaders and received their complete approval.
The President, replying to Germany on Octo- ber 8th, asked if he was to understand definitely that the German government accepted the terms laid down in the Fourteen Points and in subse- quent addresses and "that its object in enter- ing into discussion would be only to agree upon the practical details of their application." He added also that the immediate evacuation of invaded territory was an essential to the good faith of further discussion. On October I2th the German government replied affirmatively, and on October I4th the President made this
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statement of decision: that the conditions of the armistice must be left to the military advisers of the United States and the Allies, and that no arrangement could be accepted that did not provide "absolutely satisfactory safeguards and guaranties of the maintenance of the present military supremacy of the armies of the United States and the Allies in the field"; that an armistice could not be considered until submarine warfare ceased; and that further guaranties of the representative character of the German government would have to be given.
On October 2Oth Germany accepted the new conditions and pointed out that she now had a constitution and a government dependent for its authority on the Reichstag. On October 23d the President informed Germany that, having received the solemn and explicit assurance of the German government that it unreservedly accepts the terms of peace laid down in his address to the Congress of the United States on January 8, 1918, and the principles of settlement enunciated in his subsequent addresses, and that it is ready to discuss the details of their applica- tion, he had communicated the above corre- spondence to the governments of the Allied Powers with the suggestion that, if they were disposed to effect the peace upon the terms and principles indicated, they will ask their military advisers to draw up armistice terms of such a character as to "insure to the associated govern- ments the unrestricted power to safeguard and enforce the details of the peace to which the German government has agreed."
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Meanwhile events in other directions had been moving rapidly. Replying to Austria- Hungary on October i8th, the President pointed out that a radical change had been worked in Point Ten, which read: "The peoples of Austria- Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autono- mous development."
"Since that sentence was written and uttered to the Congress of the United States," he said, "the government of the United States has recog- nized that a state of belligerency exists between the Czechoslovaks and the German and Austro- Hungarian Empires, and that the Czechoslovak National Council is a de facto belligerent govern- ment clothed with proper authority to direct the military and political affairs of the Czecho- slovaks. It has also recognized in the fullest manner the justice of the nationalistic aspira- tions of the Jugoslavs for freedom."
On October 28th the Austro-Hungarian gov- ernment submitted to the conditions of the President, and on November 4th accepted armistice terms that amounted to a complete surrender. Bulgaria had already withdrawn on September 29th, and Turkey had capitulated on October 3ist. On November 5th the Pres- ident transmitted to Germany the decision of the Allied governments. Subject to two qualifica- tions, they declared their willingness to make peace with the government of Germany on the terms of peace laid down in the President's address to Congress of January 8, 1918, and
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the principles of settlement enunciated in his subsequent addresses. The qualifications were: (i) Freedom of the seas, being open to various interpretations, must be left to the Peace Con- ference, and in the discussion they "reserved to themselves complete freedom!" (2) Further, in the conditions of peace laid down in his ad- dress to Congress on the 8th of January, 1918, the President declared that invaded territories must be restored as well as evacuated and made free. The Allied governments feel that no doubt ought to be allowed to exist as to what this provision implies. By it they understand that compensation will be made by Germany for "all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and to their property by the aggres- sion of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air."
The acceptance of the German government was given on October 27th; the armistice terms were submitted on November 8th, and were signed by the Germans to become effective on November nth. At the time the Germans had 2,000,000 men under arms on the western front, and to the east there were the armies of Macken-
/ sen and von Sanders. What happened to them was an utter spiritual collapse, a disintegration of morale both on the firing-line and among the civilian population. And history will say that this was due to the words of Wilson in even
r larger degree than to the hammer blows of Foch.
.— There is a tendency in certain quarters to-day
I to attack the Peace Treaty on the theory that the German capitulation was in no sense a surrender,
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but merely a cessation of hostilities on certain fixed terms. This view, as a matter of fact, is the very base of The Economic Consequences of the Peace, the book in which J. M. Keynes appeals to the world in behalf of Germany. The con- tention entirely ignores the second stipulation of the Allies' answer, the specific statement that "compensation will be made by Germany for all damage done to the civil population of the Allies and to their property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea, and from the air."
This all-embracing clause, agreed to by the President, meant unconditional surrender, and the Germans were in no doubt as to the intent. Ludendorff, in his Memoirs, says:
On October 23d or 24th Wilson's answer arrived. It was a strong answer to our cowardly note. This time he made it quite clear that the armistice conditions must be such as to make it impossible for Germany to resume hostilities and to give the powers allied against her unlimited power to settle themselves the details of the peace accepted by Germany. In my view, there could no longer be doubt in my mind that we must continue the fight.
Hindenburg held to the same view, and on October 24th signed an order "for the informa- tion of all troops" that made these statements:
He (Wilson) will negotiate with Germany for peace only if she concedes all the demands of America's allies as to the internal constitutional arrangements of Germany. . . . Wilson's answer is a demand for unconditional surrender. It is thus unacceptable to us soldiers.
The closing words were a passionate appeal to "continue resistance with all our strength." The order, however, was never promulgated. 10 131
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Hindenburg and Ludendorff were both over- ruled, and the note of submission went forward to the President, a note that accepted the terms that every German fighting-man knew to be unconditional surrender.
A second opportunity to choose between war or surrender was afforded the Germans by the presentation of the armistice terms. A more definite and detailed document was never framed. It set down provision after provision that were the essence of unconditional surrender, and at every point it made clear what the Peace Treaty itself would contain. It was in the power of the Germans to denounce the terms as being in violation of the President's assurances of a "just peace/' They made no such denunciation. Instead they signed and accepted the armistice terms, and it remained for an English economist, writing a year later, to discover that the Germans did not surrender and that the Allies were falce to promises.
VIII
THE PRESIDENT'S "PARTIZAN APPEAL
THE congressional elections in November, 1918, merit detailed consideration by reason of the sweep and force of their consequences. Not only were ugly passions aroused that shat- tered domestic unity, turning the United States over to a very madness of pull and haul, but the results worked an evil change in Europe as well, giving the elder statesmen of the Allies the hope that "practical programs" might be substituted for "idealistic theories." Only by analysis of the various incidents can clear understanding be gained of an action that, on its face, bears every appearance of aberration.
In September various Democratic members of Congress waited upon the President and told him frankly that if he desired to retain a party majority in the House and Senate his one hope was to make an open, non-partizan appeal to the people. They were explicit in the statement that the Democratic organization itself was in no position to conduct a vigorous campaign, and with a certain approach to resentment gave him specific explanations. For more than a year the party had been without leadership, as Vance McCormick, chairman of the Democratic Na- tional Committee, had devoted himself exclu-
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sively to the direction of the War Trade Board. This lack of executive authority, and the Presi- dent's own failure to act as a party leader, had resulted naturally in the disintegration of ma- chinery and in a war chest too depleted to meet even the mechanical expenses of a campaign. On the other hand, Will H. Hays, chairman of the Republican National Committee, was giving entire time to travel and conference in the in- terests of party harmony and enthusiasm, as well as collecting funds in larger amounts than had been known since the days of Hanna.
The President, always impatient of the me- chanics of politics, was doubly unwilling to con- sider them at a moment when the fate of a world hung in the balance. Somewhat curtly, and very decisively, he rejected the suggestion made him, and turned to the tremendous questions that pressed upon him. Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey were trembling on the verge of sur- render, and the notes of the President, each one with the cutting edge of a sword, were slashing the bonds that held these countries to continued support of the Imperial German government. Not only did the Allies have instant and intimate knowledge of every detail of this correspondence, but they indorsed it so fully as to give the Presi- dent authority to speak for them. Far better than any one in America they knew the exhaus- tion of their own countries and the strength of Germany, and both statesmen and soldiers fol- lowed with eagerness every point in the Presi- dent's diplomatic correspondence, seeing hope of winning by words the victory that might
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otherwise have to be purchased by still greater expenditures of blood and money and suffering.
On October I3th, at the most critical stage of the correspondence, Mr. Roosevelt publicly de- nounced the President for attempting to bring about a "negotiated peace," accused ijim of "bad faith" to the Allies, and berated him for his "weakness." As if in response to a signal, the Republican speakers rose in their places and elaborated the attack. Almost instantly the plan of campaign was broadened to take in the Fourteen Points. To be sure, it was the case that these specifications of the President, de- clared in his speech of January 8th, had been accepted unquestioningly by the people of the United States and by the Allied governments as well, and nothing was more obvious than that the high justice of these pledges had been po- tent factors in winning the approval and support of neutral nations. Mr. Roosevelt, however, sounded a general assault by his statement that "When it comes to peace negotiations, we should emphatically repudiate these famous Fourteen Points."
The campaign, in its first stages, seemed so entirely political, rather than popular, that .small attention was paid to it. Certain partizan Sena- tors had spared no effort to embarrass and harass the administration in its prosecution of the war, but never at any time had the people shown any signs of being gulled. The President had the conviction that Americans were interested but little in the election, and he was particularly of
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the opinion that the reactionary Senate group did not reflect the sentiment of the Republican rank and file in any degree. As time went by, however, two things became increasingly appar- ent; first, that the so-called "Old Guard" was in undisputed control of the Republican ma- chinery; second, that the forces of "invisible government" were preparing to emerge from the j^tirement thrust upon the unities of war.
^Realizing that German defeat was only a matter of weeks, Big Business felt that the time was ripe for a successful attempt to regain the power lost in 1912. What took evil and definite shape in the shadows was no mere uprising of a partizan clique, but a carefully planned revolt against Wilson and his "crazy ideals." The orders that went out from the headquarters of Privilege were peremptory, and money in huge amounts followed the drders. The hands of the President were to be upheld no longer; they were to be tied. The movement's power in men, money, and machinery began to be appreciated, and appre-
\ hension took the place of easy confidence.
There was not a man in the whole war ma- chinery, Republican or Democrat, who did not react to the gravity of the situation. It was not only that a Republican majority in the House or Senate meant divided leadership at a moment when the President's undisputed central control was a necessity, but it was a certainty that such result would be regarded by Europe as a repudiation of the President and his war policies. The Central Powers and the Allied governments alike would interpret it as a weakening of our
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war will, and while the enemy would be strength- ened, our associates would be correspondingly depressed. It was not a party that was at stake, but America, and Americans, without regard to political beliefs, urged the President to reconsider his decision with respect to an appeal to the people. He did so, and on October 24th issued the following statement:
MY FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN: The congressional elections are at hand. They occur in the most critical period our country has ever faced or is likely to face in our time. If you have approved of my leadership and wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, I earnestly beg that you will ex- press yourself unmistakably to that effect by returning a Democratic majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
I am your servant and will accept your judgment without cavil, but my power to administer the great trust assigned to me by the Constitution would be seriously impaired should your judgment be adverse, and I must frankly tell you so because so many critical issues depend upon your verdict. No scruple or taste must in grim times like these be allowed to stand in the way of speaking the plain truth.
I have no thougnt of suggesting that any political party is paramount in matters of patriotism. I feel too deeply the sacrifices which have been made in this war by all our citizens, irrespective of party affiliations, to harbor such an idea. I mean only that the difficulties and delicacies of our present task are of a sort that makes it imperatively necessary that the nation should give its undivided support to the government under a unified leadership, and that a Republican Congress would divide the leadership.
The leaders of the minority in the present Congress hare unquestionably been pro-war, but they have been anti- administration. At almost every turn since we entered the war they have sought to take the choice of policy
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and the conduct of the war out of my hands and put it under the control of instrumentalities of their own choosing.
This is no time either for divided counsels or for divided leadership. Unity of command is as necessary now in civil action as it is upon the field of battle. If the control of the House and the Senate should be taken away from the party now in power, an opposing majority could assume control of the legislation and oblige all action to be taken amid contest and obstruction.
The return of a Republican majority to either House of the Congress would, moreover, be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my leadership. Spokes- men of the Republican party are urging you to elect a Republican Congress in order to back up and support the President, but, even if they should in this impose upon some credulous voters on this side of the water, they would impose on no one on the other side. It is well understood there as well as here that the Republican leaders desire not so much to support the President as to control him.
The peoples of the Allied countries with whom we are associated against Germany are quite familiar with the sig- nificance of the elections. They would find it very difficult to believe that the voters of the United States had chosen to support their President by electing to the Congress a majority controlled by those who are not in fact in sym- pathy with the attitude and action of the administration.
I need not tell you, my fellow-countrymen, that I am asking your support not for my own sake or for the sake of a political party, but for the sake of the nation itself in order that its inward duty of purpose may be evident to all the world. In ordinary times I would not feel at liberty to make such an appeal to you. In ordinary times divided counsels can be endured without permanent hurt to the country. But these are not ordinary times.
If in these critical days it is your wish to sustain me with undivided minds, I beg that you will say so in a way which it will not be possible to misunderstand, either here at home or among our associates on the other side of the sea. I submit my difficulties and my hopes to you.
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Such an appeal was in no sense extraordinary. As a matter of fact, it had high warrant in distinguished precedent. In various elections George Washington pleaded for "united leader- ship," and Lincoln specifically urged upon the people the unwisdom of "swapping horses in midstream." It was Lincoln also who made the following election statement:
There is an important sense in which the government is distinct from the administration. One is perpetual, the other is temporary and changeable. A man may be loyal to his government and yet oppose the peculiar principles and methods of the administration. I should regret to see the day in which the people should cease to express intelligent, honest, generous criticism upon the policy of their rulers. It is true, however, that, in time of great peril, the dis- tinction ought not to be so strongly urged; for then criti- cism may be regarded by the enemy as opposition, and may weaken the wisest and best efforts for the public safety. If there ever was such a time, it seems to me it is now.
In a speech delivered at Boone, Iowa, October II, 1898, President McKinley pleaded for a Republican Congress in these words:
This is no time for divided councils. If I would have you remember anything I have said in these desultory remarks, it would be to remember at this critical hour in the nation's history we must not be divided. The triumphs of the war are yet to be written in the articles of peace.
Theodore Roosevelt, when a candidate for Governor of New York, appealed to the people to give President McKinley a Republican Con- gress, saying:
Remember that whether you will or not, your votes this year will be viewed by the nations of Europe from one
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standpoint only. They will draw no fine distinctions. A refusal to sustain the President this year will, in their eyes, be read as a refusal to sustain the war and to sustain the efforts of our peace commission to secure the fruit of war. Such a refusal may not inconceivably bring about a rupture of the peace negotiations. It will give heart to our defeated antagonists; it will make possible the inter- ference of those doubtful neutral nations who in this struggle have wished us ill.
Ex-President Benjamin Harrison, also urging the people to "stand behind the President" by electing a Republican Congress, said:
If the word goes forth that the people of the United States are standing solidly behind the President, the task of the peace commissioners will be easy, but if there is a break in the ranks — if the Democrats score a telling victory, if Democratic Senators, Congressmen, and governors are elected — Spain will see in it a gleam of hope, she will take fresh hope, and a renewal of hostilities, more war, may be necessary to secure to us what we have already won.
Theodore Roosevelt, as President, did not feel that such an appeal was improper even in time of peace, for on August 18, 1906, he wrote as follows to James E. Watson, then the Republi- can whip :
If there were only partizan issues involved in this con- test, I should hesitate to say anything publicly in reference thereto. But I do not feel that such is the case. On the contrary, I feel that all good citizens who have the welfare of America at heart should appreciate the immense amount that has been accomplished by the present Congress, organized as it is, and the urgent need of keeping this organization in power. To change the leadership and or- ganization of the House at this time means to bring con- fusion upon those who have been successfully engaged in the steady working out of a great and comprehensive
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THE PRESIDENT'S "PARTIZAN APPEAL"
scheme for the betterment of our social, industrial, and civic conditions. Such a change would substitute a pur- poseless confusion, a violent and hurtful oscillation between the positions of the extreme radical and the extreme re- actionary for the present orderly progress along the lines of a carefully thought out policy.
In every war in America's history the man in the White House at the time has asked to have his party majority confirmed at the polls, and common sense approves the wisdom and justice of such a request. It is upon the President, named in the Constitution as Commander-in- Chief, that war responsibility rests, and fairness and prudence join to point the necessity of guarding him against partizan harassment.
Mr. Wilson's appeal, however, was denounced as "unprecedented," and straightway subjected to bitter attack. Mr. Hays, chairman of the Republican National Committee, in the course of an intemperate speech, charged that the Presi- dent had impugned the loyalty of Republicans and denied their patriotism, and said:
A more ungracious, more unjust, more wanton, more mendacious accusation was never made by the most reck- less stump orator, much less by the President of the United States, for partizan purposes. It is an insult, not only to every loyal Republican in Congress, but to every loyal Republican in the land. It fully merits the resentment which rightfully and surely will find expression at the polls.
Mr. Roosevelt declared that the President had asked the people to elect a Congress made up exclusively of Democrats, and in his Carnegie Hall speech made this flat statement, "No man who is a Republican, and no man, whether a Re-
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publican or not, who puts loyalty to the people ahead of loyalty to the servants of the people is to have a voice in determining the greatest questions ever brought before this nation." This, of course, was nonsense. What the Presi- dent asked for was not a unanimous vote, but a majority vote. Had every Democrat been elected, or had every Democrat been defeated, neither party would have had two-thirds of the Senate, the majority necessary to ratify a peace treaty, for instance. Regardless of the elec- tion's outcome, Republican votes retained im- portance and power^
As the campaign progressed the hand of Big Business became increasingly apparent. Mr. Hays, carried away by his bitterness, betrayed true objectives in these words:
But Mr. Wilson's real purpose has nothing to do with the conduct of the war. He wants just two things. One is full power to settle the war precisely as he and his sole, unelected, unappointed, unconfirmed personal adviser may determine. The other is full power as the "unem- barrassed spokesman in affairs at home," as he actually demands in his statement, to reconstruct in peace-times the great industrial affairs of the nation in the same way, in unimpeded conformity with whatever socialistic doctrines, whatever unlimited government ownership notions, what- ever hazy whims may happen to possess him at the time, but first and above all with absolute commitment to free trade with all the world, thus giving to Germany out of hand the fruits of a victory greater than she could win by fighting a hundred years. A Republican Congress will never assent to that. Do you want a Congress that will? Germany does.
Germany looks to Mr. Wilson to get it for her, as he pledged himself to do in one of the few of his famous articles
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THE PRESIDENT'S "PARTIZAN APPEAL"
which are explicable. Germany understands that. See the New York World, spokesman of the administration, of last Saturday, and read the testimony of Henry C. Emery, former head of the Tariff Commission, just returned from seven months in Germany. "The German people," he says, "seemed to realize that in President Wilson lay their only salvation. They have turned to him in the belief that he is the one great political leader who can be trusted to make a permanent peace which will permit equal economic development." He is. All others demand that the Germans shall pay the full penalty of their crimes.
To-day, when the German vote is again a power to be soothed and wooed, the Republican leaders are crying out against the President for his harsh treatment of the Central Powers, but at the time of Mr. Hays's speech the war was still on, the German vote was cowed, and it was good campaign strategy to denounce the Presi- dent as the friend of Germany, the champion of a "negotiated peace'* instead of the uncondi- tional surrender that the warriors of the Home Guards demanded. Under all the buncombe, however, there coiled the selfish purposes of reaction — protective tariffs, ship subsidies, special privileges, private ownership, and the feudal operation of free institutions.
The campaign of the Democrats, necessarily weak by lack of funds, was made still more futile by a combination of unfortunate circum- stances. At the time when they were preparing to take the field in earnest the sweep of the influenza epidemic put an end to public meetings. It is doubtful if the speech of the President had been read carefully by one citizen in ten thou- sand. Certainly there was no remembrance of
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the paragraph in which he said: "I have no thought of suggesting that any political party is paramount in matters of patriotism. I feel too deeply the sacrifices which have been made in this war by all our citizens, irrespective of party affiliations, to harbor such an idea." Repub- lican papers drove home the lie that the Presi- dent had said that Republicans were not patriots. Democratic speakers had no chance to answer it. __ The fundamental mistake, however, was in \ permitting "patriotism" to remain the issue. In no sense was this the nature of the fight. As in 1912, the battle-lines were drawn between progress and reaction, between politics and public service, between the hosts of democracy and the forces of Special Privilege. This align- ment was not touched upon; the real issues were not made clear. Greatest misfortune of all, the President did not have at his back the inspired, unselfish fighting forces that swept him to victory in 1912 and 1916. As has been pointed out, his rooted distaste for the business of appointments had blinded him to the impor- tance of putting none but progressivists on guard, and as a result of his neglect the movement had fallen into discouragement and disintegration. Bad enough prior to 1917, it was a condition that grew into hopelessness after America's entrance into the war. The leading reaction- aries of the country were permitted to capture the War Department and a majority of the newly created civil bodies, and each man, as a matter of course, swiftly installed his standpat following. Not for a day nor an hour did a single one
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of them surrender his political convictions or domestic prejudices. Under direct partizan inspiration reactionary organizations, such as the National Security League and the American Defense Society, sprang into evil being. A chauvinistic hue and cry was raised at once, and while "disloyalty" was the asserted object of attack, the real purpose was to crush the liberal movement in the United States. Men and women of any reputation as progressivists were excluded from war-work and even subjected to continual harassment and attack.
It was these forces that were foremost in crying that the President had "insulted the patriotism" of every Republican. The Demo- cratic organization, utterly demoralized, could not beat back the lie. The progressivist move- ment, that might have stemmed the tide, was scattered and besmirched. As a consequence, the people reverted to partizanship, and, without thought of the war or the peace, rushed to the polls and voted on the question as to whether Republicans were "traitors." My feeling at^ the time, and my conviction to-day, were ex- pressed in the following letter sent under date of November 8th:
MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT, — You have indeed made this war a war to "make the world safe for democracy." But it was not that sort of war when it began. And it ^t
was not that sort of war when we entered it.
Before we got into it, our entrance had its chief impul- sion from our most reactionary and least democratic ele- ments. Consequently nearly all our most progressive and liberal leaders had marked themselves as opposed to it. The Republican representatives of Big Business made
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a clear record of patriotic support of what was then, in outward appearance, a reactionary trade-imperialistic war. Many radicals, progressives, and Democrats spoke and voted against it.
When you raised it to the level of a war for democracy, you rallied to the support of the war all the progressive and democratic elements. The Big Business patriots went with you, ostensibly on your own terms, because they saw that only on your terms could the war be won. They came into conspicuous leadership as Red Cross executives, as heads of State Councils of Defense, as patriotic dollar- a-year men.
All the radical or liberal friends of your anti-imperialist war policy were either silenced or intimidated. The Depart- ment of Justice and the Post-office were allowed to silence or intimidate them. There was no voice left to argue for your sort of peace. %
When we came to this election, the reactionary Republi- cans had a clean record of anti-Hun imperialistic patriotism. Their opponents, your friends, were often either besmirched or obscure. No one had been able to tell the public what was really at issue in the elections. The reactionaries knew, but they concealed it. They could appeal to their patriotism against what looked like a demand for a partizan verdict for the Democrats. The Democrats, afraid of raising the class issue, went on making a political campaign. Secretary Daniels and you spoke too late.
It seems to me if the defeat is to be repaired, the issue as between the imperialists and the democracy will have to be stated. You will have to give out your program for peace and reconstruction and find friends for it. Other- wise the reactionary patrioteers will defeat the whole immediate future of reform and progress. Respectfully,
GEORGE CREEL.
Every one of our present troubles traces back to the election of 1918. Lodge was lifted from mediocrity to evil power, and has been able to translate his personal hatreds into national
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policies. The war aims of the United States have been repudiated and we have been kept out of the League of Nations. Worst of all, the Wilson program for reconstruction — a great plan for the restoration of our national health — was handed over to the mercy of such men as Penrose, Smoot, Watson, Sherman, and Brande- gee. Had it been the deliberate intent of the electorate to destroy America nationally and internationally, it could not have worked more surely. 11
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WHY THE PRESIDENT WENT TO PARIS
IT is safe to say that on the day of the armistice Woodrow Wilson was the most loved and admired man in all the world. In foreign lands they burned candles before his picture, named squares and streets in his honor, and hailed him as an apostle of light, the invincible champion of human rights; in the United States the sweep of victory cleansed the popular mind of prejudice and irritations, leaving only an intense apprecia- tion of the man's true greatness. With courage and devotion never surpassed, the President threw this universal popularity upon the gaming- board of Paris, risking himself in one tremen- dous hazard for a peace of justice, a peace of permanence.
As clearly as though the future mirrored itself before him, he saw the tragedy of reaction and intrigue that would stage itself at the Peace Conference. Never at any time under delusions as to the character of the statesmen of Europe, he knew well that the lifting of war's necessities would restore them to their old habits of thought — habits formed through long years of tortuous diplomacy, " practical" politics, and careful balancing of power. What they had promised in the hour of defeat, when American aid was
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the one salvation, was bound to lose importance in the hour when a cruel and merciless enemy lay at their feet. Against an enforced idealism, resented by their experience as "visionary" and "Utopian," there would be a revolt of minds accustomed to think in terms of victor and vanquished, spoils and revenge.
What more natural? For close to five years the armies of the Central Powers had ravaged Belgium, France, Italy, and Serbia, their sub- marines had swept the seas of Allied shipping, and their aircraft had wrought desolation in great cities. For close to five years, through no fault of their own, French, English, Italians, Belgians, and Serbians had sat face to face with death and despair, and the future that stretched out before them was gray with the smoke that rose from burning homes. A League of Nations, a peace of justice, were fine faiths when a world shook to the sound of guns, but with victory won, what more intelligent than to attend first to the redress of immediate wrongs, to the exaction of indemnities, to the imposition of punishments that would rid them at once and forever of the German menace? Then the ideals!
There was no doubt in the mind of the Presi- dent as to the sincerity of the Allied peoples. Their passion of belief in the righteousness and practicability of a new order came to him across the sea, inexpressibly inspiring. He knew, how- ever, that between citizenship and government, especially in European countries, there yawned a gulf not to be bridged without infinite time
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and labor, and that so far as the Peace Confer- ence was concerned, decision would be in the hands of politicians, the young more plausible than the old, but all master opportunists su- premely skilled in the art of appealing to the human passions of gain and revenge.
Working also to their advantage was the fact that the surrender of Germany was in every sense unconditional. It was not only the case that the Allies held the written promise of Ger- many to make compensation "for all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and to their property by the aggression of Germany by land, by sea and from the air." There was also that grim provision in the armis- tice itself "that any future claims and demands of the Allies and the United States of America remain unaffected.'* It was legitimately in the power of the Peace Conference to present just claims that would put the Central Powers in bondage for generations to come, that would destroy them forever as a free people, an inde- pendent nationality.
The one restraint was in the Fourteen Points, accepted by the Allied governments as the basis of settlement. Better than any one else, how- ever, the President knew that these terms were far removed from being an easily enforceable pledge in the sense that a contract is enforceable. They were articles of faith, rather than the hard and fast clauses of a commercial agreement, and if they were to be dealt with in a mean, legalistic spirit, every one of them could be denied without loss of face.
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This phase of the difficulty was exaggerated by the situation in America itself. Throughout the whole of October, during the congressional campaign, the Republican party had indulged in wholesale repudiation of the Fourteen Points, denouncing them as part of a mollycoddle policy inspired by secret concern for Germany's wel- fare. "Blood and iron" was the prize election compound as far as the Republicans were con- cerned, and nothing was more abhorrent to their thought than the idea of a "negotiated peace," a peace that considered Germany's future in any degree. Mr. Hays, chairman of the Re- publican National Committee, sounded the key- note when he declared that America "will uphold her allies in whatever reparation they may exact for the frightful outrages inflicted upon them by the accursed Huns." And the Republicans had won the election! Already, in every capital in Europe, statesmen were ad- justing themselves to the new situation, secretly rejoicing in the turn of the wheel that seemed to lift the burdensome obligations that had been placed upon them by the Fourteen Points.
For the President to have stayed in Wash- ington would have been the easy way. En- throned in the White House, high above the jangles of Paris, it was in his power to have placed entire responsibility upon an appointed Peace Commission, reserving an Olympian de- tachment for himself. But even as he knew that this would save him his popularity, just as surely did he know that it would lose the peace. The one chance for the League of Nations, for
a peace of justice and permanence, was for him to go to Paris in person, to sit at the Peace Table himself, fighting face to face for the fulfilment of the pledges that he had framed. To sit in Washington was to invite defeat. With a situa- tion that would change with every word, it was idle to dream that intelligent communication could be maintained by cable and wireless. His absence would be regarded as the assumption of a dictator's role, and the premiers would be quick to use it to their advantage. Advice and counsel, unless in line with their wishes, would be construed as ultimatums and commands.
There was also the possibility that his presence might stabilize the situation in large degree. It would disprove the theory of "autocratic aloofness," and, by giving direct evidence of a willingness to share in common counsel, might result in larger regard for the American position. With all the passion of his soul the President desired a Conference of friends, unchanged, unchanging, animated in peace by the same ideals that had thrilled in war, and had it been necessary to achieve such result he would have made the pilgrimage on his knees. These were the considerations that formed his decision to go to Paris as head of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace — a decision made in spite of the attack of political enemies and the implorations of his friends. The responsibility was still his: he would not shirk it!
rThe general ignorance of our basic law was .lever more apparent than in the widely held belief that the Senate is part of the treaty-making
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power of government, and that the President acted autocratically in refusing to take that august body to Paris with him in its entirety. The Constitution, as a matter of fact, places the foreign relations of the nation in the hands of the President alone. No one_elsehas power or voice! The making of a treaty withTany foreign natTohls the duty of the President, and responsi- bility rests upon him and upon no other. The sole business of the Senate is to ratify or to reject the treaty when the President has made it. In this, as in a score of other ways, the Constitution is unwieldy, for it was written in a day when we boasted of our isolation, and its framers did not conceive of a time when foreign relations would furnish the country its most important and complex questions. Until the defect is remedied by amendment, however, it is the law, and the President was faced by a responsibility that he could not have evaded | had he so desired.
The selection of the personnel of the Commis- sion came next, and, as is generally the case in the United States, personalities dwarfed prin- ciples. Within a week both press and people were far more concerned with the men who were to go to Paris than with what they were to do in Paris. The number decided upon was four, exclusive of the President, and two of the places were filled from the first. The Secretary of State, by virtue of his position, was compelled to be chosen, although there was the exact knowl- edge that he would contribute nothing to the general strength. Colonel House was equally in-
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evitable, owing to the President's continuous use of his services in foreign affairs and the intimate knowledge of European conditions thus gained.
Looking back, there is no question that much bitterness and antagonism would have been averted had the President selected ex-President Taft and Mr. Root for the two remaining places. They were logical choices, for at the time both were more or less committed to the League of Nations and to a peace of justice, and the ap- pointment of these eminent Republicans would have appealed to the country as big and broad. After prolonged deliberation, the President de- termined against them. He knew that the Allied countries seethed in unrest, and that radicalism was the ruling force in Europe, not reaction. Mr. Root had failed with his Russian mission by reason of his reputation as America's foremost champion of the "capitalistic system," and the President feared that his presence as a peace delegate would work prejudice at the out- set. As for Mr. Taft, there was his indelible record as a genial, peace-loving soul who never let convictions stand in the way of concord. Although the moving spirit in the League to Enforce Peace, and an ardent champion of the President's program throughout the war, he commenced to wabble at the beginning of the congressional campaign, and by the time his Republican associates had finished their per- suasions his performances were truly acrobatic. As the President saw it, the prime qualification of a commissioner was an ability to hold to convictions for more than a day at a time.
WHY THE PRESIDENT WENT TO PARIS
With these two men eliminated, the field of selection was left bare and sterile. Judge Hughes might have passed muster, although this is doubtful, but in his case the President was explicit. The evasions of the ex-justice in the campaign of 1916, the belief among many people that he was angling for the German vote, his re- fusal to take a position on any question of the day, had disgusted the President even more than it had chilled the Republican party. As for Mr. Roose- velt, his antagonism to the Fourteen Points was open and bitter, and throughout the campaign he had stood for a "dictated peace," insisting that America was without right to interfere in the im- position of such terms as the Allies saw fit. When it came to making a selection from the Senate the case was hopeless. From Senator Lodge straight down the line every Republican had followed Mr. Roosevelt, and stood committed irrevocably against the Fourteen Points that had been accepted by the Allies as the base of settlement.
Never very patient in such matters, for the business of appointment was always an irrita- tion to him, the President ended his difficulties by selecting Secretary of War Baker and Mr. Henry White. The choice of Mr. Baker was a wise one, for, whatever his lacks in other direc- tions, he has a mind that is as quick as it is tireless, as deep as it is brilliant, and he is never more impressive than in those mental clashes that call for the nice commingling of firmness and adroitness. Realizing, as the President did not, that his presence was more necessary in the United States than in Paris, Mr. Baker declined
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the honor, an exhibition of unselfish devotion to
.duty for which he has never been given credit.
The man to have put in his place was ex-Secre- tary McAdoo, not only by reason of his force and genius, but because of the fact that his control of the Treasury throughout the war had given him an intimate familiarity with European condi- tions and needs. There was never any chance of this, however, for the President's horror of i_nepotism is close akin, to mania. Gen. Tasker H. Bliss, while a man of rare scholarship and very real ability, stood in the public mind merely as a soldier. The selection of Mr. Henry White was a very honest effort to please the Republicans as well as a very sincere attempt to strengthen the Commission by a very necessary note. Mr. White had been an ambassador to Italy and France by the appointment of Republican Presidents, had served as the head of many American delegations to international confer- ences, and he knew the European diplomatic mind as a fox knows its burrow.
As a matter of fact, however, the American Commission to Negotiate Peace was not an im- portant body in the true sense of the word. When one thought of France, England, and Italy it was not in terms of commissions, but in terms of Sonnino, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando. Just as each of these was the sole source of power, his nation's picked champion, so was it a foregone conclusion that Woodrow Wilson would have to stand out as America's source of power, America's picked champion. What forecast itself was no round-
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table argument, shared in by scores of com- missioners, but a grapple of four wills, a test of strength confined to four chosen leaders. What the President needed on the Commission, and he knew it, was not counselors, but men who would guard his back. — ^
The truly important body — and this the President realized from the first — was the group of experts that went along with the Commission, the pick of the country's most famous specialists in finance, history, economics, international law, colonial questions, map-making, ethnic dis- tinctions, and all those other matters that were to come up at the Peace Conference. They constituted the President's arsenal of facts, and even on board the George Washington, in the very first conference, he made clear his de- pendence upon them.
