HIlMi, Wit?! Ill.l,llllll 1 1 ... li I I SHI M m l,|.r'|llf fffrFnmimirtktiHiithiih-tHJsitSHmffftTairtifrtr i, i im. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY FROM ".P.Hivera E767 .D63'T922'"™""'' """"^ Woodrow Wilson and his worlc. olin 3 1924 030 937 134 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030937134 © //rims * Eiring PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON Whodrom Wilson and His Work By William E. Dodd Professor of American History in the University of Chicago Fifth Edition Revised September, 1921 Garden City, N. Y., and Toronto Doubleday, Page & Company 1922 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Youth and Eaklt Envihonment ... 3 II. The New Road to Leadership .... 24 III. New Wine in Old Bottles 42 rV. The Great Stage 60 V. From Princeton to the Presidency . . 80 -«*VI. The Problem 106 — VII. The Great Reforms 124 VIII. Wars and Rumours of Wars .... 146 - ^^IX. The Election of 1916 170- X. The United States Enters the War . . 195 XI. "We Are Provincials No Longer" . . 220 XII. Roosevelt or Wilson 250 XIII. The Great Adventure 277 XrV. The Day of Reckoning 298 XV. The Treaty and the League . ... . S28 XVI. An Appeal to the Country 354 XVII. Political Sabotage 378 XVIII. The Breaking of Woodrow Wilson . . 410 Index 439 INTRODUCTORY [To the First Edition] THE career of President Wilson and his services to his country and to mankind in general are so well defined and fairly rounded out that historians may not long postpone their estimates of both the man and his work. The fears of some that early appraisals may not accord with the final verdict of history are not well grounded. The final verdict has not yet been pronounced upon Julius Csesar, and each generation of American scholars forms anew its opinion of outstanding figures like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln. Jefferson, whom half of articulate America jeered at during his last year in the presidency, was a political saint to Abraham Lincoln; and Lincoln, whom nearly all the leaders of both great political parties of July and August, 1864, urged to retire in humiliation from his second candidacy for the presidency, was and is a political saiat to Woodrow Wilson. Violent attack and virulent abuse are not the criteria of his- tory. They but call attention sharply to the one attacked or abused, and create the presumption that something real is being done or attempted. No public man in all the coimtry was more distrusted by the eminent the day that John Wilkes Booth did his deadly deed than Abraham Lincoln. If Lincoln had lived to try his philosophy of kindness in the reconstruction of the broken South, his fame might well have been very different from what it is. Accident had a great deal to do with what history says about Lincoln. Accident has already pro- foundly influenced the thinking of men about the present X INTRODUCTORY leader of the United States. He has himself said that ac- cident was responsible for his second election to the presi- dency, although he quickly added that this did not mean that the body of the plain people were alienated from him. There is nothing more adventitious than the judgments of history. Did not Washington's fame take a bizarre turn through the fictions of Parson Weems? Chief Justice Marshall had been in his grave nearly a hundred years before a worthy biography was even attempted. There is not to-day a good Life of Henry Clay. History is fickle if not a fiction, and one of the reasons for its shrewish character is the failure of scholars to take their problems and greater subjects in hand before too many of the pertinent materials are lost. A contempo- rary account of a great man or a great epoch, if made in the spirit of truth and justice, may set somewhat the form of future history; as indeed a false contemporary account may thwart or make diflBcult the later verdict. With a view to a just estimate of President Wilson, the following chapters have been written. They are written while he lives and while his bitterest opponents occupy the centre of the pubUc stage. If the account errs, it may be corrected, and thus be a means to a better understanding of the man and his services, a means even of an earlier historical portrait. As to the main facts, there can not be widely dif- fering judgments. They are still fresh in the minds of mil- lions of people. Of purposes and ideals, no man has ever spoken more plainly or written more accurately than Wood- row Wilson what he believed and what he thought the coun- try ought to adopt as its programme. As to details, those details and incidents that make so much of the unpurposed work of a great man, I have had some as- sistance from the President himself. Three or four times during his trying years in the White House he talked frankly INTRODUCTORY xi of the state of the world and of his high hopes for his country, for a better future for all men everywhere. No man could listen to him as I did and not be warmed, not be moved in behalf of his cause. Many of his hopes, doubtless, have failed of realization; many groups of men have surely been digging their own graves, unawares; and many have from purely personal motives sought to thwart him. All of this he realized; but it did not make a pessimist of the President. What was said in such conversations has not, of course, been quoted or even restated in my own words. But it did enable me to interpret and estimate public statements and public acts in ways that would otherwise have been impossible. Furthermore, in the prosecution of this work I have had the good fortune to come into close relations with Professor Stock- ton Axson, the brother of the first Mrs. Wilson, who has been intimate with the President since the days of his boyhood and who remains practically a member of the family circle at the White House. Professor Axson has related to me many incidents and facts of Wilson's home life and family connections, explained a number of things about the entrance of the President into New Jersey politics, and read and com- mented upon the larger part of the book in manuscript. For all of this I am deeply grateful. In similar manner Messrs. Cyrus H. McCormick, and Thomas D. Jones, both of Chicago, and others have given information about the Princeton presidency and the plans of Wilson, the educator. Secretaries Daniels and Houston explained the working relations of the President and mem- bers of the Cabinet, thus making plain matters that otherwise might have escaped me. For all such friendly assistance the thanks of the author are hereby cordially expressed. But all these sources are favourable and perhaps coloured by close personal relations. To rely^ wholly upon them would not be xii INTRODUCTORY historical. In order to get the other view, several members of both houses of Congress have been asked about Wilson and his administration. Republicans as well as Democrats were willing to talk, although it would be unfair to quote them or give their names. And as occasion offered men of standing in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago have been asked the reasons for their decided, sometimes bitter, hostility toward the President. From public men in Washington and from business men in the large cities one learns how earnest and deep-seated is the dishke of many of Wilson's opponents. It is a part of the purpose of this book to explain and interpret that dislike. Some of the maneuvers of irreconcilable political enemies, of which I have learned, can not properly be given to the public, although the knowledge of them has been invaluable in the interpretation of certain events. Of course unfriendly sources of information have been used with much caution; but it has seemed proper to ascertain, as nearly as possible, what men think is their grievance against a leader whose popularity transcends all national boundaries and most racial and party differences. I can not hope to have under- stood all the motives and forces that have played upon the White House these last seven years; but it does seem that the picture ought to be better for the patient listening to men and women who regard Wilson in much the same way that Thad- deus Stevens and Charles Sumner regarded Lincoln. The materials that have yielded the larger part of the in- formation necessary to this story are the speeches of the President delivered before Congress and other audiences. These Mr. Joseph P. Tumulty has kindly gathered and for- warded for my use from time to time. The Congressional Record, in spite of its profuseness, remains the great authority for the proceedings of the two houses of the national Leg- INTRODUCTORY xiii islature. Of similar importance are the various reports and hearings of committees of Congress. What the pubUc thinks can not well be ascertained even from the electoral returns, as recorded in Edward Stanwood's valuable "History of the Presidency." Nor may one rely implicitly upon the press, either daily or periodical, for these are all more or less coloured by personal or group interests. But, as will be seen from the footnotes to my pages, much assistance has been gained from the New York Times, the Springfield Republican, and certain other well-known newspapers. The Literary Digest has been frequently cited because it is a gleaner of press opinion from all parts of the country. But it ought to be said that its work would be much more satisfactory to his- torians if it gave the dates of its press excerpts. Of books bearing upon recent events, the histories of the time, biographies of leading figures and the various forms of propaganda that have so burdened the mail pouches of the world due use has been made, as will appear, I trust, from the frequent references that accompany every chapter. But I have not undertaken to exhaust this source of knowledge. Only where Wilson was the subject in a serious way, where reputable scholars had something to say in either foreign or domestic periodicals, and where more or less scientific effort was made in books or pamphlets to treat subjects germane to the inquiry, has there been an effort to be exhaustive. Because the subject is contemporary and the sources of in- formation are well-nigh infinite, no bibUography has been appended. The references to sources which accompany the text on almost every page must suflice to show the range of my study. But it must not be supposed that every authority consulted has been duly listed. It is a pleasure to express my thanks to my colleagues, Messrs. A. C. McLaughlin, Charles E. Merriam, Conyers kiv INTRODUCTORY Read, and Ferdinand Schevill for reading parts or all of tha manuscript or proof of this book, and for giving it the benefit of their criticism. This is not to say that any or all of these gentlemen agree with the social philosophy or the interpreta- tion which run through the book, nor to claim immunity from criticism because of their supposed acquiescence in the validity of the narrative. It is to express the gratitude of the author for a kind of assistance that is often irksome. In a special sense I wish here to record my thanks to Professor Albert H. Tolman, likewise of the University of Chicago, for a careful reading of the proof and for many valuable sugges- tions as to form and style. It remains to be said that this portrait of Woodrow Wilson is designed to be a brief history of recent times as well as a chronicle of a great career. It aims to set the man in his historical backgroimd and to explain the trend of American life during a momentous period of world history. And since there are many and violently hostile views of recent history, it is hoped that readers will consider well the facts and the alternative interpretations before they take offence at what is here set down. I can not hope that all historians will agree with my interpretations, for historians are partisans like the rest of mankind. My chief hope is that some mis- informed people may come to a saner view of Woodrow Wilson and a more historical interest in the development of our country along liberal lines. If that should be attained the author will consider himself amply repaid for the two years, and more of labour consumed in the making of this book. William E. Dodd. University of Chicago, February 12, 1920. WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Woodrow Wilson and His Work CHAPTER I YOUTH AND EARLY ENVHIONMENT FEW Americans have had a better lineage than Woodrow Wilson, 28th president of the United States. His father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, born at Steubenville, Ohio, was the tenth child of James Wilson, and his wife, from County Down, Ireland, and of the sturdy Scotch race which still troubles the international waters in more ways than one. The life of James Wilson and his big family was of that hard but wholesome kind which has imparted so much vigour to the whole body of the American national experience. Joseph R. Wilson early showed a bent for books and con- sequently he was sent to Jefferson College, Pennsylvania, where he graduated in 1844. After a year of teaching in a Presbyterian school, he went to a theological seminary at Alleghany, Pennsylvania, to prepare for the Presbyterian ministry. In 1847 he went to Princeton for another year of preparation for his chosen calling. But on his return to Steubenville, he again became a teacher, this time in the Steuben viUe Male Academy, as men were then wont to call a school for boys. Here he met Janet Woodrow, a beau- tiful young woman, likewise of Scotch parentage, and a student in a school for girls conducted by Doctor Beattie, another Scotchman turned pedagogue in the backwoods of America. i WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Janet Woodrow was the daughter of Thomas Woodrow, graduate of the University of Glasgow, and his wife, a Scotch woman of similar strain who had died on the long joxirney to "the States." After a year of missionary work in Canada, the Woodrows settled in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1837, where the head of the house was the pastor of the Presbyterian Church till 1849, when he moved to Columbus to become the minister of the Hogg Presbyterian Church. Thomas Woodrow was already a man of note in Ohio, a devotee of the ancient classics who felt every day poorly spent which did not take him through many pages of the Greek and Latin writers which adorned the shelves of his library. He was likewise a firm believer in that stem Calvinist philosophy of which John Knox had been the best British exponent. His religion, duly burrowed from ancient Greek books and seasoned with the precepts of the Genevan theology, made something more than the mere milk for babes of which we learn in Holy Writ. There was no mistaking the intellectual calibre and the sturdy character of the stocky, full-bearded man who pre- sided with easy dignity over the church at Chillicothe, and then for many years at Columbus. It was his daughter, the fifth child in a family of seven, whom young Joseph Wilson met at Steubenville. They were married in Jime, 1849, and two weeks later this daughter of a great preacher was the wife of another preacher, for her husband was ordained the following month by the Presbytery of Ohio. The young couple did not enter at once the manse of some western church; they went instead for a short time to Jefferson College, where Wilson was professor of rhetoric, whence they moved again to Hampden Sidney College, Vir- ginia. There Joseph Wilson served the Church for four years as professor of chemistry and natural science, preach- ing the while to neighbouring congregations that asked his YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 5 ministrations. In 1855 he became the settled minister of the Presbyterian Church in Staimton, Virginia. There on Pecember 28, 1856, a son was born to the family whom they called Thomas Woodrow, in honour of the grandfather at Columbus. 1 But the family moved once more before they took root in the earth. In the spring 1858, Reverend Joseph R. Wilson became the minister of the Presbyterian Church of Augusta, Georgia, and there he remained through the succeeding stormy years till 1870 when he went to the well-known Theological Seminary at Columbia, South Carolina, as pro- fessor of pastoral and evangelistic theology. The Wilsons were soon at home in Georgia and South Carolina, for the people of Augusta and Colmnbia formed one community. There the beloved Doctor Thomas Woodrow, as he was now called, visited them and held aloft the stand- ard of learning. To the neighbouring Oglethorpe College, Georgia, came Mrs. Wilson's brother, Doctor James Wood- row, a distinguished graduate of the University of Heidel- berg, although he, too, was soon transferred to the Seminary at Columbia where he long tried in vain to reconcile dogmatic theology and natural science. Still another member of the old Chillicothe circle. Miss Marion Woodrow, visited her sister at Augusta, married James Bones, merchant and slave- holder, and became identified with the old South.'* It was a unique community, that of Augusta and the coun- try round about in 1860. There nearly all men of note were the owners of slaves. There society was sharply articulated. The aristocracy, composed of planters of the country side and the older merchants of the towns, were quite as sure of AVUKam Bayard Hate, "Woodrow Wilson, the SUry of his Life," New York, 1913. ^For character sketches of Southern Presbyterian leaders see Henry Alexander WhiUy "Southern Presbyterian Leaders, "New York, 1011. 6 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK.; their positions in the world as were the gentry of Britain with whom the Woodrows had had sympathetic experience be- fore emigrating to America. The farmers and mechanics made another class, not so sharply set off as were their brethren in England, but none the less a class apart. And the Negroes and poor whites quarrelled among themselves as to which group was entitled to social precedence.^ That the Wilsons readily adapted themselves to the system as they found it is evidenced by their long residence in the region as well as their undoubted social and professional success. They became as good Southerners as if they had been to the man- ner born. The home of the Wilsons in Augusta was for the time a stately house fronting on one of the best streets. Its rooms were large and its halls high and wide; and there was ample space about the place to give that dignity of which Lowell speaks when he said every home should have "fifty feet of self-respect" between it and the public highway. As was common everywhere in the old South, there were trees in abundance, a stable for the horses, and walls of brick to keep out prying eyes. Moreover, the church across the street was the handsomest in the town and its congregation the richest. That, too, was a dignified structure surrounded by tall elms and oaks, and permeated with an atmosphere that suggested sacred things and rather tamed the spirits of men as they came within its walls. Its quiet family pews, long, carpeted aisles, high ceiling, great suspended chandeliers, and pillared galleries for the slaves made upon men's minds that wholesome im- pression which Doctor Wilson, both in presence and stately speech, strongly re6nforced in his sermons. In the manse, •For description of lite in the South, see the author's "Cotton Kingdom" in The Chron- icles of America, New York, 1919. YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 7 on the shaded streets, and about the coves and corners of the church young Wilson found his playground, and got those early inspirations which are of the very essence of life. The Wilson family circle was of that sober, even stern character so common to the South in those marvellous days which preceded her great war for independence. Morning and evening there were Bible readings and family prayers which all were prompt to attend. On Saturdays there was a stillness which presaged the Holy Sabbath itself, for the father was preparing and meditating upon the two sermons for the next day; and Mondays partook of Sundays because they were the so-called "blue days" familiar to every preacher. To men of Doctor Wilson's creed aU mankind, save the elect of God, dwelt in outer darkness or moved irresistibly upon that downward road which led to the lake of everlasting fire and brimstone. It was the preacher's appointed business to warn such as the Great Father might have ordained from the foundation of the world as partakers of the covenant and heirs of that kingdom of heaven whose antechamber was the Church militant. God was to the Presbyterian a monarch of indescribable majesty and inscrutable will whose son, Jesus of Nazareth, had been sent into the world to explain and propitiate. Doctor Wilson was himself a fit representative of that deity which he preached from Sabbath to Sabbath. He was tall, symmetrical, and good to look upon as became the ser- vants of God; not a man whom one would pass unnoted in the street, nor one who might be approached with familiarity. He was profoimdly concerned lest his own children, of whom there were two girls and two boys, might prove to be of that unsaved mass of mankind to whom the grace of God did not extend; and he doubtless watched, as they grew to ma- 8 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK turity, for signs that Heaven would yet open its portals to them, yet he was withal a gentle and warm-hearted man, a believer in the value of human leadership and suggestion as well as in the stern will of God handed down through the ages. It was an earnest little world, that Wilson home in which our hero first learned the ways of life.^ Saturdays, Sundays, and Mondays of every week were filled with the presence of the Presbyterian deity, and on other days of the week members of the family unfailingly approached in prayer and song the throne of Almighty God, led by the father in that spirit of old which would not let go "till he obtained the blessing." To them all, as to most religious-minded Amer- icans of that time, the world was a vale of tears, a place of preparation, in sweat and blood, for that other world to which all must surely go. During those days of growing orthodoxy .- in the South people generally conceived of Satan as an active moving spirit whom one must fight through a resolute faith or circumvent by propitiating the angry Jehovah.^ Bowed down beneath a load of sin. By Satan sorely pressed; By wars without and fears within, I come to Thee for rest. While the home held true to the ancient faith and the parents endeavoured to bring their children into touch with the divine order of things, there was a larger influence of the church which played upon the life of the young boy who was to mean so much to a war-torn world of a later day. The ^Conversation witli Mrs. Jessie B. Brower, Winnetka^ 111., December SI, 1918. Mrs. Brower is a cousin of Woodrow Wilson who lived near him during his early years. ^One of the commonly used hymns, taken from the Presbyterian Hymnal of 1868, p. 00. In preparing this sketch of Dr. Wilson the author has consulted two members of the family circle, and he has made a careful study of the books, hymnals, and correspondence of lead- ing preachers of the time. YOUTH AND EABLY ENVIRONMENT 9 American Presbyterian Church of 1860 was a very powerful organization. It was wholly under the control of its South- ern leaders. The prince of them all was Doctor James H. Thomwell of the Columbia Theological Seminary who was to the reUgious world of the old South what Calhoun had been to the political. He was an aristocrat of the very best type and a champion of slavery and the cause of secession. A much younger man, but a powerful one, was Benjamin Mor- gan Palmer of New Orleans who preached on Thanksgiving, 1860, one of the remarkable sermons of American history in which he declared that God had made it the duty of the South to maintain and spread over the continent the whole Southern social system, including African slavery."^ Another leader of whom the world knows little to-day. Doctor John B. Adger, professor of church history and polity at Columbia and translator of the Bible into the Armenian tongue, was a master spirit in the religious world. North as well as South. There were many others- whose names were known to the country in 1860, but there is not space here to enumerate them. When the Civil War came and the Presbyterian Church could no longer remain non-committal on the slavery issue, separation was inevitable. Consequently, the leaders whose names I have mentioned and many others from all the seceded states gathered in Doctor Wilson's church at Augusta to organize the Southern Presbyterian Church. Thornwell, Palmer, Hoge of Virginia, and Adger made the Wilson home their headquarters and there caucused as to what was best to do, what was the best machinery for their work. Among these princes of the church, young Woodrow Wilson began to envisage the world. They were his father's intimate •William Gary Johnston, "The Life and Letters of Benjamin Morgan Palmer," E. P. Oberholtzer, "History of the United States," Chapter H. YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 13 nervous nature and he broke under the strain. In the spring of 1875 he returned to his father's roof, now the Presbyterian manse in Wihnington, North Carolina, whither the theo- logian of Columbia had meanwhile retreated in order to take up the work of pastor again. In Wilmington there were interesting things for a boy, the long wharf where great ships loaded for foreign parts, where sailors told marvellous stories of pirates, long since dead, that used to sail into the harbours and rob the king's ships be- fore they left their moorings; of the terrible battles between Yankees and rebels for the control of the place, and of bold blockade runners who used to feed guns and clothing and shells to the Confederate armies in Virginia. Altogether it was a great place for a dreamy young man who had never seen the ocean; but Wilson did more than listen to sea tales and gamer war stories.' He spent a year in Wilmington making up his mind what to do next and reading serious books that had already be- come his passion. He had already commenced to take an interest in British politics and to admire William E. Glad- stone, almost an ideal statesman to him. It was plain that he must go to college again. And in September, 1875, he took the Wilmington and Weldon train for Washington and thence to Princeton where his father had been a student and where he was to spend a great part of his life. It was as natural for Wilson to go to Princeton as it is for young English gentlemen to go to Oxford. It was an old in- stitution founded before the middle of the eighteenth century, a school of the prophets for the South and West for more than a hundred years. Thence had come Davies and Stanhope Smith, Moses Waddell and later Robert Breckinridge. There ■President Wilson has said since these lines were written that he was almost led to enter upon the life of a seaman while at Wilmington. 14 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Thornwell and Adger had studied, and the great Edwards for a short time had taught things fit for the gods to con- template. There James Madison had been a student, and senators and judges of the United States had learned the ways of government. Moreover, his father's teacher, the famous Doctor Charles Hodge, was still there. The Alexanders, so well known to every Presbyterian in the country, and J. S. Hart, the maker of books and f oimder of the Sunday School Times, and Joseph Henry, famous for experiments in physics, not to mention the great Doctor McCosh, philosopher and president of the College, all drew a young man like Wilson who leaned upon his father for counsel and kept in touch with the world. which his father knew best.' Nor can there be doubt that the boy was welcome. He came from good old stock. He was nearly twenty years old and mature for his years; in fact, Woodrow Wilson, like Thomas Jefferson, was never immature; he took promptly to his books if indeed it can be said that he ever left them. There was little opportunity to do anything else. The atmosphere at Princeton was not unlike that of Davidson. The professors were all of the earnest character of Christian ministers. There were prayers eveiy^ morning to which the boys must contribute their presence; the sermons and the revivals made it clear that to go astray must be the purpose, not a mere Blip of the student; and the boys were of the same social stratum with their teachers, coming as they did, in the main, from earnest Presbyterian homes, sons themselves of ministers and laymen of the Church.^ Of the formal side of Woodrow Wilson's training at '"Catalogue of all Who Have Held Office in or Have Received Degrees from the Collegeol New Jersey, " Princeton University Press, 1896. "■'Princeton," by Varnum Lansing Collins, New York, 1914, Chapters V and VT. YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 15 Princeton little more need be said than that he gave sufficient attention to the classics, to mathematics, and the budding sciences to satisfy his teachers. He did not distinguish himself; perhaps his mind was not so evenly set as to enable him to "carry" all his classes with high distinction. Perhaps he did not feel the need of the endless round of the ancient quadrivium and its modern annexes. Admirable as had been his grandfather's learning and the evenness of the father's accompHshments, Wilson was a young man who stood upon his own feet. When he graduated he ranked forty-one in a class of a hundred and twenty-two, which meant that he barely attained "honours." Of more importance jperhaps is the record which Wil- son made in the Whig Hall, a literary and debating soci- ety into which Southern students generally drifted. It was in this organization that a young man showed his mettle, his initiative. On more than one occasion he led in the competition for honours, the' most notable of which was his unprecedented conduct when he was appointed as one of the representatives of his society to debate with represent- atives of the rival society for the award of a coveted prize. The custom was to have the subject submitted to the debaters at the beginning of the contest. Sides were determined by lot. On this occasion it fell to the lot of Wilson to defend the protective tariff as against the principle of free trade. He flatly declined the contest, preferring to have his society lose the prize and himself the highest honoiu* of his college course to defending what he considered an immoral thing. Like Emerson at Harvard, many years before, Wilson was not a little disposed to academic anarchy. He loved the library more than he did the professors' lecture rooms; and he sought to try his own powers as a writer rather than to sharpen his wits by painful exercise in grammar and rhetoric. 16 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK He had already studied British pubhc men before he left home. Now he published a sketch of Prince Bismarck, the Gterman chancellor, in which he manifested the usual Amer- ican tendency of those years to applaud things German, al- though he did not fail to point out the dangers of autocratic and unscrupulous methods. In better form was a study of Chatham which closed with the remark of Macaulay, I be- lieve, that "William Pitt was a noble statesman, the earl of Chatham a noble ruin." These and other articles, which show more than mere undergraduate abilities, appeared in the Nassau Literary Magazine, a students' periodical of recognized merit. But another interest was that of the growing department of athletics, as that division of college activity soon came to be called. In this he won a place on baseball teams and became student director of athletic sports. Close akin to this was his elevation by his fellows to the editorial management of a new student publication known as The Princetonian, a bi- weekly devoted to the news of the campus. There were no upper class clubs then at Princeton, in the sense at least of later years, but Wilson did eat with the "Alligators," a group of similar spirits, and he "chummed" with men of his own tastes; and perhaps idled just a bit; but his greater interest in his articles for the college journals, his part in the management of athletics, and his incursions into the field of British politics saved him from the loiter- ing good-fellow habit that was soon to lead many Prince- ton men into the exclusive club life of 1900. The best fruit of his earnest studies outside the curriculum was seen in a work of his senior year — an article published in the International Review of 1879. In this first mature out- put of his mind one sees the germ of his later political re- forms in the United States. It has been rare that a young YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 17 man of twenty-three, and still in college, has been able to subject his own government to a scrutiny as objective and scientific in method as Wilson did that of the United States. Possibly his Southern training and aloofness from all things national was a factor, or was it his British descent? At any rate, he made an analysis of the method and pro- cedure of Congress in which the secret committee system was unerringly pointed to as a fruitful source of the shameless scandals of the time.^ Instead of ranting at the facts and the ruthless exploitation of the people by the people's chosen representatives, he uncovered the cause — the absence of re- sponsible leadership and the failure to apply open methods in laying tariffs and fixing taxes. The article in the Interna- tional was an indictment of congressional government and a vindication of the British system. It was Wilson's fare- well to undergraduate life; it was his debut into the world of scholarship, although he was hardly aware of the fact. -He was a man without knowing it. From Princeton he went to the University of Virginia to study law under the famous John Minor. There again he joined one of the debating societies, the Jeffersonian, and distinctly avowed himself a Democrat in the act. He wrote for the University Magazine, as he had done at Prince- ton, and he defended the impopular cause of the Roman church in the United States, not an easy thing for the son and grandson of Scotch Presbyterian preachers to do. But Glad- stone and John Bright still occupied his attention and he published studies of them at Virginia. But the law was Wilson's business, and Doctor John Minor,, his teacher, was a hard taskmaster. Nearly a year Wilson 'One does well here to read and compare Boosevelt's first book, "The Naval War of 1812," 1882, for the chasm- wide difiference in points of view of these greatest of American leaders of our 18 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK studied as he had never studied at Princeton, and he was apparently on the way to success as a candidate for a law de- gree when indigestion overtook him and he left the University for home. He remained in Wilmington for a considerable time nursing his health and reading in that discursive manner which had aheady become a habit with him. Too old to continue under his father's roof much longer and drawn to- ward a pubHc career, he knew no better than hastily to finish his preliminary studies in law, take his degree at the Univer- sity, and run away to some town to try his luck.^ He went to Atlanta in May, 1882, with his license in his pocket and, finding another young aspirant at hand, formed a partnership. The sign read "Renick and Wilson, Attor- neys at Law," and it was himg out at 48 Marietta Street. This location in Atlanta was another of those evidences of Wilson's attachments; he was a Georgian, like his father and many others of his kindred. Atlanta was, therefore, the place for him to begin. Still, practice and distinction and wealth were not apt to come to a young lawyer who did not stick to the law above everything else. And that Wilson could not do. He knew the use of the pen too well. And the idea of that article in the International stiU haunted him. He could not help elaborating it during the long hours when litigants kept vigilantly away from his doors and other young men like Hoke Smith enjoyed thedistinctionof baiting corporations and fighting spectacular cases through the courts.'' There can be no doubt that Wilson was approaching matiu'e manhood without great promise of that success and distinction which had been the rule with his immediate forebears. iwaiiam Bayard Hale, " Woodrow Wilson, the Story of his Life," Chapter V. 'A member of the Senate says that Wilson and Hoke Smith came into unfriendly relafiosa in those early days in Atlanta. YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 19 To relieve the ennui of an empty office and the tedium of constant writing upon a book which would probably never reach the distinction of print, to say nothing of winning royalties for its author, the young lawyer made long visits to his cousin, Mrs. Jessie Bones Brower, who now lived at Rome, Georgia. It was his nearest approach to home that was available. There he renewed an earlier acquaintance with Miss Ellen Axson, daughter of another Presbyterian church- man. Miss Axson was then living with her parents in Rome. Wilson very soon learned that she had charms for him which he should never be able to resist. Before many renewals of the acquaintance he asked and received her approval of marriage, at the first convenient season, for everybody knew that the bridegroom-to-be had no means of supporting a family. Doubtless this romance brought Wilson's affairs to a crisis. The firm of Renick and Wilson must be dissolved. Before we note the next step in Wilson's career, reference must be made to a characteristic declaration of positive op- position to the policy and practice of his government. The tariff that followed the American Civil War was one of econo- mic exploitation pure and simple; and as the expenses of the struggle declined it was raised not as a matter of taxation, but to protect American industries from competition of every sort. In 1872 the Southern and Western elements of the country retiu-ned to Congress such a majority opposed to the Republican tariff policy that the subject became again a sharp issue. By a narrow margin, however, the Republicans had saved to themselves the presidency both in 1876 and in 1880. Still Southern and Western men clamoured for down- ward revision of the tariff, and in 1882 a congressional com- mission was sent over the country to take testimony on the subject. Wilson went before the body and gave an undoubted pro- 20 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK fession of faith. He opposed the tariff: "Now that peace has come, the people of the South will insist upon having the fruits of peace and not being kept down under the burdens of war." He went on to show the unwisdom of laying any tax except for urgent needs; a tax laid for other purposes is bad policy and class legislation. Still, he would not abandon tariffs for revenue.' The people had too long been accus- tomed to indirect taxation. This was a pronouncement in full accord with his sectional faith as well as with the results of his long studies of British public affairs. Nine of every ten men in the South held the same view and longed for the day when they could compel the industrial interests of the North to take better care of themselves and take less direct or indirect aid from the treasury. The time had come for Wilson to try another calling. It was plain that the law was not for him. He went to the new Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore in September, 1883, and there once more renewed formally his contact with learning. His ideas for a treatise on congressional govern- ment, developing the thought of the article of 1879, were still in mind. He put himself under the guidance of Professor Herbert B. Adams, one of the most stimulating teachers known to American educational history. There were other young men of similar minds at the new university, James Franklin Jameson, Albert Shaw, Frederic J. Tiu-ner, Albion W. Small, John Dewey, and others of whom the world has heard a great deal. No more remarkable group of stu- dents than those who worked with Adams in his earlier years at Johns Hopkins has appeared in our history. Adams had come but recently from Germany where he had been imbued with the best spirit of that country. The new i"B«port of the Tariff Commission," House "Mijcellaneous Beports" 2nd Sess. 47th Cong, Vol. in, IWi. YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 21 university had for its president Daniel Coit Gilman, an- other man who was overcome with the sense of the American need for accurate scholarship and first-hand research. The seminar was the method. There were no residential halls and what is called college spirit hardly existed. Only the spirit of research prevailed. Under such a regime, Wilson must have found benefit, even if he had not already failed at law and felt the instant need of things. Within two years, he had met the conditions for the doctorate although he was not desirous of actually receiving the Ph.D. degree, and his study soon to be known as "Congressional Government" was accepted.' It was his real d^but into the world of scholarship and a re- markable book indeed it was for a young man of twenty- nine. It was the idea of 1879 developed to its logical con- clusions. Its plea was that congressional government was in a sad state, that only positive reform in the way of respon- sible leadership could save it. But if it were saved it would not be congressional government; it would be cabinet govern- ment after the British model. Although the book was ex- ceedingly well done, entirely independent in thinking, and written in a style that might save many another dissertation of infinitely less value, the author had not after all drawn the conclusion to which his study pointed. If direct and open responsibility for the policies of demo- cratic government be absolutely necessary, then the elabo- rate scheme of checks and balances set up by the fathers of 1787, designed to prevent things from being done rather than to forward things that needed to be done, must go. If the president must shape and guide legislation and stand iWoodrow Wilson, "Congressional Government," Boston, 1885. Professor Stockton Axsoh informs the writer that Wilson did not expect to apply for the doctorate. It was the interest taken by Miss Thomas, then dean of Bryn Mawr College, that induced him to take the ex- amination and receive the degree. -22 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK or fall with the people according to the measure of suc- cess attained, then the shirking of responsibility through division of authority, house, senate, and supreme court, must cease. That would be democracy such as the English were already approaching and such as the American system was daily defeating. But to this radical, if logical conclusion, young Wilson, aristocratic and conservative as he was, did not think of pro- ceeding. He had made his.contribution; he was ready for the next turn in his career and he took it, leaving to the political doctors to determine what reforms should be applied to the rickety Federal system in Washington. His book was well received by all the critics; it went through many editions during the next decades, but there is no sign that any con- gressman ever read it. Certainly none ever took serious note of it till nearly thirty years later when the author sat in the White House and men began to cast about to learn what manner of man the new President was. It was not long before opportunities came to the author of "Congressional Government" to take positions in different colleges. He accepted the position of associate professor of history and political science in Bryn Mawr College, Pennsyl- vania, and there he took up the work he was to pursue during the succeeding eighteen years. It was significant of the future, perhaps, that his first position was in a woman's college. Meanwhile, the vows to Miss Axson had not been forgotten. On June 24, 1885, they were married at her grandfather's house in Savannah. Their honeymoon was spent in the mountains of North Carolina, near Waynesville, where gen- tlemen and ladies of South Carolina and Georgia had spent vacations and honeymoons for a hundred years or more. The next autumn the young couple took up their residence YOUTH AND EARLY ENVIRONMENT 23 lear Philadelphia, and Wilson began the work of teaching he art and science of government to young ladies. He )egan his career very near where his paternal grandfather lad begun nearly a hundred years before and not far from Princeton where his great triumphs, as well as his sorest trials, rere to take place. CHAPTER II THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP BRYN MAWR COLLEGE was in the suburbs of Philadel- phia. Its doors had only a short time before been opened. There was every opportunity for its president and board of control to set themselves to new tasks, to improvement and reform, and doubtless Wilson felt that the way was open. At any rate, the limitations of the legal profession, as he had felt them in Atlanta, could not apply. But Philadelphia was already bound hand and foot to the great Pennsylvania machine whose master was Don Cam- eron. And in Pennsylvania men had gone a long way from those ideals which Franklin had set up and which Lincoln temporarily restored in 1860. The conventions of Georgia could not have been more stifling than were the limitations of the new environment. Nor was there more freedom across the river in New Jersey. The whole North was in 1885 caught in that full and driving current which made men behave in essential things just as the Southerners had behaved under the heavy pressure of slavery. In such a world the young lawyer-professor had little to do but stick to his last. For the moment all his ideas, as expressed in "Congressional Government," were abandoned, save as they might be pressed upon the young women of well-to-do families who attended his lectures. He was simply a teacher; and three years of successful study and teaching followed. From Bryn Mawr he went to Wesleyan 24 THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 25 University, Middletovm.Conn., In 1888,where he taught young len, doubtless with more satisfaction, till 1890. His next love was to Princeton where he became professor of jurispru- ence, that is, he taught political science. This position he eld for thirteen years and he quickly became one of the est known specialists in his subject in the country. His success at Princeton was instant, and he was in frequent emand for lectures and addresses all over the East. At ome his students adored him, while his colleagues readily ielded to his leadership in University matters. They were appy years, those thirteen of his professorship at Princeton, md the circumstances of his home were also most favourable his development. Mrs. Wilson was a woman of genuine culture and real iterest in the work of her husband. She was interested, loreover, in art on her own account. She designed the Vilson home and made it an artistic retreat, although the icome of the family was not such as to make it luxurious, ^here were three daughters in the family who added liveliness s they grew older. And young Stockton Axson, Mrs. Wil- on's brother, who had joined the household at Wesleyan, emained a constant member of the family group at Prince- on where he was professor of English literature till 1913. diss Helen Bones, Mr. Wilson's cousin of the old Augusta onnection, came on to attend a school for young ladies in 'rinceton. She, too, was a member of the family for the leriod of her studies in the town.^ And Doctor Joseph R. Vilson, worn out with many years of teaching and preaching ti the South, took up his abode with his favourite son during hese early Princeton years. It was a big family and there ras always good talk and frequent entertainment of guests. 'Miss Bones became^a member of the Wilson family again when iti head entered the White louse in 1913, 26 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Wilson had undergone such a regular and steady develop- ment that he never broke with the strong church of his Scotch forebears. He was regularly at church and a leader in its work. Nor did the atmosphere at Princeton tend to develop other tendencies. He was a moderate, how- ever, and not a little impatient with the ancient dogmas and fearful hynmology of Presbyterianism; but it was the impatience of reform and not of revolt. He was an active ruling elder in the Second Church of Princeton during most of his career as professor in the University. Success as a teacher and acceptability as a leader in his lather's church were not the goals which Wilson had set himself. His own genius, stimulated by the remarkable scholarship of Herbert B. Adams at Johns Hopkins, pointed the way to historical research. And while yet a young teacher at Bryn Mawr, he wrote an article for the New Princeton Review which marked him for an original thinker in history. It was the beginning of that period of American historical research in which the notion that facts, all the facts, consti- tute the beginning and the end of success was so popular. Although Wilson was himself a pupil of Herbert Adams, the foremost of the "Germans," he pointed out how much more important it was to understand, to read the sources with the eye of imagination. He demanded that historians know more of life and human nature; he declared that the whole field of literature was the historian's laboratory. Moreover, there was at that time a growing dogmatism among historians that all the great choices of life are made from economic motives. To this young Wilson replied that "men love gain, but they sometimes love one another."' Two years later he points out the failure of James Bryce in 'The New Princeton Review, March, 1887. THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 27 his "American Commonwealth" to understand the growth of American nationality although he did point out the greatness of Bryce's contribution.^ Thus early did Wil- son suggest one of the most important facts in American history. The nation was not struck off either in 1776 or 1787, as Gladstone declared with so much gusto: "until a people thinks its government national it is not national." There was no nation in the United States till after the defeat of General Lee at Appomattox.^ Li similar fresh and independent manner Wilson re- viewed Burgess's "Political Science" in the Atlantic Monthly in 1891 and found it almost entirely wanting. Nor did James Ford Rhodes meet the test of true history in his monumental volumes then beginning to make a stir in the world. To Wilson it was shallow learning that treated the great Civil War as involving the treason of one section and the righteous apotheosis of the other. There was no treason, since there had been no nation till the war determined the question of sovereignty.' In the unfolding of Wilson's genius for the quick under- standing of American history, the influence of Frederick J. Turner, while both men were still at Johns Hopkins Univer- sity, can not be overlooked. It was the time for a fresh judgment of the American development. Both Turner and Wilson had eyes of their own and both were men of independ- ent thought, a very rare thing in historians. One of them was from the far-off state of Wisconsin, not then so well known as now; the other was fresh from the broken South. They walked together and talked together. American ^Young^Wilson's review of Bryce's book was the best of all that appeared in America, and it led to a warm and close friendship of the two men. ' Political Seietux Quarterly, March, 1889. ' Atlantic Monthly, August, 1803. 28 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK history and the weakness of the American method of politi- cal expression were their themes. Wilson surely influenced Turner and lent new earnestness to his historical independ- ence. Turner made Wilson realize how much the West and the ever-moving frontier had determined the course of American history.^ If Turner has never written a full history of the country, he has influenced the writing of that history more than any other man of his generation. If Wilson never became the great historian that he could easily have been, there can be no doubt that he influenced the interpretation of American history in a way that few had done before him. It sometimes seems a pity that Wilson leaned more and more to political science and finally to politics, but the great world will hardly quarrel with him for these backslidings. He did, however, in a little volume, "Division and Re- imion," published in 1893, set up a school of historical thought which has long since become orthodox. His idea that the nation was not born till the close of the Civil War he made the basis of his treatment of the period of 1829 to 1889, and he made the case so clear that few cavil at him to- day. The South was right in law and constitution, but wrong in history. The East, on the other hand, was wrong in law and constitution but right in history. That Wilson understood Americans as few other students did is shown in his essay on "A Calendar of Great Ameri- cans," published in "Mere Literature" in 1896. Hamilton he classed as a great European, ill fitted to lead or shape the life of a frontier people who hated Europe. Of Jefferson, Wilson was a less discerning critic. Nor did he make Wash- ington fit his principle of classification closely; he admired Washington too much. But Lincoln he loved and under- stood at the same time, a rare thing for a young Southerner, 'Conversation with the President and a letter of Professor Turner dated October 7. 1919. THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 29 brought up to think of the great war president as "a black Republican." But Wilson was a peculiarly free spirit even from the first. His essays, his reviews of historical works, and his "Di- vision and Reunion" were not all of his writings in the field of history. In 1896 he published his "George Washington," a book which was, to be sure, interesting and characteristic; .but it was all eulogy, it portrayed in all-too-glowing colours that Virginian civilization which flowered about the time of the Revolution and which went down in irretriev- able ruin before the reform strokes of Thomas Jefferson. There was no analysis of character, no understanding of the delicate balancing of social forces in Virginia or pene- trating interpretation of constitutions and laws, such as Wilson gave promise of in his shorter historical studies. He only added to the steel-engraving status of the Father of his Country. Nor was he more successful in his larger work, "The History of the American People," 1902. In this book of five volumes there are many fresh interpretations and some changes of emphasis. It is written in the style of the "George Washington," flowing English and expository, illustrating the major contentions of the "Division and Re- union"; but it does not portray those greater forces in Ameri- can history which were making short work of constitutions and laws, of divisions of powers, and limitations of govern- mental authority. Not even the brilliant suggestions of the review of Goldwln Smith's "History," The Forum, 1893, or the fitne analysis of the reconstruction era, described in the Atlantic Monthly, in 1901, are made use of. In this last of Wilson's historical works there is a self -drawn portrait of the man, his personal view of critical events, and his enter- taining style; but that is all. He was about to quit the 30 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK field of history, for which he had shown such talent, without leaving the world a masterpiece. He was not to be a great historian.' In another field he had already shown equal if not superior gifts in the field of political science. In his first book there appeared the spirit of criticism, of mastery, of precocious judgment in all that pertains to the science of government. Not many young men still in their undergraduate days have manifested the insight into human institutions that he manifested in his preliminary sketch of "Congressional Government." One thinks of James Bryce's first draft of The Holy Roman Empire, a college exercise, but of few others, In the New Princeton Review, in the Political Science Quarterly, and many other periodicals, from 1887 to the day when Wilson became president of Princeton University, he put forth articles and studies on government and poli- tics which marked him as a gifted critic, even leader in public affairs, if ever scholars should come to their own in the United States. He is plainly a disciple of Edmund Burke, a young Ameri- can saturated with the writings of Adam Smith, of Waltei Bagehot, Sidney Smith, and John Stuart MiU. The peculiar English Constitution is frequently the object of his keen critical judgment and discriminating praise. He sees plainly that free men are free men only because they have had long years of training in self-government. But the one thought is the necessity of responsible leadership if men are to arrive at results and make reform. He laments now, as in 1879, the hit-or-miss methods of Congress, the failure of American presidents to outline policies and seek to guide legislation. There w as no government in Washington, he proclaimed ^ Wilson, like some of his ablest contemporaTies^ never sat himself down for a laborious vork because be felt so strongly the instant need of things. He wrote his "American People" for 9 popular magazine, not for the future nor for the thinkers of his own time. THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 31 many times, and he found plenty of witnesses to that claim* among the writers who spoke with authority on the sub- ject. As an ardent tariff reformer, an admirer of George William Curtis, and believer in the Democratic party, he viewed with unmixed pleasure the second advent of Grover Cleveland to office. It was a time for his ideas to get a hearing from men in high station. It was all a matter of leadership, good administration, and the application of the old principles of British Liberalism, of government by gentlemen and for the people. "Large powers and unhampered discretion seem to me the indispensable conditions of responsibility. There is no danger in power if it be not irresponsible. It is harder for democracy to organize administration than for monarchies to do so. We have enthroned public opinion. , . . The reformer in a democracy must stir up the public to search for an opinion and then manage to put the right opinion in its way."^ In April, 1893, he wrote a significant article for The Review of Reviews in which he repeats all his former ideas and very gently but strongly urges the new president to resume leadership. The relations of Cabinet and Congress might now be made intimate since for the first time in many years all elements of the Government were in full accord. Let the' President become prime minister and let Cabinet officers become the media for the coordination of the people's in- terests. What neither Wilson nor the new president saw in those critical days of the second Cleveland Administration was the growing, crying, and shameful inequalities and exploitations in American social and economic life. There can be no political democracy where economic democracy fails. And '"Letters and Journals of Lord Elgin," London, 1872, 121; Biyce's CommorfseJlh. 'Political Science Quarterly, June, 1887, 32 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK that fact underlay the Cleveland troubles that brewed thick and fast as soon as it became evident that he did not hear the cries of the suffering South and West. Any application of Wilson's reforms would have focused more sharply than ever the responsibility for doing nothing, and while Cleve- land was a brave man, those who had brought about his second nomination and election did not wish the whole na- tion to turn its eyes upon the cause of its ills. For twenty years divided counsels had been a cover for the exploitations which had made the word "democracy" a farce in the country. Now the only escape from a public under- standing of the failures of reforms — ^financial, tariff, and other- wise — offered in the strictest maintenance of the old habit of sharply divided powers. If Congress muddled the tar- iff and left the burdens of taxation on the shoulders of the poor, the President might publicly wash his hands of re- sponsibility; if the President refused any and all reforms of an iniquitous financial system, Congress could point to its silver legislation; and if both Congress and President agreed upon some mitigation of unfair tariff taxation by enacting an in- come tax, the Supreme Court could veto it as a violation of the Federal Constitution. Thus nothing would be done and the Constitution could be trusted to salve men's consciences. The time had come in the history of the great indus- trial states of the North when strict construction of the Constitution, the principle of a sharply enforced limitation of powers as between the great departments of government was as important to them as a similar system of administra- tion had been to the great planters of 1860. The Republican party was as much the champion of privilege in the period of 1880 to 1900 as the Democratic party had been when Jefferson Davis and James Buchanan had been its leaders. Could Cleveland make a new and ardent democracy of groups THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 33 of men who gave him his second chance? Could Gorman and Whitney and Gresham and the rest make a Lincoln of Cleveland? It is a rare thing that university professors have the fore- sight to sympathize with great popular movements. And Wilson was no exception to the rule in the early Princeton days. He hardly wished the President to place himself at the head of the distressed and revolutionary Southern and Western elements of the national population. Yet he had a vague feeling that the masses were not wrong as he showed when he said in a well-known address at Princeton: "The danger does not lie in the fact that the masses, whom we have enfranchised, seek to work any iniquity upon us, for their aim, take it in the large, is to make a righteous polity. "^ Nor is it at all improbable that he voted for Mr. Bryan in that alarm- ing election. But if so, he had not changed the view so often expressed that the people could not know what was best for them. He frequently used language like the following: When young college men go home to face "the unthinking mass of men"; and again, "to hear the agitators talk, you would suppose that righteousness was young and wisdom but of yesterday. . . . How many [educated men] know when to laugh? "^ Although Wilson's plan of responsible leadership must have compelled public men to make reforms, and he was to that extent a reformer himself, he was still a Liberal of the Gladstone school, an American scholar who hoped to see American institutions take on more of the forms of the British constitutional procedure. Such a proposition, if made in Congress or in a great national convention, would have caused its author to be denoxmced as something worse ^The Forum, December, 1896. *The Forum, September, 1894. 34 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK than a Scholar in politics. Wilson was thus not quite a practical man, as, in fact, it was charged that all the George William Curtis reformers were not. But it is given to a professor of jurisprudence in an Eastern university to be both conservative and unpractical. Wilson had no dream that he should ever be the president of the United States. His books and his students interested him. Of the former, he was constantly putting out his due pro- portion, and the University authorities were taking notice of his industry if not raising his salary. In 1889 he had pub- lished "The State, Elements of Historical and Practical Poli- tics," a text book which went through many editions and played a great part in the training of young men all over the country. Some of his best studies of politics and of the philosophy of government he brought out in two of the best books he ever published: "An Old Master and Other Essays" and "Mere Literature," both of that lean year, 1893. More- over, he was busy all the while presenting his ideas to au- diences, such as that of the Chicago Exposition of 1893, of the St. Louis Exposition of 1904, and of universities every- where. There were few more eloquent or effective speakers in the country. The fruit of these years of thinking as well as the consummation of his political thought may be found in "Constitutional Government of the United States," a work which came out after he had become a public leader as presi- dent of Princeton University.^ In this work one sees the mature thought of Professor Wil- son. He is still the sincere Liberal, a believer in his own earlier views as to the need of leadership in American life. As he contrasted the pushing business men of the country, who had captured the resources of the people and become im- mensely jich, with the leaders of political life, he noted the 'Woodrow Wilson, "Constitutional Government in the United States," New York, 1908. THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 35 concentration of initiative and responsibility in the one class and the division of authority in the other. He could not help explaining the failure of public men by making plain that they had never been trusted with the powers necessary to the protection of the public interest. The Fathers had, he contended, endeavoured to set up a Newtonian system of government which should, when once set going, never cease to function, as if it were propelled by some social law of gravitation. Thus he repeats the criticisms of his "Congressional Government." The presidency stood aloof; each house of Congress was self-sufficient; and the Supreme Court main- tained a lofty independence all its own. No other such machine existed in the modern world. It was and still is an anachronism, a left-over of that magnificent age of French interpretation of the British system, something that never had existence elsewhere. But remarkable as the American con- stitutions were, Wilson portrayed them and their workings in clear and penetrating chapters. At the end of his first period of constructive study, he is full and ripe, just and admirably balanced. His chapter on the courts is one of the most enlightening portrayals of that difficult sub- ject in our literature. He says not a word too much; he leaves little to be said. But in aU that he says there is a marked tone of moderate conservatism. He prefers the American courts to the Brit- ish. And much as he thinks America has lost by the sepa- rating of executive from legislative departments, he gives an account of the two Houses of Congress which Congressmen themselves would hardly resent. He shows how secret com- mittees militate against good government, but hardly touches upon the corruption that inherently connects itseK with such secrecy. Political parties receive philosophical treatment. 36 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK They are the necessary products of the constitutions that had been set up. They hold men and states together by their hot scramble for office. Their bosses are evils, but lesser evils than the anarchy which they prevent. Americans have great, smooth, and selfish party machines because Americans will not officially trust anybody with authority and leadership. Contrary to Wilson's^ philosophy of concentrated lead- ership as the practice of judicial vetoes is, he does not find another way in a country of written constitutions. He does not hesitate to say that courts should annul social legislation that invades the field of state activity. Harsh child-labour laws are better to him in 1908 than too-far-reach- ing Federal statutes. Yet he sees that conflicting laws of states in regulation of interstate commerce is one of the greatest evils of the time. He makes plain that the object of the framers of the Federal Constitution was to thwart democracy, but he does not condemn the motive. It is not his place to condemn but to describe. In this final fruit of Wilson's thinking on American con- stitutional practices we have less of the avowed Burkeian philosophy and more of the American eclectic. The author has grown mature. He no longer writes with strong under- tones of disapprobation as in the earlier years. While he sees the fatal weakness of the American system, he doubtless feels that institutions more than a hundred years old do not easily lend themselves to quick improvement. He would still have the president lead the country and guide Congress; but he shows much more of the patience with presidents who refuse to follow the advice than he had once shown. Of new things, sudden changes, and quick reforms he has none too high an estimate. "You had better endure the ills you know than fly to ills you know not of," was perhaps his frame of THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 37 mind. It was Wilson the statesman that spoke in these pages and the conservative statesman, too. In proof of this there is abundant evidence. But while this book was a-making and long before it went to press another way to leadership had opened to Wilson, the road to the presidency of Princeton University. The old College of New Jersey, beginning to be known as Princeton University,^ was founded in 1746 as a true school of the prophets. Its professors had been for more than a hundred years the devoted teachers of young ministers and young teachers who went into the great Southern and Western wildernesses to toil and pray among frontier folk. When Wilson was himseK a student at Princeton, the at- mosphere was stUl one of prayer and religious devotion. The spirit of Jonathan Edwards and of Doctor Witherspoon were still potent forces there when Wilson became a professor, although the leaven of the newer and worldly life of America was doing its work. While Wilson was primarily a historian and a political scientist, he could not avoid taking a part in the administration of President Patton. The full day of presidential autocracy in American colleges had not dawned and successful professors had a large share in the general management of their institutions. Nor was Wilson's share in the least unwelcome. He had a great influence with the students and his reputation as a writer was daily growing. It was the day of science versus the humanities. Wilson was a humanitarian. He had never shaken off the influence of that stern classical training which his grandfather had given him. Woodrow Wilson had grown up in the atmosphere of Greek words and Latin forms and he never broke with his own past. It was natural, then, that he should break a lance for the humanities. He played 'The college was formally christened Princeton University in 1896. , 38 WOODROW TVILSON AND HIS WORK the part well in The Forum, in September, 1894 : Science is cold and calculating. It allows nothing to the human spirit. And the by-products of its laboratories are lack of faith and absence of that reverence for great things which are of the very essence of history. Science can never combat socialism. The two are alike scientific and not sufficiently human. It was the day when men in the universities feared socialism. He would have all yoimg men know the languages of ancient philosophy and ancient government. They must know Greek and Latin and Mathematics, for "the good of their souls" as he said in a New York address. And know- ing these they must "get great blocks of history" in or- der to know what men had struggled for in all time, to have the material in mind for testing new devices in social and poUtical life. To this formidable list of things to be known by the college graduate he adds a longer and fuller study of English literature where once again men will come to know the materials men have worked upon, the ideals for which men have fought and died. "Eveiy university should make the reading of English literature compulsory from entrance to graduation. It offers the basis of a common American culture for college men. It gives imagination for affairs and the standards by which things invisible and of the spirit are to be measured."* In Princeton and elsewhere young Professor Wilson was re- garded as the champion of the humanities as against the scientists; and there was other reason for addresses at colleges and associations of teachers and ministers. It was not as a candidate for the presidency of Princeton or any other office that he was so active. He was naturally a leader of men, original in his research and fearless in the promulga- tion of his ideas — and ideas filled his mind to overflow. TAe Forum, September, 1894. THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 39 It was in recognition of this that he was chosen in 1896 to deliver one of the addresses in commemoration of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the College of New Jersey. It was to be a great occasion in the college world, and the opportunity to impress leaders of educational thought was so inviting that Wilson prepared himself as he had never before prepared for an address. It was in October, in the midst of that historic first Bryan campaign when all the East was keyed to a high pitch of nervous excitement. What Wilson said was both a pro- fession of faith and a chart for the future. He made a pro- found impression and his address was printed in full in The Forum, a periodical whose pages had already been opened by the editor, Mr. Walter H. Page, to the productions of his young fellow Southerner. I have already said that this was a rotable address. It was the most important of Wilson's public pronouncements before he entered the presidency of the United States, seven- teen years later. After a careful review of the greater events in Princeton's history and Princeton's contribution to the American social and national life and when he had his audience following him in full acceptance of his views, he reit- erated his ideal university training: "Religion is the salt of the earth wherewith to keep both duty and learning sweet against the taint of time and change; the catholic study of the world's literature as a record of the spirit is the right prepara- tion for leadership in the world's affairs /you do not know the world until you know the men who have possessed it and tried its ways before ever you were given your brief run upon it; the cultured mind can not complain, it can not trifle, it can not despair, leave pessimism to the uncultured who do not know the reasonableness of hope."'_j. 'The Forum, December, 1S9S. 40 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK But having shown the way to university men everywhere, he sounded a warning against the dangers which threatened men: "I am much mistaken if the scientific spirit of the age is not doing us a great disservice, working in us a certain great degeneracy. Science has transformed the world and owes little debt of obligation to any past age. It has driven mystery out of the universe. Science teaches us to believe in the present and in the future more than in the past, to deem the newest theory of society the likeliest. It has given us agnosticism in the realm of philosophy and scientific anarchy in the field of politics." Although he recognized that these by-products of science were perhaps not the intended results of scientific investigation, they did set the world agog and they made it the duty of teachers and leaders everywhere to beware the dangers of a final break with the past, to guard young men against abandoning the "old drill, the old memory of times gone by, the old schooling in precedent and tradition, the old keeping of the faith as a preparation for leadership in days of social change. We must make the humanities human again; we must recall what manner of men we are." "It has been Princeton's work, in all ordinary seasons, not to change but to strengthen society, to give not yeast but bread for the raising; the business of the world is not in- dividual success, but its own betterment, strengthening, and growth in spiritual insight. There is laid upon us the com- pulsion of the national life. We dare not keep aloof and closet ourselves while a nation comes to its maturity." It was surely a remarkable appeal to educators everywhere which Wilson made that day, and its publication a Httle later extended its range to all the universities. From that time he was regarded at Princeton as the most suitable man for the next presidency. All the logic of events as well as the growing fame of Wilson THE NEW ROAD TO LEADERSHIP 41 pointed to him as the one man whom the trustees must select in due time to lead the University. Students and pro- fessors alike favoured the change. And in 1899 when Yale, which had always influenced Princeton, abandoned its policy of a clergyman for president and chose Professor Hadley as its leader, the pressure became stronger. In 1902, President Patton quietly laid down the baton of office, retaining his professorship in the Theological Seminary, and Woodrow Wilson took up the work of president of Princeton University. He was a little less than forty-six years old; he was well-known as a historian and the leader of the new profession of political science; and he was an orator of unusual grace and elo- quence, a layman come first to the successorship of a long line of clergyman presidents of the University. The query of all was: "What will this layman do in his new and important r6le? " It was not long before the country knew what the President of Princeton was doing and Princeton itself could not be kept off the front pages of the secular press every- where. Men sought to put new wine. in old bottles and there was much difficulty to keep the vesseli whol«. CHAPTER III NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES PRINCETON UNIVERSITY is one of the oldest institu^ tions of learning in the United States. It was founded in 1746 by radical democrats calling themselves evangelical Presby- terians of whom William Tennent and his three remarkable preacher sons were the pioneers. These earnest men were very much like the early Franciscan monks who carried the Gospel to the poor and the rich without money and without price. They preached a doctrine of freedom, emotionalism, and faith in the ancient classics that had a profound in- fluence upon the Middle colonies and the old South. They travelled, like the Methodists, everywhere; they invaded the precincts of older and more conservative ministers; and they set up log schools wherever young men interested in learning could be brought together. The College of New Jersey, as the institution was called in its early history, was the chief of all these schools; it was the "headquarters" of the travelling preachers as well as all those of the so-called New Light persuasion."- For more than a hundred years it did its marvellous work on an endowment ranging from nothing to two hundred thousand dollars and with a teaching corps of five or six devoted men. Latin, Greek, a little mathematics, and a wealth of Scotch theology composed their stock in trade. 'Alexander, A., "Biographical Sketches of the Founders and Principal Alumni of the Los College," Princeton, 1845. 42 NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 43 Aaron Burr, senior, Samuel Davies, and the beloved Doctor John Witherspoon were their leaders and models of char- acter. The students, numbering from a score to a hundred and fifty, were in the main poor fellows from the Middle States and the South who intended to become preachers, teach- ers or, in the Revolutionary years, public men. The atmos- phere of the place was that of a monastery. All day long students and prsfessors were busy with their classics and their theology or arranging the necessaries of a frugal life, chopping their wood in winter or cultivating their gardens in summer. While this appears unusual and primitive to us, it was but a miniature of the life of the people of the United States before I86O.1 But this stern, simple ideal was not to continue. The Civil War which worked so great a change in other ways revolutionized the College of New Jersey. Soon after the close of the war Doctor James McCosh, an eminent Scotch divine, somewhat inclined to accept the fatal Darwinian theory of evolution, became the president of the old school. He foimd the alunani of Princeton growing rich everywhere in the North. They gave of their wealth to erect new buildings and to equip new laboratories. Their sons went to the college in increasing numbers. They were not theo' logs, but merely young men seeking an education. Science gradually won a place in this school of the prophets, due per- haps to the great influence of Professor Henry, the physicist. Slowly the old austerity gave place to an easier piety. A rich people, like those of the United States were coming to be, could not have their sons attend prayers in cold winter weather at five o'clock in the morning. In the twenty years following the advent of Doctor McCosh, in 1868, the college changed its character perceptibly. iColUiis> Varnum L., " Frinceton." This is a valuable brief history of Princeton Universitjr. 44 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK But after 1888, when President Patton occupied "the place of Witherspoon," the change took on an amazing pace. Beautiful buildings adorned the campus. The professors in- creased in number and assumed the manners of men of the world, even if their salaries did remain meagre. The students, instead of chopping their own firewood and bringing water from the nearest wells, united in clubs, built themselves luxurious clubhouses, employed the best of servants, and dined in the manner of gentlemen who knew the good things of life. Instead of the dog-eared Greek and Latin texts of their primitive predecessors handed down from generation to generation, they found excellent tutors who could, for a con- sideration, drill enough of the wicked classics into their easy- going heads to enable them to pass examinations and take the coveted degree at the ends of their stipulated periods of study. As a certain lady patron of the University was wont to say, "Princeton was a delightfully aristocratic place." At this turn in the history of the University Woodrow Wilson, the son of one of those poor, austere students of the older days, became president. As we already know, he be- lieved in work both for its own sake and for the sake of students who needed to fight the devil with busy brains. He believed not only in setting the Princeton youth to work; he thought the students of all the colleges of the East needed to have their attention called to the purposes for which men go to college. Harvard, Yale, and the rest were in like plight with Princeton. Fraternities, clubs, and athletic sports had every- where usurped, as he said, the functions of the "main tent." Men went to college to have a good time, to learn a little from their fellows, and return home finished gentlemen, farther removed than ever from the workaday world in which all men should have a personal part. If Princeton was to be set again upon the hard and thorny NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 45 path of Doctor Witherspoon, the new president had a task before him. It was the year 1902 when all the United States was busy with its great trusts, with its railroad combina- tions stronger than the Government itself, and with its metro- politan newspapers whose editors could make or unmake men and plans more easily than they can now. Wilson's task was a delicate task; for, in addition to making students study, he must not alienate the professors, always slow to welcome change, and he must hold the allegiance of the wealthy fathers and other alumni whose sons and friends would dislike intensely the contemplated reforms. The endowment of Princeton, in 1902, was about two millions; the number of professors was one hundred and eight; and the number of students thirteen hundred. There was an annual deficit to be met by the president from gifts of alumni and friends. Wilson set about his work quietly. He improved the student honour system which he had caused to be introduced a few years before by the organization of the senior council, a body of students whose business it was to lead and give tone to undergraduate activities of all sorts and sit in judg- ment over those who failed to observe the tacit rules of the student governing system. He'endeavoured to have more rigorous tests applied in the examinations and to give greater importance to the marking system. It became increasingly difficult for men to pass their examinations, and after 1902 somewhat more than a hundred students were required to leave college each year because they had not passed their tests. The president announced in one of his earlier addresses that "some day I predict with great confidence there will be an enthusiasm for learning in Princeton."^ >The Alumni Weekly, November 26, 1901. 46 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK The sincerity of the president is manifested in his second annual report in which he acknowledges without embarrass- ment the falling off in the number of students. He had said in his inaugural that "the college is for the minority who plan, who conceive and mediate between social groups and must see the wide stage whole. We must deal with the spirits of men, not with their fortunes. The man who has not some surplus of thought and energy to expend outside the narrow circle of his own task and interest is a dwarfed, uneducated' man." He was now endeavouring to make good that prophecy. Of equal importance was his reform of the curriculum so as to make it meet the needs of an advancing age. The classics were retained as the basic content in the traiauig of men who expected to study in the field of the social sciences, for men who were to deal with history and other manifesta- tions of the human spirit. But if students wished to devote the major part of their work to the sciences, and win at the end of their courses the B. S. degree, they might omit Greek and add an equivalent in the modern languages. But all students were to follow a certain prescribed course during the first two years of their college careers. It was rather an ideal solution of the problem, and many colleges and universities of the country have been influenced by it. But a larger matter was already engaging the new presi- dent's attention. In his efforts to induce men to love study and to guide them in their search for the best and most useful knowledge, he came to the conclusion that one of the reasons for the break-down in the intellectual morale of American universities was the fact that teachers had got out of touch with their students. There were too many students in pro- 'Princeton University Bulletin, 1901-03. Wilson's inaugural. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 47 portion to the number of experienced teachers, as well as too many fat purses. How was the professor to regain that in- timate companionship with the young men under his care which had made the early graduates of Princeton such successful and even famous men? This question Wilson answered in his annual report of 1904 in what has come to be called the preceptorial system. In this he was doubtless influenced by the ideas of President Harper of the University of Chicago who had insisted from the foundation of that institution that successful teaching could only be done in small classes. But Wilson went further. He would not only have small classes. He would have a large number of capable instructors live in the dormitories, become companions of the young men, and guide their studies and reading. He would put college boys into touch with maturer minds and give them the companionship which they so much needed. It was not the Oxford system although there was a certain resemblance to it. If this system were to be made effective it would cost' the University a hundred thousand dollars a year. Wilson ap- pointed a great committee of alumni' and supporters of the University of which Cleveland H. Dodge and Cyrus H. Mc Cor- mick were members and asked them to provide the funds. Large sums of money were found and within a year the plan went into effect with general approval, although some mem- bers of the faculty were a little disposed to demur when two score young doctors of philosophy, engaged as tutors, and un- acquainted with the ancient ways of Princeton, were admitted to that body with professorial privileges. Nor did the students hasten to assume this second burdensome yoke of study; however, there was too much enthusiasm everywhere in 1905 for the new president for resistance to be seriously ^Alumni Weekly, February »S, 1905. 