"You are, in truth, my advisers," he said, "for when I ask you for information I will have no way of checking it up, and must act upon it unquestioningly. We will be deluged with claims plausibly and convincingly presented. It will be your task to establish the truth or falsity of these claims out of your specialized knowledges, so that my positions may be taken fairly and intelligently."
It was this expert advice that he depended upon, and it was a well of information that never failed him. At the head of the financiers and economists were such men as Bernard Baruch, Herbert Hoover, Norman Davis, and Vance McCormick. As head of the War Industries Board, in many respects the most powerful of
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all the civil organizations called into being by the war, Mr. Baruch had won the respect and confidence of American business by his courage, honesty, and rare ability. At his side were such men as Frank W. Taussig, chairman of the Tariff Commission; Alex. Legg, general man- ager of the International Harvester Com- pany; and Charles McDowell, manager of the Fertilizer and Chemical Departments of Armour & Co. — both men familiar with business con- ditions and customs in every country in the world; Leland Summers, an international me- chanical engineer and an expert in manufactur- ing, chemicals, and steel; James C. Pennie, the international patent lawyer; Frederick Neilson and Chandler Anderson, authorities on interna- tional law; and various others of equal caliber.
Mr. Hoover was aided and advised by the men who were his representatives in Europe throughout the war, and Mr. McCormick, head of the War Trade Board, gathered about him in Paris all of the men who had handled trade matters for him in the various countries of the world.
Mr. Davis, representing the Treasury Depart- ment, had as his associates Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, Mr. Albert Strauss, and Jeremiah Smith of Boston.
Dr. Sidney E. Mezes, president of the College of the City of New York, went with the President at the head of a brilliant group of specialists, all of whom had been working for a year and more on the problems that would be presented at the Peace Conference. Among the more
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important may be mentioned: Prof. Charles H. Haskins, dean of the Graduate School of Harvard University, specialist on Alsace-Lor- raine and Belgium; Dr. Isaiah Bowman, di- rector of the American Geographical Society, general territorial specialist; Prof. Allyn A. Young, head of the Department of Economics at Cornell; George Louis Beer, formerly of Colum- bia, and an authority on colonial possessions; Prof. W. L. Westermann, head of the History Department at the University of Wisconsin and specialist on Turkey; R. H. Lord, professor of history at Harvard, specialist on Russia and Poland; Roland B. Dixon, professor of ethnog- raphy at Harvard; Prof. Clive Day, head of the Department of Economics at Yale, specialist on the Balkans; W. E. Lunt, professor of his- tory at Haverford College, specialist on northern Italy; Charles Seymour, professor of history at Yale, specialist on Austria-Hungary; Mark Jef- ferson, professor of geography at Michigan State Normal, and Prof. James T. Shotwell, professor of history at Columbia.
These groups were the President's real coun- selors and advisers, and there was not a day throughout the Peace Conference that he did * not call upon them and depend upon them.
And so the expedition sailed. As the George Washington left its anchorage and slipped down the Hudson to the sea, a thousand whistles screamed, a million onlookers cheered, and a great tity rocked to the waves of an exultant patriotism. An old naval officer, standing on the deck, recalled the return of Dewey in 1898,
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the madness of welcome that awaited the hero of Manila, and reflected in bitterness that in less than a year the cheers had turned to abuse. He harked back to Washington, beloved and honored in the day of victory, yet leaving office in humiliation and heartsickness, followed by jeers and imprecations. "We are people of the hive," he said. "When the king bee has per- formed we kill him."
Signs were not wanting to support the gloomy prophecy. Already the signal fires of partizan- ship were blazing from every hilltop, and Re- publican leaders were sending the burning arrow from state to state. On November 27th, five days before the President's departure, Mr. Roose- velt had cried this message to Europe, plain intimation that the Republican majority in the Senate would support the Allies in any repudia- tion of the League of Nations and the Fourteen Points:
Our allies and our enemies and Mr. Wilson himself should all understand that Mr. Wilson has no authority whatever to speak for the American people at this time. His leader- ship has just been emphatically repudiated by them. The newly elected Congress comes far nearer than Mr. Wilson to having a right to speak the purposes of the American people at this moment. Mr. Wilson and his Fourteen Points and his four supplementary points and his five complementary points and all his utterances every which way have ceased to have any shadow of right to be accepted as expressive of the will of the American people.
He is President of the United States. He is a part of the treaty-making power; but he is only part. If he acts in good faith to the American people, he will not claim on the other side of the water any representative capacity
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in himself to speak for the American people. He will say frankly that his personal leadership has been repudiated and that he now has merely the divided official leadership which he shares with the Senate.
. . . America played in the closing months of war a gallant part, but not in any way the leading part, and she played this part only by acting in strictest agreement with our allies and under the joint high command. She should take precisely the same attitude at the Peace Con- ference. We have lost in this war about 236,000 men killed and wounded. England and France have lost about 7,000,000. Italy and Belgium and the other Allies have doubtless lost 3,000,000 more. Of the terrible sacrifice which has enabled the Allies to win the victory, America has contributed just about 2 per cent.
It is our business to act with our allies and to show an undivided front with them against any move of our late enemies. I am no Utopian. I understand entirely that there can be shifting alliances.
But in the present war we have won only by standing shoulder to shoulder with our allies and presenting an undivided front to the enemy. It is our business to show the same loyalty and good faith at the Peace Conference. Let it be clearly understood that the American people absolutely stand behind France, England, Italy, Belgium, and the other Allies at the Peace Conference, just as she has stood with them during the last eighteen months of the war. Let every difference of opinion be settled among the Allies themselves, and then let them impose their com- mon will on the nations responsible for the hideous disaster which has almost wrecked mankind.
What Mr. Roosevelt did, in words as plain as his pen could marshal, was to inform the Allies that they were at liberty to disregard the President, the League of Nations, and the Four- teen Points, and that the Republican party would stand as a unit for as hard a peace] as Foch chose to dictate. Had he signed a power
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of attorney he could not have given any freer hand to Lloyd George and Clemenceau.
The President was at all times aware of the I risks that he ran, the dangers that he faced. The joy of the armistice, that caught every one in its tidal sweep, was, perhaps, his last experience with unalloyed happiness. I was on the George Washington as his guest, my errand to France haying no other object than to wind up the affairs of the Committee on Public Information. The legends that associated my work with censorship and repression made demobilization the part of wisdom, and the same reasons forced the conclusion that any personal connection with the Peace Conference would be distorted and attacked. One evening, as we walked the deck, I spoke to the President of the tremendous help that his addresses had been to us in our work — of the wholehearted response of the peoples of earth, their gladness in his words, the joyful liberation of their thought. The one incom- pleteness was in connection with the Central Powers. In a score of ways we had reached the public opinion of these countries with the mes- sage of America, but what seemed necessary now was to put the story of American idealism before them in all of its splendid fullness. New governments were forming in Poland, Czecho- slovakia, and Jugoslavia and not only was it important to impress them with the true nobility of our purpose, but there were also the sullen- nesses of Germany, Austria, and Hungary that might be wiped out by an explicit relation of the facts.
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The President stood silent for quite a while, and when he turned to me at last his face was as bleak as the gray stretch of sunless water.
"It is a great thing that you have done," he said, "but I am wondering if you have not un- consciously spun a net for me from which there is no escape. It is to America that the whole world turns to-day, not only with its wrongs, but with its hopes and grievances. The hungry expect us to feed them, the roofless look to us for shelter, the sick of heart and body depend upon us for cure. All of these expectations have in them the quality of terrible urgency. There must be no delay. It has been so always. People will endure their tyrants for years, but they tear their deliverers to pieces if a millennium is not created immediately. Yet you know, and I know, that these ancient wrongs, these present unhappinesses, are not to be remedied in a day or with a wave of the hand. What I seem to see — with all my heart I hope that I am wrong — I is a tragedy^fjdisapppintment.**
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PARIS AND PROCRASTINATION
BREST brimmed with flower-bearing children — it seemed as if the jardins des enfants of France had been poured into the streets of the town — and on the way to Paris the train passed through a veritable lane of women and little ones crying: "Vive VAmerique! Five le Presi- dent!" They crowded the stations, they lined the fields, and their shrill pipings were the last thing we heard at night, the first thing in the early dawn. Paris was splendid! All that was fine and brave and generous in the nation poured out like wine in those first days.
Dear and heart-warming as it was, however, the President had not come to France for his gratification, but on a stern errand th'at brooked no delay. He asked at once about the Con- ference, and there began the series of delays that were carefully and skilfully planned to give time for the subsidence of popular emotion. It was explained that Lloyd George was fighting for his political life in the English elections, that Orlando and the Italians were not ready, that France could not bear to let him commence serious conversations until he had received her full tribute — and seen the devastated area; and there were also the plans that had been arranged
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for his visits to England, Italy, and Belgium. The statesmen knew well that had the Con- ference convened upon the President's arrival, it would have been suicide to resist a single Wilson proposition, for the peoples of the Allied countries were still in the grip of a great joy, a great gratitude, and a great faith. In equal degree these wise old men knew that it would be only a matter of weeks before these very people, going back to their ruined homes and desolate lives, would be thinking in terms of victory and indemnities.
The President was bitterly disappointed at the delay, but, since there was no other alternative, he accepted the situation with good grace. His one successful resistance was to the repeated effort to have him visit the devastated area. It was obviously the French desire to stir him to a passion of resentment against the Germans, and, keen as were Mr. Wilson's sympathies, he did not mean to let himself be swayed from high purposes by any process of harrowing. At every point, and at every moment, there was this organized campaign on the part of the politicians to center thought on France's wrongs and to keep discussion away from the League of Nations and the Fourteen Points. All the while the Paris papers filled their columns with despatches from the United States, telling of the President's repudiation by the Republican Senate majority, and informing Europe that the American people were behind France, not Wilson.
In England an even more disturbing mani- 165
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festation of intent was witnessed. To win the election of December i8th Lloyd George was forswearing himself and his pledges with a shamelessness that was equaled only by that of the English people in forcing and applauding such a course. Speaking on November nth, the day that the armistice was signed, Lloyd George made this declaration of faith :
They [the conditions of peace] must lead to a settlement which will be fundamentally just. No settlement that contravenes the principles of eternal justice will be a per- manent one. The peace of 1871 imposed by Germany on France outraged all the principles of justice and fair play. Let us be warned by that example. We must not allow any sense of revenge, any spirit of greed, any grasping desire, to override the fundamental principles of righteous- ness. Vigorous attempts will be made to hector and bully the government in an endeavor to make them depart from the strict principles of right, and to satisfy some base, sordid, squalid idea of vengeance and of avarice. We must relentlessly set our faces against that. . . .
A large number of small nations have been reborn in Europe, and these will require a League of Nations to protect them against the covetousness of ambitious and grasping neighbors. In my judgment a League of Nations is absolutely essential to permanent peace. We shall go to the Peace Conference to guarantee that a League of Nations is a reality.
On December nth, at a time when the Presi- dent of the United States was on the sea, coming to Europe to receive the fulfilment of the pledges made him, Lloyd George was begging votes on a platform of "Hang the Kaiser" and "Make Germany pay the whole cost of the war." As he said in Paris, grinning as though it were all a joke, "Heaven only knows what I would
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have had to promise them if the campaign had lasted a week longer."
England cheered the President even more . enthusiastically than Paris — the same England that had voted to repudiate his program just one week before — and even as the ovation rang loudest Clemenceau was informing the Cham- ber of Deputies that the old-fashioned system of alliances must be maintained. Fairly shouting his defiance to the League of Nations, he de- clared on December 3 1st that "there is an old system which appears condemned to-day, and to which I do not fear to say that I remain faithful at this moment. Countries have or- ganized the defense of their frontiers with the necessary elements and the balance of power."
The Italian situation also had its disquieting features. While in Paris on December igth the King of Italy and his advisers had sounded out the President on the subject of annexing Fiume and a large section of the Dalmatian, coast. This plan did not have the full-hearted support of either the King or Orlando, and as yet had not been mentioned to the Italian people, but was entirely the jingoistic conception of the reactionary Sonnino. The President did not attempt to conceal either his sense of shock or his unalterable opposition. He made it clear that he stood for every Italian claim that had been openly advanced, and would support the return to Italy of the Trentino, Triest, and part of Istria, but that he saw nothing but in- justice and new war in the original and startling proposition to seize the only possible seaport of
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the Jugoslavs. The Italians seemed to ac- quiesce, but the surrender was more apparent than real.
On the journey to Rome Ambassador Page boarded the President's train at Modane, and in his party was a messenger from Mr. Hearley, the Commissioner for Italy of the Committee on Public Information. He told me that the program for the President, as arranged by Or- lando and Sonnino, had excited wide-spread discontent by its exclusion of the people them- selves. I looked over the sheet brought by the ambassador and saw for myself that the plan of entertainment considered only the royal and official circles. Mr. Hearley 's suggestion was that the President had an empty hour after his luncheon with the Queen Mother, and that as he drove back to the Quirinal the citizens of Rome were eager to have him stop at the Piazza Vene- zia for a meeting that would be the people's own. I took the matter up with the President at once, and after consultation with the ambassador, who saw no impropriety in the arrangement, I was given permission to telegraph the Presi- \ dent's consent to Mr. Hearley.
At twelve o'clock of the day Admiral Grayson brought word that the "official entertainers" had entered a very vigorous protest against the plan and that the President thought it wise to cancel the engagement. I explained to the admiral that this was impossible, as thousands were al- ready gathered at the Piazza. Venezia and nothing but misunderstanding and bitter dis- appointment could result from the announcement
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that the President had changed his mind at the last moment. The invitation had been extended and accepted in good faith, and, as the pledge of the President had been given, surely the Italian government would not wish to put him in a position of extreme embarrassment. The mes- sage came back that the President would keep the appointment, but that the hour would have to be four o'clock instead of two-thirty o'clock. Orlando and Sonnino, working quickly, had arranged for a number of interviews that were not on the program.
As early as one o'clock the great square facing the Umberto Memorial was filled with men, women, and children, and by two there must have been 50,000 people packed in the Piazza and the near-by streets. Four o'clock came, and with it a message from the President to tell the waiting throngs that he was being delayed for half an hour. Alpini, Arditi, and plain citizens ran through the crowd like mad, shouting the news. Despite the fact that all had been stand- ing for four hours, a great and happy cheer went up when it was learned that the President would come eventually. Time dragged on, and it was not until six o'clock that we heard the trumpets and saw the outriders that marked the approach of the King and the President. Every one figured, as a matter of course, that a stop would be made, but the procession swept by at full speed on its way to the Chamber of Deputies. A groan went up from the gathered thousands, and with the Latin emotionalism that one finds only in Italy women cried and men threw their
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hats upon the ground and tore wildly at their hair.
It was not until the next day that I learned the full story of the wretched afternoon. Un- able to change the President's plans, Orlando and Sonnino went to work deliberately to block them. Interview after interview was arranged in haste and thrust forward with peremptoriness, and ^vhen the President, out of all patience, was about to put on his coat to go out the King himself was produced for the purpose of an offi- cial conference on matters of state. At last there was the understanding that the car would be stopped at the Piazza Venezia, but this was not done. It was told to me later, by a sym- pathetic member of the court circle, that the reason for it all was Sonnino's fear that the President, speaking extemporaneously to the people, might bring up the Fiume proposal. This would have been fatal to the plans of the politicians, for they had not yet commenced their propaganda campaign, and all Italy was thinking in terms of peace and justice, not in terms of annexation and renewed hostilities. Undoubtedly the President guessed at this, for in his speech before the Chamber of Deputies he declared that the full independence of the Balkan States must not be interfered with by any dream of annexation.
The planned interruptions of the afternoon, reaching a climax in the deceit that carried him by the Piazza Venezia without a halt, stirred the President to a deep and bitter resentment, and the last act of the drama added to his dis-
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trust of Sonnino. A statement of the affair, cautious enough to guard against offense and yet sufficiently explicit to absolve the President in the minds of the people, was killed by the Italian censorship. In its stead the official press carried the bland announcement that the President had never had any intention of speak- ing to the people at the Piazza Venezia, the false report being the work of trouble-makers.
Throughout the stay in Rome it was amus- ingly apparent that only the King and the peo- ple believed in the President and his ideals. The Cabinet, dominated by Sonnino, epitomized reaction. As a matter of fact, the King himself was the only man in the Italian government who seemed to have any faith in democracy /at all. A sturdy little figure, homely, but very appealing, his simplicity went home to the heart of the President on the occasion of their first meeting in Paris.
"Good Lord!" the King groaned as he looked around him at the splendors of the Hotel Murat, "we can't give you anything like this at the Quirinal."
The President reached Paris on the morning of January 7th, and was dismayed to learn that Lloyd George had not yet arrived, and that a visit to Belgium was in process of arrangement. As firmly as might be, the President served notice that touring was at an end and that he must insist upon an instant convocation of the Peace Conference. His very evident indigna- tion forced an end to the deliberate dawdling, and on January I2th the first meeting of the
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Supreme Council was held. A primary task was the amendment of the armistice terms, and, this done, the President drove straight at the fundamental point, inviting a test of strength on the question of the League of Nations. He won. When the discussion ended announcement was made that the League of Nations would be "at the head of the order of the day at the first full meeting of the Peace Conference."
On January I5th, however, he suffered a reverse, the Council deciding against open sessions.
^^M. Tardieu in the course of a recent article ^attempts to prove that Clemenceau was at all times an advocate of publicity. Nothing is farther from the truth. The President and Lloyd George made the fight for the admission of the press, and were voted down by the union of France, Italy, and Japan. It was only under the pressure of an aroused public opinion that Clemenceau and his two supporters yielded to the extent of permitting the full sessions of the Conference to be open. Frankly, the French governments attitude toward publicity was a source of irritation throughout the entire Con- ference. Before leaving Washington the Presi- dent had announced the suspension of American censorship of every kind, and had requested both France and England to pursue a similar course, stating his belief that the peoples of the world were entitled to the fullest possible in- formation with respect to the Peace Treaty. Both governments agreed, but on arrival in Paris it was discovered that the British were
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living up to their pledge only in part, while the French were disregarding it entirely. The Presi- dent's protests were specific and repeated, but only England heeded them.
The cleverness of the French was never more apparent than in their concealment of responsi- bility for the unfortunate condition, for it was even the case that they persuaded many to believe that President Wilson himself was the source of repression. So intelligent an observer as Dr. E. J. Dillon was deceived, and has writ- ten as follows in his Inside Story of the Peace Conference:
It was characteristic of the system that two American citizens were employed to read the cablegrams arriving from the United States to French newspapers. The object was the suppression of such messages as tended to throw doubt on the useful belief that the people of the great American Republic were solid behind their Presi- dent, ready to approve his decisions and acts, and that his cherished Covenant, sure of ratification, would serve as a safe guaranty to all the states which the application of his various principles might leave strategically exposed. In this way many interesting items of intelligence from the United States were kept out of the newspapers, while others were mutilated and almost all were delayed. Pro- tests were unavailing. Nor was it until several months were gone by that the French public became aware of the existence of a strong current of American opinion which favored a critical attitude toward Mr. Wilson's policy and justified misgivings as to the finality of his decisions. It was a sorry expedient and an unsuccessful one.
Nothing could be farther from the facts. There was no such censorship, and never at any time were "two American citizens" employed for any such purpose. The proof of it may be
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
found in the Paris press of December and Janu- ary. Every paper, on its front page, carried daily despatches from Washington informing the French people that Wilson was not the spokes- man of the United States, but only a repu- diated politician. On December i8th Sena- tor Knox made a bitter attack upon the League of Nations, declaring that the whole question should wait "until the Allies had imposed their terms," and on December 2Oth Senator Lodge delivered a lengthy address along the same lines. Both of these speeches were "played up" in the French and English press, and other regular features were the assaults of Roosevelt. Also on December 2ist Senator Lodge made a speech in favor of Clemenceau's appeal for "secret sessions," and this was reprinted with keen delight. As early as January 1st such papers as L'Echo de Paris and the London Post were carrying editorials stating that the attitude of the Republican Senate majority "placed full power in the hands of the Allies," but that this power must be used wisely, as any open humilia- tion of Mr. Wilson might be resented.
Mr. Ray Stannard Baker, attached to the American Peace Commission at the time, has given proof of the extent to which the campaign was organized and directed:
A secret document showing how the French press — a large part of which is notoriously controlled by the government — was being marshaled against the influence of the President and in support of French interests actually came into the possession of one of the American commis- sioners. It was in the form of official suggestions of
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policy of French newspaper editors, and it contained three items:
First, they were advised to emphasize the opposition to Mr. Wilson in America, by giving all the news possible regarding the speeches of Republican Senators and other American critics.
Second, to emphasize the disorder and anarchy in Russia, thereby stimulating the movement toward Allied military intervention.
Third, to publish articles showing the ability of Germany to pay a large indemnity.
At all times there was plain evidence of this secret relation between__£EiIEHn3]ugovernment and the French press. The President, induced to regard private discussions as sacredly con- fidential, kept his pledge to the point of an absurd reticence. No American newspaper man could win a word from him with reference to any controversial matter until decisions were reached and duly announced. On the other hand, the French contentions, the French points of view, were communicated secretly but regu- larly to the French press, a pleasant practice that continued until the President served warn- ing that he would not submit to it a day longer.
Repudiated and assailed by the Republican majority, every attack being reprinted with joyousness by a French and English press, meet- ing at every turn the stubborn antagonism of cynical statesmen bent upon a policy of delay until they were ready to stab, and faced by the patent fact that the "power of the people" was confined to the presentation of flowers and city keys, it was only the driving force of the Presi- dent's faith that compelled the meeting of the
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Supreme Council of January I2th and secured the selection of the League of Nations as a first order of business. And with this faith as his sole support he turned now to the first meeting of the Peace Conference, where the real battle was to be fought.
XI
"THE BIG FOUR'
NO council-chamber ever witnessed the meet- \ ing of four more widely dissimilar person- alities than those that faced in Paris for the pur- pose of restoring peace and order to a distracted, war-torn world. In character, temperament, training, culture, ideas, and ideals the President, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Sonnino stood out as studies in contrast, and these differences were rendered more acute by a conflict in aims that was as instant as it was fundamental. Eng- land, France, and Italy were gathered as victors to impose terms upon a defeated enemy, their whole intent embittered by the wretchedness and desolation at their backs. The settlement with Germany accomplished, and accomplished according to the Mosaic formula, they were willing to talk of world peace and international concert, but not until then. Only the mind of the President was unclouded by any passion of anger \ or self-interest.
The Allied point of view found a vigorous and complete expression in Clemenceau, better known as "The Tiger." Mr. Keynes, more concerned with striking phrase than true characterization, may call Clemenceau "dry in soul and empty
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of hope,"1 but no one else gained any such impres- sion. The whole soul of the man flamed with a passion for France, his hopes for France were insistent demands, and to the support of an aggressive nationalism he brought the strength of a bull and the direct charge of a rhinoceros. As a youth he had writhed under the Prussian entry into Paris; from 1871 to 1914 he had seen his country exist as a nation by the sufferance of Berlin, and it was the memory of these un- happy, humiliating years that dominated him at every stage of the Conference. Reparation was not a determining consideration with him by any means. What he wanted, what France de- manded, was security. Better a prostrate Ger- many, too weak to pay, than a Germany strong enough to pay, and therefore srong enough to repeat the assaults of 1870 and 1914. It was this fear, burned into French consciousness by a half-century of dread, that Clemenceau felt and expressed. When he presented claims that violated the principles of settlement it was in no spirit of mean rapacity, but in obedience to a very natural instinct of self-preservation. France was sick of living under the Prussian sword. The simplicity of Clemenceau's problem added immeasurably to the innate strength of the man. He stood for France, for France alone, and the devastated area was a background that not only robbed the stand of sordidness, but gave it a certain heroic quality. Squat and powerful, his long arms reaching well below his knees, his old face gnarled into the shape of a
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. 178
"THE BIG FOUR"
bludgeon, he was an embodiment of the primi- tive, the savage, as he stood over the -bleeding, prostrate form of France and bellowed his challenges.
The President, on the other hand, was cast in no such picturesque role. He fought for principles, always less dramatic than the personal, and neither could he point behind him to a war- ravaged land. He had to find his foothold among seeming abstractions, while Clemenceau was privileged to fix his feet on the solid gran- ite of an uncompromising demand. Clemenceau could talk concretely, while the President was forced to talk generally. He could appear the man of action, while the President, in the nature of things, had to look the man of words.
Orlando, the Italian delegate, was a plump, cheery little man, blessed with some approach to democratic vision as well as a very real ability, but at his back, controlling and directing, was always Baron Sidney Sonnino, the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Son of an Italian Jew and an English mother, Sonnino had the age and cynicism of Clemenceau without a single one of the Frenchman's generous passions. Hair white as snow, his age-stooped shoulders and hawk face joined to give him the appearance of a bird of prey. An imperialist in every inch of his old body, believing implicitly in secret diplomacy and the balance of power, Sonnino foresaw the triumphs of the Allies at the time Italy entered the war, and dreamed a dream of divided spoils that would restore the ancient glories of his country. The claim to Fiume, cutting off the is \ 179
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Slavic hinterland from any Adriatic port, was his conception entirely, and at every point in the Conference he stood like iron against "Uto- pian theories" and "emotional experiments."
Working by himself, Orlando would have been of inestimable value to his country, but Sonnino was a millstone that dragged him down. Taci- turn to the point of sullenness, offensive to the point of insolence, and holding himself aloof at all times, Sonnino was the most disliked man in Paris. His constant pull and haul with Orlando also had the effect of giving a weird effect of contrariety to every Italian position. What was said or done one day would be unsaid and undone the next, and as a result even the best friends of Italy were always in doubt as to how she wished to be served.
As for Lloyd George, there is no parallel for him in American politics, or in world politics, for that matter. So completely does the quick- silver quality of the man defy terse characteriza- tion that it is, perhaps, the safest course to let his political record define him. It was by rea- son of his savage assault upon England's estab- lished order and the English ruling class that Lloyd George first rose to power. The House of Lords was anathema to him, and not even William D. Haywood ever inveighed so elo- quently against the tyrannies and oppressions of Special Privilege and Vested Interest. I was in England in 1910 at the time when he was driving through the Parliament act that stripped the Lords of their veto power, and every true Briton able to support a white collar and a top-
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hat cried out against the Welshman as an assas- sin who meant to "murder them in their beds," a form of death that, for some reason, seems to hold a peculiar horror for Englishmen.
By his passionate championship 6f labor and his strenuous advocacy of home rule for Ire- land he was the idol of these groups, and Asquith, forced to recognize his power in the Liberal party, had to make a place for him in the Cabinet. Growing in radicalism, in order to effect a dis- tinction between himself and Mr. Asquith's more conservative leadership, there is no doubt that Lloyd George was reaching out for the reins of power, but the sudden explosion of war com- pelled a change in his plans. His patriotism may not be questioned, but even the most ardent patriotism can be made to take on the color of one's desires. Out of his alliance with North- cliffe came the bitter, unceasing attack upon Asquith that eventually enabled Lloyd George to aid in the overthrow of his party leader with every appearance of sincere purpose. He failed, however, to carry the bulk of the Liberal party with him in his desertion, and this compelled an alliance with his ancient enemies, the Tories. No matter what the country, reactionaries are ever hard bargainers and skilful traders, and while Lloyd George rose to be Premier, the price that he paid was the recantation of many of his labor principles, complete abandonment of home rule, and the placing of such Tories as Bonar Law, Carson, Milner, Curzon, and Balfour at his right hand in seats of power.
From that day to this his career has been 181
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marked by one patent opportunism after the other. Even while basing his December cam- paign upon assertions that Germany would be squeezed to the last pfennig and that the Kaiser would be tried and hanged in the Tower of Lon- don, he was solemnly assuring the liberal thought of England that he would stand for the League of Nations and a "peace of justice." In Paris he fairly bubbled with enthusiasm over the "rights of small peoples" and at the same time ordered fresh troops to Ireland, Egypt, and India to crush the rebellions of unhappy peoples. One moment with Clemenceau and Sonnino, the next a fine supporter of the President, he swung like a pendulum between the compulsions of his own decent principles and the necessity of placating his Tory masters. To quote the words of Doctor Dillon, an Englishman and a former admirer of the Premier, "his conduct appeared to careful observers to be traced mainly by outside influences, and as these were various and changing, the result was a zigzag. One day he would lay down a certain proposition as a dogma not to be modified, and before the week was out he would advance the contrary proposition and maintain that with equal warmth and doubtless with equal conviction. Guided by no sound knowledge and devoid of the ballast of principle, he was tossed and driven hither and thither like a wreck on the ocean."
A curious compound of drama, oratory, craft, cynicism, vision, demagoguery, and idealism, the perfection of the blend made Lloyd George at once a hope and a despair. Only the brilliant
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audacity of the man, his humor, bubbling gaiety, and charm, enabled him to carry off situations that would have shamed another.
At no time was the President deceived as to the character or intent of his colleagues. One of his most valuable possessions is an uncanny gift of appraisement, and from the first he assessed each man fairly and accurately. The impas- sioned nationalism of Clemenceau, the medie- valism of Sonnino, and the "grasshopper mind" of Lloyd George were simple of understanding after the first few meetings, and with every per- sonal obstacle clear in his mind, he set to work on the accomplishment of the purposes that had brought him to Paris. Mr. Keynes, with glib authoritativeness, may declare "that the President had thought out nothing; when it came to practice his thoughts were nebulous and incomplete," but the facts dispute this impudent assertion at every turn. What the President carried to the Peace Conference was a definite, concrete plan for a League of Nations, not as an afterthought, but as an integral part of the treaty, its very foundation, in fact, for he saw plainly that the one hope of a just peace, a world peace, was in the quick creation of an independent, impartial machinery of adjustment and adjudication.
In driving to his goal, however, he was arbitra- rily limited both by internal and external re- straints. Every warm impulse of his nature stirred to the pathos of the desolated homesteads of France, Belgium, Serbia, and Italy, and even while he opposed many of the demands of
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their spokesmen as calculated to continue the very evils that had worked the wretchedness, his sympathy was at all times with them. Com- radeship is an instinct with him, and he could not have forgotten, had he wished to do so, that America had fought side by side with these peoples. This very real understanding of their wrongs, this sense of blood brotherhood, made him patient of chicane, unfalteringly tolerant of deceit and selfishness, and robbed him of weapons that it would otherwise have been in his power to use.
There is also this to bear in mind. When the President, in behalf of America, served notice upon the world that the Conference must present a "peace of justice," he did not mean a "peace of parole" by any means. Much of the mis- understanding that muddles public thought to-day is due to this confusion of justice with such words as mercy, leniency, escape, con- donement, etc. The President suffered from no such confusion. What Germany had at- tempted was an intolerable thing, and it was right that she should be made to pay for the attempt. The wrong that Germany had sought to do the world and to civilization was the greatest wrong in all history, and there must be no weak purpose with regard to punishment. There was to be no thought of crushing the German people, but what had to be burned into the consciousness of the German people was a due sense of responsibility for the horrors wrought by their mad ruler. Thus the President ,spoke and thus he thought.
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Another difficulty in the path of the President was the American situation. Each day saw the French and English press filled with quota- tions from the speeches of Republican Senators and Republican politicians in which both the President and his policies were repudiated and a "peace of victory" urged. Particular emphasis was placed upon Mr. Hays's declaration that "America will uphold her allies in whatever reparation they may exact for the frightful outrages inflicted upon them by the accursed Huns." x.
That no sympathy went out to the President \ is either a compliment to the strength of the man or else a bitter commentary upon the fair play of America, for his position was pitiable and desperate. Instead of support from the people whose declared ideals he championed, there came only the steady shrilling of the Senate, vile in its abuse, treacherous in its desertion of war aims, enthusiastic in its encouragement of every attack upon the President and his principles. Facing him were men who jeered him in their souls and whose minds were set on his defeat. The obvious course was forbidden to him by his conscience. If, for instance, he appealed to the peoples of Europe against their f rulers, what then? Granting that the iron cen- sorship of France, England, and Italy would have permitted his message to be printed, does any one imagine that they would have presented it fairly? Nothing is more certain than that a great cry of "pro-Germanism" would have been raised at once, and that the wild angers aroused
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would have been deaf to argument or reason. America itself, still hot with battle anger, would have joined in the clamor no less than the Allied countries, and the world would have surged again to its former hates.
For him to have returned to the United States, as a protest, would have been not merely deser- tion, but actual betrayal. Left to themselves, with every restraint removed, the Allies would have harked back to the Congress of Vienna for their inspiration, giving themselves entirely over to their fears, hates, and rapacities, and deciding upon a peace treaty at the last that would have doomed the world to resume life under the old menaces of catastrophe. Instead of a League of Nations, with its great world court for the peaceful settlement of interna- tional disputes, only a return to the evil balance of power; instead of universal disarmament, freeing the back of humanity from a crushing burden, more millions into navies and even larger standing armies; instead of permanent peace, only the certainty of new and more terrible wars. There was but one decision possible to be made in honor, and that was to fight it out. This decision the President made, and he brought to its support a courage that never wavered, a faith that beat down opportunism, a resourceful- ness that bewildered his opponents, and a char- acter that compelled their reluctant respect.
Mr. Keynes finds it in his conscience to write that the President's mind was "slow and un- adaptable," that he was somewhat "dull" and often "bewildered"; that his hands, "while
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capable and fairly strong, were wanting in sensi- tiveness and finesse," that he lacked "the dominating intellectual equipment necessary to cope with subtle and dangerous spellbinders," and, crowning fault of all, "he was not only insensitive to his surroundings in the external sense, he was not sensitive to his environment at all. What chance could such a man have against Mr. Lloyd George's unerring, almost medium-like sensibility to every one immediately round him? To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with tele- pathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's buff in that party."
This expression of British malice, so peculiarly revelational of the intense dislike for America and Americans that dominates the average Englishman, is best answered by the record. The President met Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Sonnino on their own ground, fought them with their own weapons, and won. Before many days had passed his Tory associates were hysteri- cal in their resentment against Lloyd George for his weakness, contemptuously referring to him as "Wilson's puppy dog," while the reaction- ary French newspapers and the jingoistic group in the Chamber of Deputies were equally bitter
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against Clemenceau for permitting "the auto- cratic Wilson" to bully him into the surrender of French rights. The same hoarse screaming came from Italy and Japan.