48 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK offered. The preceptorial system of instruction became at once a part of the Princeton method.' The hastening of the pace of student work, the solution of the problems of the curriculum, the classics, and the far larger matter of how best to lead young men into the paths of scholarship and science pointed the way the president would go to the end. He was earnest and liberal minded, but Scotch-bent in his plans. If his spirit prevailed the ideals of Jonathan Edwards and Doctor Witherspoon as applied in divinity would be carried into the broader work of the modern university and young men would go to college not only with burning purposes to accomplish something for themselves but with the ambition to do something for the world after graduation. The revolutionary character of Wilson's plans may be seen in an address which he delivered on November 29, 1907, before the Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools of the Middle States and Maryland: "We have just passed through a period in education when everything seemed in process of dissolution, when all standards were removed; when men did not hold themselves to plans, but opened the whole field, as if you drew a river out of its course and invited it to spread abroad over the countryside. . . . You know that the pupils in the colleges in the last several decades have not been educated. You know that with all our teaching we train nobody; you know that with all our instructing we educate nobody. . . . We are upon the eve of a period when we are going to set up standards. We are upon the eve of a period of synthesis when, tired of this dispersion and standardless analysis, we are going to but things together in a connected and thought-out scheme of endeavour. "^ 'Collins, v. L., "Princeton," 274-75. ^Ford, Henry Jones, " Woodro'v Wilson, the Man and\His Work," New York, 1916, i9-S0. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 49 Although Wilson met with discouraging opposition in this rejuvenation of an ancient institution of learning, he was making headway. Wealthy friends and alumni gave him money for new buildings, new professorships, and endow- ments. Princeton became a subject of discussion in every home where men kept abreast of the times. People began to feel that it was doing a new work in the world and that the outcome of its experiments might be of great value to the country. But the president's work was not merely the work of a social reformer. He loved Princeton for its own sake, as was made plain in a speech accepting the gift of a beautiful lake by Andrew Carnegie: "I do not think that it is merely our doting love of the place that has led us to think of it as a place which those who love this country and like to dwell upon its honourable history would naturally be inclined to adorn with their gifts. . . . We could not but be patriotic here, and I know that you, yourself. Sir, feel the compulsion of this [Princeton's] noble tradi- tion." 1 Other gifts besides that of Mr. Carnegie were added almost monthly to the long list. In the year 1906 Cleveland H. Dodge, David B. Jones, Moses Taylor Pyne, Cyrus H. McCormick, and scores of others gave liberally to the Univer- sity and thus enrolled themselves among those who sup- ported Wilson and his wide-reaching revolution in education. He was unconsciously knitting together a group of friends against the day, soon to dawn, when friends would be needed. At the same time he was, unavoidably to be sure, leaning upon the shoulders of wealthy men, men who might ultimately come to doubt the wisdom of democratizing the life of a great college. And their gifts of millions would lead them to suppose that their influence should be decisive. Whenever a ^Alumni Weekly, December 8, 1906. 50 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK serious difference of opinion appeared between these bene- factors and the president, the power of the latter for good would be ended. And the day of reckoning was, in fact, drawing nigh. In accordance with Wilson's matured plan of articulating all the resources and activities of the University about the main tent, aa he was wont to say, the trustees, following the lead of the president, accepted his plan of bringing all classes of students together in dormitories about a common quad- rangle.'- This plan was the next step after the adoption of the preceptorial system. One of the growing obstacles in the way of all success at Princeton was the club arrangements of the upper classmen. About half of the members of the Junior and Senior classes belonged to the clubs whose atmos- phere and tone were both undemocratic and not conducive to study. As elsewhere in the Eastern colleges, these in- stitutions formed the nucleus of an adolescent aristocracy based upon other things than merit as hard workers. Yet they absorbed the interest of the lower classmen and took the lead in what was called student activities in a way that seriously hindered the real purpose of the University. The one great anxiety of most students during their second year in college was whether the leaders of the clubs would take notice of them. And not to be chosen at the proper time was the worst that could befall a yoimg man in the whole course of his student life. If Princeton was to be made, as Wilson half jokingly said, an institution of learning, the clubs must be abolished.' The quadrangle scheme was quite as important as the preceptorial system. The president, therefore, endeavoured to win club and alumni support for the measure before he set Mlamni Weekly, September 23, 1907. ■William Bayard Hale, "Woodrow Wilson, the Story of His Life," Chapter Vn. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 51 about raising the money to build the new dormitories. He sent to the clubs at commencement time, when many prominent alumni were present, an outline of his proposal, asking careful consideration. The idea was to open new dormitories of the most modern type on the campus, to have these grouped about a main quadrangle so that the members of the different classes might come into daily contact. Many of the preceptors and other unmarried members of the University faculty were to have quarters in the new buildings and use common parlours in furtherance of the preceptorial method. The plan was made to look as attractive as possible to club members who must see that ultimately their luxurious and privileged quarters would be rendered superfluous. The response came quick and disconcerting. If the new and "distinguished" president really intended to make Princeton a student democracy, there was to be war to the knife. The clubmen went home to protest to their fathers. The visiting alumni returned to their commimities to or- ganize meetings of protest. The point they, one and all, emphasized was the "right of every man to choose his com- panions . ' ' One of the leading graduates of Princeton wrote to the Alumni Weekly denouncing the idea that students should be compelled to associate with their inferiors, although the language used was gently veiled. Adrian H. Joline, a New York business man, declared publicly that Wilson's new scheme had not one redeeming feature about it. Influential professors shrugged their shoulders significantly when the quadrangle plan was mentioned. Before the president returned from his vacation, in September, a veritable outcry of students, alumni, and professors was made; and members of the trustees began to indicate their doubts about raising the necessary millions for the new buildings. The news- 52 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK papers of the country discussed the proposed democ ratizing of the colleges.! PKncetOT~was indeed on the map, but Wilson was by no means certain of success. Realizing early in the autumn that he might be defeated, he yielded as gracefully as he might to a vote of the trustees, in special session, which withdrew the quadrangle plan. He let it be known, however, that the idea was not abandoned. Wilson had come to a turning point in his career. As a Liberal, of the general type of James Bryce and John Mor- ley, he had undertaken to reform and revise the educational system of a great American college. If he had succeeded he must have influenced education very much all over the country. But Princeton did not apparently wish to become simply an institution of learning. The attitude of Princeton and its friends proved to be the attitude of most other great schools. I believe no other president of an American university made public any sympathy with the president of Princeton. If Wilson meant to carry his programme, he must win a larger popular support. Inany campaignhe mightmake it would be necessary to take boldly the ground of democ- racy; but if he did so a very large element of public opinion, and that element which guaranteed large gifts to education, would be enlisted against his idea. Well-to-do Americans were in 1907 very skeptical of democracy. President Wilson was a public leader in spite of himself. He could not retreat without confessing defeat; he could not go forward without definitely antagonizing a great many of the most generous of his supporters. The Eastern alumni on the whole opposed him while the Western alumni favoured him.' ^Alumni Weekly, passim; the New York Sun, October 18, 1907. 'A fact which illustrates admirably that abiding sectionalism which has characterized AnvtrK «aQ history from the beginning. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 53 The trustees numbered about twenty-seven, the Eastern men opposing and the Western men favouring his reforms. In this critical situation, he accepted manyengagementstospeak, notably in the Middle West. At Indianapolis at Christmas time, 1907, he made several telling addresses and was made the hero of more than one occasion. Thousands of people crowded his meetings to hear what this new educator who thought young college men should be made to study and be brought into close personal acquaintance might have to say. Few people knew till then that the colleges were developing such habits; still fewer dreamed that college boys were op- posed to associating with their fellows on terms of equality. Everywhere men made him understand that his ideas were theirs. Newspapers, whose editors had not been known for their support of good causes, now ridiculed college students who wished to set up exclusive cliques and groups. Public opinion became his weapon and students, professors, and trustees quickly realized that they were on the defensive; personal opponents of Wilson and men who believed in letting things drift were angry. They hoped for a blunder on the part of the president. Instead, a new issue was soon made up- One of the curious facts of Wilson's administration of Princeton was that in 1896, when the College was expanded into the University, Andrew F. West, a friend of Wilson, was made dean of the then proposed graduate school and au- thorized by the trustees to make a study of European univer- sities and report to them a plan for the organization and advancement of graduate studies at Princeton. West made a study of European institutions promptly. When Wilson became president a second visit was made and an elaborate report submitted to the trustees. This fact and the accident that West was not originally expected to subordinate his 64 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK plans to those of the president of the University led to a sort of rivalry that was to prove all but fatal. Wilson was the official head of the institution; he was active and filled with ideas. West was ambitious, too. The graduate school was his particular province and he sought support wherever he went. Wilson pressed upon alumni and others the cause of the University; West and his friends talked the graduate school. The one was interested primarily and increasingly in under- graduate studies and in making young men good citizens; the other in advanced studies and in the development of research, always a matter for the few. On many occasions Wilson and West made tours of the East together and spoke to the same audiences and shared honours almost too evenly. It was a case of divided authority, perhaps of rivalry. In 1905 a beginning was made and "Merwick," a large private residence, was opened for advanced work and of course Dean West was in full charge. The same year Mrs. Swann,a.staunch friend of the University, died and bequeathed about three hundred thousand dollars to the graduate school and it was decided to erect the new buildings on a site where the president's house had stood. But Dean West received in October of the same year the offer of the presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He hesitated to accept and the trustees, doubtless on the approval of President Wilson, indicated that he ought to remain at Princeton and develop the graduate school. The offer from Boston was declined. Still the work on the new buildings did not begin. There was some disagreement or anticipated disagreement, for the committee of fifty which had raised so much money for the college was reorganized and became the graduate council, with a curious relation to the trustees.! Professor West was the leader in this and he thus iCollins, V. L., "Princeton," «81. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 55 gained access to the board of trustees. Everything tended to make of West's work a special and distinct division of the -University, if not an entirely independent institution. While the plans of the graduate school lagged. President Wilson continued his appeal for interest in his quadrangle system. In March, 1908, he concluded a series of addresses in Chicago, in one of which he declared: "The body of teach- ers and pupils must be knit together, else nothing truly in- tellectual will ever come of it," that is of college work as then administered.^ The series of meetings in Chicago that year was significant as the West was the centre of Wilson's strong- est support. But the same tone was held in speeches de- livered in the East. However, in May, 1909, Mr. William C. Procter, a friend of Dean West, offered the University $500,000 on behalf of the graduate school, on condition that a like sum be contributed by other friends^of the school. Mr. Procter significantly made this offer through Dean West and with the stipulation that the graduate school be located according to the dean's wishes. This meant that the graduate work of Princeton would be done in practical independence of the president of the University and at a point remote from the centre of col- / lege life. Moreover, the president would be expected to raise the required $500,000 in order to secure the original] offer. Wilson was thus asked to assist a programme of dis- integration that must be far-reaching in its effect. It was war open and avowed, although all parties were expected to maintain the friendliest air, after the manner of college and | university rivalries. It required six months for the trustees to decide whether they would accept this Janus-faced gift. Then, in October, 1909, they made up their minds to receive the gift with many iAlumni Weekly, March 25, 1908. 56 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK thanks, but they asked Mr. Procter to modify his terms so that the president and trustees might determine the location of the new school. Wilson visited Mr. Procter at his home in Cincinnati and urged him to abandon his idea of locating the school at a point remote from the centre of the University. The appeal was unavailing. Accordingly, the trustees, upon {he advice of the president, were about to decline the gift, and thus lose other large offers contingent upon the original offer, when Mr. Procter withdrew his proposition altogether. The University thus declined, early in February, 1910, gifts which amounted to almost a million dollars rather than ac- cept those gifts on conditions that defeated the purposes of the administration.^ The coimtry, already familiar with the more important facts of the situation at Princeton, was astounded to learn that a college president had actually refused the gift of a million dollars. The newspapers of the whole country ap- plauded the act, but without taking the full measure of the man who had won their approval. The talk of the country was hardly louder than the lamentations of the men at Prince- ton. Professors, students, and leaders of the Eastern alumni made a violent outcry against a president who could thus sacrifice the old institution. Moses Taylor Pyne, one of the regular contributors to deficits and other funds of the University, became the leader of the campaign against Wil- son. The storm seemed too great for any college president to withstand. On February 16th, the trustees met again and adhered firmly, but on a rather close vote, to their former position. Worn out with the long fight and doubtless discouraged by the apparent timidity of weak friends, Wilson went away to Bermuda for a short vacation and, perhaps, to devise his ■iUumni Weekly, February 9, 1910. NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 57 next moves in a difficult game, a game, one must say, which had the country for spectator. His absence was made the opportunity for all his op- ponents. In the newspapers and in many meetings of the Eastern alumni he was abused and attacked both directly and by innuendo. A faculty committee appointed to consider the matter made minority and majority reports after the manner of political party committees. The majority, led by Professor W. M. Daniels, sustained the president; the mi- nority, composed of Professors West and John G. Hibben, en- dorsed the views of the dean.^ At a great meeting of the alumni in Philadelphia on March 4th, Professor Henry Van Dyke made an elaborate attack upon the president and Pro- fessor Hibben spoke in the same, if more moderate, vein at Montclair, New Jersey. The trustees were now so closely divided that a single vote was apt to turn the tide against Wilson. Adrian H. Joline, bitter opponent, was the can- didate of the East for a vacancy on the board. President Wilson returned early in March. He reentered the struggle as he was compelled to do. He visited alumni in all parts of the country east of the Mississippi explaining his plans and purposes. It was an appeal to the people. In Pittsburg he said: "The great voice of America does not come from the seats of learning. It comes in a murmur from the hills and the woods and the farms and factories and mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us from the homes of common men. Do these murmurs echo in the corridors of universities? I have not heard them. The imiversities would make men forget their common origins, for- get their universal sympathies and join a class, and no class can ever serve America. I have dedicated every power that there is within me to bring the colleges that I have anything Ufumni Weeklu, February 16, 1910. 58 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK to do with to an absolute democratic regeneration in spirit, and I shall not be satisfied and I hope you will not be until America shall know that the men in the colleges are satu- rated with the same thought that pulses through the whole great body politic. "I know that the colleges of this country must be recon- structed from the top to bottom, and I know that America is going to demand it. While Princeton men pause and think, I hope that they will think on these things. Will America tolerate the seclusion of graduate students? Seclude a man, separate him from the rough and tumble of college life, from all the contacts of every sort and condition of men, and you have done a thing which America will brand with its con- temptuous disapproval." ^ That was the reply to the challenge of Princeton men who were trying to break his power. It was an appeal to the country; it was democracy after the American method. It is plain that he had gone a long way from the position he had held in 1902 when he undertook the leadership of his alma mater. He was no longer the gentle Liberal consorting with the elect; he was a revolutionist pleading for a regeneration of all the colleges in the United States. Could he succeed? | Could he even succeed at Princeton? The answer came quickly. Although he defeated the elec- tion of his opponent, Joline, to the vacancy on the board of trustees. Dean West made still another move. He advised with a certain rich man who contemplated a bequest to Princeton — ^Isaac Wyman of Massachusetts, who died in May, 1910, leaving a will in which a gift to the graduate school of Princeton amoimting to three million dollars was stipulated. Andrew West was one of the executors of the will. The dead speak louder in America than the living. 'Quoted in Hale's "Woodrow Wilson," 162-58, NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES 59 Wilson's democracy could not withstand three million dollars handed out from the grave. At one stroke, after years of struggle. Dean West was the master at Princeton. He gave a dinner that commencement. President Wilson and Mr. Procter and Moses Taylor Pyne were present. Mr. Procter renewed his gift on the old terms. The trustees accepted everything. It was one of those dramatic turns in Wilson's fortune of which there were to be many others in the near future. Would he resign? It was plain that new wine did not set well in old bottles. CHAPTER IV THE GREAT STAGE IT IS not surprising that Princeton resisted the reforms which President Wilson pressed upon her nor that other universities viewed askance the plan of democratizing col- lege life.i The sons of rich men have almost always resisted the persuasions of their teachers to enter upon the toilsome road that leads to learning. What does surprise the historian is the readiness with which the conservatives, the bosses even, of the Democratic party turned to this educational reformer for a national leader. Moreover, it was this un- natural move of the conservatives of the East which set in motion that marvellous train of events which have made Woodrow Wilson the foremost leader in the world. Only a fair understanding of the complicated state of things in the United States in 1910 will enable one to understand this miracle of American history. At the close of the Civil War it became increasingly plain that Lincoln's generous policy of reconstruction would restore the free-trade and poverty-stricken South to its old posi- tion in the country and with an enlarged delegation in Con- gress because of the emancipation of the slaves. The South would thus at once exercise a large influence in national affairs. *"It is delightful to find how much sympathy exists for my somewhat lonely fight here among the men in the faculties of the great universities as well as the small colleges, and I am hoping every day that some other President may come out and taJce his place beside me. It is a hard fight, a long fight, and a doubtful fight, but I think I shall at least have done the good of precipitating a serious consideration of the matters which seem to me fundamental to the whole Ufe and success of our colleges." — ^Letter to author, dated May 4, 1910. 60 THE GREAT STAGE 61 Further, the Western states from Ohio to Nebraska had grown very jealous of the industrial states which dominated the whole North. The railroad, manufacturing, and banking groups of the Eastern states had grown immensely rich during the struggle. All these forces united in 1866 to insist upon a national tarifif and financial policy which would hold the West in subjection for half a century. Westerners, therefore, like George Pendleton and Allen G. Thurman of Ohio and scores of others from other states, protested against paying the national debt in gold and against a steadily rising tariff which bore heavily upon farmers everywhere. Here were two powerful sections of the nation, the South and the West, which had formerly supported each other in national affairs. They each had grievances. If the South were readmitted to the Union, Southern and Western men would inevitably unite their strength and arrange a national policy which would serve their interests. Andrew Johnson, in spite of his loud talk during the early months of his presi- dency, represented the promise and guarantee of such a com- bination. Hence the bitter struggle to impeach him. In- dustrial men succeeded by a campaign of hatred both in de- feating Johnson and in holding the South out of the Union for a decade. Meanwhile, industrialism made its position secure.^ The Republican party was the agency through which this industrial supremacy was made secure.^ High tariffs, high wages, and rapid railway development were the popular slogans under which elections were carried. Prosperity with the exception of certain violent reactions known as panics was the result, a prosperity which enabled railroads to be built across the continent, which raised great cities upon the ^William A. Dunning, "Reconstruction, Political and Economic," Ch. V. 'James A. Woodburn, "The Life of Thaddcus Stevens," Indianapolis, 1913, Ch.XXI. 62 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK plains like mushrooms that spring overnight. Industries that had to do with wool, cotton, iron, coal, copper, and rail- roads increased their returns, enriched their owners, and herded millions of human beings about their smoking chim- neys, men who spoke strange tongues, lived in dingy hovels, and worked for wages that just kept them going. From Boston to Minneapolis stretched this vast indus- trial domain. Railroads tied the mines and the farms of the rest of the country to the nerve centres of this busy, smoke-blackened region. National, state, and private banks fed the industries, the railroads, and the other ancillary busi- nesses with the necessary capital which was borrowed from Europe or from the savings of the country. Real estate rose in value beyond the wildest dreams of its owners because industry brought millions of tenants; bank and industrial stocks doubled and quadrupled both in volume and in price because vast populations gathered in the cities increased the consumption of goods. Rich men grew to be millionaires and millionaires became masters of hundreds of millions of wealth. Was there ever anything like it? The Republicans answered, "No," with a mighty shout.^ From 1866 to 1896, the process went on almost without interruption. The opposition, led in the beginning by mem- bers of Congress from the Middle West, called itself the Democratic party. It consisted in a solid South voting against the East whether in goerd or ill repute and the pro- vincial West. The provincials of America could not see that it was a blessing to cover the earth with great plants and wide- flung mill settlements so long as cotton, corn, tobacco, and all other products of their lands declined in value. Their sons >E. Stanwood, "History of the Presidency," gives official platforms; his "Tariff Controver- ■ies" gives the philosophy. A more subtle and popular philosophy of industrialism will be found in John Hay's, "The Breadwinners," 1883. M2 s s 12; " ^ I ^ 6? •£3 >o fe? « • • ::••••■ .. ••• • . * • • . . • • « • . • • ••' • . . • • ( 111 ... • • • ♦ " * • • • • * ••* *• '-1 • ■ • • • • • • • y^ o I o I s 1 I 6S 64 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK ran away to the cities to swell the enormous tide of new- comers from Europe, both of which masses of men added to the representation of the industrial districts in Congress and made the more difficult the election of any leader of the farming groups to the presidency. Every year the country regions not touched by industry became lees attractive. Houses took on a tumbledown appearance. The South be- came a waste. Planters became farmers; farmers became tenants; and tenants took places as day labourers or emi- grated to the city. There was no help for it. Old America that lived upon the land and talked of liberty and equality was vanishing. Men of the Protestant faiths, people who read their Bibles daily and looked tp the next world for ad- justments of the wrongs of this world, had their faith for their pains. Little else came their way. Still, it must not be inferred that the industrial forces held imdisputed sway in all their rich region. There were remote Republican districts where people doubted the divinity that hedges business about; and there were clerks and bookkeep- ers and Irishmen in the big cities who worked and voted stub- bornly against "their betters. "^ These doubting Republi- cans and organized common folk of the cities were potential or actual allies of the provincial South and West, of that older America which might yet win control. Nor were the pro- vincials altogether masters in their areas. The Negroes, always poor and ignorant, were a Republican thorn in the side of the Democratic South. Even in the agricultmal West there were industrial and commercial pockets where the faith of "Pig Iron" Kelley* was warmly preached and voted. iThe difficulty of holding a great state to an industrial programme is well illustrated in Mr. Herbert Croly's "Marcus Hanna — His Life Work," Cfa. XVI. 'A unique champion of the industrial sjstem. See W. D. Kelley, "Speeches, Addresaes, and Letters," 187*. 66 66 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK These sometimes gained control of the machinery of govern- ment as in Missouri. But these are the exceptions which prove the rule. Articulate America was industrial; it was Eastern and Northern, sectional and in absolute control of the economic life of the country. Preachers whose names were known far and near, imiversities that were known in Europe, the intellectuals, as a rule, were found in the industrial belt. Unlike the planters of the old South, the masters of in- dustry, bankers, managers of railroads and large business concerns, with incomes ranging from some thousands to a million a year, declined to hold office. How could they afford it? It proved easier and quite as safe to connect their business with political leadership through what all the world calls bosses, men hke Conkling of New York, Don Cameron of Pennsylvania, and Mark Hanna of Ohio. These men controlled electoral machinery, set up candidates for Con- gress, town councils, and the presidency. They saw to it that the interests of property were more securely protected in free America than anywhere else in the world.^ As in the South before the Civil War constitutions, state and national, became sacred and the courts were held to be beyond criti- cism. Legislative, administrative, and judicial powers were kept so strictly separated that effective social regulation of industry was almost impossible. The dead men who had written constitutions were everywhere more powerful than the living people who sought relief from intolerable evils. Even the cities set up similar divided governments and let real estate, traction, and utility interests domineer them al- most at will. In such a system great bankers, railway build- ers, and industrial leaders governed the United States quite as completely as ever the owners of great plantations in the > Croly's "Marcus Hanna — His Life Work, " New York, 191*, and Samuel W. Fennypacker's "Autobiography," New York, 1918, give evidence of this at many points. THE GREAT STAGE 67 South had governed. One thinks of Collis P. Huntington, J. P. Morgan, and Stephen B. Elkins and of the days when their representatives were such powerful figures in Congress, in legislatures and city governments; of the challenge which Roscoe Conkling, the Republican boss of New York, gave in the Senate to President Garfield and of the enforced sur- render of President Cleveland to the bankers of New York in 1895.1 It was a magnificent evolution. It must have been a joy to the man of aflFairs to live in those thirty years which fol- lowed the death of Lincoln. Fortunes piled high upon for- tunes. The scattering millionaires of 1860 multiplied till they were like the sands of the sea in number. Men travelled first in special cars, luxuriously fitted out, then in special trains with private diners, parlour cars, smokers, and with liveried servants to attend their wants. They built yachts that only monarchs like William II could rival. Their palaces occupied blocks and double blocks in the great cities, costing often millions of dollars and requiring more than princely incomes to keep them going. Not only in the cities did these mansions rise. In the favoured parts of New Eng- land, in the Adirondacks, or upon the high ridges of Pennsyl- vania beautiful summer homes and vast private parks ad- vertised the presence of men it were worth while for ordinary mortals to cultivate. The riches of the earth were pouring year after year into the narrow region which the census takers know as the industrial belt. New York City carried half the bank deposits of the country and her bankers issued ukases to the people of all industries.^ The treasury of the United States feared to act independently of half a dozen •The contract which the President was compelled to sign will be found in W. J. Bryan, "First Battle," Chicago, 1896, p. 134. 'Carl Hovey, "The Life Story of J. Pierpont Morgan," New York, 1911, Chaps. Vm-XI. 68 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Eastern financiers.^ Country merchants far and near en- deavoured to have their names on the books of these elect of the world; little bankers in every town and city scraped to- gether as much money as possible in order to maintain big balances in Wall Street; clergymen learned the law from real masters rather than from musty books said to come from a certain mountain in ancient Palestine; and universities were very loth to fall into ill favour with the only men of power in the country. 2 What else could men do? They were caught in a system, as the people of the old South had been caught in the slavery system. Yet forces were forging for an emancipation. Conditions were becoming so hard that men, American men at least, would not endure them. Every year from 1866 to 1896 the returns of the farms of the South and West declined in pur- chasing power, although an increasing volume of output was the rule. The price of wheat fell from $2.50 a bushel to sixty cents; corn from $1.50 to forty cents; and cotton from forty cents a pound to five or six cents. A vicious eco- nomic law seemed to be operating to the disadvantage of those who furnished the country with the essentials of life and to the infinite advantage of those who set up the ma- chinery of modern society. Westerners and Southerners had opposed and fought national debts, banks, and railroads many times during the period, but fighting separately or without persistence they had not effected any change. In 1880 they thought to capture the machinery of the Demo- cratic party which had been demoralized in the Greeley campaign of 1872 and which had in part deserted the farmers lA fair picture of representative men of this class may be seen in "The Memoirs of Henry Villard," 1904; in E. P. Oberholtzer's, "Jay Cooke, Financier of the Civil War," 1907; and in Misg Ida Tarbell's "History of the Standard Oil Company," 1904. ^Henry Adams shows in "The Education of Henry Adams," BostODt 1918, what the dilem- ma of the intellectuals was. THE GREAT STAGE 69 in 1876. They failed. The Republicans, appealing always to the great name of Lincoln and more intimately industrial in leadership, were beyond the hope of capture.^ If one endeavoured to bring the Democratic party to the work of social reform, the cry was immediately made that narrow-minded Southerners and wicked rebels would ruin the country; if the progressive Republicans proposed child- labour laws or a national education bill. Southern men scented danger at once to their budding industrial communities or to that sacred shibboleth of state rights on which so many poli- tical battles had been fought and won. Again, if Eastern men like George William Curtis proposed any reform in the civil service. Westerners had their serious doubts; and if Western men sought to replace tariff laws by income taxes. Easterners shrieked, "long-haired radicalism." Moreover, interests and prejudices were so fixed that any real move toward a redemocratizing of the country was likely to bring on an economic panic, one of the terrors of both organized capital and organized labour. Was there ever a more complex situation? But into this complex and tangled situation William Jennings Bryan, son of an Dlinois judge and a protege of Lyman Trumbull, Lincoln's friend of the Civil War period, plunged with all the enthusiasm of youth. Bryan was essentially a provincial, a farmer, a Westerner of Southern ancestry, a devotee of the old American ideals as expressed in the Declaration of Independence and as lived in farmer communities. Bryan not only believed in equality, he prac- tised it. And he felt the heavy pressure of the industrial system upon agricultural life and ideals as every other Wes- terner who was not a beneficiary of the system felt it. He was gifted with a power of direct and earnest speech un- >0ne needs only to read the reports of committees of Congress in 1912 to see the difficulties. 70 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK paralleled in America since Patrick Henry; and he was a handsome man of striking appearance and of extraordinary personal magnetism. Honesty sat upon his very counte- nance. He gripped simple men to him in life-long devotion. He had a lively part in the great anti-tariff campaign of 1890 and went himself to Congress in that year winning in Washington a high place among the leaders of the Demo- cratic party. But Bryan was not a radical. He only urged moderate reductions in the tariff, a very reasonable income tax law, and effective trust control. But he fell into ill favour with President Cleveland over the silver question. J. Sterling Morton, member of the Cleveland cabinet from Nebraska, became his enemy, and in 1894, when Bryan be- came a candidate for the United States Senate, the "admin- istration " Democrats of Nebraska did not aid him. He was defeated. He became editor of the Omaha World Herald and set about organizing the Democrats of the West and South upon the money question, an issue on which West and South had endeavoured to unite since 1866. His aim was to control the Democratic national convention which was to meet in Chicago on July 7, 1896. He travelled and spoke in every state of the Mississippi Valley and in Texas. Men received him with open arms. ■ Southerners looked to him as to a long-promised deliverer. The young and growing Populist party, as well as a large element of the Republicans, looked upon him as their leader. It speedily became plain that he would be a power in the convention, if not its master. The Cleveland Democrats of Nebraska managed to defeat him as a candidate for appointment as a delegate in a way that old politicians know so well how to apply. But the Bryan men sent him to Chicago as the leader of a contesting delegation. He and his friends defeated the national Demo- cratic committee in their effort to organize the convention. THE GREAT STAGE 71 Bryan was seated in the convention and he delivered the "cross of gold speech" and won the nomination for the pres- idency on the vote of an overwhelming majority of the delegates.^ Free silver was made the major plank in the Democratic platform. The machinery of the party was taken from the control of the Eastern men, from the bosses who had defeated Cleveland's tariff reform and then turned upon Bryan at Chicago.^ A campaign followed that has become famous in American history. The evolution which Bryan and his friends had tried to bring about under Cleveland was about to turn into a revolution like that which placed Andrew Jackson and his "rough necks" in charge of the country in 1829. Bryan revived the touring method of Henry Clay, the first great Westerner in politics. John Hay, badly frightened, said^ that he made the same speech a dozen times a day and attacked every man who wore a clean shirt. He certainly stirred the East as it had not been stirred since Jackson. New York he pronounced the "enemy's country, " which was not incor- rect. Professor Wilson said of the movement: "Do not be afraid, the people mean no harm; they long for a righteous social system."* What made Easterners so uneasy was the simple, axiomatic way in which the "Boy Orator" proved everything to be so simple. The tariff was a system by which some men keep their hands in other men's pockets. The trusts should be abolished off-hand. The Supreme Court, which had descended into the political arena and annulled the income tax law, in which Bryan had been so much in- 'The story is nowhere better told than in Jryan's " First Battle," 6S, 186-67, 188-209. 'One does well to study the preliminary struggle of the Bryan men of 1896 and compare the facts with those which preceded the assembling of the Republican convention of 191*. 'William R. Thayer, "Life of John Hay," Boston, 1915, 11, 161. Carl Hovey, "The Life Story of J. Pierpont Morgan,'' Cba.ps.'X and XI. A friendly view of the McKinley regime may be seen in Charles S. Olcott's "Life of WilUam McKinley," Bos- ton, 1916. For this subject see Ch. XXm. 76 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK hordes of immigrants from the south of Europe broke the morale of the great labour organizations whose leaders had all along wished to support the farmers. Southern manu- facturers began to talk protection, and Western communities blamed themselves that they had not "invited" business to live among them.^ Men seemed to think the whole country might resort to industrial pursuits and thus share the pros- perity which tariffs and other legal devices secured to the East. Under Eastern leadership, the Democratic party put the "crude and provincial" Bryan aside at St. Louis in 1904 and set up Alton B. Parker as a leader. Thomas Taggart, one of the rawest of the bosses, took control of the campaign. Roosevelt, who had succeeded McKinley in September, 1901, but who insisted upon his devotion to the "great policies" of his predecessor, was made the Republican candidate. That is, both parties stood for the same thing and only kept up a sort of motion show of opposition. Thomas F. Ryan, one of the worst of the financial lords of the East, was the god- father of the Democratic organization; Edward H. Harriman, of Union Pacific fame, played the same role for the Republi- cans. Roosevelt made his great business patrons a little uneasy by talking the Bryan policies, and Parker made the ever-faithful common folk of the South uneasy by suggesting the business alliance which had made McKinley president. There was a feeling in the atmosphere that the leaders of the two great parties might "change partners" after the manner of country dances. The provincial West was so distraught that its voters actually took to Roosevelt or stayed at home. Parker was defeated so disastrously that Eastern Democratic bosses realized that all hope of victory with one of their kind must be abandoned. ^The career of William B. Allison, as well as the history of Iowa, illustrates perfectly the change that took place in the minds of great numbers of men. THE GREAT STAGE 77 Roosevelt took the reins of Government in hand in the spring of 1905 with such a personal hand that conserva- tives of the McKinley type almost lost their breath. He undertook to remedy the ills of provincial America by endors- ing the Bryan reforms. He forced the packers of Chicago to improve their ways, although he did not touch their monop- oly; he compelled railroad corporations to yield their grip upon the coal mines of the country, although the courts undid this work. He threatened to enforce the Sherman anti-trust law. Roosevelt was a terror. He secured the passage of his measures by Democratic votes; and Bryan was reduced to the necessity of declaring that the President had stolen his political clothes. Still, the new leader did not propose to abandon the industrial groups of the country. He tried to moderate their demands; he undertook to ride two horses at the same time. And when his second term was about to close, he was reduced to the necessity of vio- lating the third- term precedent or of finding a Republican who could continue to ride two horses. Mr. Taft was chosen for the task. Taft did not even essay the r6le. He concluded to take the side of the McKinley battalions, then led by Sena- tor Aldrich and Speaker Joseph G. Cannon. The result was a tariff reform in 1910 which angered the country as it had not been angered since 1890. The palliative of a corporation tax of some real promise did not satisfy.' When Roosevelt came back in 1910 from his sojourn in Africa and Europe, revolution was in the air as it had been in 1896. The recent spring elections in many cities showed that the Republican leaders were losing their grip upon the coimtry. Roosevelt took active part in the autumn elections, but an overwhelming Democratic majority was returned 'An admirable account o! the decade following 1907 may be found in Frederic A. Ogg's "National Progress," New York, 1918. 78 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK to the national House of Representatives. The country did not Uke Mr. Taft. It did like Roosevelt if one might judge from the reception which was given him whenever he made a public appearance. From 1911 to 1912 Roosevelt was making up his mind what he should do to save the country from the Democratic radicalism which seemed about to up- set everything. But President Taft would not decline a renomination as the ex-President seemed to think he ought to do. Senator La FoUette undertook to organize a move- ment aimed at the control of the next national Republican convention, just as Bryan had done in the Democratic party in 1895-6. La Follette was quite as radical as Bryan had ever been and he, too, appealed to the provincials of the West to overthrow industrialism. In the face of such a menace the Eastern Republicans of the older order rallied to Taft and insisted upon his candidacy before the Chicago convention of 1912. Senators Root, ' Lodge, Penrose, and Crane made up the inner council of the Taft wing of the party; Mr. Barnes, the boss of New York, became a sort of general manager for the movement. Under these circumstances, Roosevelt decided to enter into a con- test with his former protege for the Republican nomination. He quickly snuffed out the La Follette movement and gath- ered about him a few very able industrial leaders like George W.Perkins, DanielHanna, and Senator Oliver of Pennsylvania. That is, he endeavoured once again to ride two horses at the same time. It was hardly possible for him to do otherwise, for he was not a people's man, as Bryan was, or as La Follette wished to be. His r6le must be like that of Henry Clay, that of a compromiser. He wished to have plebiscites, not free elections and a frank dependence upon majority de- cisions. He knew history too well not to recall how often popular majorities had been obtained for doubtful causes. THE GREAT STAGE 79 It was said of him by at least one spokesman of big business that he was the only man who could ride the popular storm and yet do nothing. With Taft and Roosevelt dividing the strength of the Republican party and each claiming to be the successor of Lincoln, the Democrats had their chance. But Bryan having been beaten in 1908 as Parker had been in 1904, it was evident that the leaders of that party must find a new man, or Roose- velt might again sweep the country. There was no eminent Democrat in the West but Bryan, and no experienced Demo- crat in the East of any sort. The South had no chance what- ever, even if there had been a real leader there.' Since Bryan was out of the question, it was "up to" the bosses of the East to name the candidate. Would they, like the Western Republican bosses of 1860, oflEer a Lincoln.'' That was not to be expected; yet there was Woodrow Wilson, the stone re- jected of the Princeton builders — the man whom destiny or luck had in store. How he came to be put upon the "great stage," as he once described the country, must now be stud- ied and made plain. CHAPTER V FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY THE nomination of Woodrow Wilson for the presidency of the United States in 1912 is one of the miracles which have marked the course of American history. Wilson was a composite American, born, he himself has said, of Scotch peasant forebears; he was a Southern man living in the heart of the East, but without love for the hustling, materialistic, life of that crowded region which was about to drive him out of his university atmosphere; and he was in political and social philosophy rather more an English Liberal than an American Democrat. He was a follower of Burke and Bage- hot as well as of Jeflferson and Lincoln. Yet he did take sides in American politics. He hated the protective tariflf, al- though he wo.uld not immediately abolish it; he believed that the Federal government stood in dire need of radical reform, yet he loved the Constitution and dreaded change for any but the gravest reasons. He was withal a man of learning, and as such loved the quiet ways of universities and their better traditions. He thought liberally but in terms of the ages rather than in terms of the present emergency. He was, moreover, a prominent Presbyterian, a leader in the local as well as the national church, as befitted the head of Princeton University. How could such a man be chosen to lead one of the great political parties in a national campaign, and how could he compound with many rivals and competitors in such a race 80 FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 81 and then set up an harmonious cabinet for a national ad- ministration? The answers to these questions came quickly in 1912-13. A certain New York editor played a curious but important part in the process. _^ol^;gl_ George Harvey , editor of Harper's Weekly and the North American Review, both generally supposed to be "Morgan" periodicals, undertook to make Wilson the nominee of the Democratic party both in 1908 and in 1912. It was Harvey's especial task to interest conservative Demo- crats in the president of Princeton. There can be no doubt that he was well fitted for the undertaking. He was a wel- come and an influential member of the leading clubs in New York; he had close relations with the great figures of Ameri- can finance; he drove a trenchant pen and managed very im- portant agencies of publicity. He was close to the Morgans; he entertained celebrities at elaborate dinners; he was a shrewd judge of political leaders; and there was a sort of assurance about him that made people think him a power- ful dispenser of public honours. He essayed to play the king- maker's r61e. The editor of Harper's Weekly came into touch with Wilson when the latter was inaugurated president of Prince- ton in June, 1903. It was indeed a memorable occasion. Many of America's rich men were present including the elder Morgan. Ex-President Cleveland was a leading figure of the ceremony. President Harper of the then new University of Chicago was present. And James H. Harper of the New York publishing firm,' Laurence Button, Mark Twain, and the genial worshipper of things as they are, Richard Watson Gilder, also honoured the occasion with their wit and their hearty approval of the young university man. The address of Wilson won Harvey's hearty endorsement. iPubliaher of Wilson's " History of the American People " and other writings. 82 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK William Inglis, the private secretary of the editor of Harper's, later said that Colonel Harvey convinced himself that the author of that address could move the masses of common folk, and at once bethought him of the future presidency.' But regardless of Colonel Harvey's friendly interest, the new president of Princeton quickly made himself felt in semi- political circles. Late in November, 1904, when Eastern Democrats were sore at heart over the recent sad discom- fiture of their leader, Alton B. Parker, he spoke to the Virginia Society of New York in earnest and almost solemn warning on the subjedt of political affairs. He won his audience as few New York audiences have been won. And it was a distinguished audience. Men shouted their approval at the end; they waved handerchiefs, called for the speaker, until Wilson was compelled to accept the demonstration as something quite extraordinary in that latitude. Amongst other things, he declared that the party leadership was aim- less and even bankrupt. He made it plain that Mr. Bryan was not entitled, intelleAually, to the immense power he wielded. But while Wilson was in this critical frame of mind, he indicated in an address to the Princeton alumni al- most at the same time that he was not entirely of the Eastern way of thinking: "America is great because of the spirit of her thinkers and not because of the monuments of her manufacturers. "^ In 1906, Colonel Harvey definitely made up his mind that Wilson was the kind of man he should like to see president of the United States. In consequence, he arranged a din- ner at the Lotos Club of New York where he introduced Wilson as his candidate for the next Democratic nomination. ^A good account of this occasion will be found in CoHier'a Weekly of October 7, 1916. GUder refers to it in his "Letters," 846, giving the names of men present. ^Brief reports of these addresses will be found in the Princeton Alumni Weekly, paanTO, FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 83 Harvey concluded his speech with the remark that he was tired of voting the Republican ticket and that Wilson would enable decent Eastern Democrats to return to the fold. What the -president of Princeton really thought of the performance at the Lotos Club on that February evening has never been ascertained. Doubtless he was willing to have people press him for the high honour in question. Few Ameri- cans have ever resisted such blandishments. But Wilson did not change the tone of his public ut- terances. It was only a little later that he lauilched his greatest move at Princeton, the plan for the abolition of the social clubs. In less than two years he was appealing over the heads of trustees and resisting professors to the great un- learned public for the democratization of American university life. The appeal to the common people in such a matter ought to have suggested much to Colonel Harvey. And during the same years the social ideals of Wilson were shift- ing notably from those of Bagehot and Burke to those of Abraham Lincoln. Now, to worship at the shrine of Lincoln means little in American public men, for Lincoln is a tradi- tion. But for a historian and an American college president to say as Wilson did say in those critical years about 1908 that a second Lincoln would probably be ruined if he were compelled to attend an American university was significant of change. In a widely quoted address at Chicago in 1909, he said in all seriousness: "God send us such men again." The follower of contented British Liberalism, with the big I L, was fast drifting toward the camp of radicalism. Yet Colonel Harvey continued his campaign on be- half of Woodrbw Wilson, "predestined," as he insisted, to be the president of the United States. Newspaper sup- port in the South, the West, and in New York was organized in behalf of the Wilson " boom. " St. Clair McKelway of the 84 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Brooklyn Eagle was won and the New York World asked Har- vey to write its editorial in which the academic man was held up by that powerful sheet as the proper candidate of the party at the St. Louis convention in 1908. Wilson's only public comment upon this activity came in a quiet if some- what humorous interview in which he said that other politi- cal lightning rods were doubtless so much taller than his that the electricity would not be attracted to him. After the third Bryan defeat it became clear that Harvey's work would bear fruit, that Wilson or some other Eastern man would most likely be the party nominee in 1912. The break up of the Republican solidarity in 1910 made it quite likely that the regular Democratic candidate would be the next president of the country. Harvey redoubled his energy. Wilson doubtless began to realize that the work of Harper's Weekly was not a joke. Harvey might, after all, become a king-maker. It now became necessary to bring Wilson into political office, if possible. New Jersey, tired of her bosses and sick of being called the most corrupt of all the states, was beginning to bestir herself. There was a Republican Progressive movement led by Mr. George L. Record; and Joseph P. Tumulty was working with others to reform the Democratic party of the state. Could Harvey, , close as he was to the great financial interests of the country, induce the New Jersey Democrats to nominate and elect his friend Wilson to the governorship? That was a delicate matter. Yet it must be done if Wilson were ever to be made president of the United States. The auspices were certainly bad for this rising Caesar. But Harvey was a dauntless man. He was a neighbour of James Smith, Jr., one of the worst of all the boss species ot the time. Smith held a firm grip upon the Democratic machineiy. But he was hated by all the Bryan Democrats and even by the FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 85 Cleveland group. However, Smith was close to Tammany Hall and he was a connection of Roger Sullivan, the Demo- cratic boss of Illinois. Harvey asked him directly to nomi- nate Wilson for governor at the party convention which was to meet at Trenton about the middle of September, 1910. Smith wished to know the terms of the bond. Harvey could not give them. He made it plain that Wilson was not a man from whom stipulations could be asked. Besides, it would ruin him in the race for the presidential nomination in which Smith seems to have shown some interest. Harvey visited Wilson. Wilson never said whether he would accept a nomination or not if offered. He was aware that the best Democrats of the state were bitterly hostile to Smith and very skeptical of Harvey. He simply said he was greatly interested. In the early summer of 1910, Harvey, finding Colonel Henry Watterson in New York one week-end, conceived the idea of getting Smith, Watter- son, Wilson, and himself about a common table and settling the candidacy both for the governorship and the presidency. Deal, Harvey's home in New Jersey, was found to be the best place. Watterson agreed to a Sunday dinner with Harvey, only Wilson seemed little interested. He ran off on a slight pretext to Lyme, Connecticut. There Harvey's secretary found him about to go to church on that Sunday and induced him to get into an automobile and hasten to Deal, New Jersey. At the proper time the four men, Wilson, Harvey, Watterson, and Smith, sat down to dinner. Wilson f knew well that he was playing with fire. He did, however, agree to accept the nomination for governor if it could be offered him without any promises. The stars were shap- ' ing their course to future events. That summer Smith " lined up " the delegates to the Democratic convention in the way American bosses usually do when great matters are afoot. 86 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Wilson met Harvey once or twice meanwhile. They talked over the proposed platform, it seems, in Boston and elsewhere. It was understood that Smith might ex- ert his influence in the coming campaign but that he was not to attempt to become a candidate for any office, particu- larly that of United States senator, a position he had dis- graced during the second Cleveland administration, from the Wilson point of view. The time for the assembling of the Democratic convention approached, however, without either Harvey or Smith being definitely assured what Wilson would do. From all the evidence I have been able to gather, the president of Princeton kept a masterly silence and never absolutely committed himself to anything except that he would accept a nomination if offered and that Smith's ambi' tion to return to the Senate was not to be suffered to embar- rass the progressive Democratic movement.^ When the convention was ready to vote on the nomination for the governorship Wilson's name was duly proposed by a representative of the machine. It was a unique situation. Smith and Harvey were in the convention. There was strong opposition to Wilson among the more independent elements of the party. Wilson was at his home at Princeton. But the nomination was offered in accordance with the wishes of Smith and Harvey. Wilson was brought from his home as quickly as possible. When he appeared there was doubt among many of the delegates whether they had not committed themselves in that critical year to a reactionary willing to wear the collar of Wall Street. At a dramatic moment Wilson said: "I did not seek this nomination. I have made no pledges and have given no promise. If elected, as I expect to be, I am left free to serve ^The whole story is well told« although as unfavourably to Wilson as permissible, in CoU. lier'i Weelcly. October 7-81, 1916. FROM PRINCETON TO TliE PRESIDENCY 87 you with all singleness of purpose. It is a new era when these things can be said." The defeated progressive group of the convention yielded their doubts when the speech of accept- ance was finished. The very tone and ring of Wilson's words convinced them that they, and not the bosses, had won that strategic contest. Little time was lost on the part of the new political leader. Wilson promptly resigned the presidency of the University and began his campaign for the governorship. It was one of the notable canvasses in recent American history and as import- ant, in many respects, as were the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. New Jersey had been awakened to her lost estate. Wilson's nomination by such men as Smith and Harvey was proof of the fact, and the new candidate was well aware of what was expected of him. He knew his speeches would be read all over the East, and that his administration of New Jersey's affairs, in the event of his election, would be the testing by which the people of the country would determine whether he might be elevated to the presidency. Wilson rose to the occasion. He was indeed, as we already know, one of the best equipped men who had ever been nominated for the governorship of one of the states. He had long been a Liberal and he was already under the stimulus of the new times becoming a radical, a democrat. His speeches were of the very best. Wherever he went he was successful in con- vincing common men that he was their spokesman. Thou- sands of commuters who travelled daily the trains from New Jersey into New York City became his ardent advocates. When the campaign advanced a little, Mr. George L. Record, representative of the Republican insurgents of that year, put nineteen searching queries to Wilson — designed to test the sincerity of the Democratic leader. Wilson answered all with the utmost frankness and added the 88 WOODROW WlLSON AND HIS WORK answer to a twentieth query which was that, if elected governor, he would consider himself forever disgraced if he "should in the slightest degree cooperate in any such system, or any such transactions as th^ boss system describes." It was indeed a curious situation. Smith, Nugent, and Davis, the Democratic machine leaders, had long cooperated with Baird, Stokes, and Kean, the Republican machine men, in the practical politics of New Jersey. Wilson owed his nomination to the former group. It had been the hope of these men, in the troublous times ahead, to place a liberal academic man in the governorship and then in the presi- dency, trusting to his mere academic character and poUtical inexperience to make him either too timid or too conservative for the real work of reform. The Republicans relied upon their Democratic allies in underground government to save the day in the event that they lost control. All knew that in 1910 it was necessary for the bosses to put up a candidate who had a reputation for reform and high character. Wilson had shown both traits. He was as necessary to Smith as to Baird. Record's questions gave Wilson the very opportunity he was seeking. He announced to the people of New Jersey that he would never submit himself on any public mat- ter to either Democratic or Republican machine for ap- proval. What Colonel Harvey and his greater business friends in Wall Street thought of this new politician whom they had set up for president of the United States has not yet been made public. But the older party men of New Jersey were distressed beyond the power of speech. They doubtless said among themselves what Richard Croker, the former Tammany Hall chief, said of Wilson in the public press : "An ingrate is no good in politics." Was Woodrow Wilson an ingrate? He had all his life FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 89 condemned the American boss system. He knew perfectly well that most intelligent people felt that their government was no longer a democratic government. He knew that the methods by which the exploiters of the public ruled were such as could not endure publicity. Few public men had, how- ever, felt strong enough to make and continue war upon the bosses and their methods. Had not Cleveland been ruined by a few party bosses in the Senate? Was not President Taf t then paying the terrible price of having once allowed the Republican machine forces to take charge of the proposed tariff reform.'' Wilson simply declared independence. The declaration made him governor. And few will deny that it was a long step toward the presidency. Wilson's election to the governorship was one of the bright promises of the year 1910. Real Democrats all over the country took notice. His plurality was 49,000 from an electorate which two years before had given President Taft a plurality of 82,000. It seemed that even a "rock-ribbed" Eastern state could be won for democracy if good men could ever get nominations. But the surprising result did not stun James Smith and his friends. They undertook to persuade George Harvey to secure from Wilson his approval for Smith to appear before the incoming legislature as a candidate for the United States Senate! Harvey is reported '^ to have whistled. Even Harvey knew that a governor of New Jersey who smoothed the way to the Senate for such a man as Smith could not win the nomination from the next Demo- cratic national convention. But Smith insisted upon a fight for the Senate. The new governor quietly assumed leadership for the party and made it plain that neither Smith nor any of the machine leaders of 1 William Inglis in Collier's Weekly, October 21st, says that Harvey refused to make the requeit of Wilson. 90 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK New Jersey could have any disproportionate influence in the choice of a new senator or in the shaping of the policy of the Democratic party. When Smith insisted upon his right to be a candidate before the legislature which he thought he had himself caused to be elected. Governor-elect Wilson warned him that there had been a definite understanding to the con- trary, as expressed in a Democratic primary, and added that Smith must publicly announce that he would not be a can- didate.^ This the irate boss refused to do. A sharp canvass of the state ensued in which Wilson made it plain that the election of Smith would be a surrender to the evil forces of New Jersey life and that it would break the faith of com- mon folk in the sincerity of the new movement. When the legislature voted. Smith received only four votes. Of equal importance in those first critical days of Governor Wilson's career was the definite assumption of leadership not only for the party majority in New Jersey, but for the state as a whole. During the preceding campaign Wilson announced that, if elected, he would consider himself the "political spokesman and advisor of the people" and that if men did not care to have their governor act as the responsible head of the people they had best vote against him. That was to apply his great principle of responsible leadership to American affairs, a principle which he had outlined and emphasized in "Congressional Government," his first book published some twenty -five years before. At another time in American history a governor who- thus boldly assumed a position not provided by his state constitution must have been very sharply attacked. Not so in New Jersey in 1911. The invisible government of American commonwealths by iThe Smith candidacy is carefully treated in Professor Henry Jones Ford's "Woodrow Wilson," 138; and in William Bayard Hale's "Woodrow Wilson," 178-184. FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 91 interested people had gone so far that men were ready every- where to try new experiments. Governor Wilson was himself a new experiment, the ex- periment of choosing the foremost political scientist in the country to administer a sore, bedraggled commonwealth. But Wilson was no extremist. In his first inaugural he said: "It is not the foolish ardour of too sanguine or too radical reform that I urge upon you. ... I merely point out the present business of progress and serviceable government, the next stage on the journey of duty." But the journey of progress was just the way that old legislators did not wish to go. The majority of the legislature was supposed to be ^ Democratic and in sympathy with the governor. They were not. The majority of the senate was Republican and re- actionary, a remnant of the old New Jersey Republicanism led by the Republican bosses. The house was Democratic, but a large number of these Democrats were followers of James Smith and sore over the defeat of their master. It was a mixed situation, such as American methods usually supply whenever forward movements are under way. At the centre of this legislative situation stood James R. Nugent, the acting head of the Democratic organization of which Smith was the real and absentee head. He proposed to organize the Republican senate and the Democratic machine element against the "ingrate" governor and defeat every effective move that was made. There were four vital changes in the laws of New Jersey which Wilson must press or he could not think of himself as serving any useful pur- pose. ^^ These were the election reform, the employers' li-j ability, the public utilities, and the corrupt practices bills, all of which embodied reforms of far-reaching consequences. ^ They were the very essence of the whole movement then known as progressive. If applied successfully. New Jersey 92 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK would become one of the free states of the Union. Of course all the interested parties rallied to their respective sides. The governor was the one and only promise of. success to those who had long combated the boss system. James R. Nugent became the leader of both Republican and Demo- cratic reactionaries. The decision upon these issues would practically determine Wilson's success as governor. Mr. Nugent asked for a Democratic legislative confer- ence on causes in which the party attitude should be deter- mined. The promises of the recent campaign were thus to be interpreted by the leaders. This conference was called for March 8, 1911. Wilson indicated that he would hke to attend. It was an unprecedented wish. Without pressing the question of his right to do so, the leaders assented. It was with much anxiety that they yielded. Wilson appeared at the appointed time and place and became at once the leader of the conference. He presented his ideas and argued his case in a way that broke down the opposition. The conference that was designed to defeat his whole pro- gramme adjourned with a hearty endorsement of his lead- ership. Nugent and Smith were completely discomfited and the new leadership was triumphant. From that time Governor Wilson was the unquestioned spokesman of New Jersey, a sort of political miracle in an old, boss- ridden community. The new Eastern leader was a national challenge. Of the details of the administration of New Jersey by Woodrow Wilson there is little space here to speak. Within two years from the day the new "academic" governor took office at Trenton, the laws of the community were so re-made-i that reformers everywhere studied them as models for other states. Wilson did not achieve all he wished, for the Re- publicans regained control of the legislatiu-e in 1912 and made FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESmENCY 93 a point, during the second year of his administration, to thwart and limit him as much as possible in order to detract from him as a candidate of their opponents for the presidency. Their success was small. Wilson made his principle too clear for any to misunderstand: a governor or president was and must be the leader of his party and his country during his term of office. If he went wrong, he could be repu- diated in the next election. If his opponents refused to support him in a given controversy or upon a vital policy, he must go to the people and explain his purposes. If public opinion was outspoken and articulate, they must yield or suffer his measures to prevail till a test could be made. It was responsible leadership, similar to that which has been so long practised in England^ — But-^sinee elections are for definite terms in the United States, men must be guided by the expressions of opinion, informally given; or simply bide their time,Mf in opposition, till an election comes. The principle as applied by Wilson involves a very great ability for testing the public will. The leader of this new American type must study and know men as only a few Americans have studied and known men. Wilson would be a second Jeffer- son, or better, perhaps, a second Lincoln. With all the world looking on and applauding, with Roosevelt breaking the Republican party into halves, the astute men in New York who had set Wilson up were con- siderably disturbed what to do with their leader. If Bryan and his Western "extremists" were to be put aside for a worse than Bryan, what profit would it be to them? This was the dilemma of George Harvey. He was, moreover, fast being deserted by the very men who had helped him nomi- nate Wilson. It was only natural. The East wished to de- feat the so-called radicahsm of the Western wing of the Democracy. It could only do so with a progressive leader; 94 WOODEOW WILSON AND HIS WORK but a progressive leader of the East could not stop at any half-way house, as Wilson had shown. Harvey continued his advocacy through the year 1911. He published editorials in Harper's Weekly. He interested editors of Southern papers. He made speeches about the "political predestina- tion " of Woodrow Wilson. He even endeavoured to win Mr. Bryan to the support of Wilson. ^ His last appeal for the Governor of New Jersey appeared in The Independent, De- cember, 1911. It was rather a pathetic case, that of the ardent president-maker at the end of that year. Colonel Harvey was an earnest champion of the capitahstic forces. He was wise enough to see that a libaral conservative was the only leader who could long preserve capitalism as then set up. Wilson had seemed to him the only hope of conservatism. But Wilson was a man who grew constantly as he saw the great contest open before him. He was a conservative, but an able, honest leader who realized, as few other Eastern men could possibly realize anything, that the people of the United States would not long endure the kind of capi- talism which had broken President Taft. Those last years at Princeton had shown him much. Every day in the gov- ernorship of New Jersey showed him the only road an honest leader could take. The break with Harvey and his friends had to come. Somehow an invitation of Harvey to Governor Wilson to meet for a conference at the home of the former at Deal, where Wilson, Harvey, Watterson, and Smith had met that summer evening in 1910, was declined. Harvey felt in- stinctively that the Governor was no longer simply his can- didate. Wilson knew that nominations to office were affairs of the people and not of groups of personal friends. On December 7th, the two met in a New York club in the 'William Inglis in Collier's Weekly, October 81, 191& FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 95 presence of mutual friends and Governor Wilson was asked directly if the activity of Colonel Harvey was thought to be harmful. The reply was in the affirniative and the re- lations of the two men ceased from that day. But Wilson was already far past the stage in his develop- ment as a leader when he could be called simply a candidate for the presidency. A great national stock-taking was in process that winter. Wilson was everywhere counted as an asset or as a liability. University men were recounting his struggles in behalf of a more democratic university life. Business men, not caught in the drift of anti-social com- binations, hoped from him a leadership which might emanci- pate common folk from the overgrown businesses that made men into machines and tended to force American life into a new feudalism as deadening as ever was that of half a thou- sand years before. Farmers of the South and West, repre- sentatives of that older America that was Protestant and orthodox, looked hopefully to the Presbyterian elder who was making New Jersey a better commonwealth. Calls came to him from Wisconsin where Republicans were fast becoming progressives, from Texas where the old Democracy was almost democratic, from the nearer West, the old state of Pennsylvania, and even from New England to visit them and make evidence of the faith that was in him. Wilson could hardly find time to be governor of New Jersey for the pressing calls of other groups of people who hoped that a really wise man of the East had arisen. He was the hope of so many forward-looking men that he could not for a mo- ment allow personal relations with Eastern friends to deaden that greater influence which society had given him. But there were other leaders of the Democratic party. Champ Clark, an old Bryan lieutenant, Speaker of the national House of Representatives; Governor Harmon, a 96 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK member of the second Cleveland cabinet; and Oscar Under- wood, author of the proposed Democratic tariflf of 1912, which was to take the place of the Payne-Aldrich tariff that had tried Mr. Taft so sorely. These were all men of national prominence. They were of the older class of public men who had not seen that "handwriting on the wall" which Wilson had made Harvey see. They still spoke the lan- guage of Cleveland's day and expected the nomination to the presidency from the Democratic party upon the give-and- take plan so common to men who have lived long in the at- mosphere of Washington. Not one of them had studied the science of government; hardly one of them knew more of American history than one gets from experience and ob- servation. ' In such a group Wilson was easily the master. One man only gave both Wilson and the group of old- fashioned men who were his competitors serious thought. That man was Mr. Bryan, the leader of three national cam- paigns. What would Bryan do ? Before the primary struggle of that year drew to a close Clark, Harmon, and Underwood were understood to have permitted an agreement among their lieutenants, whereby their interests were to be pooled as against Wilson who was very popular with the people. It was a tangled situation. Harmon's influence was strong in the North among Bourbons of every party. In the South his cause was urged by Joseph W. Bailey of Texas, who for the moment controlled the party machinery of that state. Clark might have been a pro- gressive leader, but he had become the choice and candidate of the Missouri machine of which Senators Stone and Reed and David R. Francis, a former member of the Cleveland cabinet, were the managers. Clark's principal manager in iBrief accounts of this campaign will be found in F. L. Paxson's "The New Nation." Bostol 191S. «3S-38; and in F. A. Ogg's "National Progress," 197-207. FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 97 Virginia and the upper South was Senator Martin, closely affiliated with Thomas F. Ryan, the New York capitalist. And Bailey was close to both the Missouri and the Virginia machines. Hence neither Clark nor Harmon could stray far from the old conservative path. Representative Underwood had the strongest hold upon the lower South, even dividing Georgia with Wilson, and aligning himself there with the reactionary wings of the Democratic party led by ex-Governor Brown of Georgia and Senator Bankhead of Alabama. Harmon, Clark, and Under- wood held the strongholds of the South, the citadel of the Democratic party. Only through the management and faith of two men did Wilson get any substantial official party sup- port in that broad region where he was surely the most popular of all the candidates. These two men were Colonel Edward f M. House and Josephus Daniels. House had sometimes been a prominent factor in Texas, and Daniels had been a powerful editor and supporter of Bryan in North Carolina. Now the people of those states were then, and remain, rather more democratic than those of the other Southern states. Through good or evil fortune they had loved William J. Bryan and what is more important they had voted for him. Colonel House, who spent a great deal of his time in New York, understood that Wilson could never break the power of machine politics in the South so long as Colonel Harvey was his chief sponsor. He was perhaps the first to build a pass- able bridge between the Presbyterian elder of Princeton and the Presbyterian elder of Lincoln, Nebraska. If Wilson crossed that bridge, he would not only further the cause of democracy as he professed it; he would begin to foil the machinations of his rivals in the South. Although neither Wilson went all the way to Xincoln nor Bryan all the way to 98 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Trenton, the friends of the two men all over the South united. House won away from Bailey the Texas delegation to the famous Baltimore convention. And the Texas delegation was the strongest nucleus of Wilson support in the Baltimore convention from the first to the last day of its stormy sessions. ^ In similar manner Josephus Daniels won and held the North Carolina politicians to the Wilson flag and made colistant inroads upon the oflBcial opinion of Virginia and South Carolina, which last came over wholly to the same cause before the struggle reached its critical stage. Wilson was born in Virginia. Ordinarily that fact would have won him some support from the politicians of the state; but at that time the Old Dominion was under the sinister influence of Thomas F. Ryan who could never endure the sight of a progressive in any party. Virginia resisted Wilson to the last and seemed to be proud of her apparent alliance with Tam- many Hall, although two or three of her delegates to the Baltimore convention revolted against the Martin-Ryan influence. But Texas and the two Carolinas made a con- siderable element of the South. In the East, Wilson had a following in New England; he readily won the Pennsylvania delegation; and, after the final defeat of the Smith machine, he might have had the support of the New Jersey politicians for the asking. That made a respectable showing. But as the next Democratic convention would be organized it would take more than six hundred of a total thousand delegates to nonjinate him. He did not have hopes of more than half that number in the early days of 1912. It was now that Colonel Harvey turned quickly upon his formerly "predestined Woodrow Wilson" and endeavoured 'A careful reading of events of "The Real Colonel House," by Howden Smith, New York, 1918, and conversations with some of the men who led the Wilson campaign arr the Bupporta for these paragraphs. FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 99 to win for Clark two thirds of the convention before it gathered. It required two thirds to nominate according to the custom of seventy years. Harvey made almost aff strong a campaign for Clark as he had formerly made for Wilson. Tammany Hall, James Smith Jr., and Roger Suljiva^^irere all enthusiastic for the man from Missouri. At the very moment when the friends of Wilson Were about to bring , Bryan and Wilson together, Adrian H. Joline, a former trustee of Princeton University and a bitter opponent, as we already know, published a letter of 1907 in which Wilson had expressed the hope that "somehow we may knock Mr. Bryan into a cocked hat." From the context of the letter it was clear that the president of Princeton then thought Bryan a doubtful asset both to the party and to the country.^ The letter appeared a day or two before the leaders of the Democratic party were to gather at a widely advertised public dinner in Washington and discuss their programme. Both Bryan and Wilson were to be present. Would the two men make a scene? Josephus Daniels met Bryan on the train coming from Florida and prepared the way for a friendly meeting. At the dinner nothing happened, except that Bryan put his arm about Wilson's shoulders in the pres- ence of the newspaper men and the assembled leaders of the party. The mischief that might have wrecked one of the greatest programmes of American history fell harmless to the ground. There was, however, no alliance between Wilson, the only progressive Democrat of the campaign, and Bryan, the one prominent leader who was not a candidate. Both Bryan and his closest Western friends kept their counsels till the very day of the gathering in Baltimore. They saw clearly enough that Harmon and Clark and Underwood •A copy of the letter will be found in "The Keal Colonel House, " by Arthur Howden Smith, p. IflO. 100 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK were the favourites of the bosses, that is, of the great interests, but former personal relations and the exigencies of politics seemed to require silence. The great silent masses of the people, in so far as these can stop their ploughs and their hammers to think, were watching the strange developments. It was indeed a situation fast getting beyond the powers of the men who generally "fix things" in our life. Clark, a mere boy in the great complex of American life, had a Tnarjopity-of the delegatioBS-^o the convention. But Underwood and Harmon held each a sufficient block of votes to deny Clark the nomination^oirthe first baUoL... ..Either of them might have withdrawn- if-ihey had not known that Wilson, and not Clark, would have beei3~"^ the beneficiary of such a move. Although Harmon, Clark, and Underwood all stood for exactly the same thing, not one of them could move without definitely surrendering the nomination to the one man whom* all feared. Under these circumstances. Colonel Harvey, thinking to tip the balances at last in favour of Clark and reaction, published in his Weekly, a few days before the convention assembled, a great black-and-white map of the country showing almost two thirds of the districts committed to the nomination of Clark. The former friend thought he had his sweet revenge for the plain talk of the preceding December. It was another Joline letter. 1 But the "predestination of Woodrow Wilson" seemed to be past defeat. The passions of men as well as the im- ponderables of politics, played in his favour. The great Republican convention met in Chicago about the middle of June. The national executive committee of the party gathered a week beforehand, as the Democratic committee 'See issue of June 22, 1912; Harpar'a Weekly during the winter and spring of 1912 shouldlbt read by every student of the period. FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 101 had done in 1896,' to overrule the will of the majority of the membership of the party who wished the renomination of Roosevelt. Roosevelt, like the Bryan of 1896, had canvassed the country and -apparently won a majority of delegates; only in 1912 it was called a primary campaign whereas in 1896 it was a radical movement which could not be suppressed and which was conducted in extra-legal form. The Republican national committee ruthlessly unseated Roosevelt delegates in favour of contesting Taf t delegates as the Democratic com- mittee had done with Bryan delegates sixteen years before. When the convention assembled it was safely "Taft" and in charge of Messrs. Root, Crane, Barnes, and Lodge. The bosses would have their way and take no chances with any doubtful tactics. The anger of Roosevelt rose to the w"" power. Break- ing all precedents, he journeyed to Chicago; denounced the national committee as having stolen the votes of the conven- tion, and his former friend, Taft, as the receiver of stolen property.