The League of Nations, urged only by the President and resisted by every Premier, was not only adopted, but adopted as a primary and integral part of the Peace Treaty, the very key- stone of the arch.
The German colonies, confidently looked upon by England as loot, and the weak nations of the world, about to be divided as part of the spoils, were all withdrawn from conquest and annexa- tion and placed under the supervision and pro- tection of the League of Nations.
The French claim to the sovereignty of the Saar Basin and the Rhine Valley was disputed successfully, likewise the Italian claim to the Jugoslavic seaport of Fiume, and Japan, instead of holding Shantung as a prize of war, was forced to accept the role of an economic concessionaire.
The German indemnity, instead of being fixed at $40,000,000,000, was set at about $14,000,- 000,000, and placed under the direction of a Reparations Commission that has the power to accommodate payments to the needs and abilities of the German people.
Mr. Keynes may* feel that the "old Presby- terian" was "bamboozled," but no crow of self- congratulation has yet escaped Lloyd George, Clemenceau, or Sonnino, and the bitterness of the imperialistic press of France, England, and Italy continues unsoothed.
XII
THE OPENING BATTLE
HTHE sources of confusion and antagonism •»• with respect to the treaty narrow down, under analysis, to two fundamental miscon- ceptions: the first as to the power and purpose of the Peace Conference itself, and the second as to its emphasis and procedure. There is a somewhat general opinion, carefully cultivated, that the Paris gathering had the scope and authorities of a world court, and that it blundered criminally and fatally in failing to realize that its problems were not political or territorial, but financial and economic.
The Peace Conference, as a matter of fact, was in no sense a concert of nations, but merely the assemblage of a group of victorious belliger- ents for the sole business of determining matters that concerned themselves and themselves alone. They were joined only to re-establish their own lives, to heal their own wounds, for any attempt to order the affairs of the whole world, in the absence of every neutral nation, would have been unwarranted and resentable. The single con- cern of the Conference was the settlement of the war and questions arising out of the war. All else was automatically excluded.
It was the case, to be sure, that definite bases 189
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
of settlement had been declared, and that many solemn pledges bound the gathering to certain great principles in connection with the estab- lishment of a new world order with permanent peace as its object. The application of these principles to concrete injustices, however, was neither the right nor province of the Conference. The freedom of the seas, self-determination, disarmament, arbitration — these and all other related hopes were not in the authority of the Conference, except as it chose to approve them, but waited necessarily on the formation of an inclusive, independent, and impartial body such as was forecast by the proposed League of Nations. Ireland, Egypt, and Morocco had no more reason to be considered than Porto Rico, Cuba, or the Philippines, for they were not Ger- man possessions nor were they at stake in the war. Their wrongs, and they were undoubted, were for the adjudication of a world court, not for the wrangle of a group of belligerents. For America to have attempted to give England orders as to Ireland would have been as futile and absurd as for England to have issued a mandate to America with respect to the Philip- pines. The one result of such impudences would have been an exaggeration of chaos, the loss of the one hope that lighted the despairs of oppressed peoples.
Refusing to recognize the obviousness of the situation, Irish, Egyptian, and Hindu delega- tions hurled themselves upon Paris and the President, demanding instant adjustment of their wrongs and refusing to admit that any-
190
THE OPENING BATTLE
thing else possessed larger importance. But for the tragedy of it, there would have been laughter in the confident assumption that the President had only to "sign on the dotted line" in order to give freedom to Ireland, India, and Egypt. Their insistences rejected, the various revolu- tionary groups joined hands with the reactionary groups, and soon the world witnessed the amaz- ing spectacle of imperialist and rebel, Tory and Bolshevik, all joined in enthusiastic unity for the defeat of the League of Nations. «._
The second contention— that the Conference I should have refused to consider political and territorial problems until a program of financial and economic reconstruction had been worked out — is the talk of ignorant specialists when it is not the malignance of partizans. From the be- ginning of time, the strongest force in human nature has been the passion for liberty. Not cold nor hunger nor wretchedness nor death has ever hacTpower to'~subordmate the soul of man- kind to the material considerations of life. The words ot Wilson and the defeat of Germany joined to give bright promise of a new order. These forces released the aspirations of centuries, and the Old World seethed in a spiritual tumult that had no parallel save in the exaltations of the Crusades. It is true enough that through the President's windows came the cries of a suffering world, but in no sense was it the wail of a nursing child. It was the cry of men and women sick of tyranny, and it came from their hearts and souls, not from their bellies. Bread was not their clamor, but freedom. The thing that
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
stirred them was not present needs, but ancient \ wrongs.
For four hundred years the indomitable peo- ples of Czechoslovakia had held to their national hopes in spite of every cruelty of repression; through bloody, terrible centuries the Poles had dreamed their dream of nationality, and the Jugoslavic peoples, unbowed by the Austro- Hungarian yoke, were also standing erect at last, pressing their faces against the stars. It is reasonable to assume that such as these would have put their passions to one side while be- spectacled economists worked out the problems of customs, exchange, fuel, and transport? For close to half a century France had suffered the memories of 1871, and the self-respect of the nation was bound up in the restoration of Alsace- Lorraine. Italy looked to the Irredenta as a mother to her recovered child, and this spirit of nationalism also compelled an early considera- tion of the Adriatic tangle. Is it fair, or even intelligent, to imagine that France and Italy would have been content to think of Alsace- Lorraine and the Irredenta in terms of coal and iron and railroads?
It is true that finance and economics were fundamental problems, but it is equally true that the Peace Conference did not meet in an emotional vacuum. Nothing is more unfair, more mad, than the present smug theory that the human equation could have been cold- bloodedly put to one side while economists pawed over charts and tables. The President saw the situation in all of its pathetic hopelessness, and
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THE OPENING BATTLE
even as he drove forward with the League of Nations, so did he insist upon instant considera- tion of the land titles of Europe. The League was his safeguard against injustice, a guaranty for the future, while a quick settlement of European territorial claims, in his opinion, would abate passion and stabilize mental processes, permitting economic questions to be answered sanely.
This order of business, however, was not in accordance with the plans of the various Pre- miers. While the Allies stood as a unit against the League of Nations and the Fourteen Points, each nation had its own secret ideas with regard to the territorial readjustment of Europe. In addition to the proposed annexation of the Rhine Valley and the Saar Basin, France was also taking a very feverish interest in the affairs of the new Polish state, as well as giving much thought and time to the cultivation of close arrangements with Czechoslovakia. Italy was rounding out her claims to Fiume and Dalmatia, and considering new measures to check the aspirations of the Jugoslavs. England, in full control of the seas, could afford to look upon Germany as a customer, rather than as a rival, but was not yet willing to show her hand fully. What complicated the situation still further was the disclosure of secret treaties, made prior to the American entry into the war, to be sure, but never even hinted at until President Wilson heard of them in Paris and demanded to see them. Among the documents that he forced to be laid on the board were the Treaty
193
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
of London, by which Italy was induced to declare war; the agreement with Rumania in August, 1916; the various agreements in respect to Asia Minor, and the agreements of 1917 between France and Russia relative to the Saar Basin and the left bank of the Rhine.
The President, as a matter of course, an- nounced that he would refuse to be bound by these secret and concealed arrangements, but of all those assembled in Paris, only Venizelos supported his stand. In a public statement, the Greek statesman said that "A League of Nations will do away with these treaties. As a matter of fact, they were made before the real purpose and significance of this was developed and before America came into the conflict. They no longer apply. At Versailles we all agreed to the fourteen peace terms of President Wilson. That agreement abrogates previous secret treaties which are not in harmony with it."
It is a matter of intense regret that Venizelos could not have played a larger part in the Peace Conference, for he had qualities of greatness that dwarfed those of Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Sonnino. With his broad forehead, deep-set thinker's eyes, and general suggestion of the university, Venizelos gave little hint of the rev- olutionist, yet it was his courage that drove Prince George from Crete and sent a traitor king into exile and disgrace. Venizelos sees as far and sees as clear as any man in the world to-day. As intense a nationalist as ever lived, he holds his land and his people to ideals of
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THE OPENING BATTLE
justice and refuses to let them be stained by a single selfishness.
The Allies were not ready to face the issue, partly out of a fear of the President's strength, but principally because their own plans were still in disarray. What seemed safe, therefore, as a measure for gaining further time was the disposition of the German colonies, and this question was put to the fore. On its face, it looked simple, for the peoples involved were weak and helpless, and the transaction seemed no more difficult than a book transfer from Germany to the nations then in physical possession. All had been arranged in advance and only signa- tures were required. Japan was to hold the province of Shantung in fee simple and was to take over the Marshall and Caroline Islands; Australia and New Zealand were to divide the Southern Pacific possessions; South Africa was to annex German territory; and the French were to receive the Cameroons and Togoland.
The President, when faced with these pro- posals, pointed to the fifth of the Fourteen Points, which said that in colonial claims "the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined." The Allies agreed enthusiastically to this prin- ciple, but insisted that its application be delayed until after the German colonies had been dis- tributed. President Wilson stood like iron in support of Point Five, insisting that the German colonies should not be handed out like prize packages, but must be placed under the pro- 14 195
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
tection and guidance of the League of Nations. Mr. Hughes, the Australian Premier, was put forward by England to make the open fight against the President, and his bitter attack reached the point of insult and abuse. The French and British press, directly inspired, joined in a hue and cry that continued until the President informed Lloyd George and Clemen- ceau that he would reveal the entire discussion unless the guerrilla attack came to an end. Neither of the Premiers dared to stand before the world as cold-blooded annexationists, and in the end the President scored a complete victory. Article 22 of the Covenant accepts the mandatory principle in its entirety. The French press gave vent to its indignation in rather full degree, but it was the English newspapers that voiced a frenzy of reproach. Lloyd George was accused of having cut the Empire into bits, attacked for betraying the British tradition, and denounced as a weakling who dared not stand out against the autocracies of Wilson.
This decision was reached on January 29th. On the 25th another success had been won by the President, the first plenary session of the Peace Conference adopting the project to estab- lish a League of Nations as an integral part of the Peace Treaty, and appointing a committee to work out the details. The President was named as chairman, and his associates were Lord Robert Cecil, General Smuts, Leon Bourgeois, and 'Orlando. No lie was more assiduously circulated at the time, or is more generally believed to-day, than that the President's stubborn support of
196
the League of Nations was responsible for the delay in framing the full Treaty of Peace. As a matter of fact, the two engagements of January 1 8th and January 25th were as brief as they were decisive, while the actual formulation of the Covenant itself was done at night after the President had given his day to the Peace Con- ference. This incessant strain, forced upon him by his sense of urgency, was what sapped His strength, for he was compelled to depart from the White House regimen that kept him in health. ,_-
Much is made of the fact that when the Presi- 4 dent reached Paris he did not have a typewritten constitution and by-laws in his pocket for im- mediate production after the style-^of a constable about to foreclose a chattel mortgage. Where the President had the plan of the League was in his mind, his heart, and his soul. The matter was not one for thought, but one for agreement. Every fundamental of the League's constitution had been set down in his addresses time and again. Its terms, as he saw them and as he had stated them, were these: an end to the secret treaties of secret diplomacy, disarmament, a general council to sit continuously, arbitration and the economic boycott as a substitute for war, an end to private traffic in the munitions of war, the establishment of a permanent court of international justice, the protection of demo- cratic nations brought into existence as the re- sult of the Great War, and a system of manda- tories for the upbuilding of weak peoples hitherto handed about from power to power like so many
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
pawns. It was not phraseology that mattered — any law clerk could write it out when agreed upon — but^grinciples. In the discussions that took place in the Hotel Murat, night after night, Orlando was reserved, Bourgeois timid, Cecil hesitant, and only Smuts, with the ardor and vision of the colonial, had the courage to take his stand side by side with the President, aiding \ him at all times to drive forward. j* All the while another question of tremendous I import was pressing its demand for immediate attention. This was the Russian situation. Throughout the war the President, unable to come to any positive agreement with France, Great Britain, and Japan, and faced by the utter impossibility of taking any single-handed action, had more or less permitted the Russian chaos to "take care of itself." This policy could be persisted in no longer with safety, and none realized it more keenly than the President. Japan was taking advantage of every opportunity to increase her armed force in Siberia, and French opinion, concerned entirely with France's huge loans to Russia, was solidly in favor of over- throwing the Bolshevik dynasty, although some- what uncertain as to the means. In the middle of January Lloyd George ventured a hint that it might be well to recognize the Lenin govern- ment as a first step in the direction of stabiliza- tion, but the outcry that rose instantly from the conservatives of England and France sent him scuttling to cover. The Republican leaders in the Senate — -the selfsame group that later listened with such keen sympathy to Mr. Bul-
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THE OPENING BATTLE
litt's glowing picture of Bolshevism — joined in the thunder of denunciation.
The next move in the confused game was the proposal to hold a conference on Prince's Island to which representatives of every Russian group would be invited, the hope being that the Rus- sians themselves might come to some agreement, or, at least, simplify the situation so that the Peace Conference could take a fair and definite position. The idea was that of the President, but it had the approval of England and France. Lenin accepted the invitation with alacrity, but the anti-Bolshevist groups declined with fury and particularity. How far the French encouraged this refusal will always be a matter of conjecture, but there can be no doubt as to Clemenceau's change from sullen acquiescence to aggressive opposition. The Republican party in the United States, and the conservative forces of France and England, joined in bitter protest against any "parley with assassins," and Clemen- ceau was able to support his attitude by reference to this opposition. Deserted by their own peo- ple, the President and Lloyd George were unable to go farther. Even as they debated, however, the situation changed, forcing an action of the very appearance that both men hated and desired to avoid. Japan, waiting with curled lip while the talk went on, announced that she was sending 70,000 troops into Siberia for the purpose of "protecting Japanese rights." It was plain to be seen that Japan could not be permitted to go into Russia alone. As quickly as might be, England sent a force into northern
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
Russia, French troops went to southern Russia, and American troops traveled to guard the Siberian Railway. It looked like a policy of aggression, but, in reality, it was a policy of protection. This, however, could not be ex- plained, for the motives of Japan could not be impugned, the honor of Japan could not be questioned.
The Russian chaos exists to-day as a direct result of the failure of the Prinkipo conference, and it will continue to exist until democratic nations are sufficiently in love with their practice to make the admission that Russia is entitled to have the kind of government that the people want or seem to want. Whether one likes or dislikes the rule of the proletariat is not the question. It is what Russia likes, or, at least, what Russia endures, that counts.
XIII
THE STAB IN THE BACK
'"THE early days of February, 1919, were •*• bright with promise. The European press, seeming to accept the President's leadership as unshakable, was more amiable in its tone, the bitterness bred by the decision as to the German colonies had abated, Fiume and the Saar Basin had taken discreet places in the background with other deferred questions, and the voice of French and English and Italian liberalism was heard again. On February I4th the President reported the first draft of the League con- stitution— a draft that expressed his principles without change — and it was confirmed amid acclaim. It was at this moment, unfortunately, that the President was compelled to return to the United States to sign certain bills, and for the information of the Senate he carried with him the Covenant as agreed upon by the Allies. _« We come now to a singularly shameful chapter « in American history. At the time of the Presi- dent's decision to go to Paris the chief point of attack by the Republican Senators was that such a "desertion of duty" would delay the work of government and hold back the entire program of reconstruction. Yet when the Presi- dent returned for the business of consideration
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
and signature, the same Republican Senators united in a filibuster that permitted Congress to expire without the passage of a single appropria- tion bill. This exhibition of sheer malignance, entailing an ultimate of confusion and disaster, was not only approved by the Republican press,
I but actually applauded. + The draft of the League constitution was
f denounced even before its contents were known or explained. The bare fact that the document had proved acceptable to the British Empire aroused the instant antagonism of the "pro- fessional" Irish-Americans, the "professional" German-Americans, the "professional" Italian- Americans, and all those others whose political fortunes depended upon the persistence and accentuation of racial prejudices. Where one hyphen was scourged the year before a score
4 if hyphens was now encouraged and approved, n Washington the President arranged a con- ference with the Senators and Representatives in charge of foreign relations, and laid the Covenant frankly before them for purposes of discussion and criticism. The attitude of the Republican Senators was one of sullenness and suspicion, Senator Lodge refusing to state his objections or to make a single recommendation. Others, however, pointed out that no express recognition was given to the Monroe Doctrine; that it was not expressly provided that the League should have no authority to act or express a judgment on matters of domestic policy; that the right to withdraw from the League was not expressly recognized; and that the constitu-
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THE STAB IN THE BACK
tional right of the Congress to determine all questions of peace and war was not sufficiently safeguarded.
The President, in answer, gave it as his opinion that these points were already covered satis- factorily in the Covenant, but that he would be glad to make the language more explicit, and entered a promise to this effect. Mr. Root and Mr. Taft were also furnished with copies of the Covenant and asked for their views and criticism, and upon receipt of them the President again gave assurance that every proposed change and clarification would be made upon his return to Paris. On March 4th, immediately following these conferences, and the day before the sailing of the President, Senator Lodge rose in his place and led his Republican colleagues in a bold and open attack upon the League of Nations and the war aims of America. The following account of the proceedings is taken from the Congressional Record:
MR. LODGE: Mr. President, I desire to take only a mo- ment of the time of the Senate. I wish to offer the resolu- tion which I hold in my hand, a very brief one:
Whereas under the Constitution it is a function of the Senate to advise and consent to, or dissent from, the ratifica- tion of any treaty of the United States, and no such treaty can become operative without the consent of the Senate expressed by the affirmative vote of two-thirds of the Senators present; and
Whereas owing to the victory of the arms of the United States and of the nations with whom it is associated, a Peace Conference was convened and is now in session at Paris for the purpose of settling the terms of peace; and
Whereas a committee of the Conference has proposed a constitution for the League of Nations and the proposal
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
is now before the Peace Conference for its consideration; Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate of the United States in the dis- charge of its constitutional duty of advice in regard to treaties, That it is the sense of the Senate that while it is their sincere desire that the nations of the world should unite to promote peace and general disarmament, the constitution of the League of Nations in the form now proposed to the Peace Conference should not be accepted by the United States; and be it
Resolved further, That it is the sense of the Senate that the negotiations on the part of the United States should immediately be directed to the utmost expedition of the urgent business of negotiating peace terms with Germany satisfactory to the United States and the nations with whom the United States is associated in the war against the German government, and that the proposal for a League of Nations to insure the permanent peace of the world should be then taken up for careful and serious consideration.
I ask unanimous consent for the present consideration of this resolution.
MR. SWANSON: I object to the introduction of the reso- lution.
MR. LODGE: Objection being made, of course I recognize the objection. I merely wish to add, by way of explanation, the following:
The undersigned Senators of the United States, Mem- bers and Members-elect of the Sixty-sixth Congress, hereby declare that, if they had had the opportunity, they would have voted for the foregoing resolution:
Henry Cabot Lodge James E. Watson
Philander C. Knox Thomas Sterling
Lawrence Y. Sherman J. S. Frelinghuysen
Harry S. New W. G. Harding
George H. Moses Frederick Hale
J. W. Wadsworth, Jr. William E. Borah
Bert M. Fernald Walter E. Edge
Albert B. Cummins Reed Smoot
F. E. Warren Asle J. Gronna 204
THE STAB IN THE BACK
Frank B. Brandegee Lawrence C. Phipps
William M. Calder Selden P. Spencer
Henry W. Keyes Hiram W. Johnson
Boies Penrose Charles E. Townsend
Carroll S. Page William P. Dillingham
George P. McLean I. L. Lenroot
Joseph Irwin France Miles Poindexter
Medill McCormick Howard Sutherland
Charles Curtis Truman H. Newberry L. Heisler Ball
I ought to say in justice to three or four Senators who are absent at great distances from the city that we were not able to reach them; but we expect to hear from them to-morrow, and if, as we expect, their answers are favorable their names will be added to the list.
A full report of this action was cabled to Europe, as a matter of course, and when the President arrived in Paris on March I4th, ten days later, he was quick to learn of the disastrous consequences. The Allies, eagerly accepting the orders of the Republican majority, had lost no time in repudiating the President and the solemn agreements that they had entered into with him. The League of Nations was now discarded and the plan adopted for a preliminary peace with Germany was based upon a frank division of the spoils, the reduction of Germany to a slave state, and the formation of a military alliance by the Allies for the purpose of guarantee- ing the gains. Not only this, but an Allied army was to march at once to Russia to put down the Bolshevists and the treaty itself was to be administered by the Allied high command, en- forcing its orders by an army of occupation. The United States, as a rare favor, was to be per-
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mitted to pay the cost of the Russian expedition and such other incidental expenses as might arise in connection with the military dictatorship that was to rule Europe.
While primarily the plan of Foch and the other generals, it had the approval of statesmen, even those who were assumed to represent the liberal thought of England being neck-deep in the con- spiracy. Not a single party to the cabal had any doubt as to its success. Was it not the case that the Republican Senators, now in the ma- jority, spoke for America rather than the Presi- dent? Had the Senators not stated formally that they did not want the League of Nations, and was the Republican party itself not on record with the belief that the Allies must have the right to impose peace terms of their own choosing, and that these terms should show no mercy to the "accursed Hun"? I was in Paris throughout this period, and while regret at the "passing of the President" was heard in some quarters, the general feeling was one of great satisfaction. There would now be an end to this silly gabble about "ideals" and "justice." The President allowed himself just twenty-four hours in which to grasp the plot in all of its details, and then he acted, ordering the issuance of this statement :
The President said to-day that the decision made at the Peace Conference in its Plenary Session, January 25, 1919, to the effect that the establishment of a League of Nations should be made an integral part of the Treaty of Peace, is of final force and that there is no basis whatever for the reports that a change in this decision was contemplated.
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THE STAB IN THE BACK
This action of the President brought upon his head the fiercest denunciation that had yet been launched, and when he met with Clemenceau and Lloyd George on March i8th their attitude was one of truculence. In this crisis the Presi- dent used no threats of any kind, for, as a matter of fact, there were none that he could use. Deserted by the peoples of the world, all of them now committed to a "hurry up the peace" policy, betrayed by the Congress of his own country, and faced by a group of men able at last to voice their resentment against principles in which they had never believed, there was no threat in his power that would not have recoiled to his defeat and humiliation. Nor did he stoop to appeals or persuasion. He simply talked sense. Clearly, logically, convincingly, he ripped the plan to pieces, showing that it was not only unjust, but unworkable, and that instead of lead- ing to firm ground it was committing the Allies themselves to a quicksand from which there was no escape. If they cast the Fourteen Points to one side, where would it leave them ? France would straightway seize the Saar Basin and the Rhine Valley. Was that agreeable to England and Italy? No! Italy would proceed at once to make the Adriatic an "Italian lake,'* cutting off Czechoslovakia, Austria, Jugoslavia, and Hungary from their outlet to the sea. Putting aside the certainty of armed resistance by the Slavs, would France and England like that? No! Poland, craftily directed by France, would lay claim to East Prussia and all the territory from the Baltic to the Black Sea? Even ignor-
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
ing the wars of freedom that would be waged by Russians, Lithuanians, Ruthenians, and Ukrain- ians, would England and Italy like that? No! England would take over Persia, Mesopotamia, the Hedjaz, Egypt, and the German islands in the southern Pacific? Would France and Italy like that? No- Did they not have sense enough to see that the thing they planned was no more than the manufacture of new wars; that if it were put into effect it would not be a year before England, France, and Italy would not only be facing armed revolt from within, but that each nation would be in arms against the other, searching eagerly for allies, and willing to make any agree- ment, even with their former foes, that would enable them to defeat their former friends? They thought themselves intelligent, yet could not discern that their greedy imperialism would restore not only the reputation of the Central Powers, but also their military strength? It stood plain that they recognized the need of a machinery to administer the terms of the Peace Treaty. Were they fools enough to dream that this administration could be furnished by the Allied high command, backed by armies drawn from the youth of America, England, Italy, Japan, and the other associated nations? Did they not have the vision to perceive that the peoples of these nations were sick of militarism, and that they would not stand for a military dictatorship any more than would the people of Germany? Were they so blind as not to see that the League of Nations provided the very
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THE STAB IN THE BACK
machinery — and a civil machinery — that was needed? That the whole Peace Treaty would fall to pieces without a fair, independent, civil body to live on through the years that would be necessary to carry out the treaty's provisions ? What madness possessed them that they ima- gined for one moment that the United States would furnish the money for a Russian invasion or for the maintenance of a military dictatorship in Germany? „_
Under this merciless rain of logic Lloyd George \ curled up and Clemenceau writhed. There was no answer to it, either from the gay insouciance of the one or the insolence of the other. On March 26th it was announced, grudgingly enough, that there would be a League of Nations as an integral part of the Peace Treaty. It was now the task of the President to take up the changes that had been suggested by his Re- publican enemies, and this was the straw that broke his back. There was not a single suggested change that had honesty back of it. The League was an association of sovereigns, and as a matter of course any sovereign possessed the right of withdrawal. The League, as an international advisory body, could not possibly deal with domestic questions under any construction of the Covenant. No power of Congress was abridged, and necessarily Congress would have to act before war could be declared or a single soldier sent out of the country. Instead r of
recognizing the Mnnrrw jQflf irrn^as. aft Arneriran
policy, the League legitimized it as a world policy. The President, however, was bound to
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
propose that these plain propositions be put in kindergarten language for the satisfaction of his enemies, and it was this proposal that gave Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and their associates a new chance for resistance.
All of the suggested changes were made with- out great demur until the question of the Monroe Doctrine was reached, and then French and English bitterness broke all restraints. Why were they expected to make every concession to American prejudice when the President would make none to European traditions? They had gone to the length of accepting the doctrine of Monroe for the whole of the earth, but now, because American pride demanded it, they must make public confession of America's right to give orders. No! A thousand times no! It was high time for the President to give a little consideration to French and English and Italian prejudices — time for him to realize that the lives of these governments were at stake as well as his own, and that Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Sonnino had parlia- ments to deal with that were just as unrea- sonable as the Congress of the United States. If the President asked he must be willing to give.
"""As if at a given signal, France renewed her claim for the Rhine Valley and the Saar Basin, Italy clamored anew for Fiume and the Dalma- tian coast, and Japan, breaking a long silence, rushed to the fore with her demand for Shantung in fee simple and the right of her nationals to full equality in the United States. Lloyd George,
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THE STAB IN THE BACK
threatened on one side by the British Labor party and menaced on the other by his Tory government, shifted painfully from one foot to the other, wondering which way to jump. Worn out in body by the terrific strain, the President fell ill and took to his bed, but his indomitable will would not let him quit the struggle, and the Council of Four continued its meetings, holding them in a room adjoining the President's sick-room. Instead of sympathy for his illness, there was only desperate intent to take advantage of it. On April yth the President struggled to his feet and faced the Council in what every one recognized as a final test of strength. There must be an end to this dreary, interminable business of making agreements only to break them. An agreement must be reached once for all. If a peace of justice, he would remain; if a peace of greed, then he would leave. He had been second to none in recognizing the wrongs of the Allies, the state of mind of their peoples, and he stood as firmly as any for a treaty that would bring guilt home to the Ger- mans, but he could not, and would not, agree to the repudiation of every war aim or to arrange- ments that would leave the world worse off than before. The George Washington was in Brooklyn. By wireless the President ordered it to come to Brest at once.
The gesture was conclusive as far as England and France were concerned. Lloyd George swung over instantly to the President's side, and on the following day Le Temps carried this \ significant item: 15 211
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
Contrary to the assertions spread by the German press and taken up by other foreign newspapers, we believe that the government has no annexationist pretensions, openly or under cover, in regard to any territory inhabited by a German population. This remark applies peculiarly to the regions comprised between the frontier of 1871 and the frontier of 1814.
Again, in the lock of wills, the President was the victor, and the French and English press, exhausted by now, could only gasp their con- demnation of Clemenceau and Lloyd George.
XIV
THE ZERO HOUR
PHE week that followed was one of such prog- •*• ress that on April I4th the Germans were notified that they should present themselves at Versailles on the 25th. Suddenly a new storm broke. Angered beyond measure at the seeming inability of their delegates to withstand the force of the President, the House of Commons and the Chamber of Deputies served notice that they would not rest satisfied with less than a "hard peace." The French radicals, of whom so much had been expected, mustered 166 votes against 334. From Italy came an imperative demand for Fiume that aroused Orlando to a frenzy of action. Day after day the President battled along against the onslaught, for while both Lloyd George and Clemenceau were op- posed to the Italian claim, neither one had the courage to come out in the open. The President yielded to the point of agreeing to place Fiume under genuine international control, but beyond this he would not go. On April 23d, seeing no end to the interminable discussion, he issued the famous statement in which he defined and de- fended the rights of the Jugoslavs to a seaport. Straightway Orlando left the Conference and set out for Rome, declaring that Italy would
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neither sign the treaty nor join the League of Nations. The President's statement had been read and approved by Lloyd George and Cle- menceau, but when the storm burst both hunted cover and permitted newspaper announcement to be made that neither of them had indorsed the President's position.
It was at this moment that Belgium chose for an expression of the anger that had been slowly forming through the weeks. From the time it became apparent that it was not in the power of Germany to pay in full measure for the dam- age inflicted the Belgians commenced to worry for fear that France and England would appro- priate the bulk of the reparations moneys, forcing the "little fellows" to rest content with what was left. Notice was now served on the Presi- dent that unless the Belgian idea of justice was met in all completeness, Belgium would follow the example of Italy, withdrawing from the Conference and refusing to become a signa- tory to the treaty.
f Into this troubled situation the Japanese pro- jected themselves with instancy and vigor. Bluntly, stubbornly, they insisted upon the validation of their claim to German rights in Shantung. As far as legal title was concerned, the Japanese contention was impregnable against attack. Shantung had been wrested from the Germans by force of arms, and the transfer of German rights to Japan had been pledged by France and England, and approved by China as well. The President, however, looked beyond the law and treaties to the justice of the case,
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and stood for the return of Shantung to the Chinese as a first step in restoring the territorial integrity of China. The Japanese were bitter in their rejection of this theory. On April nth the Peace Conference had denied them the racial equality that should have been given to them. Wounded in pride, deeply resentful of what seemed to be a bold drawing of the color line, Japan insisted upon her rights in Shantung not only as a matter of honor, but as a demand of national self-respect. They pointed to the treaty in which France and England agreed to support the Shantung claim. Was this now to be regarded as "a scrap of paper"? Lloyd George and Clemenceau answered that they still felt themselves bound by their written agreement, whereupon both Premiers walked out of the room, leaving the President to make the fight alone. Words were not wasted. If the Japanese claim was not adjusted in fairness, Japan would withdraw from the Conference and refuse to sign the Peace Treaty.
The fate of the world now hung upon the decision of the President, a man deserted by his associates, repudiated by the parliamentary body of his country, and unsupported by the peoples from whose idealism so much had been expected. Italy had already withdrawn from the Conference, Belgium was making daily threats of withdrawal, and now came the Japan- ese with a similar ultimatum. It was not merely the disruption of the Conference that was to be feared; it was the world chaos that impended. In Hungary the administration of
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Karolyi had been overthrown and Bela Kun and his Bolshevists were in command; Austria trembled on the edge of anarchy; Bavaria had adopted a Bolshevist form of government; the Poles and the Czechs were at swords' points; red-flag parades were being held in Paris, and wherever one looked there was hatred and fight- ing. To delay the peace meant the turning over of civilization to the forces of disorder. To permit the disruption of the Conference might give courage to Germany to enter the field again. Above all, it would lose the League of Nations!
Was this great fundamental, after all, not more important than a detail or two? Was it right to hazard the peace and security of the world by any stubborn demand for immediate perfection? None knew better than the Presi- dent that if the Conference dissolved in anger and confusion nothing but another world war would restore the League of Nations to the realm of practical politics. None knew better than the President that the constitution of the League contained every power of remedy for the evils of the treaty, and that these powers would be exercised wisely and effectively in the day when the rule of reason should prevail again. These were the considerations that impelled the President to certain measures of compromise. Facing the Japanese anew, he told them that he would support their claim to the German rights in Shantung if Japan, in return, would agree to recognize the sovereignty of China and rest content with the mere role
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of an economic concessionnaire. Upon this basis / the settlement was made on April 29th.
The Italians had no such case in the matter of Fiume, for even the Treaty of London specifi- cally excluded this seaport. As a consequence the President stood firm on this point. He refused to change his position with respect to the Polish demand for East Prussia and Dantzig, insisting that the needs of Poland would be served by the internationalization of the ancient city. Neither was he shaken as to the continuance of German sovereignty in the Rhine Valley and over the Saar Basin, but in the last phase of this debate he did make an important concession to Clemenceau. This was the tripartite alliance that pledged England and the United States to come to the aid of France in event of any new attack by Germany. Even had conditions been vastly different, it is difficult to see how any other action could have been taken in fairness or generosity.
Clemenceau had been forced to surrender on virtually every point in the French demand. Punitive indemnities, the annexation of the Rhine Valley and the Saar Basin, the League of Nations — all of these were losing battles for "The Tiger." What he asked at the last was nothing more than reassurance, a gesture to c«lm the hysteria of fear that shook his people. The Americans and the British were returning to their unravaged lands, leaving a desolated France to live under the menace of an uncrushed Germany. What stood in the way of such a pledge? Had Mr. Roosevelt and the entire
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Republican party not attacked the President savagely for his neutrality, urging France's many claims upon America's generosity? Was it not the case that the people and press of the United States were a unit in admitting America's obligations to the land of Lafayette and Rocham- beau? Why, then, the hesitancy? It was true, to be sure, that the League of Nations would furnish the desired security, but the Republican majority in the Senate had served notice that it would not ratify the Covenant. What was France to do in the mean time? Also was it not a fact that the President had insisted upon reopening a closed matter for the sake of exempt- ing the Monroe Doctrine from the jurisdiction of the League of Nations? What was this but an obvious submission to the prejudices of his people? Would he now deny Clemenceau's ap- peal to have equal respect shown for the fears of France? It was an argument that could not be rejected by a just or generous man.