^ The coxmtry was excited and angry. The head- lines of the newspapers everywhere carried the news from Chicago in true war-time style. Colonel Harvey was in the Chicago convention and wrote to his Weekly attacks upon Roosevelt that descended to the level of diatribes. Mr. Bryan was also in the Chicago convention reporting the Republican quarrel to a syndicate of papers in true reporter's style, without indicating his inward glee that the great rival party of forty years' successful history was going to piecep. Colonel House, now Wilson's closest adviser, declared that Roosevelt was his best aid in the coming Baltimore gathering. The outcome at Chicago was a complete rupture of the party. lAnte pp. 92-93. 'A series of articles in the World's Work d'jrin? flie summer of 1919 shows well the Roosevelt conduct and point of view. 102 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Taft was the nominee, but Roosevelt announced that there would be another convention which meant his own nomina- tion as the head of a new or progressive movement. The Democrats would nominate the next president, just as the Republicans had been sure of doing when they had put for- ward Lincoln at Chicago in 1860, after a similar break-up of the old Democratic party of Southern domination. TES Democrats gathered in Baltimore on June 25th. The national committee was reactionary. It set up Alton B. Parker, a Tammany Hall man, for temporary chairman. The move was intended to make Clark the nominee. It was plain to the country that the Democratic bosses intended to do in Baltimore what the Republican bosses had done in Chicago. The people of the country became more angry than they had been during the contest in Chicago. There had not been so much excitement in a preliminary presiden- tial campaign since 1860. There was not so much excite- ment even then. Bryan entered the Baltimore convention as a sort of St. George going out to fight the dragon, and with the hearty support of the people of all parties who sent him scores of thousands of telegrams urging him to do his utmost. The presence of Thomas F. Ryan, as a delegate from Vir- ginia, was ominous. Bryan, with the enthusiastic support of the country, defeated the machine forces, and the permanent organization of the convention showed the friends of Wilson to be in charge, although their instructions from local con- ventions still bound many of them to Clark or Harmon or Underwood. The early ballots proved that the fight was between Clark and Wilson. Upon every roll call, Tammany Hall cast the solid vote of New York for Harmon. When, after many weary repetitions of the count, Bryan offered resolutions op- posing any candidate who received the support of the FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 103 "privilege-hunting class" and demanding the expulsion of Ryan and his group from the convention, there was pan- demonium in the hall. But the vote upon the resolutions showed the temper of the delegates. The nomination of Clark was thenceforward hopeless. Bryan's r6le as an ex- ponent of outraged public opinion and as a master of great conventions was superbly played. The whole nation warmed to him, although it was clear that the country did not wish him to be the nominee of the Democrats. When he gave his influence finally and openly to Wilson the struggle was closed. ( Wilson received the necessary two-thirds vote and was pro- claimed the candidate. The forward-looking element of the party had won. Messrs Bryan, House, who was, however, not in Baltimore, Josephus Daniels, and young William F. McCombs had won the esteem of the people. The old party of JefPerson and Jackson and of the campaign of 1896 was still in existence. Its leader stood, in spite of party names, in the place where events put Lincoln in 1860. Would Wilson, the professor and the moderate Liberal of other days, rise to the great oc- casion? The people of the country were not certain. Many fine spirits of every section did not think so. History and sec- tional bias and family pride blinded them to the facts. It was then, as now, a hard thing for the representative of an old Northern family to vote with the party of the solid South, the party which John Hay so unjustly denounced as beneath contempt in 1900. These good people, disgusted with the conduct of their regular party leaders, turned to Colonel Roosevelt who made an evangelical campaign, though not himself permeated with the true social gospel. Wilson was the beneficiary of the Roosevelt movement. He was elepted, like Lincoln in 1860 and Jefferson in 1800, because of the split 104 FROM PRINCETON TO THE PRESIDENCY 105 in the opposing party. But he received only 42 per cent, of the vote of the country, although his electoral vote was overwhelming.^ Wilson did not reveal himself fully during the campaign. His speeches showed a thoughtful, cautious mind, not sure how far his countrymen wished to go. Roose- velt seemed to be the real radical. Was Wilson to revert to the "safe and sane" ways of Cleveland or did he really under- stand? Those are questions which his measures, not his speeches, must show. At any rate, a new man was about to become president. •Ogg. "National Progress," pp. 198-206. CHAPTER VI THE PROBLEM THERE was indeed a new man in the White House in March, 1913. There was need of a new man. ,_The. country had been under agitation since 1893. But during the \raole Taft presidency the public excitement had been intense. The Lorimer scandal of 1910-11 was followed closely by an ex- pose of the mismanagement of the Department of the Interior. The methods of the tariff legislation of the same session of Congress were hardly less offensive to large elements of the country. And in 1912 a series of investigations of former election campaigns showed the utmost cynicism on the part of party leaders and great business men^ in regard to the re- lations of men of wealth to the officers of government. On the very eve of President Wilson's inauguration, the Pujo committee of the House of Representatives showed how nearly a few great bankers of New York controlled the credit operations of the nation. Men were everywhere intensely anxious about the growing power of corporations and individual capitalists over the common life of the people. The railroads, with their in- timate connections with all business affairs, were under the guidance of a few bankers in New York City; all the greater steamship lines to foreign countries were similarly directed from New York or London; one third of the bank deposits 'Testimony of ex-President Roosevelt and others before committees of Congress in 1912 made this perfectly plain. 106 THE PROBLEM 107 of the United States was likewise under the same control, while five sixths of all the bank deposits of the country were lodged in the cities of the industrial district; the steel busi- ness, the cotton and woollen manufacturers, and practically all of the vast oil properties of the continent received orders from New York overlords. Every great business organiza- tion, like the American Bankers' Association or the Anthra- cite Coal Carriers, had its head; while all the better-organized undertakings, uniting with the various chaml^ers of com- merce of all the cities, had just formed a United States Cham- ber of Commerce, the better to guide and regulate business of every sort and bring pressure to bear upon government. Mr. Wilson himself said during the campaign of 1912 that "a comparatively smaU number of men control the raw material, the water-power, the railroads, the larger credits of the country and, by agreements handed around among themselves, they control prices."^ There was nowhere else in the world such a powerful industrial and financial group. William II of Germany was not so much more powerful than J. P. Morgan of New York. And everywhere in the world business men and governments respected, even feared, the leaders of American industrial life. Smaller folk in the United States had long been accustomed to a similar respect or fear. Whether village bankers wished or not, they kept balances in New York. Southern cotton brokers and Western buyers of pigs instinctively knew the value of a fair name in Wall Street. Men might not like the regime, but they knew that American business had far out- stripped all other business in the world. Any limiting of its influence or breaking of its power they feared as an ancient liege man feared an attack upon his lord. Not only village and city business folk feared the powers that could make or 'Woodrow Wilson, "The New Freedom," New York, 189. 108 WOODEOW WILSON AND HIS WORK unmake men at will, successful lawyers who filled the in- dustrial centres held a like view. They did not practise before petit juries. They drew contracts and argued before legislatures; they advised powerful clients how far they might go in their contempt of law, and they sought safe investment for retired millionaires. They, too, waited upon business. Of course the universities were measurably free. But they were free only in the sense that Southern colleges were free in 1860 to explain facts contrary to the wishes of the owners of slaves, free to teach unwelcomed truth and take the consequences. Science was the very mother cf industry, the instructress of modem materialism, and Iier votaries were welcome co-workers in the business world; In the rarest instances did the universities encourage men to indulge in criticism of things as they were. Nor was it difiFerent with the clergy. Henry Ward Beecher and Theo- dore Parker had no successors in the churches of the industrial centres of the North. Only the obscure, and perhaps Dr. Washington Gladden and Shailer Mathews among the emi- nent, thought of playing the role of Nathan, the prophet. Nothing succeeds like success. And where such amazing success as all the Northern states of the American Union had known since 1866 pre- vailed how was university or church protest to be effective? The older elements of the life of the East, the Middle States, and the Near West, had grown rich, had made themselves comfortable homes with baths in them; they carried their coupons to the banks for collection and contented themselves with the good things that came in consequence. They were still Protestant in religion but not Puritan; they gave liberally to the work of Church or charities, but did not wish to hear too many sermons or to be bothered with vital reforms. Back Bay or Euclid Avenue or the Northshore Drive was THE PROBLEM 109 good enough for them and indeed these were clean and de- lightful places, just the kind of places where children should play. But these good descendants of Puritan New England did not have many children. Children gave too much trouble. The dominant element of the industrial North was in fact al- ready decadent and there was instant need of a new gospel, if men only knew it. But they did not know it. In the vast tenement districts of New York and Chicago there swarmed millions of dirty chil- dren and women, the families of the foreign-born workers in mills. Their streets were filthy and their houses grimy. Germans, Italians, Greeks, and Slavs, ignorant alike of the English language and of American institutions, made the basis upon which the industrial prosperity of the United States depended. They did the heaA^y work of American industry. More skilled men — native, foreign, or sons of foreigners — did the higher grades of work and organized to protect themselveg against the cheaper labour of their unfortunate brethren. But organized Labour was never successful in its struggles with employers so long as five hundred thousand immi- grants arrived each year.' This vast mass of poor folk, the foreign- and the native- born, made a North that was complex. How could a de- clining native American stock long maintain its control over these multiplying hordes that had never heard of birth control or race suicide.'' The first agency was the Catholic Church, to which most of them owed allegiance. In the land of Puritanism, Catholic priests said masses and Catholic pre- lates held sway quite as sovereign as the best of governors." ^Wages were indeed increased and maintained at a high level in comparison with wages in Europe; but the increase was promptly added to the prices of commodities and the co mmuni ty as a whole bore the burden. ^It is not many years since an archbishop of Boston refused to take second place at a dinner vhere the Governor of Massachusetts had the seat of honour. 110 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Great church dignitaries are always social safety valves. Twelve or fifteen million Catholics do not make a controlling force in a region like the North if other religious organizations hold strongly to their faiths. Only other denominations did not hold firmly to their faiths. Thus the industrial region with its annual income of fifteen billions a year and its millions of poor and often unemployed men was within itself a social and economic problem when Wilson entered the White House, against the utmost protest of nearly all the wealthy people in the country. The region of greatest opposition contained the very rich, the well-to-do, and the vast numbers of undigested foreigners. Its religion was of a highly benevolent kind, giving money to every good cause, but not professing any very vital gospel. The strong- est element in it was the Catholic Church and even strenuous presidents, like Mr. Roosevelt, concerned themselves to have good Republican prelates made cardinals. It was the prob- lem of politics to keep this unstable society in repose. This problem lent an increasing power to the modern boss. In New England, the Middle States, and the Middle West, these important representatives of American life reached in 1912 their highest development. One thinks of Messrs. Crane of Massachusetts, Murphy of New York City, Pen- rose of Pennsylvania, and Sullivan of Illinois. Whether Republican or Democratic, it was their business to help business men control legislatures, secure good judges for the courts, obtain franchises for city utilities, keep watch over labour movements, and block the way to success of upstart reformers. They were sometimes themselves close to high Church dignitaries, and they sometimes rewarded college men with seats in important political conventions. They seldom held public office; but they seldom lost control of public officials. In close electoral campaigns, like that of THE PROBLEM 111 1896, they spent millions of dollars in order that there might not be any disruption of the economic or social order. Of equal importance was the newspaper press. The cost of an influential daily paper in a large city is very great. Its capital is apt to be near a million; its employes number thousands; its news franchises cost perhaps a hundred thou- sand a year. Such an institution can not be set up by mere . upstarts, as in times long past when the freedom of the press was counted so dear as to be guaranteed in the national Con- stitution. Only through advertising may one expect to publish a newspaper. But advertising is supplied by the business community. It is not long supplied to papers whose editors disparage or attack business methods or favourite local institutions. Thus the modern newspaper is almost of necessity only an adjunct of business and business is de- pendent, as we all know, upon the great industrial or financial masters. Like the bosses, nearly all newspapers serve their day in the way of keeping things as they are. They en- deavour to prevent change. It is clear to any thinking man that change is the one thing that society must have or die. The new president of March, 1913, was chosen for the purpose of changing the industrial life of the North. If he endeavoured to do that by a tariff reform, most of the agencies I have described would unite against him. All acknowledged that he was chosen to reform the tariff. But if he reformed it so as to injure any interest, hfc must be attacked. If by any chance any disturbance of the economic world followed his reforms, he knew that he would be blamed for that. In any other vital matter, his measures must be so timed and so carefully done that no important group should suffer. To do anything was dangerous; to do nothing, equally dangerous. And who would lend the new executive the necessary 112 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK support? The large minorities in the cities and in the counties of the North who had voted for him? But mi- norities do not carry states and deliver votes in the electoral colleges. Perhaps organized Labour in the cities? But Labour has never been strong enough to resist the threats of employers in times of political crisis. Would a Presbyterian elder command the support of the cardinals and bishops of the Roman Church? If not, it would be hard for the new Demo- cratic administration to retain the support of those large minorities in states like Massachusetts and Illinois. If the position of the Democratic party was difficult indeed in every Northern state, its support in the South seemed secure. But this meant that the older and more rigid Prot- estant parts of the country, the conservative, native-born, English-speaking groups of the composite nation would be aligned behind the new regime. That of itself was an offence, as everyone saw from the importance attached by the Hughes campaign managers in 1916 to the sectional issue, and it was a source of weakness among those very high-minded Liber- als everywhere who felt that the South was still barbarous in its treatment of Negro crimes and offences. Moreover, the soUd South was apd is agricultural and just a little archaic in its social life and culture, and thus hardly apt to endorse the new Democratic attitude toward woman suffrage. And woman suffr'age was a burning question in 1913. Besides, the South had got just enough of the new in- dustrialism and the profits of big business to disturb the thinking of her leaders. The iron and coal interests of Alabama composed a minority of the economic values of the state, yet Alabama's leading representatives in Congress were among the devoted advocates of the iron and coal point of view. Although North Carolina was predominantly an agricultural community, her senior senator was hardly of THE PROBLEM 113 that liberal class of public men that Wilson so much needed to head the Finance Committee of the Senate. In Virginia, the railroad interests had dominated the afiPairs of the state since 1896, if not since the rise of William Mahone in 1880; and its senators had been ardent opponents of the President in the Baltimore convention. Henry Watterson, the fore- most publicist of Kentucky, was an enemy of Mr. Wilson perhaps on mere personal grounds; while in Missouri, both senators and Speaker Clark were the makers and masters of one of the most reactionary machines in the country. If the South was homogeneous, it was far from Liberal on the great questions which any "forward-looking" president must press for solution. The machines of the East, Republican or Democratic, were likely to find support from similar machines in the South if the President insisted upon the adoption of woman suffrage for the country, or if he endeavoured to procure the enactment of an adequate child-labour law, so long pressed by the very men and women in the North and West who had done most to bring about his nomination. In the South, although men were ardent Democrats, economic interests took precedence over any theories of democracy that formerly underlay their party attitude, at least that was true of their more experienced statesmen. And, although Southerners were more rehgious and more Puritan than other sections of the country, the South was by no means a unit that could be wielded in any great crusade for a more humane and kindly foreign policy, for example, in relation to Mexico. The South was boimd fast by the insoluble Negro problem. If, then, Mr. Wilson was to succeed, he must endeavour to build upon the foundations laid in three campaigns by Mr. Bryan. But the very name of Bryan was an offence to some 114 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK good Eastern men who had helped Wilson to win the nomina- tion. In academic circles where there had been some support of Wilson one had only to mention the Nebraskan to call forth a sigh. Yet Bryan had been the only leader who had sup- ported an idealistic rank and file of the Democratic party in the West. And his followers in the South were just those men who had not yielded to the materialistic boss and in- dustrialist systems in states like Virginia, Alabama, and Louisiana. Again, if Wilson was to succeed he must seek to found a great personal party, a machine like those which Jefferson and Jackson had built. Only through a solid phalanx of devoted followers, held together by loyalty to the President as a great leader of men or perhaps by the hope of office or other good things to come, could he combat those powerful materialistic organizations of the North or those deep-seated prejudices that underlie the voting of the older elements of the South. Mr Bryan might greatly aid in the building of such a following, but it would require more than the ordinary generosity of friendship to yield himself, like John the Baptist, to the new leader. A great personal machine re- quires certain personal qualities none too well developed in Mr. Wilson. Yet if Northern Democrats would abandon dislikes, if Mr. Bryan would efface himself, and if the right tone could be struck, success might be won, won if eight years were granted in the presidency. These are many ifs. There are many ifs to any successful career in the White House. But if the solid industrial blocs of the North, if the distrust of the older New England stocks of any democratic regime could be overcome, and if the new president could arrange a combination of his friends with those of Mr. Bryan, there was yet another and a complicated situation to be met in the THE PROBLEM 115 sprfng of 1913. The industrial revolution had lirought about the participation of the United States in the economic imper- ialism of the time. New York bankers were desirous of having a share in a gre^ international loan to China, the interest on which was to be guaranteed by the governments con- cerned. The State Department was then being pressed to give its approval. The Monroe Doctrine, put forth in 1823 as a guarantee of weaker American republics against Euro- pean aggression, had become a cover for American aggres- sion. Since the seizure by President Roosevelt of the Panama canal zone in 1903, every South American republic had been exceedingly anxious lest the United States should commit herself definitely to a policy of industrial and financial imperialism in that region.^ Of more immediate concern was the condition of Mexico. The people of that country, a mixed and ill-developed race under the tutelage of Roman Catholic priests, had never trusted the United States since the rape of Texas in 1845. But under the leadership of Porfirio Diaz the affairs of the coun- try wefe brought, by pure force, into order. Americans won ooncessions of every sort: vast ranches, mines, oil fields, rail- ways, and other public utilities. Before 1913, Americans owned or controlled property in Mexico worth about £x hun- dred millions. Similar concessions had been granted to Euro- peans of all the great industrial nations. Mexico was no longer Mexico; and the Mexicans, as ignorant and superstitious as the Russians of to-day, came to regard every foreigner as an enemy seeking to enslave them and enrich himself. Under the new Monroe Doctrine, the idea had gained general acceptance in Europe that the Government of the United States must be responsible for all that happened to foreigners >The best treatment of this subject will be found in A. B. Hart's, "The Monroe Doctrine," Boston, 1916. 116 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK in Mexico, which only increased the bitterness of the Mexi- cans. ' Francisco Madero undertook to reform Mexico. He was brushed aside by Diaz. He then raised the standard of revo- lution, and in May, 1911, Diaz sailed for Paris and Madero became president of the coimtry, although not accepted by the defeated followers of Diaz. In February, 1913, General Huerta deserted Madero, caused the latter to be assassinated, and proclaimed himself president. The American Ambassa- dor, Henry L. Wilson, interested always in the rights and concessions of his countrymen, gave a certain countenance to the new regime and forthwith began to urge his government to grant official recognition. President Taft, at the very close of his term, declined, of course, to commit himself; but American business men and American newspapers urged with the greatest earnestness the immediate recognition of the new Mexican president. The disinterested observer noted always in those days that it was business men who had con- nections and concessions, or newspapers that spoke for such American interests, which pressed so constantly for the recog- nition of the bloody -handed Huerta.^ Madero had not been able to protect foreigners in Mexico. Huerta was likewise unable to maintain order without as- sistance from other countries. More than a billion dollars' worth of property was at stake and foreigners were almost daily shot down by brigands or revolutionists. Europe, at the very height of industrial imperialism and on the verge of war, insisted upon the protection of European interests in Mexico or upon a guarantee that the Government of the United States would protect them. Industrialism had in- iPresident Roosevelt's so-called big stick policy was a chief cause of this European attitude. ^Up-to-date information, including bibliography, on Mexico may be found in the new "En- cyclopedia Americana," Vol. 18, ' THE PROBLEM 117 deed broken that old isolation of which Americans had boasted since the time of Washington's famous Farewell Address. There was no isolation. There could be none for a country that had entered the modern industrial world. How would Wilson treat the Mexican problem? Nor was this all. The Spanish War left the United States in possession of the Philippine Islands. The natives resented subordination to the country which they had hoped would rescue them from Spain and set them free. Their repre- sentatives never ceased to urge in this country the applica- tion of the principles of the Declaration of Independence. But the growing and threatening imperialism of Japan, especially the conduct of the latter both in Korea and China, made it difficult to give that independence which had all along been promised. It might prove to be the beginning of a war in the Far East which must involve all the world. Yet the Democratic party had more than once promised free- dom to the islanders."^ At the close of the Spanish War, England and the United States entered into an agreement that the United States might build a canal across the Isthmus of Panama on the understanding that the shipping of all nations should receive equal treatment in using it. But Congress authorized in the Tolls Act of 1912 that the American coastwise shippmg might use the canal free of tolls. Although it was commonly known that this coastwise shipping was almost exclusively in the control of the great continental railways, both the old political parties endorsed this exemption in their platforms. The British Ambassador, James Bryce, protested that the imderstanding with England had been violated. Other European nations took the British view. And the facts 'In every platform since 1900 and particularly in the Jones bills of 1911-lSL 118 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK seemed to show that Congress was willing to violate a treaty in order to grant a favour to certain railroad interests. The building of the canal had indeed bound the country still more closely to the imperialistic diplomacy of the modern world. Nor was it possible that it should be otherwise. More- over, the canal was the beginning of a Caribbean policy for the United States which resembled the century-old Mediter- ranean policy of Great Britain. The United States, owning the canal, could hot allow any other country to own any- thing within striking distance. Central American states were, as they had been in the days of the planter domination, 1850-60, of necessity ancillary to the canal zone. No other strong power might have a foothold in them; and no weak power could gain one. In like manner the islands of the Caribbean became important to the United States. The very hint of the sale of one of these islands to Germany or Britain was enough in 1912 to set American public opinion on edge: It might mean war. The Monroe Doctrine was in consequence made to cover that, as indeed it did cover one phase of it — only now the plain objective was American possession of every island or station that might happen to be available.^ Thus when Mr. Wilson, elected upon a minority of the votes of his countrymen, came to office, the United States was industrially a part of the great world of which Germany and England were the leaders and no longer the isolated nation that her people fondly conceived her to be. This fact was quit* strongly foreshadowed in the last public ad- dress of President McKinley^ delivered to the assembled leaders of railways and industry at Buffalo in 1901. He then iThis imperialistic outgrowth of the canal building might have been avoided by the neU' trahzation of the Panama zone, but American leaders and American newspapers would not for a moment allow any such procedure. ^Wilson's message of December 3, 1919. repeats the same thing. THE PROBLEM 119 declared that the former extremely high tariff policy of his party must be abandoned. The time had come when Amer- ican industries must overflow the tariff walls set up for their protection. These walls were then about to become a hindrance to exportations. They must be lowered. Within a short decade the very character of the United States had changed. But political leaders and party shibboleths gave no evidence that this fact was understood.^ Truly the novice in politics came to oflBce at a critical time. If he understood all that transpired in the world, and nobody has ever been so wise, he might yet fail entirely to accomplish anything really important for the coun- try or the world. For, if he proved able to lead an unwill- ing North, kept the South in working harness and drew to himself all the great following of Mr. Bryan, he might yet wreck everything in possible blunders or in a failure to bring Congress to a hearty cooperation. Here the meaning of the Constitution was apt to be called into question. And most Americans are worshippers of written constitutionsj devoted followers of men long since dead and past the hope of political salvation. The Constitution provides, or is thought to pro- vide, that each house of Congress is absolutely independent of the other, that both are independent of the president, that the judges of the Supreme Court may veto any act of Congress and bring to naught any policy of both Congress and presi- dent if in their judgment the rights of individuals or corpora- tion should be put in jeopardy. Moreover, the members of the Senate must be chosen for terms of six years by states, and they have ever been chosen to represent the interests or the desires of states and not the interests or desires of the nation as a whole. Members of the House of Representatives 'Nor have the events o{ the great war brought even the so-called articulate elements to a realization of the fact. 120 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK are likewise chosen by districts, for two-year terms, to repre- sent the interests of districts and not those of the country. The president is chosen by the people of the country for a four-year term to represent the coxmtry. Thus everybody in Washington represents something different from every- body else, except as the bonds of political parties tend to overcome this. A senator outlives a president, a president outlives a representative, and the judges of the Supreme Court outlive all. ""^T^ver has a great oflSce been so hedged about as the American presidency. And yet in 1913 the President was elected to do some of the greatest things any executive officer ever had been set to do. Wilson had been long an advocate of the idea that the American Government was no t government at all if administered strictly according to the I Constitution. His idea that a president must unite his party in Congress and the country, lead it to positive action and then accept both personal and party responsibility was known to political scientists everywhere, but not to members of Congress^ at all, congressmen having long since forsworn the use of books. What would happen when the minority president set about uniting his followers in Congress, writing bills for them to enact and then personally pressing them against the interests of their constituents to vote for them? For a hundred years senators had claimed immunity from such pressure. They had sometimes dictated to presidents and many times brought to naught the declared purposes of the people. Representatives were less stubborn and not historically so deeply rooted, yet they, too, knew how to defeat presidents who sought to lead them whither they did not wish to go- 'Hearings of U. S. Senate Committee on Education and Labour — testimony of W. Z. Foster. In general, the hearings of committees of Congress have shown this very distinctly. Perhaps a, voy small number of congressmen read the serious books of the time. THE PROBLEM 121 Truly, the leadership of the United States is the most diffi- cult and trying thing in the world. But Congress was not the only obstacle. The judges of the Supreme Court count themselves the infallible arbiters of great matters in the United States. They are the popes and the cardinals of the American system all in one. It must be so. In every country there must be an infallible person or group, else there can be no stability. In England it is Parliament; in imperial Germany it was the Kaiser and the Bundesrath; in the United States the effort was made to divide responsibility among three distinct branches of the sovereignty. No such division is possible. The Supreme Court took upon itself under the leadership of the great judge, John Marshall, the responsibility which someone must exercise. ^ Only onct or twice has the decision of Marshall been challenged and then unsuccessfully. One recalls Lincoln 'g bittei complaint of 1858 and Bryan's challenge of 1896. It is a curious thing in the struggle for democracy in the United States that men have never really endeavoured to set up machinery whereby the people might become the judge in great matters.^ How was Wilson to succeed in 1913.'' He knew and all thoughtful men knew that he must attack the great powers of industry, of finance, and of organized monopoly. He must deal with the rights of property, effect in some way a re- distribution of wealth. The problem was concentration of eco- nomic power, just as the problem of 1860 was the concentra- tion of wealth, that is, social and political power in the hands of a few thousand masters of slaves; If the schoolmaster from New Jersey set about his real task, the majority of Con- gress would oppose him, in part from an instinctive fear of •For the ablest and latest authority on Marshall and his work see Mr. A. J. Beveridge's ■•Life of John Marshall," Boston, 1919. 3 As England, for example, has done. 122 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK such reform, in part from ignorance of the needs of the coun- try, and in part from motives of mere party advantage. If it came to a fight in Congress the leaders of industry would at once thrust the immense weight of their influence into the scales against him. If he managed to keep a majority of Congress on his side, it must in the nature of things appear to both the industrial North and the older social groups there as a sectional struggle. If the majority of Congress, led by the South and the President, set up a vital reform, the courts were most likely to declare the finished work unconstitu- tional; and, as a rule, the articulate elements of the people have sustained the courts against all comers. In such a posi- tion the new president was likely to find himself of little real value to the country, for no able man cares merely for the honour of living in the White House. Moreover, a president must keep Congress, a majority of the country, and the courts working together at least four years in order to be a moderate success. He must continue the cooperation and continue to go forward for eight years and then leave a successor of like mind in office if he would be a great president. It re- quires from eight to twelve years of successful administra- tion in the United States to set up a tradition that will out- last the life of the leader who would impress his generation. Jefferson was such a leader and a successful president. Jackson also set up a social and political dynasty that en- dured long after he was in the grave. Lincoln succeeded, too, but rather because he brought the nation's greatest war to a successful conclusion and died immediately thereafter than because he left a successor of his own choosing in office. Cleveland was historically due for a similar contribution to American life, but Cleveland failed as did McKinley. Roose- velt essayed the great task, won the necessary popularity, but it was contrary to the nature of political parties in the THE PROBLEM 123 cxrantry for him and his successor to reform industry and its attendant evils. It was his own chief support that he en- deavoured to reform; that is, if he succeeded he must pull down the party that set him up! Wilson came. He had the older ethnical elements of the country behind him, the body of orthodox Americans, both religious and economic; he had the support of the old South, though, as we have seen, it was not a united South; and he had the Democratic party for his weapon of attack. The diffi- culty was that reform had been delayed too long; the thought- patterns of the people had remained the same too long and the difficulties of peaceful change had become, as I think I have shown, almost impossible to meet. It is, therefore, not surprising that a great ex-senator visited Washington soon after the inauguration, talked with the astute men there, and solemnly announced that "the schoolmaster of New Jersey would not succeed, that the election of 1914 would take away his majority in Congress, and that in 1916 a Republican president would take his place. "^ He is re- ported to have added that only Republicans could govern the United States. The opinion of the ex-senator was likewise the opinion of the representatives of the foreign governments in Washington.^ Men of the world distrusted the idealistic programme of Wilson's campaign. It could not succeed, yet it must be tried. If it failed, Wilson would fail. If some materialistic compromise were set up in its place the new president would not only fail; he would be ridiculous. Such was the problem of 1913 and such the difficulties with which the "schoolmaster" must begin. >This prophecy was reported to the writer by an experienced ex-senator who had the language direct from its author. 'This the author has from unimpeachable sources. CHAPTER VII THE GREAT REFORMS DURING the months which followed the election of 1912 the President-elect set about building the administrative ma- chine with which he would endeavour to work. The Cabinet was the first element. Of course he must take his official family from the Democratic party. The last Democratic president, Grover Cleveland, had undertaken to employ distinguished representatives of the opposing party as in- timate counsellors; but Cleveland had no party when he left office. That example was not enticing. But the Democratic party had not held office in sixteen years. It contained few men of high public experience. Even these were not available to Wilson. They were men of opposing social and economic views. Governor Harmon was a conservative of rather extreme tendency. Repre- sentative Underwood was of the same frame of mind and was, besides, already on the way to the Senate whence few politi- cians ever return, save upon political defeat. Wilson could not call upon the greater organizations of the party, like those of Illinois or Virginia, for their leaders were almost personally hostile. The more-or-less radical Democrats must be his advisers. ' "" Among these Mr. Bryan was the foremost. As Mr. Sidney Brooks said in the North American flewew-at-the time,'- the country selected Bryan and Wilson must abide the choice. >The ^orih American Review, Vol. 198, pp. 27 el aeq. THE GREAT REFORMS 125 Yet the choice was an almost mortal offence to Mr. George Harvey and his friends of the Eastern wing of the party. It was a warning to the older machine men who had sought to control the party ever since 1896. And they had often been successful. Mr. Bryan became Secretary of State. And the fact of Bryan in that office was a standing announcement to the world that a new day had come. It meant a bitter war of all the greater financial men of the time against the President. There were two other members of the new cabinet of similar mould. Mr. Josephus Daniels of North Carolina, a close friend of the Nebraska leader, was made Secretary of the Navy. Mr. Albert S. Burleson of Texas, also a friend of Mr. Bryan and a former member of Congress, was given charge of the Post Office Department. Both of these men were experienced politicians, loyal Southerners, and Demo- crats of unblemished standing. They were counted upon to aid the Secretary of State in pressing administration measures upon Congress. The other members of the new administration were Messrs. McAdoo, Garrison, Lane, Hous- ton, Redfield, and Wilson, the first four being quite as much business men as public characters. This second group gave at that time no particular promise of high service. But the great war which was so soon to subject all to the utmost test has shown that their selection was justified. This is not to say that the Cabinet has been beyond criticism. Some of its members have certainly made serious blunders; but most of them have rendered very great service both to the country and to their chief. Mr. Bryan resigned in June, 1915, rather than agree to the warlike note to the German Emperor which the President insisted upon sending. But Bryan had no quarrel with his chief; and he remained a warm supporter of the Administration. Mr. Garrison, the Secretary of War, 126 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK lost his head in the discussion of military matters in the winter of 1916 and resigned.^ It was not such a cabinet as President Lincohi gathered about him in March, 1861. It was certainly not a group of all the talents, as was once said of a British cabinet. Nor was it a quarrelsome body of men as those about Lincoln certainly were. It was an administrative cabinet not unlike that which Jefferson selected and kept about him during two terms. Nor have the two men who were invited to take the places of Messrs. Bryan and Garrison — Mr. Lansing and Mr. Baker — been exceptions to the rule. The Cabinet was se- lected with two definite purposes in mind: onSrgreup'to aid in the passing of important bUls through Congress and to keep the Administration in harmony with the party outside, the other primarily for high administrative work. As a whole, the Cabinet has proved quite as successful as any of its predeces- sors, with one notable exception. There has certainly been little disloyalty or backbiting." If the Cabinet gave fair promise of success, the other means of drawing a majority of the country to him, the connection of the President with party or economic chieftains, did not promise so well. Wilson was an outsider from the political point of view. The experience he had had as a public man in New Jersey only tended to alienate him from the older leaders and these leaders could not easily forget or forgive his treatment of ex-Senator James Smith. It was a warning to all who wished any other than public ends. Wilson must then endeavour to win the masses of the people to him by his public statements and by his acts. And in the art of rallying disinterested men to him Wilson has been surpassed by only two presidents, Jefferson and Jackson; but ^Compare Wilson's own view of what a cabinet should be in The Review of Renews for Aprili 1803. 'For Lincohi's cabinet, see A. Rothschild's "Lincoln, Master of Men," Boston, IDOS, THE GREAT REFORMS n1 Wilson, unlike Jefferson and Jackson, has not shown any ability to bind men to him through personal-friend loyalty. Men follow him from intellectual motives, not upon the principle expressed in the saying: "The gang's all here." Wilson, as I have already made clear, is a master of con- vincing statement; and he made it his particular business to inform and inspire all classes of disinterested people from the first day of his Administration. In that way he meant to build a great popular support. His first inaugural address is an excellent illustration of the new president at his best. It was a great occasion. The country had gone through a long and bitter struggle in which the masses of men of the older American ideals and agrarian interests had contended against the newer industrial system and its powerful allies in business. The former had won after many years of failure and Wilson was their spokesman. Fully conscious of all the bearings of the situation, he read on March 4, 1913, his careful and matured statement. We have done great things in this country and we have suffered many ignoble things to be done. We have won unparalleled victories over Nature and at the same time we have sacrificed much of the great heritage from Nature in a reckless haste to pile up vast fortunes. Powerful and in- comparably wealthy men have held high influence with us while millions of poor and dependent people have worked and suffered in squaHd homes, in dangerous mills, and unwhole- some mines. And the Government we have all loved has often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who have used it have forgotten the people. Our duty is to cleanse and restore, to correct the evil without impairing the good. We have come now to the sober second thought. We mean to square our present conduct with every ideal and promise with which we so proudly began in 1776. We shall 128 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK deal with great industry as it is and as it may be modified and not as we might do if we had a clean sheet of paper to write upon.^ He concluded: "This is not a day of triumph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do . Who shall live up to the great trust ? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward- looking men to my side. God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me." High and noble ideals. It was indeed the language and appeal of a new character in our public life, an earnest call to all those humane and kindly reformers who had helped Colonel Roosevelt bear aloft his Progressive flag. Would the new president, with his nunority following, win either the greater or the lesser leaders of that movement to his side? That was an anxious query to many minds in the spring of 1913. Perhaps it was not in the nature of things for the ex-President to lend Wilson his support. But others not so fast bound to the industrial interests of the country might yield. After the inauguration and the omission of the customary stupid ball. President Wilson set himself to the hard task of changing the very current of history. And the need was great. The United States had been set up as an asylum for the poor. It remained poor for many decades and its inter- national relations were simple and unaffected, hardly touched by the great world of diplomacy and chicane. But as the years went by the Monroe Doctrine, at first set up as a shield of small American republics against possible European ^This paragraph I have paraphrased somewhat freely from the original in G. M. Harper'a '• Addresses of Woodrow Wdaon," New York, 1917, 1-8. THE GREAT REFORMS 129 aggression, became a rock of offence to all our Latin- Amer- ican neighbours. As the United States grew powerful, its citizens wished to have its power follow them, like that of ancient Rome, wherever they went. In Chili, in Brazil, in Colombia, Venezuela, and Mexico there had grown up a fear and a distrust of Americans that very much re- sembled the fear and distrust of the border peoples of the Roman republic toward those privileged Latins who in the time of the Caesars overawed their weaker neighbours. There was considerable cause. In Mexico men still talked of the rape of Texas in 1845; in Colombia they insisted that Roosevelt had seized the Panama canal zone in the good old Roman way.^ In Venezuela, in spite of the Cleveland episode which probably saved the country from large ter- ritorial loss, there was the bitterest hatred of Americans. The so-called A. B. C. powers had been directing their di- plomacy against the implications of the Monroe Doctrine for twenty -five years'" and it was the insistence of South Amer- ican representatives at the Second Hague Conference in 1907 that prevented a satisfactory agreement on the subject of the international responsibility of smaller countries for the col- lection of private debts within their borders. A great deal has been said, both in bitter anger and in friendly remonstrance, about the character of the^m^n whom Wilson sent abroad to carry out his new policy. But men have forgotten in the presence of a great world war that the diplomats of the Wilson Administration were appointed when there was no thought of war or the complications that fol- lowed. Still, one might read much American history without finding better men at foreign courts than Walter H. Page, am- bassador to England, James W. Gerard in Berlin, and Henry ^Colonel Roosevelt himself said in California in 1910 to a large audience: "1 took Panama," 'A. B. Hart, "The Monroe Doctrine, An Interpretation," pp. e62-7. 130 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Morgenthau in Constantinople. These were new men, to be sure. Wilson could not retain the older diplomats and expect a satisfactory execution of his plans. But new or old, these men have never been accused of want of ability or devotion to the cause of their country. Page gave his life in London, un- complaining, as a penalty for his devotion, and Gerard was unquestionably equal to all that could have been expected from any representative at the court of the Hohenzollerns. Of the other appointees, the bitter wail of some critics may be partially explained on other grounds than sheer devotion to the best interests of the country. Few will ever find heart to say that Maurice F. Egan, minister to Denmark, Brand Whitlock in Brussels, and Paul S. Reinsch in Peking, were not in the critical years of the World War equal to the best of their predecessors and wholly satisfactory to the American people. But there were others in South America, at the smaller capitals of other "backward countries," and perhaps in some important posts who owed their appointment merely to pull or political considerations, unworthy of attention. Butt when this is freely granted, the historian can not but ask, when i has any other American president had a better list to show? \ Nor must it be forgotten that in our day of wireless and cable, the president is in all important diplomatic matters his own ambassador and his own minister. His decision can be had any day. Some of the agents of President Wilson have not been of the wise and highly efficient type of Amer- icans; but it is yet to be shown that any great American interest has suffered. I have shown in the preceding chapter that the whole foreign policy was ready for reform. Indeed the whole in- ternational system of commercial imperialism stood in imminent danger of overthrow. What Wilson was elected to do for the industrial life of the United States was equally THE GREAT REFORMS 131 needful for the whole industrial world. Within a week Wil- son made known his lack of interest in the proposed six- power Chinese loan already arranged when President Taft left office. But without assurance from the new Democratic party that its leaders would follow the imperialistic policy of the preceding fifteen years, New York financiers did not wish to proceed. Not only the Chinese loan, but the Monroe Doctrine and the relations with Mexico were all under con- sideration. From March 11th to December 2nd the President matured and explained to the world a new foreign policy.^ He would have no more exploitation of South American countries by Americans under cover of the Monroe Doctrine; but he would associate all Latin-American governments with that of the United States in a common policy. If Americans wished to make investments in any part of Latin America, they must not expect the people of the United States to send their army and navy to aid in the collection of either principal or interest. If the nationals of the United States or other countries found themselves in difficulties, they must endeavour to settle things in the local courts and according to the laws of the country in which they had taken up their residence. He would endeavour to assist them; he would persuade the heads of weaker powers to do justice, but he would not make of the Government an instrument for the advancement of private fortunes or for the humiliation of governments that had difficulty in maintaining the validity of contracts tainted with fraud or unfair deahng. The best expression of this new Monroe, or Wilson Doctrine, will be found in the address delivered by the President at Mobile on October 27, 1913. In that statement he made it ^Ail important documents bearing on this change of policy will be found in Robinson and West. "The Foreign Pohcy of Woodrow Wilson," New York, 1917, pp. 179-806. 132 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK plain that exploitation of weaker peoples had been the cause of most of the difficulty as well as of the growing hatred to- ward the United States in most Latin-American countries. He urged them to maintain order; but he promised them not to meddle in their affairs in the name of the Monroe Doctrine, And he invited aU to make a common American association of powers for the advancement of democracy in world affairs. In a similar spirit he sent John Lind to Mexico to persuade ' General Huerta to make friends with his rivals and op- ponents and himself abandon the presidency which he had usurped. The voice of the Mexicans, albeit men laughed at them as ignorant and stupid, meant more to Wilson than the cries of even thousands of American adventurers who had gone to Mexico to make fortunes in devious ways. He ad- vised the latter to leave the country when the revolution endangered their lives, and he gave them all possible aid; but he would not send the army or the navy to enforce private rights of Americans or to maintain order against the wishes of the Mexicans. Of course Huerta, conscious of the mild and humane policy of the President and aware of the support he, Huerta, was receiving from great American papers and finan- ciers, did not heed the warning. Wilson was left to his policy of "watchful waiting" as he himself described it in December, 1913. Toward the Phihppines he entertained the same views. The imperiaUstic policy of 1898 and the exigencies of inter- national diplomacy had tended to make of the United States only another colonizing and commercial power in the Far East. He announced to the Filipinos on October 6, 1913, in the address of the new Governor-General, that "the mere extent of the American conquest is not what gives America distinction in the annals of the world, but the professed pur- pose of the conquest which was to see to it that every foot of THE GREAT REFORMS 133 this land should be the home of free, self -governed people, who should have no government whatever which did not rest upon the consent of the governed." And a little later, with ap- proval of Congress, the islanders were given a still larger control of their affairs, a control which left the governor the only active power of the United States in the islands^ The next step was to be complete independence. In South America, in Mexico, and in the Philippines he was setting to the imperialist powers of the world an example that ought to have influenced them; and he was denying to business men of the coimtry the free exercise of that long- acknowledged privilege, which business men have so loved in the past, of exploiting backward peoples. But in the midst of this reform, Japan and California, long disposed to quarrel, forced upon him an issue about the right of Japanese subjects to own land in the United States. For months the Cali- fornians, under the leadership of Governor Johnson, in- sisted upon their right to prohibit subjects of Japan from owning lands in the state. The President endeavoured to moderate the people of "the coast" and to pacify the Japa- nese Government. The crisis passed, but the question of refusing the Japanese rights in the United States which were and still are granted to the subjects of other sovereignties remained imanswered till the assembling of the Paris Con- ference. While the President was thus laying the foundations of the new policy in Latin America and in the Par East, Mr. Bryan prepared his scheme of universal arbitration. In April, 1913, he laid his plan before the assembled diplomats in Washington and began, without undue encouragement from them, the submission of his proposed treaties to the various countries. Many of the smaller countries of the world made haste to sign agreements, and Great Britain gave its 134 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK approval. Other European nations except Germany signed. The President was in full accord with his Secretary of State. That he really meant that the United States should sacrifice important interests in the cause is shown by his settlement of the canal tolls question which England had kept before the country since the beginning of the last session of Congress under the Taft Administration. The European press was almost unanimous in its condemnation of the exemption by Congress of American coastwise shipping from the payment of tolls for the use of the Panama Canal. Thei business in- terests of the country insisted upon the favoured treatment of American shipping. The President asked Congress on March 5, 1914, for a repeal of the law, saying that we could not afford to be regarded as seeking any undue advantage, even if the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty did guarantee such advantage. The prompt repeal of a law that had been passed by very large majorities shows how strong a hold the President had upon the country at the end of his first year in office. Thus during the short period that Wilson was to have free of the complications of a great war, he was trying to educate his countrymen to a new and more kindly spirit in the old world of secret diplomacy. He hoped to convince some of the other peoples of the world that a less grasping diplom- acy might after all be more profitable. "My dream is that as the years go on and the world knows more and more of America, it will turn to America for those moral inspirations which lie at the basis of all freedom; that the world will never fear America unless it feels that it is engaged in some en- terprise which is inconsistent with the rights of humanity."' And when his conciliatory policywith Mexico was giving end- less worry and he had authorized the employment of force, he said to the graduating class at Annapolis : " They have had ^From^a speech delivered at Philadelphia, July 4, 1914. THE GREAT REFORMS 135 to use some force — I pray God it may not be necessary for them to use any more — but do you think that the way they fought is going to be the most lasting impression? Have men not fought ever since the world began? Is there any- thing new in using force?" Here was indeed a new faith in high place. Nor had he been loth to exercise his faith in common men when on May 2, 1913, he recognized the young Chinese Republic. The self- determination of peoples was to be seen in this as in the new attitude toward Latin America. Of course the plan of leaving the Mexicans to govern their own country, well or ill; of al- lowing South American courts to determine the issues of right and wrong as between foreigners and their own citizens; and of yielding freely to the wishes of the Chinese who were trying to set up a government of the people was greeted with jeers in Europe and especially in great American cities. A London paper said that the Golden Rule would not work and Wilson would learn, as did Gladstone, to apply the big stick. The Boston Transcript said that Mr. Wilson was a sort of Mr. Micawber in diplomacy, and the Detroit Free Press asked: "Who of us can say that the United States will never again embark on a war of conquest?" Still, the first great reform of the Wilson Administration and one of the most important of all, a reform of the American foreign policy, had been begun. There were, in spite of the taimts of the metropoUtan newspapers, many supporters of the new ideal. Plain people everywhere espoused it, in so far as they understood it. Many of the so-called intellect- uals endorsed it; and a large number of newspapers, Uke the Springfield Republican, said that when men got over the shock of Golden-Rule diplomacy they would hardly stand out against it.^ However great the success of the new diplomacy ^Quoted in The Literary Digeet, November 8* 1013. 136 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK was, and in view of the great war that was so soon to break upon the world, it was supremely important, the efifect of it all depended upon the greater problem of what to do with industrialism, with the abuses or overgrowths of business. If Wilson did not begin a reform of the industrial life of the country, and begin it in a way that could not easily be re- versed, his golden rule in foreign affairs would not avail, and his Administration would prove a failure. While the country was catching its breath and preparing to think about the new diplomacy, the President called Con- gress together for the 8th of April, 1913. It was a Democratic congress by large margins. There could be no good excuse, as there had been during the Cleveland administrations, if the party did not function. Wilson appeared in person be- fore the two houses and read an earnest but very brief ap- peal asking for the promptest possible reduction of the tariff.' He gave evidence of his method at once. He would appear in person to argue his case; he would take up one thing at a time; he would himself guide the course of legislation. It was a new thing. But it was not new to him. He had said that such must be the method of presidents if they would lead the country and prevent Congress from becoming in- volved in impotent snarls such as had marked the career of more than one president. In fact, it has been his guiding prin- ciple as a^blic man and there was no just cause for surprise.* Yet the opposition forgot for the moment the Mexican tangle and the new foreign policy to attack this kind of per- sonal rule, this "dictation from the White House." But the Cabinet was a unit behind the President and Congress set about a real reform of the tariff. Not since 1857 had there ^All important apeeches of the President will be found in G. M. Harper's "Addresses of President Wilson," 1918. 'The Rmew of Bevieme for April, 1898, gives a brief outline by Professor Woodrow Wilson of the proper procedure for a president who proposes to lead. ^ THE GREAT REFORMS 137 been any real reduction of the tariff rates. Now came a gen- eral downward revision from an average of 42 per cent, upon imports to a level of 26 per cent. That is, the schedules of 1913 were made substantially what they had been under the Walker Law of 1846. For once the rates of pro- tection were neither suggested nor fixed by representatives of the protected interests. In the Birmingham manufactur- ing district a strong movement was set afoot to persuade its representative, Mr. Underwood, the chairman of the House Committee of Ways and Means, to make exceptions in favour of certain kinds of steel. The movement failed. Then the sugar men of Louisiana, never representing the larger body of people of that state, endeavoured to persuade the Senate that a Democratic tariff must protect sugar. This appeal failed likewise. The beet-sugar men of Michigan and the citrus fruit producers of California made like outcries. But there were, when the law was enacted and put into force, few if any jokers. There was, moreover, a tariff board created whose purpose was to be the study of future protectionist and free-trade propositions. This board was set up to watch the workings of the tariff and make reports and recommendations in the interests of the whole people. Professor F. W. Taussig, the foremost student of the subject in the country, was made its head. If the Wilson plan succeeded, the tariff problem, long since a highly technical matter, would be taken out of politics.^ Of more far-reaching effect was the part of the Underwood- Simmons Tariff Law which enacted an income tax. Eversince the second year of the Civil War Americans had discussed the advisability of an income tax. Mark Twain made unmerci- ful fun of his countrymen for their successful efforts at evasion of the tax that was laid in Lincoln's time. A later law, en- 'F. W. Taussig, "Some Phases of the Tariff Question," New Yorlc, 191S. 138 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK acted during Cleveland's second term, was declared uncon- stitutional by the Supreme Court in a way that greatly in- jured the prestige of that body. At the close of President Taft's term, a constitutional amendment was adopted that removed all obstacles, real or imaginary, to the proposed tax. The cause of the prolonged opposition was the desire of the wealthy people of the country to escape all national taxation, except as they might pay it through the customs house collections upon imports. In other words, the indus- trial districts, with their vast and growing wealth, feared any national tax system because the majority of the country was rural and likely to escape any large levies. The Wilson Administration assumed that a just tax must always be levied according to the ability of people to pay. It did not matter whether the wealth was concentrated in a narrow section in so far as the tax was concerned. The long- desired law was passed at the same time that the tariff was lowered. It was a liberal law in so far as great fortunes were concerned. Incomes of three thousand or less were to be exempt. A man of family was exempt on four thousand. All incomes in excess of twenty thousand a year were to be taxed progressively from two to six per cent., according to amount. Senator Root solemnly attacked the proposed measure in Congress. Once again newspapers of the big cities declared that to tax a rich man at a higher rate than a poor man was outrageous. But the bill became law. It was very imperfect in the beginning. After the great war began it was reshaped and heavy taxes were laid upon the great in- comes. The returns for 1916 of both corporations and per- sonal incomes showed that all the states south of the Potomac and the Ohio and including Texas paid less into the Federal treasury than the single state of Illinois."^ This was proof ■Statistics of Income for 1916, Treasury Department, p. IS. Wealth of the United States, 1860 Each dot indicates one hundred miJHons of property. Note fairly even distribution. Compare with Map on Income Tax for 1916 Distribution of Wealth Shown by Income Tax Returns of 1916 One dot represents one million dollars' income tax paid. Dots are placed as nearly as possible where the tax was collected 140 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK enough that the law was needed; as it was evidence also of the appallingly unequal distribution of wealth among the great industries of the people. A more important matter followed close upon the heels of the so-called Underwood-Simmons tariff. It was the Federal Reserve Banking Law. From the panic of 1907, a commission, headed by Senator Nelson B. Aldrich,'^ had studied the sub- ject of national banking and endeavoured to work out a re- form which should at once render panics obsolete, give the country an even currency, and at the same time focus the control in a great central bank in New York City. Millions had been spent in the expenses of investigations, of visits to Europe, the salaries of experts, and in propaganda. But no constructive act of Congress had been passed. The people as a whole feared and distrusted the men who guided the work; they opposed the idea of a great national bank. Mr. Aldrich and his friends wished a system like that of England or Germany but with the control in the hands of private bankers. While everybody recognized the dangerous situation nobody could hope to win popular approval of the old concentrated financial dictation- which Andrew Jackson had smashed eighty years before. The President gave the banking situation his earnest con- sideration. Secretary McAdoo and Carter Glass, then chair- man of the House Committee on Banking, cooperated, and among them the present Federal Reserve Law was worked out. Mr. Wilson, following the precedent already set, urged the bill upon Congress. There was much debate in both houses and much pressure from without, prophecies without number that no national banking system under governmental '"Senate Documents," eSrd Congress, 1 Session, No. 232. THE GREAT REFORMS 141 direction could succeed.^ Secretary Bryan and other mem- bers of the Cabinet laboured with members of Congress to secure the passage of the bill. It was a ease of governmental "team work" and the reform measure became law in the closing days of 1913. During the spring of 1914 the coimtry was divided into twelve banking districts and reserve cities named. In each city a reserve bank was designated or set up. There was a local board for each. At the head of the system was the Treasury Department whose officers were to be members of the Federal Reserve Board. The financial affairs of the Government as well as the issuing of legal tender, the deter- mination of the emergency policy of the banks of the country in the event of crises, and the distribution of banking reserves were aU under the direction of this board. And the board was under the leadership of the Secretary of the Treasury aind subject to the will of the people. It was indeed a new and a great thing. No other banking system in the world was quite like it. It was the emancipation of the Treasury. New York bankers could not in the future go to Washington, as Mr. J. P. Morgan had done in 1895*, and issue decrees to the president and people. Nor could there be hold-ups of the financial affairs of the country by business men who hlappened to have control of the New York bank reserves. If crops were to be moved, the Secretary of the Treasury and the new board would determine the movement and the loca- tion of the surplus moneys in the country. Credit was eman- cipated as well, for small business men would not need to have balances in certain New York controlled institutions in order to set up new enterprises. It was a redistribution 'In spite of the fact that in England, France, and Germany government control was an es- sential feature of banking operations. •Carl Hovey, "The Lite Story of J. Pierpont Morgan," Ch. VIII. 142 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK of the power which surplus bank deposits and the con- sequent accumulation of bank credits had concentrated in a few hands.^ The system went into operation in November, 1914, when the disturbances of world finance due to the great war were becoming acute in the United States. Financiers of every group and interest were more than glad that the new system was ready, and there has been Uttle hostile criticism of the law and its workings since it went into eflFect. The country has, after the mistakes and blunders of many banking and financ- ing experiments, including those of Hamilton, Calhoun, Biddle, Walker, and Chase, at last a plan of operation and control that is likely to prevent those extremes of economic panic and disaster which have made and ruined so many people in the past. Of similar general import was the Administration anti- trust measiu-e of the winter and spring of 1914, a constructive amendment of the ineffective Sherman Act of 1890. It changed the Sherman Law by defining its terms, forbidding local price-fixing and exclusive agreements, and abohshing interlocking directorates in interstate corporations, raihoads, banks, and trust companies wherever these came, into con- nection with the Federal Reserve system. It estabUshed the Federal Trade Board which was to study and regulate the conduct of the interstate business of the country, except as to the railroads. Perhaps the most important provision of this anti-trust law was the definite exemption of labour organizations from its operations. Likewise farmers' organ- izations, not intended for profit, were declared not to be trusts in the sense of the law. Thus injunctions against strikes and boycotting and attacks upon farmers' organiza- ^The beat short account of the Federal Reserve system known to the writer is the article in the "Encyclopedia Americana," Vol. S, pp. 181-188. THE GREAT REFORMS 143 tions, so long subjects of bitter contentions, were rendered obsolete.^ ' — — The only important recommendation which the President made that was not enacted into law was that which proposed that the Interstate Commerce Commission should regulate the issue of securities by the railway companies. All through the year 1913 and almost to the end of 1914 Mr. Wilson held Congress together, pressed far-reaching measures upon their attention, and himself set the example of high devotion to the public interest. He assumed a gentle, optimistic tone in his commimications to the legislators which was characteristic of him, although it was evident that he held men to their tasks and guided the lawmaking with a most resolute if not an iron hand. The great reforms had been definitely set up. The foreign affairs of the Nation had been given a new turn. Not since the Declaration of Independence had any leader of the country more clearly voiced the ideals which Americans loved to think they believed in. The new tariff law not only re- duced the general average to a lower level than the country had known since 1860, it placed wool, sugar, and meats upon the free list; and many other articles of common consumption came in free or paid a low duty. The Government was defi- nitely master not only of its own finances, but it controlled and regulated the money and credits of the country, which had never been true before, nor were any of the great countries of Europe so free from the domination of their financial groups. And almost from the first even the bankers them- selves acknowledged that the national finances were safe. On the trust issue equally far-reaching measures had been enacted and there was every reason to believe that no future turn of party history would upset them. «F. A. Ogg, "National Progress," 229-«S*. 144 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK The President was the unquestioned leader of Congress; his method had justified itself and there was ample reason to believe that the country approved. In every fresh appeal to Congress Wilson had urged that he was seeking only to heal the wounds of business or endeavouring to do what thoughtful men had long since agreed should be done. He disparaged no one. He assumed the agreement of even big business men with the purport of his reforms. When he was ready to make a new move in Congress, he asked the members of the appropriate committees to meet him for discussion. The result was a matured legislative plan which was generally enacted into law very much as had been suggested. Al- though he acknowledged that many of his party leaders were far from democratic, he assumed them to be disposed to give democracy a trial. If any of them threatened to be recalcitrant, it was quietly intimated that he would have to "take the matter to the people." Not since the days of Jefferson had there been such a complete master of nien in Washington. ' Yet the great programme might fail. The industrial belt, the leaders of the great cities, the former Republican and Progressive party chieftains, insisted that Wilson was only a minority president. They composed the majority. Those who were behind the President were ridiculed as pro- vincial Southerners, as sectionalists seeking only sectional interests. Great industry, so powerful in all the Northern states, connected with the old diplomacy of Europe, in full control of most of the metropolitan press, putting out its many billions' worth of goods a year and intimately con- nected with the banking systems of ijie world, was by no means ready to surrender. The Boston Transcript said that the New England interests had been flayed, that the country must simply endure the tariff for a while. The bankers of THE GREAT REFORMS 145 the Nation held a conference at Chicago when the Reserve plan was before Congress and presented their demands for a single great bank, and most of the papers urged to the out- break of the great war that the new law must be a failure. Would all that had been done prove a failure? Only an election could determine the answer to that ques- tion. There was no doubt that Wilson was popular, or that he had fulfilled the promises of his party in the campaign of 1912, or that his reforms were just and in accordance with democratic principles. It is not justice and democracy that determine the success or failure of public men. There must be no great accidents and there must be repeated victories at the polls. It has generally required three successful presi- dential elections in the United States to secure the success of any great reform movement. Could the minority Presi- dent meet that test? CHAPTER Vm WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS BUT before the first electoral test of the Wilson Ad- ministration could be made, other and very grave problems pressed upon the President for solution. The German Kaiser had been wont to boast that nothing should happen anywhere in the world without his consent. And there was opportunity enough for German intervention in Mexico long before the break into Belgium in 1914. Although Wilson in- sisted in December, 1913, upon leaving the Mexicans to their own devices but continued the Taft embargo upon the sale of arms to the warring factions, European traders found ways to supply the needful arms and European statesmen recog- nized Huerta in spite of the President's known purpose never to do so. Before the winter of 1914 had passed Venustiano Car- ranza, strongly supported by "General" Villa, made rapid headway against the usurper. In the hope of bringing about a better state of things than Huerta promised, Wilson lifted the embargo on arms and other supplies on February 3, 1914. This operated in favour of Carranza, and of course the Huertistas put forth their utmost efforts to maintain themselves. A few days after this move by the President, some bluejackets of Admiral Mayo's squadron, lying off the coast of Tampico, went ashore to buy gasoline. They were arrested. Although the sailors were promptly released. Mayo demanded a public apology in the form of a salute to 146 WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 147 his flag. Huerta refused, and the matter was referred to Washington. Wilson now repeated the demand, and the. dictator refused. A vigorous poUcy )3eing set up, the President now presented an ultimatum which was ignored. When a German steamer bearing military supplies approached Vera Cruz a day or two later, the President ordered the port to be seized. On April 21st, the principal port of Mex- ico fell almost undefended into American hands.^ The followers of Huerta made violent outcry. General Carranza, a sort of protege of the United States, likewise made protest. Argentine, Brazil, and Chili looked upon the move as but the beginning of a war of conquest against Mexico. In spite of Wilson's earnest words at Mobile the preceding October, Latin -Americans everywhere doubted him. The President insisted that he was not warring upon Mexico and that he would do everything in his power to aid the distracted country. The so-called A.B.C. powers offered their assistance in the solution of the Mexican prob- lem. Wilson gladly accepted and on July 15th, Huerta aban- doned the country. On August 20th, Carranza entered the capital. It seemed that the long-desired end had been at- tained. But Villa now declared war upon his former friend and set about organizing northern Mexico in order to gain for himself the coveted presidency. Wilson was sorely perplexed. Before the end of the year Carranza was com- pelled to abandon the city of Mexico and chaos worse con- founded prevailed all over the coimtry. Now the extreme imperialists of the United States renewed their press cam- paign for immediate intervention and for ultimate annexa- tion. Wilson refused to enter upon such a drastic policy. Once more the President had recoiu-se to the governments of South America. Argentine, Brazil, ChiU, Bolivia, Uru- 'Brief statement of these facts will be found in F. A. Ogg's "National Progress," 292-294. 148 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK guay, and Guatemala sent delegates to a conference in Wash- ington in the hope that a satisfactory provisional govern- ment might be set up in Mexico. But Carranza regained control of the capital in October, 1915, and the various coun- tries concerned recognized him as the head of the de facto government of Mexico. Diplomatic relations were renewed; but Wilson expressed his doubt to Congress in December: "Whether we have benefited Mexico by the course we have pursued remains to be seen. Her fortunes are in her own hands. We have shown that we will not take advantage of her in her distress."* In the midst of the difficulties of the Mexican situation, and just after the German war broke upon the world, Mr. Wilson was called upon to endure a personal ordeal such as must have told upon any man. Mrs. Wilson, his first wife, was a woman of the old Southern school, a member, like himself, of a prominent Presbyterian family of Georgia. She had been the-maker of their home at Princeton and had shared the honours and struggles of his University presidency v They had been the centre of much national interest when they went to the White House; and their simple, democratic household in Washington had still further endeared Mrs. Wilson to the country. Now she was taken ill. Her case became serious in the summer of 1914, but no relief could be found and she died on August 6th in the most exciting days of the great war. The whole world felt for the President, and right-thinking folk everywhere regretted that so true a wo- man and typical an American must be taken in the very beginning of her husband's marvellous career. The stricken husband followed the remains to Rome, Georgia, the little town where she had lived when young Wilson won her hand twenty-nine years before. ^Senate Journal, 64th Congress, 1 Session, 6-7. WAES AND RUMOURS OF WARS 149 In the spring of 1914, when foreign pressure upon the Mexican embroglio seemed greater than the circumstances justified, Wilson sent Colonel Edward M. House, a very observant and thoughtful personal friend, to Berlin in the hope of ascertaining the purposes of belligerent German statesmen. The situation proved to be positively dangerous. At a great dinner high officials of the old regime talked to him as though war was at the very door. In Paris and London, on the contrary, the atmosphere was calm and the leaders would not believe that Germany meant anything more than the ac- customed bluster.* But no one in Europe took the President seriously. They considered him an inexperienced idealist, if not a mere demagogue, and intimated that a year or two of experience would bring him to a more practical point of view. Colonel House returned, anxious as to the state of things, but hardly expecting the sudden outbreak that a few months was to reveal. On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war on Russia for her support of the Serbian campaign against Austro-German aggression. The next day all Europe was con- fronted with what had long been feared, a world war. General von Kluck, commander of the right wing of the great German army, prepared to the last shoe-lace, marched directly upon Paris, the first objective of German military strategy, talked of and discussed since 1871 . Never was there a greater crisis, never before so vast a military force set in motion as if upon the "drop of the hat." Without hesitation or parley the Germans went through Belgium, giving military necessity as the excuse and adding cynically that treaties were but scraps of paper anyway.^ At LiSge von Kluck was held for a short time; but he was only delayed. His army flung its right 'Arthur Howden Smith, "The Real Colonel House," Chap. XIX. *It is only fair to say, however, that every great government engaged in the war against Germany, including the United States, has violated the plainest stipulation of treaties. 150 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK upon the French border in the neighbourhood of Namur and pressed hard upon every road toward the French capital. The initial move was to be completed in six weeks and from Paris terms were to be dictated to France before England could make her power felt. The French gathered troops in front of their capital, and the British sent their little army of a hundred thousand men to worry von Kluck's right flank. The English forces were annihilated; but by some miraculous means the French broke the German drive at the Marne during the early days of September. Von Kluck was compelled to retreat thirty or forty miles and entrench. The first act in the terrible tragedy closed. A second r6le was playing in the marshes of northeastern Germany where von Hindenburg drove hundreds of thousands of Russians to surrender in the Masurian lake region and won for himself the first place among German military men. At the same time Austria pressed in vain upon little Serbia. Cold weather came and the warring peoples of Europe settled down to their first winter in the trenches. Americans, all unaware of the tense state of things in the rest of the world, were amazed. They shuddered instinctively at the display of power by Germany. The excuse given for the invasion of Belgium, the idea that treaties were but scraps of paper, tended to make them opponents of the Kaiser and his army, if not of the German people. But the President declared that the country would be neutral and he even insisted upon neutrality of thought as well as word. Leading public men openly endorsed the policy, and Mr. Roosevelt told a visiting delegation of Belgians in the early autumn that no other line of procedure could be contemplated.' * W. R. Thayer's "Theodore Roosevelt, an Intimate Biography," Boston, 1919, seems to gfoA this over; but the facts are too well known to be omitted. WAES AND RUMOURS OF WARS 151 The German Ambassador, Johann von Bernstorff, returned to Washington from a visit to Berlin in the autumn. He talked like a victor. Only northeastern France was to be annexed to Germany. But of course the French colonies would not be returned. The Monroe Doctrine would be respected as it applied to South America. Canada, how- ever, had not remained neutral and her fate would there- fore be settled in Berlin. ^ It was plain that the fortunes of the United States would be greatly affected by the German war, if Germany should succeed. At the same time Doctor Bernhard Dernburg, a former member of the German imperial cabinet and a man of high authority in his own country, began under the direction of the ambassador a campaign of propaganda that was designed to reconcile Americans to the new state of things in Europe. Scores, if not hundreds, of well-paid agents of Germany were turned loose upon the country to speak before imiversity audiences, chambers of commerce, and other organ- izations in which German-Americans were influential mem- bers. It was but a renewal of the campaign which men like Professor Kiihnemann had conducted a few years before in the Middle West.'' The greater German professors, led by Eduard Meyer, not only declared that the German war was forced upon Germany; they urged in speeches and in magazine ar- ticles that the war was another struggle like that of Rome and Carthage; that Germany was the modern Rome and England the modern Carthage that must be forever de- stroyed. The German clergy proclaimed it a holy war and American-bom Lutherans could not resist the call to render ^Literary Digest, November 7, 1914. Gives press quotations. 