With the various disputes adjusted, com- promised, or dismissed, the treaty took shape rapidly, and on May 7th, fourth anniversary of the Lusitania disaster, the German delegation filed into the historic chamber at Versailles where Bismarck had once stood in power and arrogance, shouting the savage terms that were assumed to work the annihilation of France. The personnel of the delegation was unfortunate, for instead of men expressive of a new and democratic order, the head was Count Brock- dorff-Rantzau, a pillar of Hohenzollernism, and at his side grouped prominent figures of the old
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regime. Their attitude was truculent to the point of insolence, and from the first it was more their disposition to argue dead issues than to deal intelligently with the presented problems. Without attempt to play upon the passions of the past, Clemenceau gave the text of the treaty to Brockdorff-Rantzau, and informed him that an answer would be required by May 2ist. Oral discussion was barred, and this decision is the sole ground for one of the most popular and widely copied attacks upon the President:
Thus it was that Clemenceau brought to success what had seemed to be, a few months before, the extraordinary and impossible proposal that the Germans should not be heard. If only the President had not been so conscientious, if only he had not concealed from himself what he had been doing, even at the last moment he was in a position to have recovered lost ground and to have achieved some very considerable successes. But the President was set. His arms and legs had been spliced by the surgeons to a certain posture, and they must be broken again before they could be altered. To his horror, Mr. Lloyd George, desiring at the last moment all the moderation he dared, discovered that he could not in five days persuade the President of error in what it had taken five months to prove to him to be just and right. After all, it was harder to de-bam- boozle this old Presbyterian than it had been to bamboozle him; for the former involved his belief in and respect for himself. Thus in the last act the President stood for stubbornness and a refusal of conciliations.1
To charge that the Germans were not heard is a well-nigh incredible distortion of the facts. Oral discussion was barred for the very sound and sensible reason that meetings would have degenerated into unseemly wrangles, angers
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 54. 219
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putting argument to one side, not to mention the obvious effect of daily recrimination upon the populations of the various countries. On the other hand, written arguments and counter- proposals were invited, and the Germans took full advantage of this privilege. All in all, a full score of objections and appeals were filed, and these notes, with the Allied replies, were given instant publication so that the world might follow the negotiations. On May loth the Germans discussed at length the clauses relating to the repatriation of prisoners; on May 1 2th, the question of reparations; on May I3th, the proposed territorial changes; on May l6th, the Saar Basin; on May 22d, the interna- tional labor legislation; and on May 23d the report of the German Economic Commission was published, together with the Allied reply. On May 2Oth an extension of time was asked and granted, and on May 29th the complete German counter-proposals were handed in and straightway given to the press for the informa- tion of all peoples. No fairer method of hearing could have been devised. Instead of the hot give-and-take of oral debate, confined neces- sarily to a few principal figures, the Germans were allowed time and opportunity for thought, study, and consultation in order that their replies might be full and authoritative, expressing the deliberate opinions of their experts.
At no time did Lloyd George attempt to persuade the President of error in this matter. It is true that he called the whole British Cabinet to Paris on June 1st for the purpose of consider-
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ing the advisability of modifying the peace terms to Germany, but this is what every other government was doing, and what the President himself insisted upon. The Peace Treaty and the German reply were before the world. As a matter of common sense, it behooved the Peace conferees to see that every German point received full consideration, for the peoples of earth were watching and waiting. From May 29th to June i6th the Council worked on the German counter-proposals, weighing every word, analyzing every claim, for it was the moral judgment of mankind that would pass upon the result of their labors.
It is to be wished that the two documents — the German of May 29th and the Allied reply of June i6th — could be printed in every language and placed in every school and library, for they furnish in themselves a complete and dramatic exposition of the whole Peace Treaty, permitting the formation of an intelligent and independent opinion with respect to the confused question of justice or injustice. The German note was passionate without being strong, and even so ardent an admirer as Mr. Keynes admits regret- fully that it "did not succeed in exposing in burning and prophetic words" the insincerity of the transaction. The Allied note, on the con- trary, had strength without passion, and even as it made many and important concessions and modifications, so was it at pains to explain every rejection. -^
The principal German contentions were these: * that the peace was one of violence, not justice;
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that Germany did not commence the war; and that the Allies had stated repeatedly that they were not making war on the German people; it should be taken into consideration that the people were now in power, and that the new government should not be held responsible for the " faults " of the former government. To these assertions this crushing rejoinder was made:
The protest of the German delegation shows that they fail to understand the position in which Germany stands to-day. They seem to think that Germany has only to "make sacrifices in order to obtain peace," as if this were but the end of some mere struggle for territory and power. The Allied and Associated Powers therefore feel it neces- sary to begin their reply by a clear statement of the judg- ment of the world, which has been forged by practically the whole of civilized mankind.
In the view of the Allied and Associated Powers the war which began on the 1st of August, 1914, was the greatest crime against humanity and the freedom of the peoples that any nation calling itself civilized has ever consciously committed. For many years the rulers of Germany, true to the Prussian tradition, strove for a position of dominance in Europe. They were not satisfied with that growing prosperity and influence to which Germany was entitled, and which all other nations were willing to accord her, or the society of free and equal position.
They required that they should be able to dictate and tyrannize over a subservient Europe, as they dictated and tyrannized over a subservient Germany. In order to attain their ends they used every channel through which to educate their own subjects in the doctrine that might was right in international affairs. They never ceased to expand German armaments by land and sea, and to propa- gate the falsehood that it was necessary because Ger- many's neighbors were jealous of her prosperity and power. She sought to sow hostilities and suspicion instead of friendship between nations.
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They developed a system of espionage and intrigue through which they were enabled to stir up international rebellion and unrest, and even to make secret offensive preparations within the territory of their neighbors, where- by they might, when the moment came, strike them down with greater certainty and ease. They kept Europe in a ferment by threats of violence, and when they found that their neighbors were resolved to resist their arrogant will they determined to assert their predominance in Europe by force.
As soon as their preparations were complete, they en- couraged a subservient ally to declare war on Serbia at forty-eight hours' notice, a war involving the control of the Balkans, which they knew could not be localized and which was bound to unchain a general war. In order to make doubly sure, they refused every attempt at conciliation and conference until it was too late and the World War was inevitable for which they had plotted and for which alone among the nations they were adequately equipped and prepared.
Germany's responsibility, however, is not confined to having planned and started the war. She is no less respon- sible for the savage and inhuman manner in which it was conducted. Though Germany was herself a guarantor of Belgium, the rulers of Germany violated their solemn promise to respect the neutrality of this unoffending people. Not content with this, they deliberately carried out a series of promiscuous shootings and burnings with the sole object of terrifying the inhabitants into submission by the rery frightfulness of their action.
They were the first to use poisonous gas, notwithstanding the appalling suffering it entailed. They began the bombing and long-distance shelling of towns for no military object, but solely for the purpose of reducing the morale of their opponents by striking at their women and children. They commenced the submarine campaign, with its piratical challenge to international law and its destruction of great numbers of innocent passengers and sailors in midocean, far from succor, at the mercy of the winds and waves, and the yet more ruthless submarine crews.
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They drove thousands of men ana women and children with brutal savagery into slavery in foreign lands. They allowed barbarities to be practised against their prisoners of war from which the most uncivilized people would have recoiled.
The conduct of Germany is almost unexampled in human history. The terrible responsibility which lies at her doors can be seen in the fact that not less than 7,000,000 dead lie buried in Europe, while more than 20,000,000 others carry upon them the evidence of wounds and suffering, because Germany saw fit to gratify her lust for tyranny by a resort to war.
Justice, therefore, is the only possible basis for the set- tlement of the accounts of this terrible war. Justice is what the German delegation asks for, and says that Ger- many has been promised. But it must be justice for all. There must be justice for the dead and wounded, and for those who have been orphaned and bereaved, that Europe might be free from Prussian despotism. There must be justice for the peoples who now stagger under war debts which exceed $30,000,000,000 that liberty might be saved. There must be justice for those millions whose homes and lands and property German savagery has spoliated and destroyed.
This is why the Allied and Associated Powers have insisted as a cardinal feature of the treaty that Germany must undertake to make reparation to the very uttermost of her power, for reparation for wrongs inflicted is of the essence of justice. That is why they insist that those individuals who are most clearly responsible for German aggression and for those acts of barbarism and inhumanity which have disgraced the German conduct of the war must be handed over to justice, which has not been meted out to them at home. That, too, is why Germany must submit for a few years to certain special disabilities and arrangements.
Germany has ruined the industries, the mines, and the machinery of neighboring countries, not during battle, but with the deliberate and calculated purpose of enabling her
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own industries to seize their markets before their industries could recover from the devastation thus wantonly inflicted upon them. Germany has despoiled her neighbors of everything she could make use of or carry away. Germany has destroyed the shipping of all nations on the high seas, where there was no chance of rescue for the passengers and crews.
It is only justice that restitution should be made, and that these wronged peoples should be safeguarded for a time from the competition of a nation whose industries are intact and have even been fortified by machinery stolen from occupied territories.
If these things are hardships for Germany, they are hardships which Germany has brought upon herself. Somebody must suffer for the consequences of the war. Is it to be Germany or the peoples she has wronged ? Not to do justice to all concerned would only leave the world open to fresh calamities. If the German people themselves, or any other nation, are to be deterred from following the footsteps of Prussia; if mankind is to be lifted out of the belief that war for selfish ends is legitimate to any state; if the old era is to be left behind, and nations as well as individuals are to be brought beneath the reign of law, even if there is to be early reconciliation and appeasement — it will be because those responsible for concluding the war have had the courage to see that justice is not deflected for the sake of a convenient peace.
It is said that the German revolution ought to make a difference, and that the German people are not responsible for the policy of the rulers whom they have thrown from power. The Allied and Associated Powers recognize and welcome the change. It represents great hope for peace and a new European order in the future, but it cannot affect the settlement of the war itself.
The German revolution was stayed until the German armies had been defeated in the field and all hope of profiting by a war of conquest had vanished. Throughout the war, as before the war, the German people and their representa- tives supported the war, voted the credits, subscribed to the war loans, obeyed every order, however savage, of their
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government. They shared the responsibility for the policy of their government, for at any moment, had they willed it, they could have reversed it.
Had that policy succeeded they would have acclaimed it with the same enthusiasm with which they welcomed the outbreak of the war. They cannot now pretend, having changed their rulers after the war was lost, that it is justice that they should escape the consequences of their deeds.
In conclusion, the Allied and Associated Powers must make it clear that this letter and the memorandum attached constitute their last word. They have examined the German observations and counter-proposals with earnest attention and care. They have, in consequence, made important modifications in the draft treaty, but in its prin- ciples they stand by it.
They believe that it is not only a just settlement of the Great War, but that it provides the basis upon which the peoples of Europe can live together in friendship and equality. At the same time it creates the machinery for the peaceful adjustment of all international problems by discussion and consent, and whereby the settlement of 1919 itself can be modified from time to time to suit new facts and new conditions as they arise.
Another important German demand was for immediate admission to the League of Nations. In answer, the Allies expressed earnest hope of the "early entry of Germany into the League," but felt that it would be wise to wait until the revolution proved itself a "permanent change."
Military terms were modified, the revision permitting Germany to maintain temporarily an army of 200,000 instead of 100,000, certain demands with respect to Helgoland were granted, and important rectifications were made as to the Polish frontier. While explicit refusal met the German request to retain Dantzig, instead of
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turning it over to the League of Nations, the German contention for a plebiscite in Upper Silesia was allowed. It was also agreed that the historic frontier between Pomerania and West Prussia should be established.
German objections to the Schleswig settlement were answered by the statement that the plebis- cite, as planned, was no more than what Prussia had promised by treaty in 1864. It was also explained that the award of the communal woods of Prussian Moresnet to Belgium was not puni- tive, but merely partial compensation for the destruction of Belgian forests.
With respect to her colonies, Germany agreed that they should be turned over to the League of Nations, but claimed the right to be named as mandatory. 'This was rejected by reason of the abuses that invariably attended German colonial administration, and the theory of hampered economic development was met by the proof that pre-war figures showed that only one-half of I per cent, of Germany's exports and one-half of i per cent, of her imports were with her own colonies.
While accepting obligation to pay for all damages sustained by the civil populations in the occupied parts of Belgium and France, Germany opposed reparation to other occupied territories in Italy, Montenegro, Serbia, Ru- mania, and Poland, as no, attack in contradiction to international law was involved. In answer it was pointed out that the President's Fourteen Points, explicitly accepted by Germany as a base of settlement, made plain statement that
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the damage to these countries must be paid for. While it was denied that liberated coun- tries should be expected to pay any part of the German war debt, there was admission that they should bear their proper portion of pre-war debts.
Questions of reparations, coal, shipping, river control, and other economic phases of the dis- cussion will be treated in succeeding chapters, as they call for more than brief comment.
XV
MR. KEYNES'S JEREMIAD
VARIOUS references have already been made ' to The Economic Consequences of the Peace, the work of John Maynard Keynes, an English- man. In considering the details of the treaty, these references will become increasingly numer- ous, for more exactly and comprehensively than any other Mr. Keynes has caught up and ex- pressed every attack, misrepresentation, dis- tortion, and malignance. His book — jerked into notoriety by those who hate the President, endowed with scriptural values by every German, Austrian, and Hungarian, copied extensively by reactionary and radical publications, and hailed with joy by the semi-intelligent as a short cut to statecraft — has done more than any other thing to poison the wells of public | opinion.
An American wit once said that an accountant/ was merely a "bookkeeper out of a job.'* He might have commented also that the usual economist is a clerk risen to the importance of carrying a leather portfolio. Another confusion is in the matter of definition. In America "liberal" implies a state of mind; in England Liberal applies to a national political party.
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In America liberalism is based upon ideals; in England Liberalism is based upon partizan- ship. These distinctions must be borne in mind in any consideration of Mr. Keynes's book. He does not write as a liberal, but as a Liberal, and his book is in no sense the protest of an out- raged conscience, but the explicit announcement of a party program in support of a definite party objective.- The Liberals of England have never forgiven Lloyd George for his desertion and betrayals, and his vagrant course at the Peace Conference provided the opportunity for assault that was denied them during the war. The Welsh chameleon and his Tory associates are now to be thrown out of office, and Liberals and Labor are to be put in their places. This is Mr. Keynes's primary offensive, and at the end he states it frankly, explaining that "the replace- ment of the existing governments " is a necessary ! preliminary to any honest readjustment.
The Premier is held up to scorn as an oppor- tunist when he is not scourged as a charlatan, and the consequences of his opportunism and char- latanry are painted in terms of anarchy, disaster, and ruin. The flings at President Wilson are largely incidental, included, perhaps, for the sake of the American sale, but chiefly for the purpose of catering to that large segment of the British population that is never so happy as in hearing America and Americans shamed and derided.
Having launched the drive to "kick the ras- cals out," the next step, naturally, is a platform based upon national and material interests.
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Lloyd George and the Tories have done fairly well by England in the matter of profits. It must be shown to the electorate that Mr. Keynes and the Liberals can do better. The result is a cold- blooded program based upon the betrayal of every obligation of honor and friendship. In the first place, America is urged to cancel England's indebtedness, and in event that we are not generous enough to adopt the suggestion, there is the frank threat of repudiation. This done, America is to make a new loan.
In the second place, the program calls explicitly for the complete rehabilitation of Germany and the equally complete demoralization of France. In plain words, France is to be destroyed as a rival and Germany is to be built up as a customer. There is no longer any German merchant marine, there are no longer any German colonies and the German hold on world trade has been broken in the Levant, the Orient, Africa, and South America. England's control of the seas is abso- lute, and therefore England has nothing to fear from German rehabilitation, but everything to hope. A rich, powerful Germany — cut off from the sea — may become a menace to the Continent, but not to England. It is from England that the Germans will be forced to buy — it is through England that Germany will be forced to sell. The weak point in the plan is German poverty; and the remedy for this is the restoration of Germany to her pre-war status, minus colonies, navy, and merchant marine. Mr. Keynes works boldly to his object, not fearing to paint this picture of the idyllic conditions of 1914:
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The interference of frontiers and of tariffs was reduced to a minimum, and not far short of three hundred millions of people lived within the three Empires of Russia, Ger- many, and Austria-Hungary. The various currencies, which were all maintained on a stable basis in relation to gold and to one another, facilitated the easy flow of capital and of trade to an extent the full value of which we only realize now, when we are deprived of its advantages. Over this great area there was an almost absolute security of property and of person.1
At whatever cost — to the Continent — this happy family must be brought together again. It is "abhorrent and detestable" that France should be permitted to recapture Alsace-Lor- raine and exercise suzerainty over the Saar Basin, although Mr. Keynes is able to view with equanimity the English seizure of Germany's African possessions. The Dantzig corridor for Poland is part of a policy "not authorized by religion or natural morals," but Mr. Keynes's religion and morals approve the taking and keeping of the German ships by England. An "unworkable" condition is created by the action of the Poles and Czechs in assuming control of the Silesian coal-fields, but every interest of efficiency is served by the action of England in absorbing Persia, annexing Egypt, and filching Mesopotamia and the Hedjaz. Through all the centuries "perfide dlbion" has been a cry of hate and reproach, but it has remained for this Eng- lish government clerk, writing in the name of humanity, to give new and greater force to the ancient indictment of British faith. (At every point, in every word, The Economic
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 15. 232
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Consequences of the Peace is a brutal attack upon England's allies — that they may not be permitted to dispute England's program of trade imperi- alism— and an equally indecent attempt to restore Germany as an European autocracy, robbed of sea-power and barred from world trade, and therefore forced to buy and sell through England. France is derided and re- buked, her wrongs ignored, her sufferings min- imized. Belgium is an object of contempt, for, while Mr. Keynes admits a certain amount of sacrifice in 1914, "she played a minor role'* thereafter and sacrificed as little as possible, thinking it sufficient to pride herself on not having made long ago a separate peace with Germany.
Poland, no less than Belgium and France, excites anger by the bare presumption of na- tional existence. "She is to be strong, Catholic, militarist and faithful, the consort, or at least the favorite of victorious France, prosperous and magnificent between the ashes of Russia and the ruin of Germany. Rumania, if only she could be persuaded to keep up appearances a little more, is a part of the same scatter-brained ) conception."1
Prof. Charles D. Hazen of Columbia has characterized this as a "gift of quite gratuitous insult" and points it out as an "excellent example of Mr. Keynes's highly perfected art of slurring those who helped win this war, without under- going the labor of presenting the situation with any fairness."
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 291. 233
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Another authority, Prof. Charles H. Haskins of Harvard, has also passed judgment in these words :
Throughout the book the author's economic conceptions are curiously static. He pleads for the restoration of pre- war conditions as far as possible, irrespective of the fact that they gave Germany a position of peculiar advantage in Europe, and he opposes any correction of this balance in favor either of France or of the new states of the East. Having adopted a Germanocentric theory of European economic life, he follows it through. A little more imagina- tion would show him that many readjustments are possible with the opening up of new natural resources and lines of trade and with the extension of the industrial revolution to eastern Europe; and a little more sympathy with non- German peoples would show him the injustice of re-estab- lishing a state of affairs which Germany exploited to her own selfish advantage. Readjustment inevitably causes hardship in Germany, but it is necessary to prevent Ger- man dominance over peoples whom the war has at last set free.
Professor Haskins is mistaken, however, in assuming that Mr. Keynes is content with any mere "restoration of pre-war conditions." With the Imperial German Empire restored — ex- cepting colonies and ships, which England will retain — the claims of Belgium, France, Serbia, and Italy eliminated, and the absurd pretensions of Poland and Czechoslovakia wiped out, the next step in the program is to turn Russia over to "German enterprise and organization" for the restoration of Russian productivity. To quote Mr. Keynes:
It is impossible geographically and for many other reasons for Englishmen, Frenchmen, or Americans to un- dertake it; we have neither the incentive nor the means for
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doing the work on a sufficient scale. Germany, on the other hand, Has the experience, the incentive, and to a large extent the materials for furnishing the Russian peasant with the goods of which he has been starved for the past five years, for reorganizing the business of transport and collection, and so for bringing into the world's pool, for the common advantage, the supplies from which we are now so disastrously cut off. It is in our interest to hasten the day when German agents and organizers will be in a posi- tion to set in train in every Russian village the impulses of ordinary economic motive.1
Nor is this all. One of Mr. Keynes's important "remedies" is the establishment of a free union of countries "undertaking to impose no protec- tionist tariffs whatever against the produce of other members of the union. Germany, Poland, the new states which formerly composed the Austro- Hungarian and Turkish Empires, and the man- dated states should be compelled to adhere to this union for ten years, after which time adherence would be voluntary. The adherence of other states would be voluntary from the outset. But it is to be hoped that the United Kingdom, at any rate, would become an original member. . . . By the pro- posed Free Trade Union some part of the loss of organization and economic efficiency may be re- trieved, which must otherwise result from the in- numerable new political frontiers now created between greedy, jealous, immature, and economically incomplete nationalist states. Economic frontiers were tolerable so long as an immense territory was included in a few great empires, but they will not be tolerable when the empires of Germany, Austria-
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, pp. 293-294.
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Hungary, Russia, and Turkey have been parti- tioned between some twenty independent author- ities."1
tin plain words, Mr. Keynes proposes to have :he treaty give to Germany what Germany failed to win by war. The "greedy, jealous, and im- mature" small states, having won their freedom from Germany by blood and sacrifice, are to be restored to the commercial ownership of Ger- many in the sacred name of economics. It is the German dream of Mittel-Europa that Mr. Keynes wants to see come true. The list of countries that he sets down is precisely the list that Doctor Naumann enumerated in his grandi- ose plan for gaining for Germany the economic mastery of central and southeastern Europe. Compelled to enter the union and denied the right to erect a single tariff barrier against Ger- many, the new states would indeed be given a splendid chance to build up their industries! The one change in the Mittel-Europa program, as declared by Naumann, is that the United Kingdom will also enter, cannily directing and sharing in the profits of this economic conquest. These brutalities might be forgiven to Mr. Keynes, for he is the inheritor of commercial traditions. For centuries the British govern- ment has made trade its god, annexation its religion, and while there is reason to believe that a new generation is commencing to view hypoc- risy and rapacity with disgust, the official class is still the creature of old habit. It is impossible,
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, pp. 265-266.
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however, to forgive him for his inhumanity. That is a personal quality. Nothing stands more clear than that the military masters of Germany precipitated the World War in cold blood, working a horror of desolation that is ex- pressed in millions of graves, in sad hosts of maimed and blind, in the destruction of cities, the devastation of great areas, the ruined lives of whole populations, and the blight of a future that had every promise of fairness. One searches in vain through the pages of Mr. Keynes for a single word of condemnation addressed to Ger- many— for a single word of sympathy addressed to Belgium, France, Italy, or Serbia. Almost tearfully he quotes paragraph after paragraph from German writers telling of the sufferings of German children, and in one foot-note he prints this pathetic story:
You see this child here, the physician in charge explained; it consumed an incredible amount of bread, and yet did not get any stronger. I found out that it hid all the bread it received underneath its straw mattress. The fear of hunger was so deeply rooted in the child that it collected stores instead of eating the food: a misguided animal instinct made the dread of hunger worse than the actual pangs. •**
No one would wish to take away a throb of pity from the little ones of the Central Powers and each day sees America raising vast amounts for child relief in Germany, Austria, and Hun- gary. But is no word to be said in behalf of the children of France, of Belgium,, of Poland, of Serbia, and of Italy? What of the desolated homes in Allied countries, the tragic flights of families, of whole communities; the tragic toll
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rin human life that was taken by hunger, cold, and hardship? Of all this there is no word from Mr. Keynes. Human wretchedness must cry its despair in German to reach his ears. At one point he says:
The German commentators had little difficulty in showing that the draft treaty constituted a breach of engagements and of international morality comparable with their own offense in the invasion of Belgium.
Professor Hazen has made the best comment, saying:
This amazing statement accurately presents the tone that pervades the book from cover to cover. From this passage, as from many others, the reader can form his own idea of the sobriety of judgment, the restraint of language, the intellectual discrimination of the author. The world^put- '• side central Europe long ago formed a very definite idea of the morality involved in the invasion of Belgium. Mr. Keynes places the treaty alongside as a fit and adequate companion-piece. He is entitled to all the repute he may get as a fair thinker from that phrase. At any rate, he gives us a clear revelation of his critical standards.
As bearing upon the fairness of Mr. Keynes, it is noteworthy that there is neither record nor remembrance of any advancement of his "liberal" views while acting as a representative of the British Treasury at the Peace Conference. The members of the American delegation, such as were concerned with reparations, have the very distinct recollection that his one effort was to get everything possible for the British Empire, regardless of justice, and that his only other bias was a certain definite antagonism to France and the French. Also, in a recent letter to Prof.
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Allyn Young this amazing economist expressed regret that his book should have been construed as an attack upon the President, concluding, naively, "Of course I recognize that President Wilson was the noblest figure in Paris." x.
In the matter of honor Mr. Keynes is no less ' peculiar and individual, as stands proved by the slightest consideration of what he is pleased to call his "remedies.'* That he is valued chiefly as a rhetorician, by the way} rather than as an economist, is made obvious by the fact that not one of these "remedies" has ever been given serious attention by any of the papers or the people who have been most vigorous in applaud- ing his phrases. The principal "remedy" pro- posed by Mr. Keynes is the entire cancel ation of inter-Ally indebtedness, which, reduced to terms, is a frank demand that the United States shall wipe off the ten billions owed by the Allies. Mr. Keynes assumes that when America gave the money that "it was not in the nature of an investment," and he also mentions casually that "the financial sacrifices of the United States have been, in proportion to her wealth, immensely less than those of European states." 1
In event that these great debts are not can- celed, thereby giving a "stimulus to the solidar- ity and true friendliness of the nations lately associated," Mr. Keynes blithely advances a policy of repudiation: "On the one hand, Europe must depend in the long run on her own daily labor and not on the largesse of America; but, on the other hand, she will not
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 273. 239
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pinch herself in order that the fruit of her daily labor may go elsewhere. In short, I do not believe that any of these tributes will continue to be paid, at the best, for more than a very few years. They do not square with human nature or agree with the spirit of the age.1 . . . It might be an exaggeration to say that it is impossible for the European Allies to pay the capital and interest due from them on these debts, but to make them do so would certainly be to impose a crushing burden. They may be expected, therefore, to make constant attempts to evade or escape payment, and these attempts will be a constant source of international friction and ill will for many years to come. A debtor nation does not love its creditor. . . . There will be a great incentive to them to seek their friends in other directions, and any future rupture of peaceable relations will always carry with it the enormous advantage of escaping the payment of external debts."2
This must be regarded as the voice of England alone, for no other country has suggested can- celation except England. And what is that but a direct threat, the blackmail of force? By no means will "Europe pinch herself" in order to pay her debts. America pinched herself to lend, and to-day is paying burdensome taxes to carry the loans, but England is of greater sensitiveness, and these sordid money transac- tions irk her proud spirit. Either America must cancel the debt or else we may expect repudia-
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 282.
2 Ibid, p. 278.
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tion and enmity. "A debtor nation does not love its creditor" and "rupture of peaceable relations" are ugly phrases pregnant with warning.
Passing on, Mr. Keynes next proposes an international loan, "a fund of one billion in the first instance," and to be made by the United States as a matter of course. Having repudiated ten billions as "not squaring with the spirit of the age," even the nai've mind of Mr. Keynes is impressed by the necessity of reassuring the lender with regard to the second loan, and he is entirely willing that the additional billion "should be borrowed with the unequivocal intention of its being repaid in full." Of course, if America does not care to enter into this easy arrange- ment, there is the possibility that the indicated "rupture of peaceable relations" may provide a way to make us. ^^
Detailed answer to Mr. Keynes, however, >l requires a volume all its own. Any full exposure of the contradictions that crowd his pages would necessitate lengthy and painstaking analysis, particularly with respect to foot-notes, for it is in their small type that the author huddles the facts that he misrepresents in the bolder type of his text. In the chapters that follow only the fundamental misstatements of the book will be / checked. ^
Nor is it the intent of the writer to paint I either the treaty or the Covenant as documents of perfection. Whatever their faults, however, their justice cannot be questioned. Had the Germans been stripped of every asset
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jected to vassalage for generations to come, still would the punishment have fallen far short of their monstrous crime. As a matter of truth, the actual terms are in no wise akin to enslave- ment. If the Germans will work in peace as they worked in war, bringing to reparation the same passionate energy that they devoted to destruction, the treaty will work. Life will be hard for them, to be sure, but is it argued that life is going to be easy in France, Belgium, Italy, or Serbia?
Framed in an hour of passion, with emphasis placed entirely on territorial and political issues, and one man only standing in championship of ideals, there are many changes that will have to be made in a spirit of mercy, for justice, especially when applied with literalness, has a way of being harsh. What escapes Mr. Keynes's notice, for the most part, and the notice of the majority of people entirely, is that ample provision is made for this machinery of accommodation. When the heat of nationalism has died down and passions have abated, and when the necessities of the workaday world have developed mutuality of interest, the Rep- arations Commission may be expected to dis- charge its high duties in such manner as to restore the normalities of commerce, industry, and intercourse.
In the mean time, the Treaty and the Cove- nant, for all their faults, stand as a great and note- worthy attempt to rebuild the world on found a- \ tions of liberty, peace, and fraternity.
XVI
WHAT MUST GERMANY PAY?
'"PHE principal confusion with respect to the A treaty centers naturally around the matter of reparations. Huge calculations are intricate at best, and for reasons that will be explained the Allies were at pains to avoid explicitness in the indemnity clauses. This premeditated vague ness, while essentially in the interest of the Germans, nevertheless lends itself admirably to their campaign of distortion. Mr. Keynes, for instance, declares that Germany must pay a total of $40,000,000,000 and insists that this crushing burden will have the effect of reducing a people "to servitude for a generation, of degrading the lives of millions of human beings, and of depriving a whole nation of happiness." Mr. David Hunter Miller, legal adviser to the American Peace Commission, has answered this bold misrepresentation in detail, showing plainly "that instead of an indemnity of $4.0,000,000,000 laid upon Germany, as claimed by Mr. Keynes, with annual payments of nearly $4,000,000,000, the indemnity of the treaty amounts to approxi- mately $14,000,000,000; that this sum cannot be added to except by a unanimous determination of the Reparations Commission (composed of repre- sentatives of the United Statesy Great Britain, 17 243
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France, Italy, and Belgium), that Germany is in equity able to pay more, and that before any such determination, evidence and argument on behalf of Germany must be heard."
Subjected to analysis, the indemnity clauses of the treaty are as clear and simple as a sum in primary arithmetic, and stand at every point in flat contradiction to the figures of Mr. Keynes and the German economists. Germany's first payment is set for May I, 1921, in the sum of 20,000,000,000 marks, or, accepting the gold mark as equal to a quarter of a dollar, $5,000,- 000,000. As credit items against this payment, the Germans are permitted to list the expenses of the Army of Occupation, ships, coal, securities, machinery, cattle, and such other assets as she may turn over to the Allies prior to May I, 1921. There is also the provision that "such supplies of food and raw material as may be judged by the governments of the principal Allied and Associated Powers to be essential to enable Germany to meet the obligations for reparation may also, with the approval of the said govern- ments, be paid for out of the above sum."
In plain words, a part or the whole of this sum may be reloaned to Germany for the recon- struction of her economic life. As Mr. Keynes is compelled to admit, even if sneeringly: "This is a qualification of high importance. The clause, as it is drafted, allows the Finance Minis- ters of the Allied countries to hold out to their electorates the hope of substantial payments at an early date, while at the same time it gives to the Reparations Commission a discretion, which
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the force of facts will compel them to exercise, to give back to Germany what is required for the maintenance of her economic existence."
The second monetary demand upon Germany is for $10,000,000,000 in bonds, carrying interest at 2^ Per cent, from May 2, 1921, to 1926, and at 5 per cent, plus I per cent, for amortization thereafter. In event, however, of Germany's failure to meet completely the first payment of $5,000,000,000, any unpaid balance is to be con- verted into interest-bearing bonds of the same character as the $10,000,000,000 issue and added to that issue. As an example of Mr. Keynes's honest purpose, he makes this declaration in his text, "Assuming, therefore, that Germany is not able to provide any appreciable surplus toward reparation before 1921, she will have to find a sum of $375,000,000 annually from 1921 to 1925, and $900,000,000 annually thereafter." *
It will thus be seen that he wipes out en- tirely any possibility of offsets, allowing noth- ing at all for the German ships, coal, securities, etc. In one of his coy foot-notes, however, he says, "If, per impossible, Germany discharged $2,500,000,000 in cash or kind by 1921, her annual payments would be at the rate of $312,- 500,000 from 1921 to 1925 and of $750,000,000 thereafter." 2
As a matter of truth, many conservative economists figure that these credit items will reach a total that may discharge the entire obli- gation, but none places them at less than $2,500,-
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 164. 2 Ibid., p. 164.
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ooo,ooo.1 Assuming, then, that Germany is able to make no cash payment on May 21, 1912, and has nothing to offer but her offsets, there will remain a balance of $2,500,000,000 to add to the bond issue of $10,000,000,000, making a total of $12,500,000,000. This is the only sum that Germany is asked to pay. It is, in fact, the whole German indemnity. The interest charge on this amount would be $312,500,000 a year until 1926, and thereafter an annual payment of $750,000,000 to take care of interest and amortization. This amount does not include, or even touch upon, the general war costs of the Allies, representing only a reasonable estimate of the damage done to non-combatants and their property. As Mr. Keynes is compelled to admit :
A great part of Annex I is in strict conformity with the pre-armistice conditions, or, at any rate, does not strain them beyond what is fairly arguable. Paragraph I claims damage done for injury to the persons of civilians, or, in the case of death, to their dependents, as a direct consequence of acts of war; Paragraph 2, for acts of cruelty, violence, or maltreatment on the part of the enemy toward civilian victims; Paragraph 3, for enemy acts injurious to health or capacity to work or to honor toward civilians in occupied or invaded territory; Paragraph 8, for forced labor exacted by the enemy from civilians; Paragraph 9, for damage done to property with the exception of naval and military works or materials as a direct consequence of hostilities; and Paragraph 10, for fines and levies imposed by the enemy upon the civilian population. All these demands are just and in conformity with the Allies' rights.
Nor is the amount of $15,000,000,000, minus
1 A recent press despatch gives the information that Germany is estimating these credit items in excess of five billions.
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credit items, less than just. Mr. Keynes him- self presents this estimate of damage:1
Belgium £2,500,000,000
France 4,000,000,000
Great Britain 2,850,000,000
Other Allies 1,250,000,000
Total $10,600,000,000
Mr. Keynes admits that "no figures exist on which to base any scientific or exact estimate," and so he frankly gives his own "guess for what it is worth." It is a guess that should have destroyed his book in the hour of its publication. His Belgian figure is based upon the sneer that hostilities were "confined to a small corner of the country, much of which in recent times was backward, poor, sleepy, and did not include the active industry of the country." The French claim of damage in the sum of $13,000,000,000, without counting war levies, losses at sea, the roads, etc., is arbitrarily cut down to $4,000,000,- ooo. Serbia is dismissed with a reference to her "low economic development," and Italy, Ru- mania, and Greece are not even considered in detail, all being lumped together as "other Allies," and allowed $1,250,000,000 as con- trasted to England's $2,850,000,000. To be sure, he has the grace to remark: "It is sur- prising, perhaps, that the money value of Great Britain's claim should be so little short of that of France, and actually in excess of that of Belgium. But measured either by pecuniary loss or real
1 J. M. Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, p. 134. 247
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loss to the economic power of the country, the injury to her mercantile marine was enormous." Amazing!
x" Between the Keynes-German estimate of ' $10,000,000,000 and the Allied estimate of $40,000,000,000 honest opinion will decide that the sum of $15,000,000,000 strikes a balance that is indeed merciful to a nation that plunged a world into bloodshed and chaos. This amount, less an anticipated offset of $2,500,000,000, is all that Germany is committed to pay. It were well indeed if the treaty had decreed that the amount was all that Germany was under any obligation to pay. Throughout his book Mr. Keynes bemoans the fact that a lump indemnity was not fixed — a sum within Germany's power to pay — but he does not state the fact, as he knew it to be a fact at the time, that this was the con- tention of the President from the first. Mr. Bernard M. Baruch, economic adviser to the American Peace Commission, has stated openly and repeatedly that the President and his eco- nomic advisers insisted at all times upon the imposition of a "fixed and reasonable sum," and that this sound proposition went down to defeat before the bitter, unyielding opposition of Lloyd George and Clemenceau. At this point it is necessary to quote Mr. Miller again, for not only is his an authoritative voice, but his statement of conditions is singularly clear and convincing:
It is essential to look at the circumstances surrounding the Conference in the early months of 1919. No one then seriously thought that Germany could pay an indemnity equivalent to the capital sum of forty billions. Some
WHAT MUST GERMANY PAY?
economists did make estimates of a possible total of twenty- five billions, but such a figure represented the blue sky of optimism.
There were, however, some known factors in the situa- tion. One of these was that the amount which Germany could in reason pay was unknown. Whether that sum was ten billions, as Mr. Keynes thinks, or fifteen billions, or perhaps even twenty, as others thought, could not be pre- dicted then, and I venture to say cannot be predicted now. A second factor, moreover, was that any amount which Germany could fairly pay was less than the German debt. A third factor was public sentiment in Europe, particularly in Great Britain and France. Public sentiment is a fact. To yield to a wrong public sentiment may be a crime, but to adopt a course which without yielding permits sentiment to change and passions to cool is the part of wisdom.
The conduct of the British election campaign of Decem- ber, 1918, and the utterances of politicians and economists on the Continent, had created a very wide-spread feeling among the peoples who had suffered by the war and who could not understand the mysteries of international trade, that their financial burdens would be greatly lessened and perhaps even removed by payments from Germany. This was a delusion which existed, however unfortunate or deplorable its origin.
The question presented to the framers of the treaty was \j
whether the existence of this delusion should be recognized by a form of the treaty which did not increase Germany's obligation to pay, but which left time for appreciation of realities by the Allied peoples, or whether they should adopt another form of the treaty and shock and enrage the senti- ment of a public suffering, depressed, and almost hyster- ical. The framers of the treaty chose the former course. I believe that their decision was wise and that history I will sustain this view.
Mr. Keynes, as a matter of fact, agrees with this view, for while he declares on page 147 that the sum to be paid by Germany should have been fixed at $10,000,000,000 at the very out-
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set, on page 158 he admits that "this was im- possible for two reasons. Two different kinds of false statements had been promulgated, one as to Germany's capacity to pay, the other as to the amount of the Allies' just claims in respect of the devastated areas. The fixing of either of these figures presented a dilemma."
In reaching his decision the President found himself face to face with this dilemma. In the first place, Germany was bound by the armistice terms to pay in full for her cruel devastations. The Fourteen Points provided for damage done in invaded territory — Belgium, France, Ru- mania, Serbia, and Montenegro being specifically mentioned — but they did hot include the loss caused by submarine sinkings, bombardments, or air raids. It was to cover these omissions, and any others, that the Allies suggested an addition to the effect that Germany must make compensation "/or all damage done to the civilian population of the Allies and to their property by the aggression of Germany by land, sea, and the air" There was also a provision that "any future claims of the Allies and the United States of America remain unaffected."
The President had agreed to these additions. They had been included in the armistice. Ger- many, after careful examination, had signed the armistice. There was, therefore, no question as to German liability. It was even the case that under the armistice terms the Allies could have held Germany responsible for the devastations of Austria-Hungary and Turkey, "imposing con- tingent liabilities," as Mr. Keynes admits,
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"without running seriously contrary to the general intention of their engagements/*
The President knew well, however, that it was not within the power of Germany to pay the full sum or even a half of the sum that stern justice could have demanded. He knew equally well that the governments of France, England, and Italy would fall if this fact should be ad- mitted openly in the treaty. It was not only the case that their statesmen, Lloyd George par- ticularly, had dealt in glowing promises, but also that the hopes of the peoples themselves ran naturally and inevitably along the line that it was right and necessary for Germany to restore pre-war conditions. As the one escape from national despair and international collapse, he assented to an agreement that did not increase Germany's obligation to pay, but which con- tinued the hope of the Allied peoples until the recovery of normality enabled them to look facts in the face.
A Reparations Commission was created and in this civil body was vested full power in con- nection with the settlement. The sum of $15,- 000,000,000 was fixed as the amount that Ger- many should pay, and an additional bond issue of $10,000,000,000 was recognized as permissible. This obligation was the last word in indetermi- nateness, for it was to be issued "when and not until the Reparations Commission is satisfied that Germany can meet the interest and the sinking-fund obligations." As a matter of course, this additional ^10,000,000,000 bond issue will never be authorized. Mr. Miller, in an able
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consideration of the Reparations Commission, makes this explanation of procedure:
How is the Commission to be convinced? In the first place, it is to be "guided by justice, equity, and good faith," although "not bound by any particular code or rules of law or by any particular rule of evidence or of procedure." In the second place, the Commission, to be convinced, must be unanimously convinced. This is specifically provided by Annex II, clause ijb.
In other words, the representatives of the United States, of Great Britain, of France, of Italy, and of Belgium must all be convinced, according to justice, equity, and good faith, that a further sum is payable or it will never be paid. But there is still another safeguard. The question cannot be decided without a hearing. The Commission in this matter is to act judicially; it must receive evidence and it must hear argument on behalf of Germany, and not until then can it decide. (Annex II, 9)
Mr. Keynes strangely enough criticizes the requirement of unanimity, because the Commission must be unanimous in order to cancel or reduce the debt; but the debt, so far as it is not to be paid, either principal or interest, is a figment of the imagination. It is the payment that matters, and nothing else.
In short, Mr. Keynes's conclusions (pages 167-168) are wholly unwarranted by the terms of the treaty. He says that the treaty fixes a sum far beyond Germany's capacity, which is then to be reduced at the discretion of a foreign commission acting with the object of obtaining each year the maximum. The contrary is the case. The treaty pro- vides for a payment reasonably within Germany's ability and permits its increase only upon evidence and proof which will convince all the representatives of the five powers that in justice and equity it should be increased.
With respect to the Commission, Mr. Keynes admits that "it was necessary, therefore, to set up a body to establish the bill of claim, to fix the mode of payment, and to approve necessary
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abatements and delays." Having granted this, however, he proceeds to distort and misrepresent its powers and purposes. He is not original in this. Almost word for word he follows the German attack made by Brockdorff-Rantzau in the reply of May 2gth, and to which the Allies replied:
The observations of the German delegation present a view of this Commission so distorted and so inexact that it is difficult to believe that the clauses of the treaty have been calmly or carefully examined. It is not an engine of oppression or a device for interfering with German sov- ereignty. It has no forces at its command; it has no ex- ecutive powers within the territory of Germany; it cannot, as is suggested, direct or control the educational or other systems of the country. Its business is to ask what is to be paid; to satisfy itself that Germany can pay; and to report to the powers, whose delegation it is, in case Ger- many makes default. If Germany raises the money re- quired in her own way, the Commission cannot order that it shall be raised in some other way; if Germany offers payment in kind, the Commission may accept such pay- ment, but except as specified in the treaty itself, the Com- mission cannot require such a payment.
The Reparations Commission, in plain, is the President's provision for tempering justice with mercy. If accepted by the Germans in faith and honesty, it will prove a speedy and effective agency for the restoration of their economic life. The purposes of the body go far beyond the mere collection of an indemnity, and are primarily concerned with the rehabilitation of Europe as a whole. It has the power to receive proposals from Germany for a lump-sum settlement, and it has the authority also to handle the
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fifteen-billion-dollar imposition in such manner as to guard absolutely the interests of Germany. Mr. Keynes, in one of his bursts of contradiction, says: "Transferred to the League of Nations, an appanage of justice and no longer of interest, who knows that by a change of heart and object the Reparations Commission may not yet be transformed from an instrument of oppression and rapine into an economic council of Europe, whose object is the restoration of life and of happiness, even in the enemy countries?" This was its object at the time and it is more than ever its object to-day.
These assertions are not based upon conject- ure. Long before the rise of Mr. Keynes there was open and official recognition of the facts that he presents in his book as "revela- tions." Mr. Bernard M. Baruch, economic adviser to the American delegation, appeared as a witness before the Foreign Relations Com- mittee of the Senate on August i, 1919, and testified that the President had fought always for the naming of a "fixed and reasonable sum," and that while this was not done, he did succeed in vesting power in the Reparations Commission to adjust the German indemnity in such manner as to make it meet Germany's abilities. The following excerpts from his testimony well dis- close the spirit and intent of the President and his advisers:
SENATOR JOHNSON (of CaKfornia): So that, on the figures as obtainable and presentable now, the bill is one that you say you do not think Germany can pay, but you rely upon the fact that the good sense of the Reparations
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Commission will scale the amount down to a point com- mensurate with the ability of Germany?
MR. BARUCH: Yes; and within that power it has been left so that it would work. It is workable; there is no question about that.
SENATOR JOHNSON (of California): They have the power and the contrary power as well?
MR. BARUCH: Contrary power? What do you mean?
SENATOR JOHNSON (of California) : That is, the power to scale down and the discretion to fix as well the amount that might not be scaled down.
MR. BARUCH: To fix the amount. But, of course, if the amount is fixed, personally, I think that will be the most workable treatment — to fix with Germany the amount which they themselves think they could pay. Of course, no one would fix an amount against a debtor that he did not think the debtor could pay.
SENATOR HARDING: Why do you say that it (Germany's solvency) is to the interest of America, when the Central Powers are the most formidable commercial rival?
MR. BARUCH: Can you imagine the world being prosper- ous while 130,000,000 people right in the center of the in- dustrial population are not prosperous? Can you imagine prosperity without the financial prosperity of the Central Powers, with the finances of Italy, France, and of Belgium and their industrial life, and to a large extent England's, depending on what they are going to receive from these people? In that way this reflects upon us. It is a great big partnership. We cannot separate ourselves from it. It is of vast consequence to America. . . .
SENATOR JOHNSON: I want to get your viewpoint. Our activities will be wholly altruistic?
MR. BARUCH: I would say no to that, for this reason: the spirit and the wisdom of the carrying out of this Repara- tions Commission is a matter of dollars and cents in the United States of America, because upon the wisdom of those decisions depend the financial and the industrial conditions of the world for years to come, perhaps for many generations.
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SENATOR JOHNSON: Then it is from the world standpoint and for the stabilizing of the world ?
MR. BARUCH: And from our own personal interests. Germany was a very large customer of ours. And this Reparations Commission does not deal alone with Germany, but with all the great Central Empires, and there are some 130,000,000 to 150,000,000 people involved in this. And it is a matter about which we are moved by great altruistic ideas primarily, but it is also a matter of deep self-interest.
How, then, does Mr. Keynes reach his con- clusion that the total amount demanded of Germany is $40,000,000,000? His process is simple. He takes the first payment of $5,000,- 000,000, and by disregarding the probable credit items of $2,500,000,000, puts down the full amount. To this he adds the second com- mitment of $10,000,000,000. Then, thrusting aside the fact that the third obligation of $10,- 000,000,000 is permissive only and cannot be authorized until public hearings have convinced the Reparations Commission unanimously that Germany can pay this additional amount, he assumes it as an already collectible debt, thereby bringing his total up to $25,000,000,000. The inclusion of the third item is imaginative enough, in all truth, but in his next performance Mr. Keynes severs all connection with reality. Because the Allies possess the right to make claim for all damages, Mr. Keynes asserts that Ger- many will be expected to pay the amounts dis- bursed for pensions, allowances, and like com- pensations. This total, by one of his "guesses," is placed at $15,000,000,000 and added to the accounts due and payable, thereby gaining the figure of $40,000,000,000 that he holds up to a
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WHAT MUST GERMANY PAY?
pitying world as the sum that Germany must pay. ^
For the confusion of such German-Americans as have resurrected the hyphen, and for the information of the honest, let it be stated again that the sum total of Germany's specified obliga- tion under the treaty is $15,0x20,000,000, and that against this is a credit item conservatively estimated at $2,500,000,000. The President agreed to the inclusion of a further implied obligation, not because it stood as an expressed armistice right of the Allies, but because he saw it as the one bridge to the future. No man at the Peace Conference had any idea that the indemnity would ever be increased beyond the $15,000,000,000, but, on the other hand, many were of the opinion that the tentative amount would have to be scaled down — not from any sympathy with Germany, but out of
• •i i i • • * • '•"^•li*y**l>"— ***aillW*|(l9t-
the conviction that the rehabilitation of Ger- many's economic life was necessary to the health of the world.1 The President's course is already justified. At this time of writing (April 25th) a saner Europe is already suggesting the "fixed and reasonable sum" that will give Germany a chance not only to restore prosperity, but a chance to cleanse the honor that she has dragged^ through blood and mire.
1 At the time of the armistice Germany's immediately trans- ferable wealth was about $625,000,00x5. This, as a matter of course, was an available source of reparation, and could have been demanded by the Allies. Instead of this ruthless method, Germany was permitted to use $250,000,000 in gold for the i purchase of food, also to export another $50,000,000 from the Reichsbank to meet her obligations in neutral countries. ——4
XVII
V
THE QUESTION OF COAL
MR. KEYNES, in considering the coal clauses of the treaty, is even more untrustworthy and contradictory than in his analysis of the cash indemnity. Commencing with the flat assertion that "the judgment of the world has already recognized the transaction of the Saar as an act of spoliation and insincerity," he paints a picture of industrial ruin that gives the manu- facturing districts of Germany tragic resemblance to the devastated areas of France, Belgium, and Italy. His method, as per habit, is to make the blackest possible statement of the case at the outset, and then, in later pages or in unobtrusive foot-notes, admit qualifying facts which, while not altering the force of his original attack, saves him from the direct charge of dishonesty. In the matter of coal, he juggles figures until he has them to his liking, and then sums up his arraign- ment of the treaty provisions in this confident sentence :
"Our hypothetical calculations, therefore, leave us with post-war German domestic requirements on the basis of a pre-war efficiency of railways and industry of 110,000,000 tons against an out- put not exceeding 100,000,000 tons, of which 40,-
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THE QUESTION OF COAL
000,000 tons are mortgaged to the Allies." And on this flat statement he bases a somewhat pas- sionate assertion of Allied depravity, and a pathetic appeal in behalf of German industry.
What are the facts? In the first place, Mr. Keynes ignores at every point this precise pledge of the treaty: "If the commission shall de- termine that the full exercise of the foregoing options would interfere unduly with the indus- trial requirements of Germany, the commission is authorized to postpone or to cancel deliveries, and in so doing to settle all questions of priority: but the coal to replace coal from destroyed mines shall receive priority over other deliveries."
In page after page he insists upon 40,000,000 tons as the coal that Germany "must" supply annually, and it is only in the fine type of a foot- note, tucked away at the bottom of page 97, that he makes the admission that as early as September, 1919, the coal demands upon Germany were modified from a delivery of 43,000,000 tons per annum to 20,000,000 tons.
On pages 90 and 91 he states that the coal production of Germany, without the Saar, Alsace-Lorraine, and Upper Silesia, cannot pos- sibly exceed 100,000,000 tons, yet on page 97, in the usual foot-note, he admits that in Septem- ber, 1919, the level of production was 108,000,000 tons. Also, through the usual medium of the inconspicuous foot-note on page 92, he confesses a German production in 1913 of 13,000,000 tons of rough lignite in addition to an amount con- verted into 21,000,000 tons of briquette, modestly adding, "I am not competent to speak on the
18 259
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
extent to which the loss of coal can be made good by the extended use of lignite or by econ- omies in its present employment; but some authorities believe that Germany may obtain substantial compensation for her loss of coal by paying more attention to her deposits of lignite."
He does not spare space in reciting the de- liveries of coal that Germany must make — always 40,000,000 tons instead of 20,000,000 — but he is careful not to call them "options," which is what they are, nor does he point out that every single ton is to be paid for at the German pithead price plus freight to the frontier.
On page 83 Mr. Keynes attacks the Saar settlement as "an act of spoliation and insin- cerity," and on page 84 he denounces the Upper Silesia arrangement, but on pages 263 and 264, far removed from the original accusations, he admits that both settlements, with some modi- fications, "should hold good."
His whole attempt is to give the impression that the Saar Basin has been annexed by France as spoils of war. To quote his exact words in one instance, "The French wanted the coal for the purpose of working the iron-fields of Lorraine, and in the spirit of Bismarck they have taken it." As a matter of truth, the district has been trans- ferred, not to French sovereignty, but to the con- trol of the League of Nations. This method has the double advantage that it involves no annexa- tion, while it maintains the economic unity of the district, important to the interest of the in- habitants, and relieves France from entire de- pendence on German faith. At the end of
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THE QUESTION OF COAL
fifteen years the mixed population, which in the mean while will have had control of its own local affairs under the governing supervision of the League of Nations, will have complete freedom to decide whether it wishes union with Germany, union with France, or the continuance of the regime provided for in the treaty. In event that the people vote to reunite with Germany, the Germans are required to repurchase the mines at a figure to be determined by fair appraisal. In the mean time, as an answer to Mr. Keynes's charge of spoliation, the mines are to be duly credited to Germany on the reparation account as compensation for the destruction of French mines, and as part payment toward the indem- nity as a whole.
These paragraphs were rewritten from the first draft, as the Germans made a point of the right to repurchase. As a further con- cession, Germany is given the right to declare the purchase price as a prior charge upon her assets.
Mr. Keynes's estimate of Germany's post-war domestic requirements at 110,000,000 tons is based, as he frankly admits, "on the basis of a pre-war efficiency of railways and industry" As a consequence of German destruction, the Euro- pean coal situation is the great problem of recon- struction. Germany, however, instead of sharing in the general privations of which she is the sole cause, must be permitted to have a supply of coal equal to every pre-war requirement. The industries of France, Belgium, Italy, and the new states may stand with cold chimneys, but
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
under no circumstances must a German factory be allowed to shut down.
Brushing hypocrisy and misrepresentation aside, the facts in the case do not admit of dis- tortion. At present the coal production of Ger- many, minus the output of the Saar Basin, Alsace-Lorraine, and Upper Silesia, is 108,000,000 tons per year. Of this she is to deliver 20,000,000 tons to other countries, if the Reparations Com- mission decides that she is able to meet this requirement. Assuming that the commission so decides, this will leave 88,000,000 tons for German domestic consumption. It can be seen, therefore, that the Germans are left with exactly 80 per cent, of their pre-war requirements, a far larger percentage than is enjoyed by France or Italy or Belgium, even if Germany makes de- liveries to them in accordance with the treaty provisions. Mr. Baruch, answering the question as to whether the coal clauses of the treaty would work serious injury to Germany, said:
"No. There seems to be a great misunder- standing regarding those clauses. In addition to the coal to make up for the loss from France's destroyed mines, the only coal Germany is required to export to the Allied countries is the same amount she exported to them before the war, and even this is required only for a limited period, and only if it does not interfere with Ger- many's industrial life. As a matter of fact there are large amounts of coal Germany can mine when she gets ready. The trouble with her at present is that she won't work. She won't dig the coal out of the mines. If the German and
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THE QUESTION OF COAL
other coal-fields in Europe were being properly developed now, Europe would not need coal."
By way of clearing up the whole matter, it may be wise to deal in detail with the Saar and Upper Silesia settlements. In neither case is there even the hint of annexation. As for Upper Silesia, the whole question of sovereignty is left to a vote of the people themselves. In the mean time the province is not in the hands of Poland, but remains under the government of an Allied commission until the plebiscite. Although Ger- many gained title by force of arms, the decision of the future is left to the people. If they want German rule they can have it. Self-determina- tion, however, does not suit Mr. Keynes in the case of Upper Silesia, or in any other case where there is a chance that Germany will lose. Be- cause he knows that the population of Upper Silesia is Polish indisputably, he enters the plea that "economically it is intensely German; the industries of eastern Germany depend upon it for their coal, and its loss would be a destructive blow at the economic structure of the German state." And in his "Remedies" he actually advances the suggestion that the Allies should attempt to influence the vote by declaring that "in their judgment, economic conditions require the inclusion of the coal districts in Germany."
Germany's needs and desires are conclusive. Poland's rights and Poland's needs are not to be considered. After taking a further fling at the "bankruptcy and incompetency of the new Polish state," Mr. Keynes appeals to prejudice still further by stating that "the conditions of life in
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such matters as sanitation and social legislation are incomparably better in Upper Silesia than in the adjacent districts of Poland, where similar legislation is in its infancy." He forgets to men- tion that these were the German assertions and that they are disputed at every point by the Poles. Nor does he put proper emphasis upon the treaty clause that provides in event of the vote favoring Poland that Germany shall have "the right to purchase mineral products, includ- ing coal, free from all export duties or other charges or restrictions on exportation, and on terms as favorable as are applicable to like products sold under similar conditions to pur- chasers in Poland or in any other country/*
Coming to the Saar Basin, it is possible to quote the printed opinion of Mr. Miller, legal adviser to the American Peace delegation. He has said:
The truth is that no arrangement of the treaty is fairer or more defensible than the arrangement regarding the Saar. The coal situation in Europe is set out in Mr. Keynes's book at page 93, particularly in the foot-note. The diminished supply in France is due not only to the war, to loss of man-power, to the difficulties of transport, but to the deliberate destruction by Germany, so far as destruc- tion was physically possible, of the French coal-mines at Lens and elsewhere. The Saar Basin is on the border of France, on its very frontier; the delivery of the coal-mines to French ownership for fifteen years is not only an equitable way of assuring to France some repletion of her coal-supply, but the only physical way of giving her any effective assur- ance whatever. Deliveries of coal from Germany may prove, as to some extent they have already proved, illusory. That France should receive nothing but a hope of coal deliveries by Germany, under the circumstances of the coal-
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THE QUESTION OF COAL
supply of Europe, of her own needs, and of her coal losses during the war, would have been so unjust as to be wholly indefensible.
As for the Keynes charge that "the judgment * of the world has already recognized the transac- tion as an act of spoliation and insincerity," previous disproofs may well be capsheafed by this historical comment from Professor Hazen of Columbia:
In other words, the world recognized that the Allies in Paris were robbers and hypocrites, for these are the vulgar synonyms for those who engage in spoliation and insincerity. When one makes a charge like that there is perhaps some obligation to try to prove it. It is significant and it is en- tirely characteristic that the only evidence Mr. Keynes offers is the argument submitted by the German delegates in their reply to the Allies. This argument he accepts with approval and without the slightest critical analysis. One of the assertions in the German statement is that the Saar district has been German for more than a thousand years; that for only sixty-eight of those years has it been French. This is the classic Pan-German argument, long urged with great vigor and iteration, that what belonged to the Holy Roman Empire lawfully belonged to the Hohen- zollern Empire of 1871 and must not be touched. It has been constantly urged in the case of Alsace-Lorraine, and the Pan-Germanists of 1914 were ready to apply it to other areas that had belonged to the medieval empire. This German reply of last May, which Mr. Keynes accepts as adequate authority, also says what when in the treaty of 1814 a small portion of the Saar was retained for France the population raised the most energetic opposition and demanded "reunion with their German fatherland"; to which they were "related by language, customs, and re- ligion," and that this desire was taken into account in the following year. No. mention is made either in the German reply or in Mr. Keynes's text that there is a literature worthy of study which shows that the separation of the Saar from
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France in 1815 was a typical illustration of the Prussian art of land-grabbing and that the alleged great popular clamor was the intrigue of a small clique of Germans in- terested in feathering their own nests in a mining venture.
Despite this basis for a just claim to the right to annex, the Saar goes to the League of Nations for administration, and in fifteen years the peo- ple will decide their future by independent ballot. A fitting conclusion to the whole coal consideration is the following survey by David Hunter Miller:
Let us look at the matter from the point of view of the statesmen who framed the treaty. The coal situation in Europe was one of great complexity, of great difficulty, and of great uncertainty. Nobody could determine exactly what would in the years immediately succeeding the treaty be an equitable distribution of coal in Europe; Germany might have a large surplus of coal for export. Whether this would prove to be the case was, of course, unknown, but taking into account the transport situation and the coal situation generally, nothing could be more just than that Germany should contribute this exportable surplus, if she had it, both as a payment on the indemnity and at the same time as a relief to the economic and physical conditions of other peoples.
The scheme of the treaty followed logically and justly. Germany agrees to deliver her exportable surplus up to the maximum amount which it could probably reach, approx- imately 40,000,000 tons. The treaty itself shows the doubt that existed as to the figure being reached or as to any figure of exportable surplus being reached. The 40,000,000 tons of deliveries mentioned in the treaty are "options." All of them are stated to be options, and as to the whole of the 40,000,000 tons, and as to any part of them, the Repara- tions Commission by majority vote may postpone or cancel deliveries if the exercise of the options would interfere "with the industrial requirements of Germany." So, as framed,
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THE QUESTION OF COAL
the treaty provides, and justly provides, a maximum amount of coal which Germany can be required to furnish and leaves the actual amount to be determined from time to time by a commission charged with the duty of considering German needs.
If it is objected that the treaty might operate unjustly to Germany, that the Reparations Commission might be arbitrary, the answer is that a deplorable coal situation existed in Europe, due to the war, and that no detailed dis- tribution for the years to come could justly be fixed in the treaty, but had to be left to decision on equitable principles in the future.
But the conclusive answer is the action already taken by the Coal Commission, which is for this purpose practically the Reparations Commission, in reducing by more than 50 per cent, the amount of coal to be furnished by Ger- many, in promising to give consideration to further reduc- tion if German production should decrease, and in limiting to 50 or 60 per cent, the amount to be supplied from any such future increase.
The treaty, according to Mr. Keynes, sweeps the German mercantile marine from the seas for many years to come. It must be admitted that this is hardly a fair description of the arrangement that compels Germany to turn over her own ships to take the place of the tonnage ruthlessly destroyed by her submarines during the war. The Germans did not seek to escape responsibility in this regard and the one appeal was for modifications that would permit Germany to retain and use her mercan- tile marine while she built other ships for the Allies. While Mr. Keynes denounces the ship- ping provisions of the treaty on page 67, his indignation has spent itself Jby the time he reaches page 261, for under the head of "Remedies"
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
he suggests quite calmly that "the surrender of merchant-ships and submarine cables required under the treaty, etc., should be reckoned as worth the lump sum of $2,500,000,000, and should be deducted" from a lump indemnity of $10,000,000,000.
As showing the erratic quality of his mind, (/""'on page 174 he says: "Estimating the tonnage of German shipping to be taken over under the treaty at 4,000,000 gross tons and the average value per ton at $150 per ton, the total money value involved is $600,000,000."
Mr. Baruch, asked whether it would be pos- sible for Germany to re-establish a mercantile marine, made this answer: "Certainly it is possible. It depends partly, however, upon the wisdom and generosity of the Allies. The ownership of a merchant marine in time of peace is not very different from the ownership of raw materials. In time of war or blockade we over- emphasize their importance because the channels through which they move are disrupted. Under peaceful conditions both ships and raw mate- rials will move naturally to the highest-paying market." i
Mr. Keynes, however, insists that, "The prosperity of German ports and commerce can only revive, it would seem, in proportion as she succeeds in bringing under her effective influence the merchant marines of Scandinavia and of Holland." As Mr. Miller caustically comments, "If ports and commerce require for their prosperity ships of a particular flag, then the United States was without prosperous
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THE QUESTION OF COAL
ports or important foreign commerce before the war."
In discussing the clauses relating to the river system of Germany, Mr. Keynes declares: " These are largely unnecessary and are so little related to the supposed aims of the Allies that their purport is generally unknown. Yet they constitute an unprecedented interference with a country's domestic arrangements, and are capa- ble of being so operated as to take from Germany all effective control over her own transport system." Whereupon he attacks the plan as part of the general policy to "impoverish Germany" and to "obstruct her development in future." One hesitates to characterize the type of mind that can permit itself such state- ments. Instead of their purport being "un- known," the theory of international river control was established in the Allied answer as one of the fundamentals of peace, and these great principles were asserted: that it was vital to the free life of young, landlocked states to have secure access to the sea along rivers which are navigable through their territory; that if viewed according to the discredited doctrine that every state is engaged in a desperate struggle for ascendancy over its neighbors, no doubt such arrangement may be an impediment to the artificial strangling of a rival; but if it be the idea that nations are to co-operate in the ways of commerce and peace, they are natural and right.
Instead of being "unprecedented," even be- fore the war an international commission regu-
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lated the Rhine and the Danube. What the Peace Conference did was merely to extend the principle not only to other German rivers, but
(to all the rivers of Europe. It is a plan as vast as it is commendable to end the autocracies of national privilege by internationalizing all the great waterways of the Continent so that the stream that passes through one nation shall be just as free in all its length to the sea as if that
/ nation owned the whole of it.
As a matter of fact, the German counter- proposals admitted the wisdom and justice of the plan, and objected only on the ground that reciprocity was not provided for, although sug- gesting various changes and making certain demands. The Allied answer stated that re- ciprocal rules would be arranged as soon as the League of Nations laid down general conventions. Concessions were made, however, in a strength- ening of the clauses assuring freedom of transit across West Prussia to Germany, the increase of Germany's representation on the Oder from one to three, the representation of Germany on the commission to establish a permanent status for the Danube, the submission of the future Rhine-Danube Canal to the general regime of international waterways, and the sup- pression of the clauses as to the constructing of railroads through Germany and of the Kiel Canal Commission.
XVIII
SHANTUNG AND HYPOCRISY
NOT the President nor supporters of the Peace ' Treaty have ever advanced an opinion that the Shantung settlement was ideal, but there has been frank admission at all times that a widely different arrangement was hoped for and worked for. As it stands, however, the agreement with relation to Shantung holds out a brighter promise to China than has ever before illumined her helplessness, for in it is the certainty of protec- tion against further despoliation and explicit guaranties that will lead to the restoration of lost sovereignties. On the other hand, those who preach the treaty's defeat on account of the Shantung provision have nothing to offer except their false sympathy, and even as they cry out their pretended indignation they know that their course, if successful, can have no other end than the dooming of China to a greater/ hopelessness, a more profound despair.
Americans, as a whole, are invincibly antago- * nistic to the Japanese. This dislike, originating in California, has been spread by the malign activities of demagogic politicians and papers, and the general policies of the Japanese govern- ment have not helped to bring about a better understanding. Militaristic and imperialistic,
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the spirit of Japan has rasped the United States at every point, and this irritation has closed the average mind to any fair consideration of issues in which Nippon has a stake. Not one citizen in 10,000 knows the details of the Shan- tung settlement, or has any exact knowledge of the Chinese conditions that led up to it. These prejudices and ignorances have fitted perfectly into the plans of partizaris who have banded to defeat the treaty and to discredit the President. Their hypocrisy is a matter of proof, not assumption, for while the citizens may be excused on the score of non-understand- ing, the members of the Senate of the United States can enter no such plea, for they know, or should know, the record of rapacity that has been written at China's expense during the last quarter of a century. Shantung was the begin- ning of spoliation even as it promises to be the | end.
The first act in the sordid tragedy of China was staged in 1894, when Japan declared war under pretense of saving Manchuria from Russian domination. The fruit of Japanese victory was Port Arthur and the Liao-tung Peninsula, but Russia stepped in, backed by France and Ger- many, and forced Japan to surrender the terri- tory. Tokio exhausted effort to obtain a pledge that Russia had no designs upon Manchuria, but a treaty to this end was refused, and in 1897 the Russians effected a virtual occupation. The war-ships of the Czar entered the harbor of Port Arthur and in April, 1898, it was announced that China had granted Russia a lease that was,
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to all intents, a surrender of Manchurian sover- eignty. Port Arthur was fortified, garrisons were established, railroads were built, and the whole country was treated as a Russian province.
In 1898 two German missionaries were killed by Chinese mobs. Despite the disavowals of the Chinese government, and its plain proof that the murders were due entirely to an outburst of local passion, the Germans invaded China with drawn swords under pretense of restoring order. By way of gratitude for the Kaiser's aid, China was compelled to grant certain con- cessions to Germany in Shantung, the lease including the seaport of Tsing-Tau and embrac- ing the privilege of building a railroad and exploiting ore deposits. Senator Hiram John- son, more particularly than any other, has spared no pains to create the impression that the "Shantung question" involves the entire prov- ince with its area of 56,000 square miles and its population of 38,000,000. The grimy history of political debate is without record of any greater falsehood. The ceded area covers 117 square miles and a zone of suzerainty 76 miles — a total of 193 square miles — and the population of the grant to-day is about 60,000.
Emboldened by the success of Russia and Germany, England seized the port of Wei-Hai- Wei and France then took Tonking, with its 80,000 people. Nothing was left to China but Peking, and even there a joint army of occupa- tion masqueraded under the name of "legation guards."