'W. R. Thayer, "Life of John Hay, " II, Oh. i88, gives a good but exaggerated account of this propaganda. 152 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK moral assistance. In fact, Germans everywhere flocked to their chm-ches with unwonted zeal to pray for the Kaiser and world-subjugation.i The Kaiser and the higher German officers both of the army and the navy made constant appeals of this sort. Junkers, industrial leaders, commercial men, like Herr Ballin of Hamburg, socialists, and women of all classes boasted of the unity of Germany, of the sacred war, of the duty and privilege to serve so noble a cause. Purpose, grim as death, and ambition, high as that of the fallen angels themselves, were proclaimed from every public place in the Fatherland. It was imperial Germany at her worst. Would she succeed? Would she win American public opin- ion.'' That was, in fact, the great question. If she won, she would conquer the world. And there was every reason she should do so in 1914. For many years American students had been accustomed to study in German universities where indeed the best authorities in the world were to be found. Very many of these returned to their own coun- try unable to distinguish between the good and the bad in German civilization, and when the great war began they promptly took the side of autocracy.' Naturally the close connection between American and German univer- sities led to the ready acceptance of the German world- propaganda in the elaborate system of exchange professor- ships that prevailed several years before 1914. The Ger- man Ambassador, Johann von Bernstorflf, was justified in the feeling that his country was very close to the academic world when within five years after his appointment to Wash- ^Evidenced in almost all the newspapers that came from Germany. Larger American libraries have photostat files of German papers for the war years. ^Some of the most distinguished of American scholars announced in public speech that France and England were decadent nations and hence their time had come. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 153 ington he received the doctorate of laws from ten leading American universities.^ In the business world it was not different. Germany was practically one vast business establishment, so per- fect was its organization. American manufacturers were captivated with the idea of German efficiency which was the result of the German habit of subordination and in- dustry. Few men labour so willingly and cheerfully under direction as do the Germans. This delighted men whose only object in life is the making of money. Consequently chambers of commerce and industrial associations in the country made a study of the German method. German consuls and German tradesmen in American cities were the most popular of all foreign business men. They at- tended formal dinners as guests of honour and they were not backward in receiving the tributes of their hosts to their country and its ideal institutions. The greatest of American bankers was received at court when he went to Berlin, and he showed his appreciation by giving the empress a necklace of incomparable beauty.^ The German vogue was even more evident in the United States army. From the time of the Franco-Prussian war American military men admired the German system. Gen- erals Sherman and Sheridan set the pace. Major-General Emory Upton visited the Prussian camps and military estab- lishments soon after the close of the American Civil War and made reports urging the necessity of American imitation of the perfect machinery of destruction he had observed and studied. Elihu Root, under the direction of President Roose- velt, set up an American general staff quite like that which ^Aliatof the universities confernng the degree will be found in "Who's Who in America,*^ Vol. IX. '1 give only one example of this. There were many Americans of wealth who paid court in effective ways to the imperial regime in Berlin. 154 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK managed the German part of the recent war. And young officers were set to work mapping imaginary campaigns in foreign couhtijes, just as young German officers had done for decades. Military historical societies were organized, military magazines published, and even military history de- partments were set up in old academic institutions. Major- General Upton!s "Military Policy of the United States," a book which ridiculed the whole history of the country on the ground of its martial inefficiency, was made a sort of bible at West Point."- It is stiU the favourite book of all the army camps. Its ideal is the conscription system which had wrought so much for Germany in the Bismarckian period. Before the great war the whole tone of the army was Prussian, even down to the styles of boots that officers must wear to distinguish them from "buck" privates. Of even more importance was the influence of imperial Ger- manyamongthe large German populationof the United States. Great numbers of Germans had emigrated to the country to escape the rigours of the growing aristocratic system of their native land. Very many of these, especially those who came before the Civil War, were idealists of a high type. Carl Schurz was probably the best representative of these. They thought to find in America the freedom, liberty, as men used to say, that men could not have in Europe. But Germans are industrious and enterprising. They quickly made small or great fortunes. A man with a fortune has a hard struggle keeping faith with ideals or democracy. The Germans in the United States were tempted above their ability to resist. Throughout the long boom period of 1866 to 1914, every- body in the North seemed to get rich. A man had but to I ^This work was the result of the writer's visit to Germany. General Sherman wished it published at public expense about 1882. Elihu Root secured its publication as a public* doco- ment in 1903. WARS AND BmiOURS OF WARS 155 buy a few acres of ground, fairly distributed about the grow- ing cities, and he would grow rich in spite of himself. And as the Americans grew rich, they paid slight homage to that democracy their fathers had worshipped. They rather set- themselves to the task of thwarting democracy. The Ger- mans could not but follow the example. There was not a dynasty worship in America, but there was a cult of success, of devotion to riches thatequalled in its influence upon success- ful newcomers that worship of the Hohenzollerns which char- acterized Bismarckian Germany. The whole drift of the two generations which followed 1866, especially in the North, was away from democracy.^ The Germans were easily caught in the drift. It meant the breaking up of whatever of idealism they had been able to maintain. Moreover, successful Germans loved to revisit the ancient fatherland. There they made judicious display of their easily won wealth, and their kinsmen and friends of kins- men looked on with ravished countenances. They talked of the scores of great German names in the American world of business and these talked of the fine social system which Germany maintained, a land where every man knew his place and servants behaved themselves as servants should behave. It was a case of mutual admiration.'' German- Americans ceased to condemn the rigorous class system of their home country. They rather liked it since they had become wealthy. The better-known Germans who returned were received in aristocratic circles. Carl Schurz, who had a price set upon his head in 1850, returned often to Berlin in later years and was honoured by imperiaUsm itself. He lost his hatred of iautocracy. He rejoiced in the greatness of the '"The Education of Henry Adams," Boston, 1918, is throughout a stinging comment upon this fact. '"Memoirs of Henry Villard," U, S48-S49. 156 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK power that had once clamoured for his blood. And there were thousands of the same faith. American-born Germans became better Germans than their fathers had been, even though they did not speak the German language with ease. When university presidents talked to newspaper reporters about the honoiu-s they received from the Kaiser, when the greatest business men were obsequious in Berlin, and when high army oflScers but reflected the Prussian model, how might ordinary German- Americans escape the contagion? They did not. Only the poorer element, the workers in the mills, and the farmers, neither of whom ever cut any great figure on return trips to their ancient homes, escaped, al- though they, too, naturally felt a warmer place in their hearts for Germany than they could feel even for the best liberalism of which they coxdd learn anything in England or France. The way was surely prepared for the German propaganda when the great war drew nigh. And never did a country make more use of its opportunity than did the German imperialists before "der Tag."^ A German-American alliance was organ- nized to press the cause of Germany upon all possible occa- sions. Germanistic societies were set up and distinguished Americans of native ancestry were made honorary mem- bers. Professors of the German language and literature in the imiversities failed to distinguish between the subjects they taught and the cause the Hohenzollern dynasty repre- sented. Members of the older New England, and even Southern, famiKes became identified with these societies and better Germans than democrats. There was indeed good reason for men to believe that hundreds of thousands of Ger- Wer Tag was a term frequently used by German students and others to indicate wlien the world war was to begin. WAES AND RUMOURS OF WARS 157 man- Americans would accept" the unprecedented Delbrueck law of 1913, which set up a plan of double citizenship for Ger- mans in foreign countries whereby they could be citizens under other sovereignties but still serve the Kaiser. ^ It became plain before the end of 1914 that the mainte- nance of neutrality would be quite as difficult in the early twentieth century as it had been in the late eighteenth when the French revolution set Europe on fire. But neutrality became as difficult a matter from another angle as it was from that of the German-American propa- ganda. Business men quickly saw the opportunity of a great war. They sought at once to sell their goods in every market of the world. Britain set up a blockade against the central powers, Germany and Austria. Here was indeed cause for trouble. The price of foodstufiPs rose at once. Ger- many received her share for a time, but when the imperial government established a food control, England declared foodstuffs consigned to Germany contraband of war. Meat packers and grain exporters at once made complaint in Wash- ington. Wilson argued with the British authorities as ur- gently as the precedents of the Civil War would allow. When England refused to yield, prominent American lawyers went to London to fight the blockade. They did not quite succeed, but they became potential friends of Germany in the days that were to come. Wilson pressed more strenuously for the rights of trade in the first and second years of the war than be- came an ardent friend of democracy; but business men and their allies the bankers can make difficulties for government in any country that must be avoided or parried.' 1" QeaetzsammlunQ fiir die Konigliche Preusnache Staaien," 1911-1914, pp. 654-67. Discussion of the law pro and con in Yale Law Review No. 27, p. 312 and 479, et eeq. See also American Journal itf International Law, 1914, 214-17. 'All thrqugh 1915 the Secretary of State argued with the British Foreign Office about the rights of neutrals. 158 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK The war, nevertheless, gave a great impetus to American foreign trade. Whatever was lost in the direct commerce with Germany was regained in the volume of trade with near-by neutrals, and the export of munitions to France and England soon amounted to hundreds of millions per year. The annual output of industry when Wilson entered the presidency was somewhat more than twenty billions. ' The total of foreign exports and imports was about two billions a year. In 1917, when Wilson recommended war, the output of American industry was thirty billions a year and the total of foreign trade approached six billions.^ When the great war began American business men and corporations owed Euro- peans at least foiu* billions and the gold balances were a little diflBcult to maintain. When the country went to war in 1917, all the four billions of debt had been paid, Europe owed large sums to Americans, and the' great gold reserves of the world were on this side of the Atlantic. What mat- tered it now if the tariff were reduced and the banks were brought under strict Federal control? It was no longer a problem of competing imports that frightened industrial men. The representatives of Britain, France, Italy, Russia, and Japan hung about the antechambers of New York banks seeking loans upon any terms. Deprived of a directing hand in national affairs, the leaders of industry and the heads of the banks simply took over for a time the economic affairs of the world. Was there ever such a revolution wrought over- night? At once the workers felt the swell. Immigration stopped. The demand for fresh labour increased two-fold. The suc- cess of the allied governments of western Europe depended upon the intensity and regularity of American labour. If ^** Abstract of the Census." 1010, page 445. '"AmericaD Yearbook." 1917. Chapter Xn. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 159 our railway system failed to bear the new burdens of trade, the Germans would win the war. All "slack" labour of the cities was taken up. More men worked at night than ever before. Daylight saving was resorted to. Increasing numbers of women entered industry. Servants became scarce and the prices for domestic service quickly rose to the point that middle-class folk could not afford servants. Gen- tle hands learned the uses of "Dutch cleanser" and college professors scrubbed bathroom floors instead of chasing golf balls over eighteen-hole links. The presence of a household servant became again evidence of economic rather than social standing. Of course Labour organized. Samuel Gompers, the presi- dent of the American Federation of Labour, was almost as important a figure in the world as Woodrow Wilson. Labour unions increased their membership beyond all former totals and Labour leaders realized for the first time in American history that they were real powers in the world. ^ Farm work- ers from the West and Negroes from the cotton fields were drawn by the hundreds of thousands to the industrial cities. In many regions people talked of importing Chinese coolies to aid in the rougher tasks of the country. In Chicago the Negro problem became real and out of it grew a political ma- chine that is not likely to break down in years to come, an organization of German-Swedish-Negro and even Irish voters that quickly showed its strength. In east St. Louis riots resulted from the great influx of Negroes. But in spite of all the changes and the disturbances and the constantly rising cost of labour, the industrial pace was greatly hastened, rail- road cars carried bigger loads than ever before, and the grain- and meat-producing states increased their exports, if only by a small margin. Only the cotton and sugar producers failed '"American Yearbook," 1917, Chapter XV. 160 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK to find workers to keep up their former pace. Women and boys worked in the cotton fields, ran elevators and trolleys. Every class of people learned what a small place is the modern world; they began to see in spite of themselves that the United States was involved in the European struggle. In the midst of this swirl of financial,.industrial, and agricul- tural readjustment what was a mere government to do? Wilson sought to meet the needs of industry by pressing upon Congress in the autumn of 1914 a shipping bill which, if passed, must have supplied the country with the sorely needed tonnage of 1918. Not one tenth of the exports of the country could be carried in American ships. Britain was compelled to employ half her shipping for war purposes. The President and the Secretary of the Treasury urged Con- gress from 1914 to 1916 to pass some measure. Congress resisted. Even the representatives of Great Britain objected lest the United States buy the German tonnage then in American waters! Eastern senators who, in 1919, attacked the President every day for unwisdom upon every possible subject then attacked him for proposing to do the very thing that all parties united to do later at a cost of billions of dol- lars. ^ It was pitiable to witness the jealousies of otherwise good men in a crisis like that; but it is perhaps ever so in democratic countries. Wilson was more successful in another of his great re- forms. From the very first days of his term he had con- templated the enactment of a farm loan, or farmers' aid, law that should enable tenants to purchase land for themselves. Since 1880 tenantry had been rapidly increasing in every state of the Union. If a law could be passed which would give poor, inarticulate folk the benefit of low rates of interest, instead of the very high rates they had ever paid, and long- »" American Yearbook," 1917, ChapteriXIX. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 161 temi credit, even very simple men might become inde- pendent and thus make good democratic elements in the republic. On July 17, 1916, the Farm Loan Act was passed. It pro- vided for farmers' banks in each of the Federal Reserve districts, but in different cities from those in which the re- serve banks were located. It set up machinery for the ascertaining of land values, the needs of farmers, and the loans to those who wished to purchase lands. The Federal land banks were to have a capital each of $750,000 which might be increased to meet the growth of business. At the head of the system there was a Federal Farm Loan Board which was to guide the system, without intervention of the Federal courts, and recommend to the Government changes of the law and of the policy thus initiated. It was another of those constructive measures, like the Clayton Antitrust Law, which provided the machinery to make effectual the measures legally set up. And the people of the country, acting through the Secretary of the Treasury who was to be the head of the Farm Loan Board, would thus supervise the law and lend assistance to the men who make the nation's bread. '^ Another proposal of equally far-reaching effect was already before Congress. The war increased men's incomes in xm- precedented manner. New millionaires were created by the thousands. Yet the Government's income declined more than a hundred millions a year. Politicians, who were interested in the old regime, declared the shortage was due to the bad Democratic tariff. Thoughtful men everywhere knew otherwise. But the instant needs of the Treasury compelled a restoration of tariff taxes on certain items, like sugar, in order to meet actual deficits. Wilson acquiesced ^A good brief account of the Federal Farm Loan Act will be found in "The Encyclopedia Americana/' n, p. 78. 162 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK in this doubtful makeshift only to press the more e£fectively for a change of the financial policy of the country. Since the days of Washington indirect taxes had been the resort of the Treasury, for the reason that the Federal government, as compared with the state governments, was not sufficiently popular to endure a heavy direct tax. In 1893, President Cleveland caused an income tax to be enacted. The Supreme Court vetoed it, as I have already pointed out. In 1913 an amendment to the Federal consti- tution was ratified. A change of the national tax policy and a practical abandonment of the tariff as a means of raising revenue had already been made tentatively in the Under- wood tariff. But a party that had not a full popular ma- jority behind it might not so readily do what all political scientists knew to be right and proper. Now that the Euro- pean war had so completely upset the old system and the national psychology was directed at other and very vital measures, the time was ripe for the change. In September, 1916, Congress enacted upon the suggestion of the President the first income tax law that was really aimed at the reform of the old system. This law left the minimum untaxed income at $3,000 as did the former statute. But it laid surtaxes upon incomes that ranged above $40,000, upon the profits of munitions makers, and especially upon inheritances from estates of a million or above. The intention of the law was to do what justice would have required to be done in 1789, to raise the larger part of the national income directly from those who were most able to pay and not indirectly from consumers who must pay upon the necessaries of life.^ At any other time in American history, with the possible exception of the Civil War years, the passage of any such law would have ruined i"V. S. statutes at Large," XXXIX, Pt. 1, page i. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 163 the leaders who sponsored it. As it was, the new pohey was declared to be the product of sectional politicians, like Mr. Claude Kitchin, who sought to lay the burden of national taxes upon the Northern people. In the very nature of things the tax must be paid by the industrial communities.^ But for the confusion of war time there would have been a bitter attack upon Wilson for this measure. The new income tax law was hardly on the statute book before a worse thing befell. The scarcity of labour and the vital r6le of workingmen in the great war gave American laboiu" leaders an importance, as I have already indicated, that no president could ignore; in fact, no government of Europe dared ignore the workers there, not even the Kaiser himself. In the summer of 1916 the brotherhoods of Amer- ican railway engineers, firemen, and conductors determined to bring on a strike which should tie up every business in the country, a strike which would, in fact, have given Germany the victory if persisted in for a considerable period. The railway men asked only for an eight-hour day. The railway managers refused to grant the demand. The country be- came intensely anxious. The representatives of the allied governments of western Europe were not less anxious. If the strike came there would be no relief through injunctions of Federal courts, as had been the case in the past, for the recent Clayton Antitrust Law exempted strikes from that sort of interference. The President asked for an arbitration as provided by existing law. The Labour leaders, perfectly con- scious of their strength, refused to arbitrate.^ On August 29th, when only a week remained before the crisis would begin, Wilson went before Congress and almost demanded The working of the law may be studied in' "Statistics of Income." Published by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, 1918. »F. A. Ogg, "National Progress," 353-360. 164 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK the immediate passage of what has since been known as the Adamson Law. In his proposals, Wilson definitely took the side of La- ibour in its long struggle with Capital. He urged the eight- hour day, an increase of the powers of the Interstate Com- merce Commission over railway matters so that an inves- tigation of the value of railway properties might be made to determine future rates, the prohibition of future strikes on railways without a prior public investigation, and the author- ization of the president to seize and operate the roads in case of military necessity. In such contingency the Govern- ment was to take control of the railways, command railway employes, and keep the channels of interstate commerce open very much as the general of an army commands in time of war. Radical and far-reaching as these recommendations were, they became" law within the short time of a week with the exception that Congress refused to set up machinery for deal- ing with strikes. There was instant need of all he asked. The government of the whole people could not allow the coimtry to be brought into utter chaos either by strikers or owners of railway properties. In this measure, the President took for the time the point of view of Labour; but he also tried to provide a definite legal procedure in case of future difficulty. The Government under the Adamson Law as originally pro- posed would have found its position secure and Laboiur must have recognized its duty to the public.'^ Very conservative men who had never recognized Labour as an organized body of workers hastened to procure from the courts a pronouncement upon the constitutionality of the law. Certain Labour men were quite willing to see the lA brief of the law will be found in the "American Yearbook," 1916, p. 20. The act is in "U. S. Statutes," XXXTX. pt. I, pp. 721-7«2. WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 165 matter tested for they did not like the idea of so complete a recognition of the power of the Government to control work- ingmen as was given in the law. Judge Hook of the United States circuit court of Kansas City declared the law uncon- stitutional on November 22, 1916. The case was quickly taken to the Supreme Court which, perhaps influenced by the atmosphere of war, decided in favour of the law. The long- disputed question of the power of the Government over busi- ness and labour came to an end. The interests of the people was pronoimced to be the supreme end of government. ^ From outward appearance the President had won and it looked as if all branches of the Government were at last in harmony. Never had the courts seemed to catch the pace of the country quite so well. It was, in fact, not so harmoni- ous as it appeared to the world. American participation in the great war was so near that more people began to feel the spirit of cooperation. Indeed there were other questions on which disagreement and bitter partisanship were evident. The settlement of the Mexican upheaval which seemed to have been made in the autumn of 1915 was only tentative. In the midst of the German war the Kaiser, Ambassador von BernstorflP, and the German minister in Mexico did what they could to disturb the relations of the countries in order that the United States might have troubles enough at home and hence not be able to ship so much ammunition to Europe. A worse difficulty was that which imperialists of the United States created who wished to compel the Government to intervene in Mexico and ultimately take possession of the country. Many newspapers never lost an opportunity to make difficulty for the President.^ And Villa was always ready to receive ^The decision turned upon a vote of five to four, but unlike other close votes of the court in the past, this one seems to have been accepted as final by the country. ^lA^ary Vigeatt July 6, 1916. Gives newspaper comment. 166 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK assistance or encouragement in his endeavours to unseat Carranza. In March, 1916, Villa led several hundred of his motley soldiers across the border and fell unawares upon the little town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing several inhabitants and doing great damage to property. Had the time come at last for that long-sought intervention? Would the Presi- dent surrender to the more selfish elements of his own country and "clean up Mexico"? TheChicago rnftwree now declared that Mexico was a ripe apple, ready for the picking. Senator Fall of New Mexico and the Governor of Texas thought the time had come to make an end of their unruly neighbour. Wilson, still intent upon leaving Mexico to solve her own problems, sent Brigadier-General John J. Pershing with a small army to punish Villa. The wily Mexican chieftain could not be found. A second raid occurred in May, 1916, while the American Government 'was negotiating with Car- ■ ranza in solemn manner about the anomalous situation. The President then called upon the border states to get their militia in readiness. The National Guard was next sent to the Southern border to drill and be held in readiness for eventualities. Before the summer closed about 150,000 men were called into service, and both the Germans abroad and the imperialists at home expected the United States would become involved in a troublesome war in Mexico.' But Wilson simply patrolled the long frontier and sent minor expeditions into Mexico to punish raids and keep the peace, if such a state of things could be called peace. Villa continued to elude every effort to capture him and remained a disturbing factor in the international situation till the very 'All the periodicals and newspapers give evidence of tliis. F. A. Ogg, in "National Progress/* 802-304i gives a good summary of the state of things although his treatment of the President^ policy is rather grudging. WAES AND RUMOURS OF WARS 167 entry of the United States into the European war. Carranza, the recognized head of the Mexican Government, protested all the while that he would bring about a settled state of things and put a stop to the raids into the United States. His position was indeed diflScult. President Wilson met the Carranza authorities more than half way, continued to allow munitions to be shipped to the city of Mexico to be used against Villa, and agreed to various conferences looking to a solution of the difficulties on the frontier. The first of these conferences was held at El Paso from April 29 to May 2, 1916. But as the Mexicans demanded immediate withdrawal of troops without giving any evidence that they would be able to maintain peace on their side of the international border nothing came of the discussions. In a long statement to Carranza of June 20th, President Wil- son rehearsed the whole Mexican situation. This explana- tion of the American policy was likewise given to the repre- sentatives of the other Latin governments in Washington. ^ It shows, above all. President Wilson's patience and set pur- pose not to interfere in Mexican affairs. He would have the Mexicans set their own house in order. He would even sacrifice the Just and reasonable interests of Americans in the troubled region rather than render aid to the rapacious de- mands of imperialists who wished to exploit and even annex the coimtry. Carranza replied to this appeal with a request for a joint commission to work out a solution of the Mexican difficulties. The proposition was accepted. Three Mexican commis- sioners met Messrs. Franklin K. Lane, George Gray, and John R. Mott first at New London and later at Atlantic City during the late summer and autumn of 1916. Many matters connected with the long Mexican tragedy were '"American Yearbook," 1916, 82-84. 168 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK discussed frankly and an agreement arrived at on Novembei 24th. But General Carranza still manifested a jealousy and a petty disposition now to accept and now to reject arrangements made by the commissioners. Before the end of the year he definitely announced that nothing was accepted, and all the negotiations of the preceding autumn came to naught. But since the chronic disorders of the Mexican frontier were im- proving. President Wilson was constrained to leave matters there to later developments. In all these" negotiations it was evident not only that the President wished to be just and fair but that General Carranza had to do with a people that was poor, ignorant, and convinced that the people of the United States meant to seize their resources and even the country itself. During three quarters of a century the con- duct of the Government in Washington had given excuse for such fears. But bigger issues than those of the Mexican frontier were daily pressing for solution. Busy as the country was in 1915 with the Mexican com- plications, with the growing labour disturbances due to the great war, with the manufacture of mimitions, and the in- creasing difficulty of maintaining neutrality in such a war as Germany insisted upon conducting, there came a personal romance in the President's life. And a romance in the White House must always interest the people of the coimtry. On December 18, 1915, Mr. Wilson was married in simple but dignified ceremony to Mrs. Edith Boiling Gait, a prominent woman of Washington City and a member of an old Virginia family. The couple went away for a short stay at the famous Hot Springs of Virginia, where Virginians had spent honey- moons for a century or more. Then the second Mrs. Wilson settled down to the life of the White House and to making for the sore-troubled President the best home of which she was capable, a service of real importance to the country for WARS AND RUMOURS OF WARS 169 Mr. Wilson is the most domestic of men and loves above all a quiet and gentle fireside. In spite of little jealousies that seem to have disturbed the minds of some society folk of New York and Washington itself, any one who has known anything of the inside life of the President's home will bear witness to its perfect beauty and taste. There the family circle is simply the family circle, and Mrs. Wilson is and has been every day the servant of the country in that she has smoothed the few hours the harassed President has spent these last five years in the quiet of his household. Little as the marriage of the President properly has to do with the President's oflScial duties, so many people showed a growing interest in Mrs. Wilson that she accompanied him on his tour of the country in January of 1916 when he sought to know the mind of the people about the great war and possible preparations for American participation. She was received with great enthusiasm in Chicago and elsewhere. Since that time she has been an almost constant companion of Mr. Wilson on his trips, to the Paris conference and on his Western tour on behalf of the league of nations. Even the marriage was not without influence in the campaign of 1916 when so many things were thrust into a situation already too tangled for most folk to comprshend with ease. CHAPTER IX THE ELECTION OF 1916 AFTER all the remarkable laws that President Wilson was able to induce Congress and the industrial section of the country to pass and accept, it was by no means certain that he would be reelected and thus enabled to finish his task and leave the nation convalescent from its half century of eco- nomic debauch. Wilson knew, as any political scientist knows, that four years in office, either in the United States or Eng- land, is not enough to set a great reform movement firmly upon the ways of history. The platform on which Wilson was elected contained a "plank" which denounced second terms in the White House. There is no doubt that Mr. Bryan who wrote the platform believed then in the single- term idea. Wilson did not believe in it and before he was inaugurated he boldly, if not then publicly, declared, in a letter to be submitted to Democratic members of Congress, that he would oppose the constitutional amendment then being pre- pared limiting every president to a single term.^ The ideal thing would have been for the President and his party to submit their work to the country and ask a return to power on the promise that they would try to complete the task. They certainly had kept the promises of the cam- paign of 1912. The tariflE had been reduced. There was an 'Henry Jones Ford, "Woodrow Wilson," 819. It may be worth while to remember that Jackson made his campaign of 1828 very largely upon the single-term idea. Hig violation of the public pledge was a great cause of the crisis with South Carolina, 183%-18S3, 170 THE ELECTION OF 1916 170- expert tariff board to study the tariff and help common men to imderstand the subject. The finances of the country had really been reformed and there was a national banking board to make the reforms effective. The old trust muddle had been improved and there was a board of moderate men to study business and make recommendations as to what should be done with corporations that contrive unsocial ends. There were many other and even very important things being done in the same spirit as the various national con- ventions were assembling in the summer of 1916. Wilson had certainly a good case. No other president ever had a better one.i ..—■"" But Wilson, the life-long student of domestic problems, the reformer of industrial abuses, was not to be tried upon his merits. The great war in Europe broke upon him in the midst of his exacting tasks. He must of necessity become an expert in the compUcated and age-long pohtical and social struggles of Germany, France, and England. There was no escape from it, and he knew that no chancellery in Eiirope had anything more than pohte respect for him or his aspirations. He was to them a novice; perhaps he would become a menace, if he continued to lead so great a part of the modern world as the United States.^ It was this dread of being diverted from his main business, this dread of becoming entangled in the meshes of European affairs that lent so much earnestness to his repeated an- noimcements of American neutrality. But he could not be neutral; the country had passed the stage in its history where it could remain aloof when world wars were being waged. I have shown how great was the industrial response to the war, ■Read Henry Adams's, "History of the United States," New York, 1889, HI, Chapter XV, for a parallel, ^The knowledge of this European opinion of himself was one of the reasons for Wilson's proposed absolute neutrality so bitterly condemned by some Americans. 172 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK how many billions of dollars were being diverted toward American coffers by the war. The British blockade, becom- ing more effective every day, barred the way of American goods to Germany and even to neutral countries. Hoke Smith and a score of Southern senators and representatives urged him to protest against the blockade. Representatives of the packers of Chicago and the farmers of the Northwest urged him to open the way to hungry markets for their goods. No matter how clearly he as a historian might recall the policy of Abraham Lincoln on the problems of blockades — and the British policy in 1914 was almost identical with that of the United States in 1861 — he must respond to the loud demands of business men and farmers who cared little for history or pre- cedents. He made his fight during the autumn of 1914 and the winter of 1915 against all the more drastic phases of the British blockade, against British interference with cargoes bound for neutral ports, but known to be on the way to Germany; against searching American mail pouches, al- though he knew the Germans in the United States were send- ing money or credits to their kinsmen in Europe; against blacklisting American commercial houses, even when these were known to be German firms to all intents and purposes. It was his duty; he did it as best he could, although, as a man of insight, he must have felt that he was weakening the arm of the one great power that barred the way of imperial Ger- many to world mastery. 1 But Germany could not leave matters to take their course either in Europe or in America. Once having drawn the sword she must win or have all mankind later call her to account for the cruel philosophy of might which she had taught since Bismarck. The Kaiser in a special letter to the President 'The protests will be found in Robinson and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson,' iSO, el seq. THE ELECTION OF 1916 173 appealed to Americans to witness the German innocence of the British and Belgian charges of cruelty and want of good faith. Wilhelm talked and wrote in those days as though he were fighting a crusade for some noble cause, and the German people prayed and preached as though they were the chosen people of all the world. They could not even allow a ques- tion of their high and humane motives in the neutral world. They set to work to counteract the effects of the British blockade. They set up purchasing agencies in the United States; they made connections with American and even Canadian banking houses for the transfer of credits; they formed great associations in all the leading cities of the United States whose business it was to aid the German am- bassador in Washington in everything he undertook. They set up newspapers, bought old newspapers, made connections with William Randolph Hearst, organized university pro- fessors to speak for the German cause, and held labour meet- ings to protest against all wars. The leading brewers united with the University organization to protest against the ship- ment of arms to the Allies, to persuade members of Congress to lay an embargo upon the shipment of munitions to Europe, and they made desperate efforts to get the ear of the Presi- dent himself. The millions of money raised by loans among German-Americans or sent directly from Berlin was used in this work or in fomenting strikes, laying bombs in manu- facturing plants, upon ships about to depart for England, or even in the capitol in Washington.'^ Representative men, like Frank Buchanan of Illinois, a member of the House; Charles Nagel of St Louis, a former member of the Cabinet, and many others lent enthusiastic aid to this work to the very day that the United States entered the great war. 'Names of men involved or deeds actually performed will be found in "Hearings" of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate, 65th Congress, %nd and Sid Sessions. Three volumes of valuable testimony. 174 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK But these measures were not sufficient. On February 6, 1915, the German Government proclaimed a -submarine blockade of the British Isles. After the 18th of February commanders of submarines were to sink on sight the ships of the allied peoples and neutral ships must take care lest they, too, fall victims to the new ruthlessness. It was a question whether British and neutral seamen could be fright- ened from the ocean, not so much an expectation that Ger- man commanders would be compelled to continue this bloody work of sinking friend and foe upon ships going about their lawful business. It was expected that men would simply cease taking the risks and save themselves, leaving England to'starve or yield. Wilson made earnest protest on February 10th. Germany must take care not to destroy American lives or sink American ships. Ten days later he sent a memorandum to both Ger- many and England asking them to give up submarines and mines, except in and about harbours, and to cease the cruel practice of employing neutral flags as decoys. He even asked Britain to allow foodstuffs to be sent into Germany for the civil population under German guarantee that it should not be sent to the armies.^ If these propositions had been ac- cepted, Germany must have won the war and the President's own policy must have given him poignant regret. But while the President held this rather gentle if dan- gerous course, the opposition prodded him daily to compel England to lift her blockade. Business communities whose leaders most keenly feared the German menace were the loudest in their demands. The Boston Transcript urged the Government to protest more vigorously; the Pittsbiu-g Leader wished shipments of all kinds stopped, then the war would come to an end, its editor insisted; even the New York 'Robinson and West, "Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," HB-iS. THE ELECTION OF 1916 175 World declared all neutral rights were being sacrificed.