William McKmley was President at the time, 273
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
and John Hay was his Secretary of State, yet from America no word of protest went forth against the aggressions of Germany, France, England, and Russia, but only a warning that there must be no interference with America's trading rights in China — that the invaders must keep an "open door" for American merchandise. As long as we were permitted to do business in the stolen territories we were willing to let them be stolen. And not Senator Lodge, nor any other Republican leader now prominent in the Shantung agitation, lifted his voice to cry out against the rape of unhappy China.
In 1904 came the war betweeen Russia and Japan. The peace, it will be remembered, was concluded at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, under the benevolent auspices of President Roosevelt, and as a result of the treaty framed on American soil Japan took over the Russian "leases" in Manchuria, Port Arthur and its fortifications, the Chinese Eastern Railroad, and Korea. Again no protest was raised, but on the contrary press and people commended President Roosevelt for his "great achievement" in secur- ing a "just peace," and Japan was praised as a "noble victor."
The outbreak of the Great War found Japan the ally of England, and without delay she en- tered into the fulfilment of her treaty obliga- tions, declaring war on Germany on August 23, 1914. The consideration of tremendous interest to the Allies, as a matter of course, was that Germany's bases of operations in the Pacific should be destroyed, for not only did the German
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occupation of Shantung forbid the transport of troops from Australia, but it gave a position of advantage for continual knife-thrusts into Eng- land's back. Without delay Japan attacked the strong forts of Tsing-Tau, captured them, and swept German power from the Pacific.
In May, 1915, China signed a solemn agree- ment to the effect that she recognized Japan's rights to the Shantung leasehold, and would assent to any future arrangement effected be- tween Japan and Germany. In the spring of 1917, when Japan's larger participation in the war was necessary, England and France signed a treaty agreeing to recognize the Japanese claim to Shantung, and in 1918 China yielded a similar guaranty.
This, then, was the situation that faced the President on April 29th. The ideal arrange- ment, as he saw it, was an outright cancelation of the Shantung lease in order that the League of Nations might build from the beginning on a foundation of honor and territorial integrity. A variety of things joined to make any such settle- ment impossible. In the first place, Japanese feeling was already very bitter on account of the refusal of the Peace Conference to recognize the "equality of the nations and the just treatment of their nationals," and this bitterness had ample justification. The only excuse for this discrimi- nation, as the President frankly explained, was an American prejudice, and, while the future might remove it, it had to be dealt with as a factor at the time. Wounded in their pride, and deeply angered by what seemed a breach of faith, the 19 275
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
Japanese insisted that if their claim to the Shan- tung concession was to be ignored, they would quit the Conference and refuse to sign the Peace Treaty. No one was suggesting that either England or France should surrender Chinese leases. Why, then, should the entire burden of sacrifice be placed upon Japan? To consent to any such arrangement was tantamount to a confession that England and France were to be trusted in China, but that Japan was to be excluded as an untrustworthy nation.
As the Japanese delegates pointed out, it was not that they were asking anything from China, but merely taking over the German lease granted by China in 1898, and which still had seventy- eight years to run. By an expenditure of blood and money they had dispossessed the Germans and were now the legal possessors of the lease. England, France, and China had affirmed the transfer. Under no circumstances would Japan allow these treaties to be turned into scraps of paper. As has been remarked, Lloyd George and Clemenceau informed the President that they could not, in common honor, repudiate the pledges that they had given to Japan.
At the very outset the President indulged in some very plain speech. Speaking for the United States, he refused absolutely to recognize the treaties of 1915 and 1918 by which China agreed to transfer the German rights in Shantung to the Japanese. He proved conclusively that the signature of China in both instances was obtained under threat of war, and he proved also that China would have entered the war
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SHANTUNG AND HYPOCRISY
against Germany in 1914 but for Japan's veto. Tokio did not want to see a Chinese army in the field, and it was only after America's entrance into the world struggle that Japan grudgingly consented to let China become a belligerent. Japan, in answer, merely pointed to the fact that Spain had ceded Porto Rico and the Philip- pines to the United States under duress. She held up the solemn promise of England and France and stated flatly that her delegates would leave Paris at once unless her claim to Shantung was granted.
What was the President to do? It was not only the case that Japan was supported at every point by the strict letter of international law, but it was equally true that there was not one single compulsion that could be applied to make her consent to a course of which her statesmen did not approve. By no means was it a study in the abstract. Japan was in actual and absolute possession of Shantung, able to enforce her rights regardless of any decision of the Peace Confer- ence. It was not only the case that the departure of the Japanese delegates would defeat the Peace Treaty and continue world chaos, but it stood plain that China would not be helped in any degree. The President, however, met firmness with firmness and out of the clash of wills there came a decision which, while not ideal, may yet stand as one of the most remarkable victories of the whole Conference. The President agreed that the German lease should be transferred without reservation to Japan, while the Japanese delegates agreed "to hand back the Shantung
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
peninsula in full sovereignty to China, retaining only the economic privileges granted to Germany and the right to establish a settlement under the usual conditions at Tsing-Tau." All fortifica- tions were to be razed, all Japanese troops were to be withdrawn, and any police force that might be needed for the protection of Japanese proper- ties was to be recruited from the Chinese popula- tion. Where Germany ruled as a sovereign in Shantung Japan will operate only as an economic concessionnaire, enjoying no rights but the eco- nomic and commercial rights that go with its lease to operate a railroad and to develop mines.
The President did not stop with this arrange- ment. Calling Lloyd George and Clemenceau into the council-chamber again, he explained the nature of the agreement, and asked flatly whether he might expect that England and France would follow the laudable example of Japan. The two Premiers stated that they were willing that the French and English concessions should be passed upon by the League of Nations and that the President might count upon their influence in securing the surrenders necessary to restore the territorial integrity of China.
r Those who strike at the Peace Treaty, under pretense of friendship and pity for China, are in reality the enemies of China. The defeat of the treaty will not cancel the Shantung lease or put an end to Japanese control of the former German holdings. These are things that can be done only by force. America would have to take arms against Japan, and inasmuch as France and
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England are in China, these two nations would also have to be fought and expelled. It is sig- nificant, however, that not a Republican Senator has had the courage or honesty to suggest this course, for it is not China that they want to help, but the President that they want to discredit. If the League of Nations does not become a fact, with America in it as a champion of fair dealing, China has been robbed of her one great chance to regain her ravished sovereignty. Japan, re- leased from her obligation, will undoubtedly treat Shantung as the Germans treated it — fortifying, colonizing, expanding — striking always deeper into the heart of China. France and England, no longer bound by their promises to the President, will strengthen their holds in China, and the unhappy country will more than ever become the prey of strength.
Only in the ratification of the treaty — only in the operation of the League of Nations — is there any hope for China. This great tribunal, when it is set up, will see to it that Japan stands by her bargain, receiving no rights other than as an economic concessionnaire, and at the end of her lease quitting China entirely. France and Eng- land will also be held to their words, and quick action may be expected that will either put them outside of China or else continue them as mere tenants and not as sovereigns. The whole in- tent of Article X is to respect and preserve the territorial integrity and political indepen- dence of nations, and not only is China to be a member of the League, with full power of pro- test, but the other nations of the world are at
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last in a position to voice their own protests against the intolerable grievances to which the Chinese have been subjected.
There is no question that Japan will live up to her agreement in event of the constitution of a League of Nations. Contrary to general opinion, Japan, as a nation, has been more scrupulous than any other in the observance of treaty obligations. Another factor, overlooked by the average American, is the existence and increas- ing strength of the liberal movement in Japan. In the last few years, particularly, democratic sentiment has had an amazing growth in the Flowery Kingdom, and there is every certainty that the military tradition will soon be over- thrown. Arbitrary and discriminatory treat- ment in the matter of Shantung would have caused a revulsion in Japanese feeling, restoring the imperialistic party to all of its old power, but the League of Nations, with its accent upon peace and justice, is virtually a guaranty of victory for the forces of liberalism.
Japan wants the friendship of the world, but more than anything else she needs the friendship of China. In the opinion of the best informed, there is little doubt that Japan will not only hold to her agreement, but that she will go even farther, perhaps to the length of canceling the entire Shantung concession as the first step in winning the confidence of the Chinese. """* Whether this is done or whether this is not done, the arrangement forced by the President, and depending upon the formation of a League of Nations, is China's one hope. The only
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other way is for America to demand the return of Shantung under threat of war, and every person of intelligence knows that this is not going to be done.
It is also the case that the President did not rest satisfied with the settlement, but proceeded at once to put the future of China upon firm ground. The representatives of the United States, France, Great Britain, and Japan met in conference and associated in a consortium based upon these principles:
(a) That no country should attempt to culti- vate special spheres of influence;
(b) That all existing options held by a mem- ber of any of the national groups should, so far as practicable, be turned into the consortium as a whole;
(c) That the four banking groups of the coun- tries in question should act in concert and in an effective partnership for the interests of China; and
(d) That the consortium's operations should deal primarily with loans to the Chinese Republic or to provinces of the Republic, or with loans guaranteed or officially having to do with the Republic or its provinces, and in each instance of a character sufficient to warrant a public issue.
Here was plain agreement that not only would China be protected from spoliation in the future, but that the partitions of the past would be remedied. Here was an open, honest offer of financial help — an unselfish concert of nations for the purpose of lifting China out of debt \ and putting her on the road to solvency.
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Emboldened by the position of the Republican majority in the Senate, Japan is showing signs of a desire to repudiate the consortium, a course she would not dare to pursue were the United States a member of the League of Nations. It is a course that every other nation will com- mence to adopt if America persists in with- holding her voice and influence. It is not only the welfare of China that is being imperiled by Senator Lodge and his Republican majority, but the hopes of every weak nation in the world.
XIX
THE ADRIATIC TANGLE
THE impregnability of the President's position with respect to Fiume is proved absolutely by the written record. It may not be seriously questioned that the Treaty of London is to be considered as a complete statement of Italy's war objectives. England and France, facing what seemed to be certain defeat, were little disposed to quibble over the terms that would bring a new ally into the war, especially as the rewards that Italy was to receive were entirely at the expense of the enemy. What Italy asked was the Trentino, as a matter of course, the province of Triest, the peninsula of Istria, most of Dalmatia, the chief Dalmatian islands, and the Dodecannesus. This parceling rectified the northern frontier, reclaiming Italian territory long held by the Austrians, and also gave Italy virtual control of the Adriatic. France and England agreed to these demands, and incor- porated them into the Treaty of London. No one can doubt that the two nations, in their extremity, would have granted anything that Italy chose to request, and Fiume would have been signed over without demur had the city been asked for. Instead of that, the Italian
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representatives specifically insisted upon the exclusion of Fiume and Spalato.
Fiume, therefore, was not an Italian objective when Italy set down the terms upon which she stood ready to enter the war. Nor was Fiume in the mind of Italy even at the time of the armistice, for on December 2, 1918, the Italian Bureau of Information in Washington issued a statement in denial of imperialistic pretensions, making this formal reference to Fiume:
The Treaty of London is the only document supported by the Allies in which there are precise promises in favor of the Jugoslavic peoples, and these promises were asked by Italy before the Allies. Italy, which might have egotistically treated only with regard to her own rights, has wished, in entering the war, to assure also to the Jugo- slavs their rights for a just balance of power in the Adriatic.
Note 2 attached to Article V of the treaty (of London) establishes:
The following districts upon the Adriatic shall be by virtue of the powers of the Entente included in the territory of Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro: . . . the entire coast of Croatia, the port of Fiume, and the little ports of Nevi and of Carlopago.
This stipulation, as it gives proof of the generous loyalty of the Italian people, so it gives the first measure of what should be and is a just accord of all rights; of the rights of a people such as the Italians, which cannot be renounced.
If this is not proof enough that Fiume was merely an afterthought of certain Italian poli- ticians, the record contains other confirmatory evidence. Signer Orlando not only held friendly conversations in London with Trumbic, the Croatian leader, but arranged for a meeting in Rome for the purpose of cementing an alliance
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between Italy and the Jugoslavia peoples. At the time Czechoslovaks, Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes were fighting under the Italian colors in the front-line trenches, and the congress gave promise of burying forever the ancient feud between Italian and Jugoslav. The action of the Jugoslav committee in congratulating Or- lando upon the great Piave victory was a fitting climax to the projection of the accord. There was much talk of the new state that should rise from the ruins of Austria-Hungary, and Signor Orlando led the dominant group that preached the wisdom of a close and co-operative alliance. It was this policy, no doubt, that dictated the exclusion of Fiume and Spalato from the Treaty of London. Orlando saw that the friendship of the Balkans would prove of incalculable benefit to Italian commerce, while the voluntary cession of Italy's rights in Fiume would win world approval.
This statesman-like conception was brought to naught by the antagonism of Baron Sonnino, Italy's Minister of Foreign Affairs, a diplomat brought up in the tradition of Metternich and unable to grasp any other political method than that of appealing to the basest passions of the masses. As though it were his object to isolate Italy entirely, this old man shattered the under- standing with the new Jugoslavia state, con- temptuously rejected the overtures of Greece, and set about the disruption of friendly relations with France. Fiume was the idea of Sonnino and Sonnino alone. The Italian people knew nothing about the demand for weeks, and when
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it was tentatively suggested to President Wilson soon after his arrival in Paris he called Sonnino's attention to the fact that Fiume did not figure in the Treaty of London and that Italy had accepted the Fourteen Points without a single reservation. Stubbornly, cleverly, Sonnino swept both the President and Orlando to one side, and commenced the promotion of the agitation that resulted in the resurrection of Italian jingoism and D'Annunzio's seizure of Fiume.
As has been pointed out in a previous chapter, never at any time did the President change his mind with regard to Fiume. He made his posi- tion clear when the matter was first broached in Paris, and it was with difficulty that he was dissuaded from stating his views to the Italian people during his visit in Rome. Italy was to receive the Trentino, the province of Triest, principal parts of Istria and Dalmatia, the naval base at Pola, and other important accessions. These were Italian rights and the President supported them wholeheartedly. Fiume, how- ever, had been promised to the Serbs and the Czechoslovaks as their one outlet to the sea, and it was a promise that must be kept. His statement of April 23d — the so-called appeal to the Italian people over the heads of Orlando and Sonnino — was no more than a public declara- tion of the stand that he had held from the very beginning. The Italian delegation left Paris on April 24th in ostentatious fury, but it was notable that the economic representatives remained, con- tinuing the daily business of getting money, fuel, and raw materials from the United States.
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The vote of confidence received by Orlando on his return to Rome must be regarded as more political than popular, for it was not long before the Premier and his Cabinet were forced to resign. The sane papers of Italy commenced to point out that the lunatic insistence upon the comparatively insignificant question of Fiume had not only lost Italy valuable and necessary friendships, but that it had blinded the delega- tion to Italy's real necessities. While the battle over Fiume was being waged with rage and bitterness, not one single intelligent effort had been made to forward Italy's economic interests by arrangements with regard to finance, coal, food, iron, and steel.
Until the day of his departure, the President hoped for an amicable settlement of the Adriatic tangle, and persisted in these efforts even after his return. Principally as a result of his interest, an agreement was reached on December 9, 1919, the proposals being signed by Lloyd George and Clemenceau, with Frank Polk representing the President as a member of the American com- mission. There was no question as to the joint nature of the note, and even as late as December 23d Clemenceau made this frank statement to the Chamber of Deputies: "The Fiume question has been agonizing. Italy promised Fiume to the Jugoslavs, but went back on her promise. France, England, and the United States have sought a solution, and the latest indications are that it will finally be reached. Only when this is solved can we commence to breathe freely." The feature of the settlement
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was the creation of the free state of Fiume, a compromise that safeguarded the Jugoslavia interests even as it held a salve for Italian pride. In all else the Italian claims were granted even beyond the first expectations.
Shortly afterward the American delegation re- turned to the United States, the attitude of the Senate making impossible any further stay in Paris. On January 6, 1919, Signor Nitti, the new Italian Premier, answered the joint note of December 9th, making counter-proposals that were no more than a restatement of the original Sonnino demands. Whereupon Clemenceau and Lloyd George, acting in entire independence and without even informing the President of the new Italian note, met hurriedly on January 9th and came to a fresh understanding that repudi- ated in every particular their signed agreement of December 9th.
Under this new arrangement, the free state of Fiume was cut down to include the city only, and a further strip of territory was given to Italy in order to connect Fiume with Italian Istria; additional islands were ceded to Italy, the Jugoslavia city of Zara was recognized as a free city, and various other concessions were made. By way of appeasing the Jugoslavs, they were given permission to step in and take a considerable slice of northern Albania, a pro- posal that New Europe denounced in these terms :
The Jugoslavs are asked to sacrifice half a million of their kinsmen, and to accept as "compensation" — in other words, as a shameless bribe — chose northern districts of Albania
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which the secret Treaty of London had assigned to them. This means that France and Britain have robbed a weak ally of its rights in order to meet obligations which they had wrongly contracted, and which they are not prepared to redeem with their own property; and that they now invite their victim to indemnify himself and descend to their own level by plundering a still weaker neighbor.
Premier Nitti, as a matter of course, "con- sented," and without more ado Lloyd George and Clemenceau sent for the representatives of the Jugoslavs and told them that unless they accepted the new proposition within four days the Treaty of London would be put in force. The London Times, describing the scene, states that "Pasitch and Trumbic were rated in a fashion not usual in diplomacy. They were told that discussion could not continue, that if they did not give way England and France were going not only to apply the Treaty of London, but to allow Italy to apply it and apply it in its integrity. 'That,' said Clemenceau, 'is the al- ternative. There is no third course to which it is possible to accede.' Lloyd George was 'in full agreement with Clemenceau."
These actions, communicated to Washington, resulted in a telegram to Ambassador Wallace on January I9th, in which it was stated that "the United States is being put in the position of having the matter disposed of before the American point of view can be expressed, as apparently M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George have sought only the views of the Italian and Jugoslav governments before ascer- taining the views of the United States govern-
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ment. Is it the intention of the British and French governments in the future to dispose of the various questions pending in Europe and to communicate the results to the government of the United States? There are features in connection with the proposed Fiume settlement which both M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George must realize would not be acceptable to the President. As was pointed out by Mr. Polk before his departure, the Dalmatian and other questions should be taken up through regular diplomatic channels, and the fact that you are not charged with full powers could have no bearing on the question/'
This communication was answered under date of January 23d by a joint cable from Lloyd George and Clemenceau in which the two Premiers denied any intent to make "a definite settlement of the question without obtaining the views of the American government." There were glib explanations that they had merely pro- ceeded upon the theory that it was best, in view of conditions, "to proceed with the negotiations as rapidly as possible, and to submit the results to the United States government as soon as definite conclusions had been reached." The answer also protested that "practically every important point of the joint memorandum of December 19, 1919, remains untouched and has now been indorsed by the Prime Minister of Italy." In reply the President despatched his famous note of February loth, dealing not only with Fiume, but setting forth the American position with reference to the whole question of
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THE ADRIATIC TANGLE
European territorial readjustment. Its impor- tant passages may well be quoted:
The President fully shares the view of the French and British governments that the future of the world largely depends upon the right solution of this question, but he cannot believe that a solution containing provisions which have already received the well-merited condemnation of the French and British governments can in any sense be regarded as right. Neither can he share the opinion of the French and British governments that the proposals contained in their memorandum delivered to the Jugoslav representative on January I4th leave untouched practically every important point of the joint memorandum of the French, British, and American governments of December 9, 1919, and that only two features undergo alterations, and both these alterations are to the positive advantage of Jugoslavia. On the contrary, the President is of the opinion that the proposal of December gth has been pro- foundly altered to the advantage of improper Italian ob- jectives, to the serious injury of the Jugoslav people and to the peril of world peace.
The memorandum of December 9th rejected the device of connecting Fiume with Italy by a narrow strip of coast territory, as quite unworkable in practice and as involving extraordinary complexities as regards customs control, coast-guard services, and cognate matters in a territory of such unusual configuration. The French and British governments, in association with the American government, expressed the opinion that "the plan appears to run counter to every consideration of geography, economics, and ter- ritorial convenience." The American government notes that this annexation of Jugoslav territory by Italy is nevertheless agreed to by the memorandum of January I4th.
The memorandum of December 9th rejected Italy's demand for the annexation of all of Istria, on the solid ground that neither strategic nor economic considerations could justify such annexation, and that there remained nothing in defense of the proposition save Italy's desire 20 291
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for more territory admittedly inhabited by Jugoslavs. The French and British governments then expressed their cordial approval of the way in which the President had met every successive Italian demand for the absorption in Italy of territories inhabited by peoples not Italian and not in favor of being absorbed, and joined in the opinion that "it is neither just nor expedient to annex as the spoils of war territories inhabited by an alien race." Yet this un- just and inexpedient annexation of all of Istria is provided for in the memorandum of January I4th.
The memorandum of December 9th carefully excluded every form of Italian sovereignty over Fiume. The Amer- ican government cannot avoid the conclusion that the memorandum of January I4th opens the way for Italian control of Fiume's foreign affairs, thus introducing a measure of Italian sovereignty over, and Italian inter- vention in, the only practicable port of a neighboring people; and taken in conjunction with the extension of Italian territory to the gates of Fiume, paves the way for possible future annexation of the port by Italy, in con- tradiction of compelling considerations of equity and right.
The memorandum of December 9th afforded proper pro- tection to the vital railway connecting Fiume northward with the interior. The memorandum of January I4th establishes Italy in dominating military positions close to the railway at a number of critical points.
The memorandum of December 9th maintained in large measure the unity of the Albanian state. That of January 1 4th partitions the Albanian people, against their vehement protests, among three different alien powers.
The American government, while no less generous in its desire to accord to Italy every advantage to which she could offer any proper claims, feels that it cannot sacrifice the principles for which it entered the war to gratify the improper ambitions of one of its associates, or to purchase a temporary appearance of calm in the Adriatic at the price of a future world conflagration. It is unwilling to recognize either an unjust settlement based on a secret treaty the terms of which are inconsistent with the new world condi-
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tions or an unjust settlement arrived at by employing that secret treaty as an instrument of coercion. It would wel- come any solution of the problem based on a free and un- prejudiced consideration of the merits of the controversy, or on terms of which the disinterested great powers agreed to be just and equitable. Italy, however, has repeatedly rejected such resolutions. This government cannot accept a settlement the terms of which have been admitted to be unwise and unjust, but which it is proposed to grant to Italy in view of her persistent refusal to accept any wise and just solution.
It is a time to speak with the utmost frankness. The Adriatic issue as it now presents itself raises the fundamental question as to whether the American government can on any terms co-operate with its European associates in the great work of maintaining the peace of the world by remov- ing the primary causes of war. This government does not doubt its ability to reach amicable understandings with the associated governments as to what constitutes equity and justice in international dealings, for differences of opinion as to the best methods of applying just principles have never obscured the vital fact that in the main the several governments have entertained the same fundamental con- ception of what those principles are. But if substantial agreement on what is just and reasonable is not to deter- mine international issues, if the country possessing the most endurance in pressing its demands rather than the country armed with a just cause is to gain the support of the powers; if forcible seizure of coveted areas is to be permitted and condoned, and is able to receive ultimate justification by creating a situation so difficult that decision favorable to the aggressor is deemed a practical necessity; if deliberately incited ambition is, under the name of national sentiment, to be rewarded at the expense of the small and the weak; if, in a word, the old order of things which brought so many evils on the world is still to prevail — then the time is not yet come when this government can enter a concert of powers the very existence of which must depend upon a new spirit and a new order. The American people are willing to share in such high enterprise, but
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many among them are fearful lest they be entangled in international policies and committed to international ob- ligations foreign alike to their ideals and their traditions. To commit them to such a policy as that embodied in the latest Adriatic proposals, and to obligate them to maintain injustice as against the claims of justice, would be to pro- vide the most solid ground for such fears. This government can undertake no such grave responsibility.
The President desires to say that if it does not appear feasible to secure acceptance of the just and generous concessions offered by the British, French, and American governments to Italy in the joint memorandum of those powers of December 9, 1919, which the President has already clearly stated to be the maximum concession that the government of the United States can offer, the President desires to say that he must take under serious considera- tion the withdrawal of the treaty with Germany and the agreement between the United States and France of June 28, 1919, which are now before the Senate and permitting the terms of the European settlement to be independently established and enforced by the associated governments.
The devious nature of French diplomacy was evidenced again in connection with this cor- respondence. Appreciating the fact that secrecy could be maintained no longer, and fully realiz- ing the moral strength of Wilson's position, the French government followed its usual practice of presenting the case to the world in the colored and distorted form best suited to French pur- poses. Instead of giving the notes to the press, inspired articles commenced to appear, the ob- ject being to gain currency for the impression that France and Great Britain and Italy had agreed upon a sensible settlement, eminently fair to the Jugoslavs, and that this settlement had been rudely cast aside by President Wilson
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under threat of withdrawing entirely from con- cern with European affairs. The Echo de Paris, mouthpiece of the French Foreign Office, was guilty of one great indiscretion, however, when it declared, "It is inadmissible that Wilson — an autocrat, truly, but an autocrat who is about to fall — should be allowed to impose his political conceptions upon us when within a year Re- publicans will rule in the White House and in all probability will immediately denounce all his conceptions.*'
What else was this but a confession that European imperialism looked upon the Repub- lican Senate as its ally, and that under the terms of this new alliance authority was given to break every agreement entered into with President Wilson ?
Certainly the action of Senator Lodge gave them the right to take this position. At one of the most critical stages of the controversy he sent an open telegram to various Italian societies in Boston, declaring that Fiume should be handed over to Italy, "not only for her own protection, but as an essential barrier against any future attempt of Germany to attack the rest of the world as she did in the recent war." Having addressed this appeal to the Italian vote, he then turned about and cajoled the German vote by insisting that the United States should make a separate peace with Germany without con- ditions of any kind. It was this sort of political claptrap, in the United States as well as in Rome, that aroused passions that clouded Italian intelligence.
295
The publication of the President's note put an end to intrigue. Its stirring sentences and unanswerable logic forced a quick reconsidera- tion of the whole Fiume matter, and the Anglo- French reply was a complete backdown. Every word was a virtual admission that the settlement was nothing more than a hasty, ill-considered attempt to adjust a difficulty, and in addition there was specific admission that the Albanian partition was unfair. The European press re- acted favorably to the new attitude as leading "to the only sensible settlement of the dangerous and embarrassing position."
President Wilson, in a note of February 24th, explained that he "would, of course, make no objection to a settlement mutually agreeable to Italy and Jugoslavia regarding their common frontier in the Fiume region, provided that such an agreement is not made on the basis of com- pensations elsewhere at the expense of nationals of a third power." And he restated the principle on which he stood:
The President believes it to be the central principle fought for in the war that no government or group of governments has the right to dispose of the territory or to determine the political allegiance of any free people. The five great powers, though the government of the United States constitutes one of them, have in his conviction no more right than had the Austrian government to dispose of the free Jugoslavic peoples without the free consent and co-operation of those peoples. The President's position is that the powers associated against Germany gave final and irrefutable proof of their sincerity in the war by writing into the Treaty of Versailles Article X of the Covenant of the League of Nations, which constitutes an assurance
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that all the great powers have done what they have com- pelled Germany to do — have foregone all territorial aggres- sion and all interference with the free political self-deter- mination of the peoples of the world. With this principle lived up to, permanent peace is secured and the supreme object of the recent conflict has been achieved. Justice and self-determination have been substituted for aggres- sion and political dictation. Without it, there is no security for any nation that conscientiously adheres to a non- militaristic policy.
The only possible solution of the Fiume ques- tion lies in the friendly and sincere agreement of Italy and Jugoslavia, and such an agreement will not be reached until the Italian people realize that their politicians have led them into a quicksand. The Fiume claim was manu- factured after the armistice in open defiance of solemn pledges, and there is small doubt that D'Annunzio's coup had Sonnino's approval, if not his complete support. This challenge to the Peace Conference, instead of forcing a sur- render to the Italian demands, has had only the opposite effect, and as a result Italy is standing outside the good opinion of the world. She has Fiume, by right of force, but against this barren victory there are to be placed her losses in friendship and material support. No nation is more in need of economic reinforce- ment, yet the certainty of this aid has been thrown away for the sake of a port that Italy does not need.
Under the quick impulsiveness of the Italian there is a rare fineness of spirit and a very shrewd common sense. When passion has cooled it is safe to assume that the people of Italy will return
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to the original policy of Orlando, working out an amicable settlement with the Jugoslavs that will safeguard every Italian interest even as it will build solid foundations for an accord with the Jugoslavic state. This was and is the hope of the President.
XX
WERE THE FOURTEEN POINTS IGNORED?
1VTOTHING is more certain than that the calm I •»• N judgment of the future will bear witness to the amazing justice of the Peace Treaty. Deliberated at a time when the passions of the world ran high, and framed against a back- ground of ruin worked by the premeditated cruelties of Prussianism, the document is re- markable for its exclusion of the spirit of revenge. There is severity in it, to be sure, for the thing that Germany did called for punishment that should stand forever as a lesson and a warning, but at every point there are redemptive possi- bilities and in every provision there is opportunity for the exercise of a wise clemency. The whole emphasis of the treaty is upon the future, not the past, and in its dream of a new world there is a proud place for Germany if her people have the vision and the courage to claim it.
Both courage and vision are lacking as yet. Instead of comparing the terms of the Peace Conference with the conditions that Prussianism would have imposed in the event of victory, the German people are still indulging in an orgy of self-pity, and not even the propaganda of poison with which they deluged the world throughout the war was more vigorous than
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the present propaganda of appeal. It may not be denied that the effects are being felt in the United States. Naturally enough, the great mass of Americans of German blood and descent are still possessed of their former sympathies, and the cry that comes to them from their kindred strikes down to the old affections . This fact, unfortunately, has been seized upon by politi- cians with keen appreciation of the strength of the German vote, and no attempt has been spared to convince every citizen of Teutonic extraction that a savage revenge has been inflicted upon the Fatherland. Mr. Hays, chair- man of the Republican National Committee, once passionate in his fear that President Wilson meant to let "the accursed Hun" escape, is now leading his party in a chorus of pained expostula- tion, and Senator Knox, most clamant in his demand for a "hard peace/* raises his voice to-day only to attack the harshness of the terms j| inflicted upon unhappy Germany.
To justify their position they now assert that the Germans did not surrender unconditionally, but laid down their arms under an agreement that peace terms should be based upon the Fourteen Points of President Wilson, and that this agree- ment was "repudiated." It is a comparatively safe position, for not one in a thousand remembers the Fourteen Points and not one in a hundred thousand knows the exact provisions of the Peace Treaty. As a consequence of its repetition, the great majority of the men and women of the United States have come to complete and un- questioning acceptance of the falsehood, and even
300
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among those who approve the peace there is a general opinion that the Fourteen Points were cast aside.
This position has the advantage of simplicity, calling for nothing more than bare assertion. Truth, on the other hand, is a thing of detail, particularly so in the present instance. The Fourteen Points, as a matter of fact, were in no sense a definitive practical formula, but a broad announcement of principles. As Mr. Keynes himself admits, "a large part of the addresses is concerned with spirit, purpose, and intention, and not with concrete solutions," and "it is difficult to apply on a practical basis those passages which deal with spirit, purpose, and intention." If it were necessary, the gen- eralizing nature of the Fourteen Points could be used as a shield against attack, but there is no such necessity. Taken up one by one, and com- pared with the terms of the Peace Treaty, it is seen that the Fourteen Points were not only not repudiated, but were put into effect as solemnly and effectively as though each had been worded with the legal precision of a contract. It is a comparison that should have been made months ago in the interests of information and fairness,. Considering the famous Points in their order, this is the result:
I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there should be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.
The fulfilment of this is found in Article XXVIII of the Covenant which reads as fol-
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lows: "Every treaty or international engage- ment entered into hereafter by any Member of the League shall be forthwith registered with the Secretariat and shall as soon as possi- ble be published by it. No such treaty or in- ternational engagement shall be binding until so registered." This marks the end of "secret diplomacy." As the President said in one of his speeches: "From this time forth all the world is going to know what all the agree- ments between nations are. It is going to know, not their general character merely, but their exact language and contents, because the provision of the League is that no treaty shall be valid which is not registered with the general secretary of the League, and the general secretary of the League is instructed to publish it in all its details at the earliest possible moment. Just as you can go to the court-house and see all the mortgages on all the real estate in your county, you can go to the general secretariat of the League of Nations and find all the mort- gages on all the nations. This treaty, in short, is a great clearance-house. It is very little short of a canceling of the past and an insurance of the future."
2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.
Contrary to false assertion, the freedom of the seas was not withdrawn from discussion by Great Britain. What England insisted upon
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WERE THE FOURTEEN POINTS IGNORED?
was that the phrase should be defined before any agreement was reached. Nor was it possible for the Peace Conference to lay down the defini- tion. The essence of the "freedom of the seas" is that the governance of the seas shall rest upon the consent of the governed. Fourteen neutral nations were not represented at the Peace Conference. These countries are now in the League of Nations, and it will be the duty of this world court to frame a sea code that will forever free the ocean lanes from tyranny and obstruction. It will be done and it is the only way in which it can be done. ...
3. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and asso- ciating themselves for its maintenance.
The treaty provides specifically for the re- moval of duties on German's exports and im- ports in many cases where such reduction is necessary to her economic rehabilitation. It was not "possible" to grant blanket exemptions, for the simple reason that while German manu- factures continued throughout the war, the manufactures of France, Italy, Belgium, and England were either crushed outright or partially. A certain protection is wise and necessary until Allied industries have been restored in some degree, but the barriers are temporary, and the League of Nations is given full power to put the spirit of the third Point into effect.
4. Adequate guaranties given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest points consistent with domestic safety.
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This pledge is nobly fulfilled in Article VIII of the Covenant.1
•— •
5. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjust- ment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the govern- ment whose title is to be determined.
This pledge was fulfilled by an abrogation of the secret treaty that divided Germany's colonial possessions among England, France, and Japan. It was one of the President's first battles and one of his greatest victories. Lifted out of the chattel class, Germany's former colonies are now independent entities under the adminis- tration and protection of the League of Nations.
6. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest co-operation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembar- rassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing, and more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire.
The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and un- selfish sympathy.
President Wilson defeated the attempt to use armed force for the overthrow of the Bolshevik
'See Chapter XXI.
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WERE THE FOURTEEN POINTS IGNORED?
regime, secured the withdrawal of conflict troops, protected the territorial integrity of Russia against schemes of conquest, and gained the adoption of a policy that puts the future of Russia in the hands of the Russians themselves. As far as the antagonistic policy of Lenin has permitted, aid has been given, and when the distracted country desires a return to civilized intercourse her place in the League of Nations is waiting for her, likewise every assistance in her economic rehabilitation.
•M
7. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evac- uated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the govern- ment of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of interna- tional law is forever impaired.
Is there any question that this has been done?
•VM
8. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has un- settled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.
Is there any question that this has been done ?
jA
9. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.
The Trentino and Triest have been restored to Italy, also part of Istria, part of Dalmatia,
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and various Adriatic islands. Only Fiume has been withheld and Fiume was never an Italian war objective, but a post-armistice demand.
10. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous develop- ment.
As the President explained in his note to Ger- many on October i8th, this point had undergone a radical change. "Since that sentence was written and uttered to the Congress of the United States," he said, "the government of the United States has recognized that a state of belligerency exists between the Czechoslovaks and the German and Austro-Hungarian Empires, and that the Czechoslovak National Council is a de facto belligerent government clothed with proper authority to direct the military and political affairs of the Czechoslovaks. It has also recognized in the fullest manner the justice of the nationalistic aspirations of the Jugoslavs for freedom."
These changes were accepted by the Central Powers and became part of the basis of settle- ment. As a consequence Czechoslovakia is a republic and the Jugoslavic state is pursuing its destiny. Galicia and Silesia have had the Austrian yoke lifted from them, and the stolen portions of Rumania have been restored.
•Q
11. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evac- uated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan States to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and
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WERE THE FOURTEEN POINTS IGNORED?
nationality; and international guaranties of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan States should be entered into.
Evacuation has been brought about in full degree: Serbia's right to a free and secure access to the sea was responsible for the President's resistance to the Italian claim to Fiume, and Article X in the Covenant of the League of Nations gives the promised guaranties of inde- pendence and territorial integrity to the new
states.
*«•
12. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolute unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations, under international guaranties.
The Dardanelles are open to the world, and every one of the oppressed nationalities is being given help that will enable it to come to strength and independence. The action of the Senate compelled the withdrawal of the United States from the further discussion as to the full settlement of the Turkish question, and as a consequence the exact status of Turkish sover- eignty is still undetermined.
Both British and French governments are of the opinion that the Sultan should be permitted to keep his hold on Constantinople. Banking interests are back of the French demand, while the English position is the result of a fear that the Mohammedans of India will resent the 21 307
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expulsion of the Turk from the holy city of Stamboul. The President, however, though barred by the Senate from taking any share in the debate, has insisted upon American interest in the settlement. He is steadfast in his insist- ence that the "anomaly of the Turks in Europe should cease" and "no arrangement that is made can have any permanency unless the vital in- terests of Russia in these problems are carefully provided for and protected, and unless it is understood that Russia, when it has a govern- ment recognized by the civilized world, may assert its right to be heard in regard to the decision now made." A final settlement is yet
to be reached.
••»
13. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.
An independent Poland has been erected, and, as in the case of Russia, its future depends upon its people. The indisputably Polish parts of Galicia and Silesia have been restored and plebiscites are planned for districts where the ethnic lines are not clearly drawn. Dantzig has been made a free city under the administra- tion of the League of Nations, and Poland has a corridor that leads to the port.
•*
14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guaranties of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.
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WERE THE FOURTEEN POINTS IGNORED?
This has been done and forty countries have entered the League of Nations. The Central Powers, temporarily excluded until they evince a willingness to fulfil treaty obligations, Mexico, banned for very much the same reasons, and the United States of America, dragged back by a Republican majority in the Senate, are the only great states still outside the society of nations.
Let there be an end to the lie — circulated by malignants and accepted by the half-baked — that the Fourteen Points were "thrown into the discard." Every one of them was written into the treaty, and the result will stand for all time as a monument to the courage and faith of Woodrow Wilson. With the Republican Senate demanding a "hard peace" and screaming denunciation of the Fourteen Points, and with the Premiers of Europe standing like iron for the letter of the bond, the President might well have surrendered to overwhelming odds, but instead of that he fought the fight and conquered.^}
The Germans, in their heart of hearts, knowA well that the peace is written in fairer terms than they ever expected. Had it not been for the attitude of Senator Lodge and his Republi- can associates, Germany would have accepted the treaty without any large demur, and by now would be working back to prosperity and the esteem of the world. As it is, she counts upon the Republican party to force America into a repudiation of the peace, thereby entail- ing a confusion, a general weakness, that may ' enable her to escape entirely.
XXI
THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS
BEFORE taking up the tortuous course of the political intrigue that resulted in America's exclusion from the League of Nations, the inter- ests of clarity and understanding may be served best by a detailed consideration of the Covenant that stirred the Americanism of Republican Senators to the depths, or, rather, to the dregs. That so short a document, and one so simple, should stand confused and distorted in the popular mind is at once a bitter commentary upon the impudence of politicians and the intel- ligence of the citizenship. In view of the pass to which the country has been brought by this combination of falsehood and ignorance, it were well to give national application to the Oregon pamphlet law, putting a printed copy of every fundamental proposal in the hands of each elector for his information and protection. •—- The most cursory reading of the Covenant of the League of Nations gives the lie to every attack made upon it. In no sense is it a super- state that has been created, nor yet an inter- national legislature. It is, at most, merely an international conference for purposes of dis- cussion, co-operation, and peace, its powers dependent entirely upon the free consent of
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members. To those confident enough to expect that the horrors of the Great War would win the nations of the world to a courageous advent- ure in real partnership, >the outcome is disap- pointing, for the Covenant is essentially a cau- tious document, instinct with concession to precedent and prejudice. It is, however, a corner-stone upon which to build, and there is always the great hope that the nations of earth, realizing eventually the necessity and practica- bility of the League, will complete the structure in pride and power and glory. Even to-day, with all its weaknesses, its careful obeisance to the traditions of sovereignty, it stands as the greatest aspiration since the cry of the Galilean — human- ] ity's one ladder from the pit.
The first draft of the Covenant — fruit of weeks of consultation, compromise, and revision — was published February 14, 1919, and was not only referred back to the nations party to the Peace Conference, but was also submitted to the representatives of thirteen neutral -govern- ments. President Wilson, for instance, return- ing to America, advised with the Foreign Rela- tions Committee of the Senate, as well as with many leaders of thought, and carried back to Paris a large number of suggestions, criticisms, and actual amendments. Other delegates acted similarly, and the Covenant, vastly revised, was adopted unanimously by the representatives of the Allied and Associated Powers in plenary conference on April 29, 1919. This painstaking preparation is reflected in the language and pro- visions of the Covenant.
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Article I sets down conditions governing admission and withdrawal. The thirty-two Al- I lied and Associated states and thirteen neutral | states are regarded as original members, and J arrangement is made for the future admission of the Central Powers and Russia. Any nation may withdraw by giving two years' notice, pro- vided that "all its international obligations are fulfilled," but the question of fulfilment is left absolutely to the conscience of the state itself.
Articles II to VII, inclusive, are concerned en- tirely with the organization of the League. There is to be a permanent Secretariat, with positions equally open to men and women. Geneva is selected as the seat, and the membership is divided into an Assembly and a Council. In the Assembly each nation will have three repre- sentatives, but only one vote. It is without executive authority, being simply a conference body. What power the League possesses is vested in a Council of nine, with the United States, the British Empire, France, Italy, and Japan as permanent members and the other four members to be elected by the Assembly. Provision is made for the inclusion of Germany and Russia in this Council when they are ready for membership.
It is stated explicitly that both Council and Assembly shall meet from time to time as occasion requires, but that the Council shall meet once a year without fail. If the Covenant held nothing else, this provision would justify its adoption. The Great War demonstrated be- yond question that conference between the na-
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tions of earth is one of the most certain means of preventing the international misunderstand- ings that lead to war. Heretofore such con- ference could not be held except by the voluntary action of all the parties. In July, 1914, Sir Edward Gray exhausted effort to bring about a meeting of the powers to consider the dispute between Austria and Serbia. Germany rejected the proposal and World War resulted. Had the League of Nations existed at the time, a meeting would have been called on the instant and Ger- many would have been obliged to attend. Be- cause there was no such conference, with its open discussion, 7,000,000 dead men fill soldiers' graves, 20,000,000 maimed and blinded men constitute a world problem, and $200,000,000,000 — the cost of it all — burdens the back of human- ity with debt and despair.
It is a fact that Germany has admitted that Berlin expected Great Britain to keep out of the war. If a conference had been held in 1914, Great Britain would have made clear to Germany that she meant to stand by her treaty obliga- tions, and the Kaiser would not have dared to strike. The regular meetings of the Assembly and Council will not only make for peace, but they will make for friendship and understanding.
Article VIII proceeds to the fulfilment of one of America's principal war aims, even as it has been a world dream. There is frank admission that the maintenance of peace requires the reduc- tion of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety. All members of the League agree that they will not conceal
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military and naval information from one another, and that there shall be full and frank inter- change of advice as to their military and naval programs. The Council is to determine and recommend for the consideration of each govern- ment what military equipment and armament is fair and reasonable in proportion to the scale fixed in the general program of disarmament, taking into account the geographical situation and circumstances of each state. Thereupon each state, acting in its own sovereignty and according to its own laws, shall consider the recommendations of the Council, and decide how they can be made effective. "^ The weakness of it all lies in the fact that the
» Council can only "recommend." It remains in the power of Congress, the House of Commons, the Chamber of Deputies, or any other parlia- mentary body, to disregard the recommenda- tion, plunging the world anew into armament competition. There is, however, a force of moral opinion that may be depended upon. If, for instance, the rest of the world agrees to quit the mad business of mortgaging the national energy for battle-ships and standing armies, it is not conceivable that America will permit
' Congress to upset the program.
Article VIII also declares against private man- ufacture and traffic in the munitions and imple- ments of war, and the Council is given authority to work out a plan to end the evil. Article IX constitutes a permanent commission to advise the Council on these matters, and on military,
, naval, and air questions generally.
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The much-discussed Article X reads as follows :\
The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Mem- bers of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.
In its essence it is nothing more than the application of the Monroe Doctrine to the whole world. Ever since 1823 the United States has said, "We will respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and the political independence of every state in the Western Hemisphere." All that Article X does is to extend this protection to "tfieTliew nations called into being by the arms and ideals of America. As a result of the Great War, Poland, Czechoslovakia, the Jugoslavic Federation, and scores of other oppressed peoples have come at last to a place in the sun. The question that the Peace Conference had to face was this: Were these young, hopeful states to be left to struggle in daily fear of aggression and conquest, or were they to be guaranteed the peace that was their one hope of successful growth? There was but one answer that could have been given in decency and honor, and it is contained in Article X.
Instead of involving America in every Euro- pean quarrel, as enemies allege, it is America's one chance of keeping out of European quarrels. Every great war in history has had its origin in the territorial ambitions that strong nations
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have sought to advance at the expense of weak nations. Unless these ambitions are checked, America may not know peace any more than the rest of the world. When an Austrian prince was killed in the unknown city of Sarajevo was it dreamed then that his death would call two million young Americans to arms? That South America, Asia, Africa, and the Orient would be compelled to unsheathe the sword? Tjiere is
tno longer any such thing as isolation for any nation. Every quarrel holds the danger of be- coming a world quarrel. The one intelligent action is" to strike at the root of the evil, and this is the sole purpose of Article X. For the first time in the annals of humanity there is a world agreement that one nation will not attempt to seize the possessions of another, and the pledge i is guaranteed by international concert. ZZ- There is no greater lie than that Article X * impairs the right of an oppressed people to rebel or that it abridges the right of a people to change their form of government whenever they see fit. The word "external" means just what it says. If the populations of India, Egypt, and India choose to fight against what they conceive to be tyranny, that is Great Britain's business. If the Italians come to pre- fer democracy to constitutional monarchy, that is Italy's business. Internal revolution has nothing to do with the, League. It is obvious, however, that domestic rebellion may possibly affect the peace of the world, and the Covenant, while admitting this, also gives a very human recognition to the fact that rebellions are never
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without cause. Article II, therefore, contains a paragraph of amazing significance:
Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the Members of the League or not, is hereby de- clared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations. In case any such emergency should arise the Secretary-General shall on request of any Member of the League forthwith summon a meeting of the Council.
It is also declared to be the friendly right of each Mem- ber of the League to bring to the attention of the Assembly or of the Council any circumstance whatever affecting international relations which threaten to disturb inter- national peace or the good understanding between nations upon which peace depends.
The closing paragraph was written by the President himself and is his method of fulfilling America's war pledge that bound us to the rescue of the "rights of small nations." Ireland, for instance, could not possibly figure at the Peace Conference because she was not a territory directly affected by the war. Nor can Ireland be considered by America to-day under the present diplomatic system. Under Article II, however, America has the right to appear before the bar of world opinion as counsel for Ireland and for any other people whose treatment has outraged the American sense of fair play. While J the various delegations of the Irish, the Hindus, and the Egyptians were listening enchantedly to the playing out of their tragedy of futility before the Senate in Washington, the President was challenging the world with this statement of purpose :
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nWe can force a nation on the other side of the globe to jring to that bar of mankind any wrong that is afoot in that part of the world which is likely to affect good under- standing between nations, and we can oblige them to show cause why it should not be remedied. There is not an oppressed people in the world which cannot henceforth get a hearing at that forum, and you know what a hearing will mean if the cause of those people is just. The one thing that those who are doing injustice have most reason to dread is publicity and discussion, because if you are chal- lenged to give a reason why you are doing a wrong thing it has to be an exceedingly good reason, and if you give a bad reason you confess judgment and the opinion of man- kind goes against you.
At present what is the state of international law and understanding? No nation has the right to call attention to anything that does not directly affect its own affairs. If it does, it cannot only be told to mind its own business, but it risks the cordial relationship between itself and the nation whose affairs it draws under discussion; whereas, under Article XI the very sensible provision is made that the peace of the world transcends all the susceptibilities of nations and governments, and that they are obliged to consent to discuss and explain anything which does affect the understanding between nations.
Where before, and when before, may I ask some of my fellow-countrymen who want a forum upon which to con- duct a hopeful agitation, were they ever offered the oppor- tunity to bring their case to the judgment of mankind? If they are not satisfied with that, their case is not good. The only case that you ought to bring with diffidence before the great jury of men throughout the world is the case that you cannot establish. The only thing I shall ever be afraid to see the League of Nations discuss, if the United States is concerned, is a case which I can hardly imagine, where the United States is wrong, because I have the hopeful and confident expectation that whenever a case in which the United States is affected is brought to the consideration of that great body we need have no nervousness as to the elements of the argument so far as we are concerned. The
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glory of the United States is that it never claimed anything * to which it was not justly entitled. *"•
Sir Frederick Pollock, in his valuable work on The League of Nations, comments on this privilege very pointedly:
Various Irish writers, including some who deserve serious attention, have raised the question whether the standing problem of Irish autonomy can come before the League of Nations. There is only one way in which this could happen — namely, that the government of the United States should declare Irish-American sympathy with unsatisfied national- ist claims in Ireland to be capable of disturbing good under- standing between Great Britain and the United States. That is a possible event if a solution is not reached within a reasonable time, but it is more likely that a confidential intimation from the United States would not only precede a formal reference to the Council, but avoid the necessity for it.
Articles XII, XIII, XIV, XV, XVI, and XVII deal entirely with the fundamental pur- pose of the League — that is, the prevention of war. Every member of the League solemnly agrees that it will never go to war without first having done one or another of two things: (i) either submitting the matter in dispute to arbitration, in which case it promises abso- lutely to abide by the verdict, or (2) submit- ting it to discussion by the Council of the League of Nations, agreeing to place all the documents and all the pertinent facts before the Council for discussion and publication. The Council is to have a maximum of six months in which to consider the matter, and if the decision is not acceptable, the aggrieved nation further agrees that it will wait an additional three
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
months to permit of mediation, conciliation, and compromise. Even allowing no time for preliminaries, there are nine months of discus- sion, not private discussion, not discussion be- tween disputants, but discussion between those who are disinterested except in the maintenance of the peace of the world, and, above all, a dis- cussion held in the open for all the world to hear and judge.
A constant and popular attack has been that these provisions will bring purely domestic questions within the purview of the League. The language of the Covenant is explicit :
Disputes as to the interpretation of a treaty, as to any question of international law, as to the existence of any fact which if established would constitute a breach of any international obligation, or as to the extent and nature of the reparation to be made for any such breach, are de- clared to be among those which are generally suitable for arbitration.
Mr. Elihu Root wrote this definition himself, and the President, carrying it back to Paris, had it inserted verbatim.
nln event that any member of the League dis- .egards the provisions for arbitration and dis- cussion it shall be thereby deemed ipso facto to have committed an act of war against the other members of the League, which undertake im- mediately to "subject it to the severance of all trade and financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse . . . and the prevention of all financial, commercial, or personal intercourse" with the Covenant-breaking state. It is the economic boycott — a thing more terrible than
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armies. Not a nation in the world, with the possIHle exception of the United States, could endure it for six months.
In the event of the improbability that the economic boycott is not efficacious, the Council of the League is empowered to recommend what effective force the members of the League shall severally contribute to the armed force of the League in proceeding against the Covenant- breaking state. In view of the explicit safe- guards placed around this provision, it is incred- ible that Republican Senators should dare to continue the assertion that the League has the power to declare war and to send American soldiers to their death in foreign countries. It is the right of the Council merely to recom- mend. The recommendation must be unani- mous, so that the American representative will have to concur first of all. It is then referred to Congress, in the case of America, and it would be for the Senate and the House to approve or reject, for it is in Congress alone that the Con-J stitution vests power to declare war.
Articles XVIII, XIX, and XX deal a death-) blow to secret diplomacy. Every treaty and international engagement in the future is to be registered with the Secretariat for immediate pub- lication, and is not to be considered binding until so registered. All previous obligations inconsistent with the Covenant are abrogated, and there is pro- vision for the reconsideration of treaties from time to time in order to see that their justice is a con- tinuing quality. This also was written by the President, and is the method by which he hopes
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to do away with all the secret, unjust arrange- ments of the past that the Peace Conference was
! without power to touch.
•f Article XXI excludes the Monroe Doctrine from the operation of the League in these ex- plicit words, "Nothing in this Covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings, like the Monroe Doc- trine, for securing the maintenance of peace." Yet this plain language did not suit Senator Lodge and his associates, and more than twenty reservations were submitted to "protect the
I Monroe Doctrine."
^-. Article XXII deals with those colonies and ter-
I rijtories which, as consequence of war, have ceased to be under the sovereignty of the state which formerly governed them, and which are inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves. The principle is declared that their well-being and development form a sacred trust of civiliza- tion. Provision is made for putting these peo- ples under the protection of advanced powers who will be responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee freedom of conscience or religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic, and the liquor traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defense of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the
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trade and commerce of other members of the League. A permanent commission is to be constituted to receive and examine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to advise the Council on all matters relating to the observ-j ance of the mandates. I
Article XXIII provides for periodic interna- ) tional conferences to secure and maintain fair and humane conditions of labor for men, women, and children; for the supervision of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and children, opium and other dangerous drugs; for the general supervision of the trade in arms and ammuni- tion; to secure and maintain freedom of com- munications and of transit and equitable treat- ment for commerce; and to take steps in matters of international concern for the prevention and control of disease. As the President has said truly, it is the heart of humanity that beats in these noble provisions. For the first time in history there is international recognition of the rights of those who toil, and an inspiring deter- mination to view industry in the light of two thousand years of Christian progress.
Article XXIV places under the direction of the League all international bureaus already estab- lished by general treaties if the parties to such treaties consent. Article XXV puts the League behind Red Cross organizations, and Article XXVI provides that amendments shall take effect when ratified by the Council and by a majority of the Assembly. Nations are given the option of accepting the amendment or with- drawing from the League.
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n Where is there any surrender of sovereignty? Where is the necessity for that "Americaniza- tion" so passionately demanded by Republican Senators? At most the Covenant is no more than the subscription of the nations of the world to certain principles of conduct that have their base in honor, justice, and high aspiration. When all is said "and done, its powers rest entirely ? upon an appeal to public opinion.
Nor is it the case that these principles are put forward as academic propositions: they are already in action. It is no longer a question whether any country is for the League or for a League. The thing is done: the fact is accom- plished. On January 10, 1920, the League of Nations came into being and is at work! At this time of writing its membership is as fol- lows: Argentine, Australia, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, British Empire, Canada, Chile, Colom- bia, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, France, Greece, Guatemala, Italy, Japan, India, Liberia, New Zealand, Netherlands, Norway, Panama, Para- guay, Persia, Salvador, Siam, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Africa, Uruguay, Venezuela.
China has joined by ratifying the Austrian treaty, and the following four states have applied for admission to the League: San Marino, Lux- embourg, Iceland, Georgia. Only the United States, of all the great nations, holds aloof.
The League of Nations, therefore, is a going concern. The first meeting of the Council was held in Paris on January i6th, when the initial organization was effected and the Saar Basin Frontier Commission appointed. A second meet-
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ing was held on February nth in London, when the Council named a governing commission for the Saar Basin, a High Commissioner tor Danzig, accepted the obligation offered in the Polish Treaty for the protection of minorities, approved plans for the organization of the Per- manent Court of International Justice, for free- dom of communication and transit, and for the International Health Office, and summoned an International Finance Conference. The Saar Basin Governing Commission, consisting of Rault of France, Alfred von Boch of Sarrelouis, Major Lambert .of Belgium, Count de Molkte Hvitfeldt of Denmark, and Waugh of Canada, assumed its duties February 26th with a proc- lamation to the people notifying them of their administration by the League, and will continue in office until the plebiscite in 1935 decides the permanent fate of the district.
The High Commissioner of Danzig has already proposed plans for a constituent assembly and a permanent constitution, and an election has been called.
As a first step for the creation of a permanent court of international justice, these world-famous jurists were appointed: Elihu Root of the United States, Akidzuki of Japan, Altamira of Spain, Devilaqua of Brazil, Descamps of Belgium, Drago of the Argentine, Fadda of Italy, Fromageot of France, Fram of Norway, Loder of Holland, Phillimore of Great Britain, and Vesnitch of Jugoslavia. Pending their convening, a special committee of experts has brought together all the pertinent data and prepared a general scheme.
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A third meeting of the Council, held in Paris on March I3th, approved plans for sending a League Commission of Inquiry into Russia and took the first steps for the prevention of typhus in Poland.
A fourth meeting, held in Paris on April 9th, answered the request of the Supreme Council that the League take a mandate for Armenia with 'v the statement that it would assume a general oversight, but did not have the necessary .force to administer the territory directly.
The Secretariat, a permanent trained interna- tional staff chosen for special knowledge rather than for nationality, and intrusted with gather- ing information, preparing plans, and carrying out recommendations, has been organized and divided into these sections: Legal, Mandates, Interna- tional Health, Transit, International Bureaus, Po- litical, Administrative Commissions, Economics, Public Information, Financial.
The International Labor Office is already at work under the direction of Albert Thomas of France, with a governing body of twenty-four representatives of labor and capital drawn from the most important industrial states : the Inter- national Health Office has been established, and the Permanent Commission of Freedom of Com- munications and Transit is preparing to call a world conference for the purpose of working out plans that will put the great highways of nature at the disposal of all peoples. Treaties are being registered and prepared for publica- tion, and, most important of all, the Permanent Commission on Disarmament has commenced its great work.
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The budget of the League, as tentatively agreed upon, calls for $2,500,000 for the first fiscal year, a sum to be divided among the mem- bers. Already over half the money has been paid in, Canada, for instance, contributing $64,000 as her share. And a battle-ship costs $15,000,000!
The question for decision is not, "Shall there be a League of Nations?" but, "Shall the United States join the League of Nations?"
It is only a question of months when every other nation in the world will be a member of the international conceit. Germany, Austria, Hun- gary, and Russia will undoubtedly be invited to join when the assembly meets in September and Rumania, the Hedjaz and the Serbs-Croat-Slo- vene state will come in with the completion of the Turkish treaty.
Is the United States to stay out and to stand alone, denying and defying the aims and aspira- tions that we ourselves gave to the world?
XXII
HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
I HPHE Senate received the Peace Treaty on A June 10, 1919. The Senate killed it on March 19, 1920. The Paris Conference con- sumed less than four months in framing the document, and was subjected to daily denuncia- tion for its dilatory tactics, Republican leaders blaming the President particularly for what they professed to consider "criminal delay." The Senate took ten months merely to destroy. It was time that could have been saved by the practice of elementary honesty, for the defeat of the treaty was the bitter and unchanging resolve of Senator Lodge and his fellow-partizans from the very first. The ten months of haggle had rio other purpose than the poisoning of the public mind by every variety of falsehood, every appeal to prejudice that could be devised by
5 ' unscrupulous minds.
"" The "round robin" of March 4, 1919, declaring the hostility of thirty-seven Republican Senators to the League of Nations, no matter what the form, was followed by parliamentary moves of a nature to guarantee the success of the plot. A Republican filibuster ended the regular session of the Sixty-fifth Congress without the passage of a single appropriation bill, leaving every
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HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
department of government bare of money to discharge obligations or to carry on its work. This shameless disruption of the public business was the method adopted to force the President to call a special session, thereby enabling the Lodge group to continue its nagging, obstructive attack upon the work of the Paris Conference. With the government facing bankruptcy, the President had no alternative and the Sixty-sixth Congress was called in special session on May
Taking advantage of their majority of one, for the conviction of Truman Newberry as an office-purchaser dismisses him from decent con- sideration, the Republicans reorganized the Senate with no other view than the discrediting of the President and the rejection of the treaty. Senator Lodge, whose hatred of Mr. Wilson had reached the point of mania, was made chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and other members of the safe Republican majority were Borah, Johnson of California, Brandegee, Fall, Knox, Moses, New, Harding, and McCumber. All of them, save the last, shared Senator Lodge's bitter enmity to the President, and were openly and violently opposed to the League of Nations,' Senator Borah declaring that he would fight it even though advocated by the "Saviour of man- kind." The treaty, as a matter of course, was referred to this committee, and in this hostile keeping it remained until September loth, when it was finally reported out, burdened down with reservations that made ratification a farce.
Throughout this period neither Senate nor 329
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[ouse concerned itself with any other business, ind the record of Congress may be searched in rain for months more empty of service, so utterly disregardful of the national welfare. Through- out March and April Republican leaders had shaken the country with their cries for a special session, specifically protesting that they did not desire to bother the President, but were merely desirous to proceed to the immediate enactment of necessary reconstruction legislation. The President in his message was at pains to set forth the domestic problems that pressed for solution. The Republican majority paid as little attention to these suggestions as they did to their own pledges. Of all the vital questions that pleaded for settlement — taxation, the industrial problem, the increased cost of living, reclamation bills, railroads, army reorganization, the mercantile marine — none of these things was carried through to any conclusion except the railroad bill, and not even that until the last days of February, 1920, saw the passage of a slipshod measure. Casting aside all pretense of interest in any program of reconstruction, the Republicans in Congress gave themselves enthusiastically to the mean besmirckment of America's war achieve- ment and the base repudiation of American ideals.
A veritable madness seemed to possess them, and each day saw the delivery of blows at the very foundation of American unity. The forces of hyphenation were boldly called into being and no effort was spared to revive and exaggerate the divisive prejudices of
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HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
American life. Professional Germans, silent throughout the war for fear of treason charges, emerged from retirement, Charles Nagel going so far as to issue a pamphlet attacking the League of Nations and arguing against the\ return of Alsace-Lorraine to France. Dele- gations of Irish, Italians, Egyptians, Hindus, and other races were brought to Washington and given elaborate hearings under the false assumption that the Senate had power to redress their grievances. Than Senator Lodge none knew better that the undoubted wrongs of these oppressed peoples could be remedied by two > methods only: either by armed force or by the moral pressure of the League of Nations. Since it was madness to assume that the United States would declare war against Great Britain in behalf of Ireland, India, and Egypt, the only course was an appeal to the world court provided by the Covenant — a court in which America , would have the right to plead the case of op- : pressed peoples. Blind with prejudice and pas- sion, and urged on at every step by the hypo-' critical applause of the Republican group, Irish, Hindus, and Egyptians deserted the sanities of judgment and joined in the attack upon the League in which lay their one hope. It is note- worthy that not at any time did Senator Lodge support any of the numerous proposals to express American dissent from English rule in India or Egypt, and when the Democratic Senators, at the last moment, introduced a reservation declaring for Irish independence, he fought it • with the utmost vigor.
THE WAR, 'THE WORLD, AND WILSON
A synopsis of the Peace Treaty was given to the world on May 8th, but at the insistent request of France and England it was decided that the complete document should not receive publication until signed by the Germans. This synopsis was branded as a "cheat" by the Re- publican Senators, and even when it was seen to be a very complete and faithful summary there was no word of apology or retraction. Day after day the Republican majority played the game of European imperialism, denouncing the President for his efforts to secure a peace of justice and upholding the reactionaries of France and England in every contention. On June 9th Senator Borah presented a copy of the Peace Treaty to the Senate, admitting frankly that he had received it from the correspondent of the Chicago Tribune, who had smuggled it into the United States from Germany. He justified his action by charging that other copies were in the country, even intimating that the President had permitted the financiers of Wall Street to receive these advance copies for their own sinister uses. The President by cable demanded an instant investigation and these facts were developed: that Mr. Thomas W. Lament, one of the financial advisers of the American Peace Delegation, had given a copy of the treaty to Mr. Henry P. Davison in his capacity as head of the Red Cross, and that Mr. Davison, although aware that it was to be held in confidence, had passed on his copy to Senator Root, and that Senator Root, in turn, had given it to Senator Lodge. Meanwhile Senator Lodge sat silent
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HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
throughout Senator Borah's speech in which the President was accused of giving advance information to Wall Street.
Germany signed the Peace Treaty on June 28th and the President returned to America on July 8th. He presented the treaty personally to the Senate on July nth and placed himself unre- servedly at the disposal of the Committee on-\ Foreign Relations, virtually asking to be invited before it. Senator Lodge and his associates sneered at the request, and in order to gain any contact at all the President was forced to summon individual Senators to the White House. After some fifteen or twenty had taken advantage of this opportunity to get first-hand information, Senator Lodge decided that it would be wise for the Committee on Foreign Relations to meet with the President, but he managed to delay the conference until August I9th. The printed report of the meeting shows that the President submitted himself to interrogation and cross- examination without reserve, going into every detail of the treaty and conducting himself with the utmost frankness. He recalled that when he had consulted with the committee in March, taking up with them the first draft of the Cove- nant, suggestions and criticism had been asked, even urged, in the hope that every objection might be brought out into the open. \
Such representative Republicans and public men as ex-President Taft, Judge Hughes, and Senator Root had also been furnished with copies of the Covenant and requested to analyze it with a purpose to correct its weaknesses and
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
its faults. Mr. Taft, as a result of his careful study, submitted four amendments: (i) that the vote of the Council should be unanimous in order to safeguard the United States against any combination on the part of the other powers; (2) exclusion of all domestic questions from the purview of the League; (3) explicit provisions for withdrawal; (4) revision of the armament schedule every five or ten years.
Judge Hughes joined in the recommendations of Mr. Taft and made the further suggestion that there should be specific exemption of the Monroe Doctrine, also that it should be made plain that a nation would not have to accept a mandatory without its consent. Mr. Root supported the amendments of Mr. Taft and Mr. Hughes and proposed these original amendments of his own: that subjects suitable for arbitration should be clearly defined, that a permanent court of international justice should be created, and that the guaranty of territorial integrity in Article X should run for five years only.
These amendments, the President explained, had been presented to the Peace Conference and all but one of them had been accepted without question, and were now part of the Covenant. The proposal that the guaranty of territorial integrity should be limited to five years had been rejected on the ground that the matter was covered by the provision that gave any nation the right to withdraw from the League two years after giving notice. In every other respect the suggestions of Mr. Taft, Judge Hughes, and Senator Root had been followed.
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HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
The Monroe Doctrine was expressly reserved, immigration, tariffs, and naturalization were rec- ognized as domestic questions with which the League would not deal; not one single recom- mendation of the League could become binding upon the United States without the formal con- sent of Congress; America could not be made a I mandatory except by congressional act; the right of withdrawal at the end of two years was absolutely unconditional, the question as to whether the nation had fulfilled its international obligations being a question for the nation's ' fc own decision; the provision that the action of the Council must rest upon an unanimous vote guarded the United States against any danger of a combination by other countries; in case of attack upon the United States there was no question as to our right to defend ourselves without reference to the League.
Answering the charge that the Covenant had been interwoven with the Peace Treaty for the purpose of forcing the Senate to accept the one in order to get the other, he pointed out that the execution of the treaty rested entirely upon the League machinery. What was asked of Ger- many could not be delivered in a day or in a month, but stretched over many years. It was not merely a question of enforcing the terms, but even more a matter of adjusting the terms from time to time in the interests of justice and restoration. The form of old governments had been changed and new ones were established, creating intricate problems which called for the constant attention of an independent, impartial,
335
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
and civil body. France, Italy, and England, antagonistic to the Covenant at first, had been won to its support only when they saw that its machinery was indispensable for the continuous administration of the treaty.
It is difficult to understand the attack upon the President for his "obstinacy." As directed by the Constitution of the United States, he had assisted in the preparation of a treaty. When he returned from Paris and handed this treaty to the Senate his work was concluded. There was nothing further for him to do in the matter. He could not suggest alterations or agree to changes without repudiation of his own signa- ture. When his advice was asked he gave it. At all times he was willing to accept any reserva- tion which did not impair validity or compromise integrity. During the conference, and repeatedly thereafter, he assured the Senate that it was perfectly legitimate to interpret the articles, for while he was convinced that their meaning was clear, it was their right to make the obvious still more obvious. He had no objection what- soever to reservations explaining our constitu- tional method, declaring that Congress alone can declare war or determine the causes or oc- casions for war, and that it alone can authorize the use of the armed forces of the United States on land or on the sea. If they could make clearer the intention to reserve the Monroe Doctrine he would be glad to have them do it. If they could find any more explicit words to exempt our domestic affairs from the operation of the League, he would welcome them. If they
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HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
wanted to state that each nation should be the judge as to whether its international obligations had been fulfilled, well and good.
Notwithstanding these explanations, and dis- ' regarding the plain meaning of the Covenant itself, the Republican Senators commenced an attack that is without parallel for sheer dis- honesty. Senator Sherman insisted that the _\A~ whole seat of American government was to be transferred to Geneva, and that Congress was! left without power to pass an appropriation bill unless specifically authorized by the Council of the League. In one of his outbursts of billingsgate he shouted that "history would forget the reign of Caligula in the excesses and follies of the American government operated under the League of Nations by President Wilson and Colonel House.'* The charge was made repeatedly that the Council had usurped the right of Congress to declare war, and that "one million American ;
*
men would be required to meet the responsi-/ bilities and duties of soldiers in foreign lands. >
Senator Sherman even went so far as to j attempt to appeal to religious prejudice, insisting that "twenty-four of the forty equal votes of the Christian nations, members of the League, are spiritually dominated by the Vatican." On the other hand, Senator Reed of Missouri clamored that the black races would rule the world through the League of Nations, while Senator Johnson was convinced that England would control the earth. As these partizan arguments fell of their own weight, the attack switched and an outcry arose that Great Britain had six votes to America's one,
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
owing to the fact that Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India were individual members of the League of Nations. Not a Senator, however, took the trouble to point out that the League also included Panama, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Liberia, Honduras, and Sal- vador, every one of them virtually under control of the United States. Nor was it explained that all of these countries have membership in the Assembly only, a body without executive power. In the face of these facts Senator Lodge, Senator Lenroot, Senator Johnson, and Senator Reed introduced reservations that "the United States shall be entitled to cast a number of votes equal to that which any member of the League and its self-governing dominions, or parts of empire in the aggregate, shall be entitled to cast," other- wise America would refuse to consider itself bound by any note. As a result, the friendship of Canada changed to bitterness, and the Winni- peg Free Press expressed Canadian resentment in these words: "They ought to know that Canada's actual status in the world is that of a nation quite free from external control. Yet they persist in their demand that Canada — a kindred nation, their nearest neighbor and their best customer — should be degraded and put lower in the scale of countries than the half-caste Greaser republics of the West Indies and Central America, which are mostly, in point of fact, political and commercial dependencies of the f United States."
I More than one hundred and sixty reservations and amendments were offered from first to last, 338
HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
the whole attempt being to deceive the people into believing that the Monroe Doctrine had not been protected, that the right of Congress to declare war had been taken away, that domestic questions had not been exempted, etc., etc. This alleged "Americanization" of the treaty, however, was no more than a blind for Senator Lodge's real purpose, which was con- cealed in the following reservation to Article X:
The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country or to interfere in controversies between nations — whether members of the League or not — under the pro- visions of Article X, or to employ the military or naval forces of the United States under any article of the treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces of the United* States, shall by act or joint resolution so provide.
Here was a direct repudiation of responsibility, a flat refusal to subscribe to the principles of the League, a surly declination to accept any obligation of partnership. In its essence it was a return to the policy of isolation. If war should come, Congress would take notice of the matter, deliberate the causes, and in due time decide upon a proper course. But as for standing shoulder to shoulder with the nations of the world in an effort to prevent war — that was un- thinkable! What was it to the Senate that new nations appealed to us for protection? That it was the voice of America that had thrilled the world with a call to disarmament and arbitra- 23 339
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
tion? That the airplane and submarine had proved that our supposed "isolation" was a delusion? There was a Democratic President to be discredited — a national election to be won ! The President's tour was a fatal blunder. In Paris he had slaved night and day, and the tre- mendousness of the strain had told heavily upon a constitution already impaired by the drudgeries and anxieties of war. Breaking but indomitable, he gathered himself together for one last appeal to the people, and the effort carried him to the grave's edge. In the hour of his collapse the Republican press and Senate leaders jeered that his illness was a "fake," and when its serious- ness became apparent Senator Moses led the chorus that the President had suffered a stroke. With Woodrow Wilson ill — the one man in "**• Washington with the Covenant in his heart and soul, as well as on his lips — the tragedy of political intrigue rushed swiftly to its appointed conclusion.
On November I4th the "knife-thrust" reser-
HTie Chicago Tribune succeeded in enlisting the services of a ^ Dr. Arthur Dean Bevan, who did not scruple to declare in a written statement that the trouble was "permanent and not a temporary condition," and that Mr. Wilson "should under no circumstances be permitted to resume the work of such a strenuous position as that of President of the United States. The strain and responsi- bility of such a position would bring with them the danger of a recurrence of such attacks and might hasten a fatal termination." On February loth Dr. Hugh H. Young of Johns Hopkins, one of the physicians in attendance on the President, declared Mr. Wilson to be "organically sound, able-minded and able-bodied, and branded current reports as 'lies without justification.' . . . The President walks sturdily now without assistance and without fatigue. And he uses the still slightly impaired arm more and more every day. As to his mental vigor, it is simply prodigious. In- deed, I think in many ways the President is fn better shape than before the illness came."
340
HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
vation of Senator Lodge was adopted and the seven compromise reservations of Senator Hitch- cock were rejected. On November igth, the closing day of the special session, the Republican alignment was a Macedonian phalanx. Throw- ing off disguise, the so-called "mild reserva- tionists" stood shoulder to shoulder with the .outright "nullifiers," and gibed at Hitchcock's determined effort to gain a hearing for sub- stitute reservations.
"Leave the door open!" cried the Democratic leader.
"The door is closed," Lodge answered.
Moving forward with energy and precision, the Lodge program swept through, and the Treaty of Peace was rejected and a state of war continued. Senator Brandegee shouted glee- fully that this was the end of "a pipe dream," and Senator Lodge announced his determination to force the President to negotiate a separate treaty of peace with Germany.
After the Christmas holidays the Democratic Senators, hopeful of compromise, arranged a series of bipartizan conferences. The one hun- dred and sixty reservations were boiled down to fourteen and agreement was reached on all but one, Senator Lodge refusing to change so much as a comma in his "knife-thrust." Sud- denly enough there was announcement from the Republican camp that the treaty would be called up again on February lyth. There is little doubt that this was due to the insistence of party leaders, all of whom found themselves in a position of exceeding embarrassment. On
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
one side stood the people of the United States, sincerely desirous of a League of Nations and sick of the interminable Senate wrangle, while on the other side there was the painful fact that Senator Lodge had committed the party against the League of Nations. His hatred of Wilson made him impossible of control and his position as Senate leader made it impossible to repudiate him. The one remaining course, therefore, was further discussion in order to
On January 3 1st the debate was punctuated
confuse public opinion.
i by an interruption of amazing significance. Lord Grey, arriving in England from his service in Washington as British ambassador, wrote an open letter to the London Times in which he made it plain that Great Britain had no objec- tions to the Lodge reservations as a whole. What had been confused now stood clear. Throughout his adult life Senator Lodge has been an ardent supporter of the Anglo-American accord, and his attitude on the treaty was at once a surprise and a bewilderment. The Grey letter came as a key to the puzzle, for it was now apparent that Lodge and his group had been acting throughout in British interests if not under British inspiration.
No sooner had the President left Paris in February, 1919, than the Conference, under the direction of Lloyd George and Balfour, pro- ceeded to repudiate the agreement of January 25th that provided for the League of Nations as an integral part of the treaty. On March 4th, the day before the President's sailing, Lodge
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HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
and thirty-seven Republican Senators signed the "round robin" of protest against the inclu- sion of the League of Nations in the treaty, linking up tightly with the Balfour action in Paris. As has been described, the President defeated the plot, and the British and French imperialists, having failed to destroy the Cove- nant as a whole, naturally decided that the next best thing was to take out its heart. The Lodge reservation to Article X, which guaranteed the small nations of the world from annexation and plunder, was the method chosen.
What more could the British Empire ask than the refusal of the United States to safe- guard the territorial integrity and political independence of weak peoples? At its hand, waiting to be seized, were the wide stretches of Mesopotamia, Persia, and the Hedjaz, and an Egyptian protectorate that might well be turned into a title in fee simple! America alone had the will and the power to block the program of imperialism, and the Republican majority stood ready to tie America's hands. France was no less delighted with the prospect, having the Saar Basin and the Rhine Valley in sight, and Japan saw in the Lodge reservation an escape from its bothersome obligation to abstain from Chinese conquest. All the old rapacities, seem- ingly laid forever by the adoption of the League of Nations Covenant with its solemn promises, were restored in all their former virulence by the "knife-thrust" that destroyed the guaranty of territorial integrity against external aggression. 1 It was at the Grey letter, and the whole con-
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
spiracy of the European medievalists, that the President struck in his letter of March 8th when he said:
Any reservation which seeks to deprive the League of Nations of the force of Article X cuts at the very heart and life of the Covenant itself. Any League of Nations which does not guarantee as a matter of incontestable right the political independence and integrity of each of its members might be hardly more than a futile scrap of paper, as ineffective in operation as the agreement between Bel- gium and Germany which the Germans violated in 1914.
Article X, as written into the Treaty of Ve sailles, repre- sents the renunciation by Great Britain and Japan, which before the war had begun to find so many interests in com- mon in the Pacific, by France, by Italy — by all the great fighting powers of the world, of the old pretensions of politi- cal conquest and territorial aggrandizement. It is a new
doctrine 'fl f^** mnrWn affair* -»r>A ««ii.* ±,r~rrrnfrn'ni>Al QT
there is no secure basis for the peace which the whole world sojongingly desires and so desperately needs. If Article X is not adopted and dLltd upon the governments which reject it will, I think, be guilty of bad faith to their people whom they induced to make the infinite sacrifices of the war by the pledge that they would be fighting to redeem the world from the old order of force and aggression.
Every imperialistic influence in Europe was hostile to embodiment of Article X in the Covenant of the League
Nations, and its defeat now would mark the complete snsummation of their efforts to nullify the treaty. I hold the doctrine of Article X to be the essence of Americanism. We cannot repudiate it or weaken it without at the same time repudiating our own principles.
The imperialist wants no League of Nations, but if, in response to the universal cry of the masses everywhere, there is to be one, he is interested to secure one suited to his own purposes, one that will permit him to continue the historic game of pawns and peoples — the juggling of prov- inces, the old balances of power, and the inevitable wars
344
HOW THE TREATY WAS KILLED
attendant upon these things. The reservation proposed would perpetuate the old order.
Does any one really want to see the old game played again? Can any one really venture to take part in reviving the old order? The enemies of a League of Nations have by every true instinct centered their efforts against Article X, for it is undoubtedly the foundation of the whole struct- ure. It is the bulwark, and the only bulwark, of the rising democracy of the world against the forces of im- perialism and reaction.
It was a voice crying in the wilderness. The Republican majority, secure in the backing of the Anglo-American banking interests, counting happily upon the revival of pro-Germanism, the irritation of the Italians over Fiume, and the just but headlong angers of the Irish, were committed to their course. Senator Root, tak- ing orders as always, swallowed his original advocacy of Article X and solemnly urged the "Americanization" of the treaty. Mr. Taft, after offering a compromise reservation that was accepted by the Democrats and as promptly rejected by the Lodge group, subsided and soon began to purr against the Organization ' knee.
On March iQth the treaty, with the Lodge knife deep in its heart, came up for a final vote, and was rejected a second time.
This was not the end. The final act in the drama of treachery remained to be played. In early May the Republican majority in the House passed a resolution declaring an end to the state of war with Germany. On May I5th the Re- publican majority in the Senate approved a peace resolution by Senator Knox ending the
345
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
state of war with Austria-Hungary as well as with Germany.
Only six months before — in December, 1918 — Senator Cabot Lodge had shouted these words: "We cannot make peace in the ordinary way. We cannot, in the first place, make peace except in company with our allies. It would brand us with everlasting dishonor and bring ruin to us if we undertook to make a separate peace.**
It is this "everlasting dishonor'* that the Knox resolution entails; it is this "ruin" that the Knox resolution invites.
XXIII
THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION
IT is distinctly a question whether the virtues] of traditions are not outweighed by their vices, for while benefits are negative, the injuries are positive. Granted that they serve as in- centives and standards, it is even more the case that they dull the edge of independent action and close the mind to the necessities of change. There is also the fact that every tradition, at some time or other, loses its original meaning and becomes a mere incantation. Certainly a wise people will never disregard the lessons and experiences of the past, but their wisdom will put equal emphasis on the importance of studying every new question in the light of progress. y
The principal argument against the League of Natiojis, alid the one having greatest weight with the average citizen1 whu "has__a worship of names rather than a respect for facts, is the constant assertion — rfrat — Washington, in his Farewell Address, warned the people of the United States against "efffaflgfiSg-Ialliances." As a matter of fact, the phrase was coined by Thomas Jefferson in his Inaugural speech in 1800. By way of proving that the author himself did not regard it as an inflexible rule of conduct, Jeffer- son was willing to "marry the British fleet" in
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
1802 and urged an offensive and defensive alli- ance with Great Britain in 1823.
Throughout the trying days of the American Revolution there was no fear as to the dangers of "entangling alliances." The embattled Col- onies asked help wherever they thought that they could get it, and the request was not based upon any appeal to selfishness, but upon the broad ground that a triumph for popular govern- ment in America would react beneficially upon European institutions. Franklin in France and Adams in Holland specialized in this type of pleading, and the alliance with the French in 1778 was brought about by love of liberty rather than by any hope of material gain.
The first stages of the French Revolution evoked only sympathy and enthusiasm in the United States, but as moderate leaders were overthrown and Paris ran red with blood, senti- ment changed radically. As Washington saw it from where he sat, democracy had ceased, leaving anarchy as a threat. When France went to war with England in 1793 she sent Genet to the United States to demand a fulfil- ment of our treaty obligations. Hamilton, always British in his sympathies, argued that the alliance had been made with Louis XVI and that the dethronement of the king canceled the contract. Jefferson, on the other hand, insisted that the treaty was between the two nations, and that honor demanded a scrupulous adherence to our pledges. The logic of Jeffer- son's contention has long since been conceded, and there is no question that the proclamation
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THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION
of neutrality was a repudiation of our bargain. Washington, however, justified it on the theory that the alliance was defensive only, but his principal argument was based upon our "de- tached and distant situation." What he de- clared then, and what he set forth In detail in his Farewell Address, was a policy of isolation. His words were these: "Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be en- gaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Our detached and dis- tant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. . . . Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation?"
Will it be said that the conditions described by Washington remain unchanged? That fast boats, the cable, the wireless, the airplane, and the submarine have left untouched our "de- ' tached and distant situation"? Washington also warned against "the spirit of innovation" and "dangerous experiments." Why not con- strue them as declarations against the incan- descent light, steamships, aircraft, and railroads ?_J
As a matter of fact, the words of Washington's Farewell Address had barely ceased to echo before events proved that America's "detached and distant situation " was more imaginary than real. In less than twelve years we were com-
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
pelled to enter upon three wars with trans- atlantic peoples — France, the Barbary pirates, and England. When Napoleon forced Spain to cede Louisiana to France, and launched his ill- fated expedition against Santo Domingo, Presi- dent Jefferson expressed his willingness to "marry ourselves to the British fleet and nation,'* if such action should be necessary to guard the New World against imperialism.
Instead of minding their own business the fathers never lost an opportunity to declare in favor of democratic movements, no matter in what part of the world. Washington, receiving the colors of the French, said, "My anxious recollections, my sympathetic feeling, and my best wishes are irresistibly excited whensoever, in any country, I see an oppressed nation unfurl the banner of freedom."
President Monroe, in his annual message to Congress in 1822, specifically referred to Amer- ican sympathy for the Greek revolt against Turkish tyranny, and also spoke boldly of our interest in the revolutionary movements in Spain, Italy, and Portugal. The crushing of these democratic uprisings by the Holy Alliance aroused our indignation and protest, and as a consequence of our apprehensions, entangling alliances were not only considered, but seriously proposed. When the Holy Alliance resolved to re-establish Spain's despotic control over her South American colonies President Monroe called upon Jefferson and Madison for advice in the crisis, and the correspondence is rich in illumination for those modern statesmen who
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insist that the fathers were parochial in their outlook. In order to check the spread of imperialism to the New World, Jefferson was willing to enter into an alliance with Great Britain, urging that it would "prevent instead of provoking war." Madison went even farther in his consideration of the world as a whole. It was his idea that America and Great Britain should stand together in support of free govern- ment everywhere, declaring in favor of the Greek cause and expressing "avowed disapprobation" with respect to the ruthless policy of the Holy Alliance in Spain. As he stated flatly in a letter to Jefferson, "With the British power and navy combined with our own we have nothing to fear from the rest of the world, and in the great struggle of the epoch between liberty and despotism we owe it to ourselves to sustain the former in this hemisphere at least." Under the influence of John Quincy Adams, his Secretary of State, President Monroe dissented from the suggestions of Jefferson and Madison, and decided upon an independent declaration against European interference in the affairs of the New World. The argument of Adams was based upon the fear that an English alliance might tie America's hands in the acquisition of Louisiana, also on the sure knowledge that the British fleet would back up the declaration anyway.
As early as 1824 the policy of isolation was openly recognized as a thing of the past. Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State, urged the appointment of a commissioner to Greece and made the following statement as to American
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
policy in words that might have been written to-day in support of the League of Nations:
As one of the free states among the nations, as a great and rapidly rising Republic, it would be impossible for us, if we were so disposed, to prevent our principles, our senti- ments, and our example from producing some effect upon the opinions and hopes of society throughout the civilized world . . . the great political question of this age is that between absolute and regulated governments . . . whether society shall have any part in its own government . . . our side of this question is settled for us even without our volition . . . our place is on the side of free institutions.
It may now be required of me to show what interest we have in resisting this new system. What is it to us, it may be asked, upon what piinciples or what pretenses the European governments assert a right of interfering in the affairs of their neighbors? The thunder, it may be said, rolls at a distance. The wide Atlantic is between us and danger; and, however others may suffer, we shall remain safe.
I think it is a sufficient answer to this to say that we are one of the nations of the earth; that we have an interest, therefore> in the preservation of that system of national law and national intercourse which has heretofore subsisted so beneficially for us all. . . . The enterprising character of the age, our own active, commercial spirit, the great increase which has taken place in the intercourse among civilized and commercial states, have necessarily connected us with other nations and given us a high concern in the preservation of those salutary principles upon which that intercourse is founded. We have as clear an interest in international \ law as individuals have in the laws of society. I— »
*~- When the liberal thought of Europe rose in ' revolt against the theory of divine right America did not sit idly by, but took an active and decisive part in encouraging the revolutionary movement. No sooner had the representatives of the various German states met at Frankfort
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THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION
to form a new government than Mr. Donelson, our Minister in Berlin, was ordered by the Presi- dent "to proceed to Frankfort and there, as the diplomatic representative of the United States, recognize the provisional government of the new German confederation; provided you shall find such a government in successful operation." These instructions were issued on July 24, 1848, and in August of that year Donel- son was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Frankfort gov- ernment. In 1849 Mr. Donelson received fur- ther an even more authoritative instruction, and the following passage will show America's faith:
From what intelligence we have been enabled to gather on this side of the Atlantic we understand that there are, at this time, two parties in Germany, each seeking to establish a constitution for a Germanic .Empire; and that the essential difference between them consists in this — that one of them desires to form a constitution, which has for its basis a recognition of the principle that the people are the true source of all power; and the other, a constitution based on the despotic principle that kings hold their power by divine right, and that the constitutions to be established under their auspices are boons granted to the people, by them, as the only legitimate sources of power. It is hardly necessary for me to say to you that all the sympathies of the government and the people of the United States are with j the former party.
Louis Kossuth, coming to the United States in 1849, stirred Americans to intense sympathy with the Hungarian revolt against Austrian absolutism, and President Taylor even went so far as to appoint a special agent with authority to recognize the independence of the Hungarian
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
state "in event of her ability to sustain it." When the Hungarian rebels were crushed Presi- dent Fillmore approved a joint resolution of Congress, passed March 3, 1851, declaring the sympathy of the people of the United States with Kossuth and his associates, and authorizing "the employment of some of the public vessels which may be now cruising in the Mediterranean to receive and convey to the said United States the said Louis Kossuth and his associates in captivity." An American ship, proceeding to Turkey, rescued Kossuth and his fellow-exiles, and on their arrival in the United States they were formally received by the President and by Congress, and were the guests of honor at a great official dinner. The Austrian government en- tered vigorous protest against these various breaches of neutrality, but the reply of Webster / contained no single word of regret or apology, and transgressed every rule of diplomatic cor- respondence in its bold assertion of American interest in popular government.
In 1870, when the French Republic came into being for the third time, President Grant cabled instructions to recognize it instantly and to con- gratulate the French people on restoring a government "disconnected with the dynastic traditions of Europe."
More and more, as time went by, the policy of isolation was disregarded as occasion demanded, although still retaining its hold upon the Amer- ican imagination. Liberia, the negro republic in Africa, was founded by the Colonization Society of the United States, and was and is,
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THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION
to all effect, an American protectorate. In 1884 we sent delegates to an international conference in Berlin to put firmer foundations under the Congo Free State, and in 1890 the United States took part in another conference of world powers at Brussels for the prevention of the Central African slave traffic.
In 1900 American troops joined with those of England, France, Russia, and Japan in the suppression of the Boxer uprising and shared in the joint occupation of Peking. Had we had the courage then to assert ourselves as a world power, with a definite stake in world peace and justice, China would not have been partitioned and a new order might have been inaugurated. As it was, we contented ourselves with a bom- bastic assertion of interest in China's "territorial and administrative entity," and then retired to our "detached and distant situation'* while the other powers looted and annexed.
In 1906 President Roosevelt sent Mr. Henry"! White to serve as America's representative at the Algeciras conference, called by the Kaiser to dispute French control in Morocco. The United States was absolutely without direct interest in Moroccan affairs, and our participa- tion had no other purpose than the preservation of the European balance of power. Even at that time the Kaiser was eager for war with France, and under President Roosevelt's instruction America took her place by the side of England, Italy, and France in serving notice that the peace must be kept. At every point the ac- tion was in flat violation of the policy of isola- 24 355
THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
tion and an intelligent acceptance of changed j| conditions.**
rAt various times, and always pointedly, we have protested against the treatment of Jews, Armenians, and other oppressed peoples, risking diplomatic ruptures with Rumania, Russia, and Turkey, and no outcry was raised when the United States met with other world powers at The Hague in 1899 to work out a program of peace. Even while politicians were mouthing the words of Washington international co-opera- tion was progressing by leaps and bounds, and in 1914 the peoples of the world were banded together in these activities: the Universal Postal Union, the International Radio-Telegraphic Bu- reau, the Danube and Suez Canal Commission, the International Office of Public Health, the Union for the Publication of Customs Tariffs, the Sugar Commission, the International In- stitute of Agriculture, the International Union for the Protection of Industrial Property, the International Bureau at Zanzibar for the Repres- sion of the Slave Traffic, as well as in sanitary councils and various monetary and metric unions. It remained for the Great War, however, to shatter forever the fantastic theory that we were still living in the days of the Colonies, with sailing- craft as the only means of transatlantic communi- cation. From the first our "detached and dis- tant situation'* was an absurdity disproved by British Orders in Council primarily, and then out- raged by the unrestricted operations of the German U-boats. For three and a half years we clung to the rags of an outworn policy before
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THE GREAT AMERICAN TRADITION
daring to face facts. The question to be decided to-day is whether we are to face the future with open eyes or resume : the bandages of tradition. Washington's words in opposition to perma- nent alliances with other countries are quoted continually, but little indeed is said about other portions of the Farewell Address that explain and qualify. For instance, there is this passage:
With me a predominant motive has been to endeavor to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress, without interruption, to that degree of strength and consistency which is neces- sary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.
And again; pointing out the benefits of the union of the thirteen states:
What is of inestimable value, they must derive from union an exemption from those broils and wars between themselves which so frequently afflict neighboring countries not tied together by the same government. . . . Here, like- wise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments which under any form of govern- ment are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as peculiarly hostile to republican liberty. . . . Is there a doubt whether a common government can embrace so large a sphere? Let experience solve it. To listen to mere speculation in such a case were criminal. . . . The ex- periment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature.
It will thus be seen that permanent isolation was not in Washington's mind, and that his vision swept the future and saw the enormous benefits of union. Just as his soul sickened at the sight of nations banding in selfish groups for
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
the attainment of mean objectives or to secure protection against rapacity, so did it leap to the dream of a great fraternity. Neither isolation nor neutrality was his end, but merely the means. Peace was his goal, and were he alive to-day, looking out over a country grown to a population of 110,000,000, seeing the guardian * oceans bridged by modern science, and hearing the supplication of war-sick nations, pleading for a universal alliance in the interests of disarma- ment and peace, can there be any doubt as to / his decision ?
CONCLUSION
fact in the case has the clearness"] •*— ' of crystal.
America did not take arms to avenge Belgium or in repayment of any debt of gratitude to France or as a duty demanded by the peril of civilization. Our entrance into the Great War was compelled by the sound instinct of self- preservation. We fought for ourselves, for our institutions, for our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in accordance with our own desires and definitions.
It required three and a half years of violated neutrality to tear the bandages of tradition from our eyes, but when the wrappings were finally removed we saw that America's "de- tached and distant situation" had never been more than a vain hope. Just as the murder of an Austrian archduke in an obscure Balkan town was turning the United States into a vast military camp, so had we been drawn into every world war of the past, and so would we be drawn with equal inevitability Tnto every world \ war of the future.
The vision of the President shot light through \ the gathering darkness. If forty-eight sovereign states, each with its diverse interests, were able to live in friendly and profitable union, why not the several nations of the world? What end
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
was served by armaments that could not be better served by arbitration and adjudication? To such a tremendous simplicity were all of his
I proposals reducible.
The whole world, sick of the dog-eat-dog tradition, rose in gladness at his call. Every- where people looked with new eyes upon the horror of destruction that laid Europe waste, and saw it as the logical consequence of their tribal hates and superstitions. The voice, of the Nazarene, ringing ineffectually through two thousand years, was heard at last, and deeps of fraternity were stirred.
The Allied governments accepted the prin- ciples of the League of Nations as though they had been handed down from Sinai, and the thundering ideals of the President imparted a sublime militancy to the invincible pacifism of America. A war against war! Mothers gave their sons that the dream might be made to come true, and men went to death with a new courage. Shouted as a great slogan, it reached the deluded peoples of the Central Powers, under- mining the structure of fears and lies that kept their hearts in shadow. The collapse of the Prussian war machine was not physical only,
I but a sheer spiritual disintegration.
*•" In the hour of victory the President went to Paris, a decision forced upon him both by the Constitution and his conscience. He had laid down the principles that enemy and Allies alike were now accepting as the terms of the peace, and they called for interpretations that he alone had the right and the power to make. Before his
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CONCLUSION
ship was well at sea a program of repudiation was under way. The Republican majority in the Senate, concerned only with officeholding and office-seeking, set about his ruin, careless of hurt to the nation.
The President sailed to frame a peace of justice, to lay the foundations of a new world order in which the sanities of discussion should replace the brutalities of bloodshed. The Senate snarled that the peace must be "hard" and that the League of Nations was a "visionary project" that should be left to the future. The President was denounced as one without authority to speak for America, and the Senate placed itself at the disposal of the Allies for the ratification of any treaty that they chose to make.
The imperialists of Europe, reviving at this offer of partnership, hastily substituted knives for palm branches. Instead of a conference of comrades, thinking in terms of the New Day, the President found a clique of enemies thinking in the old terms of balanced power and secret diplomacy. He fought them and he beat them. Without help from a single source, betrayed at home and ambushed abroad, ringed about with foes and deserted by a world returned to its selfish personal preoccupations, he won. ^
In its essence the Peace Treaty marks man- kind's greatest victory over the baser emotions. Its angers and greeds are matters of word and gesture rather than defined intent, and wait
361
merely for a ealmer mood to be wiped out en*- tirely. The Covenant of the League of Nations lacks much of the virility that was hoped, but in its solemn agreements are provisions for dis- armament, arbitration, open dealing, and respect for the territorial integrity and political inde- pendence of weak peoples. Frail enough in all seeming, but still a ladder from the quicksands
I to the heights.
*f For ten months the Republican majority held the treaty in its hostile keeping. For ten months the politicians avoided discussion of the Cove- nant's noble purposes, confining themselves to the meannesses of misrepresentation and distortion. Where once a Webster, a Clay, and a Calhoun de- bated great issues in conscience and high ability there was the squabble of hucksters. And at last the definite repudiation of every war aim, every ideal, every hope for which mothers gave their sons, for which youth died or lived to know the disfigurements that are worse than death. With what result?
The world that loved us now hates us. We nate ourselves. The unity that was our pride has been torn into tatters by the pull and haul of a revived and multiplied hyphenation. The voice of America is a polyglot screech, every separate blood strain chorusing some hymn of passion under the leadership of this or that political group. A war record unparalleled for courage, initiative, nobility, and utter unselfish- ness has been dragged through the gutters of
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CONCLUSION
abuse and slander. The shame of it, the sadness J of it all, is relieved by no ray of light.
The Republican party, as it stands at present,*^ represents the lowest form of political life. Those \ once fought against so nobly by an outraged rank"* and file are in despotic control and the "lions" of 1912 are now jackals hopeful of scraps. Babbling about "poor Germany'* where a year before it hurled obscene hatred at the "accursed Hun," taking money from Anglo-American banking interests one moment and wheedling Irish- Americans the next, crying out against the czar- ism of Palmer even while it applauds the "Sail or Shoot" program of Wood, yelling Ameri- canism and indefatigably fanning the angers of Italians and Greeks and Germans, cheering a Sims as he shames the war record of the navy of the United States, and sneering at every military achievement of America, preaching a gospel of provincialism and repudiation in the interests of a high-tariff and ship-subsidy policy — the Republican organization has the touch of some poisonous nettle, bringing a rash wher- ever it touches. Drunk with a conviction of triumph, lavish with millions collected from war profiteers, the party of Lincoln lurches to the election without other standards, principles, or ideals than the division of spoils. The per- sonal platforms of its candidates range from demagoguery to rankest reaction, from an absurd provincialism to militarism, yet every man oper-
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THE WAR, THE WORLD, AND WILSON
ates his convictions under an agreement to sur- render them in the interests of "harmony/* 'r— There is no compromise. Honesty is not a thing that lends itself to fifty-fifty arrangements. Pledges are either kept or broken. America should join the League of Nations in faith and honor or else America should stay out. Middle ground is marsh and quagmire. The so-called "Americanization" 'of the Covenant is nothing more than the Republican attempt to poison the wells of public opinion. Mr. Taft, Senator Root, and Judge Hughes studied the first draft criti- cally and thoroughly, and their amendments were incorporated virtually as written. As for reservations, if there are words in the English language that can make clearer the exclusion of the Monroe Doctrine and domestic questions, the right of withdrawal, recognition that not one American soldier can be called to arms without the formal action of Congress, and that "external aggression" is a phrase that has no concern with internal revolution, the President has stated repeatedly that he will welcome them. All but one of the so-called reservations are merely bombastic restatements of the plain meaning of the Covenant. This one — the Lodge "knife-thrust" — is in no sense a reservation, but a nullification. It seeks to obtain the bene- fits of the League for the United States without assuming a single responsibility or exerting the least influence to shape the world forces that our
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CONCLUSION
ideals called into being. It demands dishonor as an American privilege, and stands jis an insane attempt to return the country to an "isolation" that it never possessed at any time and which is now a patent madness. The "knife-thrust" goes hand in hand with the Lodge resolution for a "separate peace," even as it paved the way for it. The President spoke truly when he declined to draw any fine dis- tinction between "nullifiers" and "mild nulli- I fiers." There is no difference.
The issues are clean cut. On the one hand ! there is the League of Nations with its relief from the crushing burdens of armament, its removal of the causes of war, its recognition of human rights and human aspiration, its simple machinery for the amicable adjustment of inter- national disputes, and its release of the fraternal impulse from the dead weights of savage tradi- tions— a tremendous theory of spiritual progress that will permit America and the world to go about the decent business of life in peace and friendship. Flexible, elastic, invitational to change, the present and future defects of the Covenant can be remedied and will be remedied, just as the Constitution of the United States has been amended.
On the other hand there is refusal to enter the League of Nations, the repudiation of pledges, the betrayal of small nations and weak peoples, a return to the "balance of power," and a perpetuation of the old order with its evil emphasis on navies, armies, division, intrigue, and rapacity.
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Peace and prosperity versus war and bank- ruptcy! Honor versus dishonor! Intelligence • versus insanity!
RThe peoples of earth are ready and waiting. Jheir hate of America is no more than the bitter- ness of a great disappointment, born of America's seeming betrayal. The evils and injustices of the Old World — the tragedies of oppression such as Ireland and Egypt — are not the result of popular demand, but the perversions of govern- ments. Given a League of Nations, with its lifting of ancient fears, and the men and women of England, France, Italy, Japan, and other predatory powers will rise to control and point the way to the high ground of justice and fra- ternity. Hurled back on their hopes, who can tell to what extremes the peoples of the world will be carried in their agony, grief, and despair? At this moment the wretched populations of central and eastern Europe are perishing by the thousands, blown like leaves on the icy winds of death. Men, women, and little children starve singly or in huddles — gnawing the roots of the field, padding city streets like famished beasts — victims of a misery so vast, so profound, that the ravages of disease are welcomed as a merciful release from the horror of living. Not a factory is in operation in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Serbia, and parts of Austria, the workers sitting idle, hopeless, yet the docks of Liverpool and Rotterdam are piled high with the raw materials that would start the wheels of industry in every stricken land, restoring health, courage, and prosperity. Charity is not
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the remedy: all that these people ask is the chance to help themselves. Credit is the one answer. Had the United States entered the League of Nations in the beginning, this concert of the world would have long since worked out a system of credit, and instead of idleness, despair, famine, and pestilence there would now be order and energy and dawning happiness.
This is the thought that is bitter in the mind ' of Europe, and out of that bitterness, if permitted to continue, what dark purposes may not come ? ./ And if, in the arrogance of our strength, we * declare ability to beat back the armed hate of the world, what barrier may be erected against the creep of disease, the contagion of anarchy? And if such a wall be raised— high enough and strong enough to shut out the angers and the pleadings of betrayed humanity — how shall our traitor lives , be guarded from the loathing of our souls ?
THE END
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