* Where Wilson was most bitterly hated, press opinion seemed to condemn the loudest his moderate policy toward England. In the midst of this chaos came the news on May 7, 1915, that the Lusitania, one of the great transatlantic liners, had been sunk off the coast of Ireland and that more than a hundred American lives had been lost. A few days later came the story from Germany that the German people were rejoicing at the fine stroke of its submarine captain.^ Certainly the German-American press, including the Staats-Zeitung of New York, defended the act. Americans as a rule shuddered. They had not believed that the Germans would ever be as cruel as their public announcements pro- claimed. The Germans were thus compelled to go on since neither the British sailors nor the workers upon neutral ships would confess themselves cowards and keep off the seas. The German annoimcements that it was to be another Rome- Carthage struggle were coming true. Those Americans who knew little about Europe and only the day before were as- sailing Wilson for supposed surrender to England* now asked themselves soberly what would be the state of a world under the hegemony of a nation that rejoiced in the Lusitania per- formance as heroic. Wilson restrained public excitement. He allowed the phrase "too proud to fight" to slip into a speech he made to a gathering of immigrants in Philadelphia a day or two later.* His keen judgment of the state of things in the United States, as well as in the world, enabled him to see how great would *A review of this opinion will be found in The lAterary Digest for March 37, 1915. ^Ambassador Gerard confirmed the story in his book "My Four Years in Germany," New York, 1917. *The Hearst papers, with their "twenty million readers," were the most unreasoning op- ponents of the President. 'Robinson and West, 266. An address made in New York twenty days before had contained the same expression. 176 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK have been the risk of going to war in the spring of 1915. Hence he maintained his poise. He wrote a series of notes during the months of May and June in which he made solemn protest that the destruction of human hves by Germany was quite a different thing from the destruction of property by England; he threateded war in the event that ruthless sub- marine attacks continued to endanger life upon the sea. He never for a moment yielded to the German contention that America must first compel Britain to remedy the wrongs of the blockade before she corrected the evils of the submarine.' A discouraging fact to those who believe in democratic government was the violent attack upon the President be- cause of his "weasel-worded" notes from the very papers whose editors had been denouncing him because he did not break the British blockade. And these men and papers turned now to constant criticism because the Administration did not go to war with Mexico at the very moment when Germany was intriguing to that end. People who exerted large in- fluence seemed to think that a great and burdensome struggle with the poor Mexicans, at the moment when the European war was about to spread to American shores, ought to be glibly undertaken. Wilson kept out of war, he insisted upon the strictest neutrality throughout the years 1915 and 1916. But everybody felt that war might come any day; none felt it more keerdy than the President. Thus the task of reforming the abuses and tyrannies of great industrial corporations, the most important work that could be done by an American statesman, was to be halted by the German Emperor. The election of 1916 would turn, then, not upon the merits of the work that the President and his iRobujson and West give the texts o! the President's notes. The German notes will be found in "AmericanDiplomaticCorrespondenceon the European War," No. 2, a government document, 1917. THE ELECTION OF 1916 177 colleagues had done, but upon the narrow margins of the European game of war diplomacy; or, what was the same thing, upon the use that American politicians might make of the European crisis. Truly, it often happens that merit does not influence the course of history or the sticcess of a leader. Wilson was fully alive to the difficulty of his situation; every prominent politician of the two factions of the old Republican party was likewise "keen" to make use of new weapons.* The leaders of the conservative wing of the Republican party quickly joined Colonel Roosevelt in his reiterated demands for the adoption of universal military service by the United States. General Wood of the United States army, representing the aggressively Prussian group in the service, canvassed the larger universities of the North in the winter and spring of 1915 urging universal military service in general and the adoption of military training schools in the colleges in particular. This was done without the approval or consent of the President or the War Department.^ Not only the colleges but business organizations were canvassed. Speeches were made that took on the form of semi-official warnings. Leading newspapers took up the propaganda. American defence and security leagues were formed. Rear- Admiral Peary made speeches in Chicago in which he de- clared that within twelve months German flying machines would be dropping bombs upon the business district. Not only the larger business and the more conservative groups of the North took up this new Americanism, as Roosevelt called it; the Progressive party dallied with it out of loyalty to their leader of 1912. If a part of the Democratic ^Any examination of the files of newspapers and periodicals for the twelve months preceding the assembhng of the conventions of 1916 will show this beyond a peradventure. 'Conversation of the author with the proper authorities in August, 1915. 178 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK party could be induced to follow the same lead, the President would be compelled to adopt the very programme which Bismarck had employed in the building of imperialist Ger- many. Senator George E. Chamberlain of Oregon, a Demo- crat, accepted the new militarism. He was chairman of the Senate MiHtary Committee. Secretary Garrison of the Cabinet likewise became a convert to the Roosevelt- Wood gospel. Preparedness became the order of the day and men talked freely of the adoption of military conscription by an Anglo-Saxon commimity. Yet the critical state of the world forbade even the mentioning of the enemy against whom the agitation was aimed. Secretary Garrison prepared his report for the year 1915 as though he spoke for the country. It was a preparedness document, the introduction to which might have given just cause for offence to the President, if Wilson had been of a sensitive and punctilious nature. The report was followed by definite plans which were submitted to Congress very promptly. The Regular Army was to be increased to 142,000 men. A new "continental army" of 400,000 was to be organized as soon as possible. There were to be reserves of state militia and vast quantities of war material. In similar manner the navy was to be enlarged.* This was indeed a remarkable change from the older British- American attitude on the subject of armaments. Men seemed not to consider the danger in a country like the United States of such a great number of armed men. They were apparently frightened by Germany; or probably they felt that the imstable conditions of the industrial region rendered such a force necessary to the security of great properties. Much depended upon the atti- tude of the President, for Congress was very loth to accept either Secretary Garrison's recommendations or to become '"American Yearbook," 1916, 2-6, 16-18. THE ELECTION OF 1916 179 excited by the representations of the National Security League. The message of December, 1915, gave tentative support to the Garrison military plans. In January, Wilson toured the North calling attention to the need of a greater army. In St. Louis he declared that America must have the greatest navy in the world. From the speeches German sym- pathizers might think that the great army was to be employed against the Fatherland, and British supporters might with equal justice feel that the great navy was to be employed to break the blockade. Of course the President could not make addresses that would practically break down the neutrality so carefully maintained.' It was noticeable, moreover, that he never employed the term "universal military service" and he was careful to explain that there was to be no militarism in the country. The result of the journey seems to have been a conviction that it was best not to hasten the larger preparations which the Secretary of War and Senator Chamberlain demanded. Representative Hay of the House Military Committee pre- pared a bill which would employ the national guard as the proposed new army, and it was in other respects a much mild- er reform of the old military system. Hay found strong support in Mr. Bryan, then opposed to the Garrison plans, in Representative Kitchin, and Southern members of Congress in general. Wilsbn did not lend support to his Secretary of War and the latter resigned.* Immediately all the elements of the opposition centred about the retiring secretary, pro- claiming him an injured public servant. A month later when Newton D. Baker, an opponent of war, was appointed to the vacant post, there was much sharp criticism. It seemed that ^The Literary Digest, February 5, 1916, gives an account of the President's campaign. ^'■Aiuericiin Yearbook," 1916, pp. 18-13, gives a slightly coloured account of the episode. 180 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Wilson had come very near to making a serious blunder and had recovered at the last moment. Whatever the leaders of the opposition urged upon him in this matter of universal military service, it was noticeable that the Republicans in Congress and in their conventions which met in Chicago in June following declined to take the advanced stand they commended to the President.' A national defence act was passed during the summer. It was a compromise, but it added nevertheless very greatly to the military power of the country. And significantly it gave the President great powers over the railroads in the event of war; it also authorized a council of national defence. In like manner Secretary Daniels was authorized to hasten the building of twice the number of capital ships that had been provided in former years. The European war had changed the military policy of the country. Representative Kitchin declared that the United States was becoming a militaristic nation. Wilson was of the opinion that public opinion, such as Mr. Kitchin and very many other representatives in both houses expressed, needed to be aroused. In August, 1915, he had become convinced that he would be unable to keep out of the great war. Of course this feeling could not be made public. Only the closest observer noticed that in the Public Defence Act and in the Adamson Law there were definite grants of military powers to the President that could be explained upon no other groimd than his apprehension of the future. But in all that had been said and done no opportunity was given for a sharp party issue. Only in the Adamson Act, that came after the presidential campaign was well advanced, and in the general treatment of the civil service from the be- ginning was there distinct challenge to the opposition. As be- 1" American Yearbook," 1916, pp. SO-Sl, gives a succinct sunmary of the Progressive an.l Republican platforms. THE ELECTION OF 1916 181 tween Labour and Capital, Wilson took the side of Labour, av any other president must have done or pretended to do. The question of the civil service was a difficult one.^ Wilson did not handle it well. He had long been an advocate of civil service reform. But the Republican party had been in of- fice sixteen years. All the positions, with the exception of a considerable number which had been filled under the civil service commission, were held by Republicans. ^ , Men, like Mr. Bryan, in the Cabinet and in Congress wisted to find places for "good Democrats." A similar spirit jad char- acterized all other administrations.^ Wilson, althc)fgh fully aware of the risks, allowed many diplomatic, con^lar, and other positions to be awarded to party workers. And Democratic leaders in Congress more than once enacted legislation that tended to debauch the civil service. The President himself removed Director North from the man- agement of the Census Bureau and placed an inexperienced man in the position thus made vacant. A great outcry was made against the policy of Mr. Bryan and a good deal of criticism was directed against Southern members of Congress for seeking to control the patronage of the Government. As to the President's removal of the Director of the Census, a cursory study of the record of Mr. North reveals a sufficient public motive for an apparently partisan act. When all has been said that can be said, it re- mains clear that Wilson did not take a backward step in this important matter. He does not love the patronage of his office. Senators have said to him : "You must recognize that somebody must build up the party. Why not let us '"American Yearbook," 1916, pp. 184-86. ^President Roosevelt's letters, written while be was in office to the English historian, George Otto Trevelyan, recite a similar difficulty and confess a similar policy. — Scrih-ner's Magazine, October. 1919, p. S91. 182 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK ^ devise ways and means since you will not do it ? " One of the difficulties between the President and his party in both houses of Congress throughout the period following 1913 was just the problem of the patronage. And as the matter stood when the campaign of 1916 opened, the Administration had as good a record as any of its predecessors; one is constrained to say a better one. Thus the great war had shifted the issue from domestic concerns,/but Wilson had managed not to commit himself publicly f J the likelihood of American participation. He had seized tbf 'leadership of the movement for preparedness which had been started by opponents, and prevented his party from being pressed too far in the direction of militarism. And in the minor concern of the civil service, on which no election was apt to turn, his record was not particularly vulnerable. Public opinion was, however, greatly perturbed. The Presi- dent was greatly perplexed. Public men did not know how to shape their courses, upon the very eve of the assembling of the national conventions."^ It was a unique situation. The Democrats, both the body of the party in the South and its fairly certain allies in the Western states, were proud of their leader. They had not had such a spokesman since Andrew Jackson. They must renominate him. But the masters of the party organizations in New York, Indiana, and in Illinois hated Wilson. The more successful he was, the more disastrous appeared the future for them. There were absolutely no side doors to them to the White House so long as Wilson was in power. These men controlled, as always, the great delegations in Democratic conventions. They agreed to allow Wilson to have a renomination, for the simple reason that there was ^Despite the confident language of leaders like Colonel Roosevelt, it was evident that uaAa Republicans nor Progressives knew what to do. THE ELECTION OF 1916 183 nothing else to do. Before the end of the year 1915, Wilson had no possible competitor for the nomination. Mr. Bryan, who had felt compelled to leave the Cabinet, was a loyal supporter of the President even when the latter sought a second term. The convention which met in St. Louis on Jime 4th was simply a formality, a ratification meeting for all the work of the Administration. It declared that Wilson had compelled Germany to respect American rights and yet he had not "orphaned a single child." "He kept us out of war" was the common talk of the convention. It was soon to be the slogan of the campaign.^ Although President Wilson himself was the greatest asset of the Democratic party, the long list of reforms eflFected, the tariff, finances, trusts, income tax, and the new foreign policy were rehearsed in the platform put out by the St. Louis con- vention. And more. The child-labour bill then before Con- gress, the principles of the Progressives of 1912, and a moder- ate preparedness programme were embodied in resolutions which gave promise as to what the party would do in the futm-e if continued in power. The Republicans were sharply criticized for their continued opposition to the Shipping BiU so long before Congress; the cause of woman suffrage was rec- ommended to the states for adoption; and, finally, the various alien groups in the country were warned against the double allegiance urged by the German propagandists.^ The country received the Administration platform as it received the work of the Wilson Administration, as distinctly progressive if not radical. The movement inaugurated in 1912 by La FoUette and launched with so much enthusiasm by Colonel Roosevelt was now practically obsolete. Many of the Progressives had already indicated their satisfaction. Tie lAterarf Digest, June 33 and July 1, 1916, gives an account of the Democratic conventioii. 'A summary will be found in the "American Yearbook," for 1916, 35-36. 184 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Colonel Roosevelt and his closer friends could not, of course, recognize ungrudgingly the sweeping character of the reforms of Wilson. The logic of events compelled the political Pro- gressives to turn again to the Republican party. The Eu- ropean situation also drove them in the same direction. Yet many of the leaders of 1912 were either pro-German in sym- pathy or afraid to offend the (Jerman voters in the cities of the North. Senator La Follette was now an open supporter of the German cause. On the other hand. Colonel Roosevelt and his Metrojmlitan Magazine group were the most violently anti-German of all American leaders. The Congressional election of 1914 had already shown that the Progressives were a vanishing party, like that which ex-President Van Buren had led in 1848. Less than two miUion people voted with the party which had given Roosevelt four million votes in 1912. It was plain that many if not most of the Progressives had been simply Roosevelt men and not reformers. This was best shown in states like Pennsyl- vania which had given very large votes to him in 1912 and almost none to Progressive candidates for Congress. In the West there was a genuine radicalism, led by Victor Mur- dock and William Allen White of Kansas. The return of the party to its ancient friends was distinctly foreshadowed in September, 1915, when Colonel Roosevelt ac- cepted a semi-public dinner from Judge Gary and his friends of the high financial circle of New York. Mr. George W. Perkins had a part in this retiu-n to "safe and sane" moorings. He was to the Progressive movement what George Harvey had tried to be to the Democratic party. Only Perkins was successful. The Gary dinner gave men the "hunch" and one by one the Eastern Progressives indicated their return. They were promptly received, if not as promptly forgiven. The Progressives called a conference to meet in Chicago THE ELECTION OF 1916 185 January 11, 1916. It was there decided that the next na- tional convention of the party should be held in Chicago on June 7th, and that an effort should be made to induce the Re- publicans, who had already appointed their convention to meet at the same time and place, to nominate Roosevelt. This the Taft men in the older party could not permit. They hoped to nominate ex-Senator Root. Of course the Western Progressives could never be induced to vote for the man who had managed the so-caUed "steam roller" in the RepubUcan convention in 1912. Roosevelt showed his es- sential conservatism in the proposition to nominate Senator Lodge, a close friend of Root. The Progressives would have no other than Roosevelt. The apparent deadlock continued till the very closing day of the dual conventions in Chicago. Another man was necessary. Justice Hughes, a conserva- tive of non-committal record in the stormy days of 1912, proved to be a God-send to the men who were managing things for two opposing groups of the old Republican party. Hughes refused to answer all requests for his views or his attitude toward a possible nomination of both conventions. His silence lent him strength. His character lent the proposed combination dignity. His former honest and able exposure of the venal and criminal connections of big business, the great insurance companies, and the machine elements of both the Democratic and the Republican parties gave promise of a good national administration, if not of continued reform. Of even greater significance was the silence of the Justice upon all phases of the German war, the Lusitania incident, and the submarine frightfulness. The justice was cartooned throughout the spring as the sphinx.* iSome people condemned these maneuvers or silences on great matters. But one must not overlook the character of the American electorate, both racial and sectional. It has never been an easy thing to hold a party together or to build a new one in the United States. 186 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK When the Republicans met in Chicago they made out a programme that was designed to meet the Progressive point of view in minor matters only. They were prompt to declare for "honest neutrality and all our rights as neutrals," for woman suffrage to be granted by the states, for a return to the policy of McKinley, Roosevelt, and Taft in what should have been called imperial control of the Philippines and for the strictest honesty in the administration of the Government. Protection to American industry and American labour was promised, and the Underwood tariff was denounced. The wording of the platform showed how thin was the ice upon which the managers of the great reconciliation were compelled to skate. It was the language of party platform-making since the day of Andrew Jackson and Henry Clay.^ But everybody knew that it was a question of candidates, for all the greater parties in 1916, and not a matter of programmes. The Republicans in Chicago refused to nominate Roosevelt. The Progressives refused to nominate Root, Lodge, or Hughes. Two men were offered by the two conventions, Hughes by the Republicans, Roosevelt by the Progressives. . This hap- pened almost at the same moment on June 10th. Adjourn- ment was in order. But if these two men were left before the people, Wilson's reelection by an overwhelming plurality was certain and both wings of the old Republican party would practically disappear as effective political organizations. Roosevelt now held the fate of the Progressives, as well as of the Republicans, in the hollow of his hand. He decided, perhaps had long before decided, to make an end of the en- thusiastic party that nominated him twice with a zeal de- serving of a better fate. He took the proffered nomination under advisement. The two bodies adjourned, but the Pro- 1" American Yearbook," 1916, SO-31. Copies of the various party platforms may be had in any good library. THE ELECTION OF 1916 187 gressives appointed a committee to decide what should be done in the event of Roosevelt's decHning to make the can- vass.^ Hughes promptly accepted the Republican nomination. He resigned from the Supreme bench in fact to reunite the sundered wings of the Republican party; he knew that he was the only man in the country who could hope to do that; and he at once entered upon a vigorous series of lattacks upon President Wilson. His "keynote" in the matter of the very critical national foreign policy was : " I stand for the firm and unflinching maintenance of all the rights of American citizens on land and sea." The Germans took that to mean that he would enforce American commercial rights as against the British blockade, and a distinguished German editor an- nounced in his Berlin paper, when the treaty was submitted in 1919, that the German cause was lost when Wilson was per- mitted to be reelected.^ Roosevelt declined after a few days and the Progressives accepted Hughes with what grace they could. In general the Eastern members of the party seem to have accepted the result with satisfaction; many Western Progressives aban- doned the Republicans altogether and annoimced their pur- pose to support Wilson. The Republican platform was of course accepted by those Progressives who returned to the bosom of the older party. The breach of 1912 was healed. There were once again two great political parties and two candidates that represented, each in his own person, the historic sections of the coimtry, Hughes the old North and 'W. R. Thayer, "Theodore Roosevelt," in the chapter which he calls "Prometheus Bound," gives a running account of the twin conventions. The object is, however,to condemn Wilson, not to explain Roosevelt. 'The New Republic, July 9, 1919, quotation from Der Tagliche Rundschau; also a letter ot Doctor Albert to Von Fapen, November 16, 1916, publjahed by the New York Timw, De- cember 19, 1919. 188 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK industrialism, Wilson the old South and its Western allies.' The critical state of the world made the American election of the utmost importance; yet the result in America would turn, as in so many former elections, upon the attitude of a very few states and a small number of persons in those states. What lends particular interest to the thoughtful person is the fact that Hughes of all the Republicans most nearly re- sembled Wilson in character and even in policy. In the hope of putting Wilson on the defensive, the Re- publicans and the Progressives had held their conventions in Chicago before the Democrats held theirs. For the same reasons, Mr. Hughes in a midsummer campaign announced his loyalty to the good old doctrine of protection; he declared he was for America first; he would prepare for possible ills to come in the maintenance of the regular army and a Federal citizens* reserve; he attacked the President's Mexican policy, but did not say what he would do if elected; he seized upon the blundering Democratic appointments to office as one of the big issues; and he denounced the weakness of Wilson's notes to Germany, but refused to say pointedly whether he would break the British blockade or go to war with Germany about the submarine policy. It was plain to all that Hughes could not announce a policy lest he offend the Germans who had voted with the Republican party since the days of Lincoln.^ When Mr. Hughes had made a few speeches in the East and the Middle West, he turned to the Rocky Mountain and the Coast states in the hope of winning the more pro- gressive Progressives. But his commitments to the "stand- ^Thia is the larger fact but the author does not ignore the large Democratic minorities in the North who were so badly represented by machines like those of New York and Chicago. 'A good digest of the Hughes statements will be found in The Literary Digest of August 12. 1916. THE ELECTION OF 1916 189 pat" element of the party, his tariff views, and particularly the personnel of the Republican management proved trouble- some. On his way West, he continued to attack Wilson's civil service record; the farmers of the Dakotas proved rather apathetic; but in California the manipulations of the older Republican group proved the most serious of blunders. The result of the visit was the personal hostility of former Gov- ernor Johnson. No Republican candidate ever had a more difficult task than that of Mr. Hughes. From start to finish he was drawn one way by Roosevelt and his bitterly anti- German followers,! another way by the influential German- American politicians, and still a third way by the radical ele- ment of the former Progressives whose votes were sought by all parties. The outcome was a weak appeal on every vital matter that was before the public. The necessity of a non-committal policy on foreign matters, the danger of continuing the opposition to the Adamson Law, begun as soon as the law was enacted, and the weakness of the RepubHcan platform on woman suffrage invited men to make use of the anti-Southern feelings of the voters in many states of the North. As I have said, the Southerners were the leaders both in the Cabinet and in the two houses of Con- gress. This fact was seized upon and people were told from many platforms that the new tariff, the bank reforms, and aU the other laws that bore adversely upon industry in the North were but outcroppings of the old Confederate animus.^ This was particularly emphasized in attacks upon the income tax law. The Adamson Law was likewise a Southern measure designed to injure the business of the prosperous North. The child-labour measure passed in the midst of the campaign, a bill that had been urged by Roosevelt and other prominent *Thayer's "Theodore Roosevelt," 424. ^And the speeches of some Southerners like Mr. Kitchin gave support to the view. 190 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Republicans since 1907, and resisted by Southern senators, was overlooked. Wilson and his campaign managers were slow to open the struggle. Vance McCormick was his manager; Josephus Daniels, a veteran of many party struggles, lent a hand at times; and Colonel House, still a new figure in public affairs, kept in touch with the Democratic headquarters. Mr. Bryan canvassed the Western states for many weeks, thus perform- ing a service which Clay had refused for Taylor in 1848 and Seward had only grudgingly done for Lincoln in 1860. Francis J. Heney of California, Bainbridge Colby of New York, and others of the former Progressive party gave public support to Wilson. In this team-play of the Democrats and positive assistance of leaders who had formerly worked with Roosevelt there was evidence of good political ability as well as genuine progressiveness in the President. Wilson himseK remained in Washington till the most im- portant items of his legislative programme were safely passed or so near passage that there was no risk in his absence. The new income tax, the child labour, and the Adamson measures were all passed in the period between the assembling of the conventions and the first week of September. These meas- ures and the resolute attention of the President to their every detail, at a time when the foreign situation would have justi- fied a less aggressive interest, from older points of view, in- dicated the unabating spirit of reform of Wilson the executive a well as Wilson the candidate. Early in September, Wilson took up his residence at Shadow Lawn, New Jersey, whence he sent forth his notifica'- tion speech. In that document he said: "We have in four years come very near to carrying out the platform of the Progressive party as well as our own." He declared that Labour had been emancipated, rehearsed the long list of THE ELECTION OF 1916 191 economic reforms, and then took up the more delicate matter of the American foreign relations. Of his Mexican policy he said that he had tried all along to save the country and its resources from the grasp of concessionaires and help the na- tives to a better life and government. He would not defend his notes to the German imperialists, but he pointed out how great was the difference between the killing of innocent men and women, the German practice, and the seizure of cargoes and mail pouches, the British oflfence. He did not indicate that it might be necessary to go to war as soon as the election was over, although he must have felt that such would be the case no matter who should be elected."^ It was a curious campaign. The President who had done more for the country than any other party leader ever had done, unless we except Washington and Lincoln, was attacked every day by eminent men and a great political party. Neither these men nor their party offered any positive pro- gramme. On Wilson's side, although he. was conscious of a great historical performance, little was said except that the President had kept the nation out of war. Indeed the one note that seemed to appeal to the voters most effectively, as the campaign neared its close, was just that claim that "Wilson has kept us out of war." The President surely felt the un- worthiness of such an appeal, but he knew that if he inti- mated that he would recommend war, he would surely be defeated and all his half -finished work might be "scrapped." On the other hand, Mr. Hughes was equally timid about in- dicating that he would recommend war either with Germany or England, although his speech at Louisville as well as some assurances he made to a great audience in Philadelphia^ ^The Literary Digetl, September 16, 1916, gives a summary of the address and the press comment. 'Nea Republic, October 88, 1916. 192 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK seem to show that he meant to attack the latter country un- less American goods were allowed free access to Germany. It was a sort of blind-man's buff that both parties played to the end. And the voters were compelled to choose as between men and parties rather than between avowed programmes and promises. But there was a great deal of money spent in advertising and in agitation by the opposition. To this the Democratic management replied in advertisements that called attention to the unprecedented prosperity of the coun- try under their beneficent leadership — a stroke of humour that must have impressed even partisan Republican minds. How long had not their leaders told the world that prosperity was a plant of exclusively Republican growth and that demo- cratic control meant hard times? Whatever the varied and angry groups of foreign-born Americans thought, however puzzling the statements of the campaign orators may have seemed to the older American stocks, the German Government indicated its preference late in September by sending the U-boat 53, one of its largest undersea boats, to the New England coast to sink outgoing shipping under the very eyes of the uneasy East. And the German-American Alliance did its utmost to bring Wilson to disaster. Their influence liad been made manifest in the Republican convention. It was continued to the very last, in spite of the belligerent speeches of Colonel Roosevelt who endeavoured to hold in line all the most violent anti- German elements of the national population. The Hearst papers likewise cast the weight of their superb sensation- alist organization into the Republican side of the scales. On the night of the election the Hearst International Film Service cartooned the President with indecent malice and played up Roosevelt as a hero.' ^Witnessed by the writer in Chicago on the night of the election. THE ELECTION OF 1916 193 But when all is said about the confusion of issues and the alignment of nationalities, the real opposition to Wilson came from the industrial centres, from the former bankers, railroad magnates, and the sturdy old Republican stocks of the East and the Middle West, men who were afraid of even the moder- ate reforms of Southerners and agrarians, from people who thought that the Government must ever remain subservient to the industrial regions which had so long controlled the vital concerns of the Nation. They feared Wilson. Nor did the larger labour organizations, despite all that Wilson had done for Labour, support the Democratic administration. Labour was more afraid of "empty dinner pails," which masters of industry threatened, than it was hopeful of good things to come from friends actually in power, a state of mind which many former elections had shown. When the returns came in on the night of November 7th, it seemed that Wilson was defeated. Men went to bed think- ing that Hughes was to be the next president. But on the night after the election it was plain that Wilson had been successful. Although the old lines between North and South were sharply drawn and the maps of the returns showed the two great sections arrayed against each other, Wilson had broken over the historic border and won Ohio, New Hamp- shire, and California, although he had failed to carry West Virginia. It was a combination of South and West which had won enough of the industrial centres to give Wilson a plurality of nearly six hundred thousand votes. The Democratic party had mustered strength enough to carry the country. Wilson was vindicated. What could he do with his triumph? Elected because "he kept us out of war," how could he maintain himself if he prepared at once to enter the war? Tv,\ SI 194 CHAPTER X THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR' THE reelection of Wilson weakened his power. For, while he was serving his first term and looking forward to a second nomination, the recalcitrant elements of the Democratic party were constrained to support his measures and defend his "radical" pronouncements. His reelection released all those groups in the party that fed upon the husks of re- action and he must seek to fill the vacancies in his own party ranks by recruits from the Republican forces. But here again his recent success, the almost unprecedented plurality of 580,000 votes, frightened the leaders and the common-folk alike of the opposition. There was a new leader in the country, a second Lincoln, Jackson, or Jefferson; "' and it was every Republican's duty to resist and discredit the new man. It would be fatal to the party, of industrialism if the prestige of Wilson were permitted to rise to higher levels. Everything conspired to hamper the President at the very moment he was contemplating his change of front with reference to the great war."^ Nothing shows this better than the treatment of the President's bills in Congress in December and January of ^ 1916-17. He wished the Adamson Law of the preceding September completed so that the Government might, in the event of war, both prevent strikes and take command iThere ia now and ever has been a deep-set sectionalism in the United States which gives to political parties a character distinctly American. 195 196 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK of the railroads. Congress refused for a long time to grant these logical and wise requests. Labour leaders, includ- ing Mr. Gompers, made violent protests against his propos- als.^ Acting upon the patent evidence of the recent elec- tion, Wilson urged a corrupt practices act which might have remedied the ills of the over-use of money in national cam- paigns. Although it was plainly in the interest of the Democratic party that such a bill should become law the leaders of that party did not endeavour to force the reform through Congress. They were then in majority on safe margins. Once again the President pressed the Senate to ratify the treaty with Colombia, negotiated three years before, whereby the people of the United States were to make honourable amends to those of Colombia for the seizure of Panama by President Roosevelt in 1903.^ Although the Democrats sustained their leader fairly well in this, the Senate refused for a third time to accept the President's work. It was, however, the constitutional provision that treaties must be ratified by two thirds of the Senate which caused his defeat in this highly important item of his international policy. General Wood, supported by practically all the army influence in Washington, by the Roosevelt and the Taft Republicans in the East, by the National Security and the National Defence leagues, and especially by the larger city newspapers, urged every day upon the Government the adoption of the universal military service scheme which the President had declined to accept a year before on the urgent advice of Secretary Garrison. Now the Senate Mihtary Committee headed by Mr. Chamberlain, Democrat and in- 1" American Yearbook," 1917, p. *. ^The Flood report of 191S upon the so-called Panama revolution makes unpleasant read- ing for any fair-minded American. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 197 fluential leader of the party in the far Northwest, held hear- ings in February, 1917, introduced a military service measure which was contrary to the views of both the Secretary of War and the President. It was a plan to which all the greater industrial leaders of the coimtry and the reactionary elements of the East were contributing the utmost of their influence and power. Everything that could be done to overbear Wilson and his followers was done and with the aid of a considerable number of his own party. What gave a sharper point to the sectional reminis- cences of the last campaign was a statement of Represen- tative Kitchin of North Carolina to a group of recalci- trant Southerners, when the emergency revenue bill was discussed in the Democratic caucus, that the North would have to pay the cost of the preparedness for which New York cried so loud. He meant that the income tax would fall upon the wealthy industrial states more heavily than upon the agrarian states of the South, which was a true statement and which represented a just policy. Yet in the temper of the times a great outcry was made against Wilson and his so-called sectional party. Kitchin was cartooned as a master "pork " politician draining the enterprising industries of the North of their resources in order to benefit the South.^ It looked as if Congress were getting away from the Presi- dent. The time had come for Wilson to relent a little in his career of reforming business, for if he meant to go to war with Germany, as it was plain that he must do, the industrial leadership of the whole country would need to be conciliated. His bank reform, the Adamson Law, and most of the other measures of his first four years in office had b.een aimed at re- dressing the wrongs of the agrarian and labour elements of the ^The JAierary Digest of February 10, 1917, gives the cartoons and the press comment from various sections of the North. 198 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK nation. He had defeated the earher preparedness move- ments in which the industrial states had been interested; he meant to defeat, on the eve of war, the Chamberlain- Wood- Roosevelt military bill.^ Was there anything he could do for "business"? Could Wilson do anything which "business" woidd consider as honestly intended in its favour? His one crumb of satisfaction was offered in the so-called Webb Law which he now made an Administration measure. In February, 1915, in an address before the United States Chamber of Commerce, he proposed to the industrial groups of the country a scheme^ somewhat like the former German cartel system. He said: "There are governments which, as you know, distinctly encoiu-age the formation of great com- binations in each particular field of commerce in order to maintain selling agencies and to extend long credits, and to use and maintain the machinery which is necessary for the extension of business; and American merchants feel that they are at a very considerable disadvantage in contending against that. I want to be shown this : how such a combination can be made and conducted in a way which will not close it against the use of everybody who wants to use it. ... I want to know how these cooperative methods can be adopted for the benefit of everybody and I say frankly if I can be shown that, I am for them." Wilson felt that there was an element of national selfish> ness in the lu-gent demands of business men for the immediate expansion of American trade in foreign lands in the midst of a war such as that then waging in Eiu-ope. He said that he did not like to take advantage of the war to win from England and ^This bill was deaigned to set up a permanent conscription policy at a time when exdtement and the actual needs of a war, soon to begin, would seem to justify it. Wilson would resort to coDScription only for the immediate emergency. The others wished conscription as a perma- nent policy. *C. M. Harper, "President Wilson's Addresses," 143-45. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 199 France their markets in the great world. Every day busi- ness men and their newspaper spokesmen were declaring that the British navy alone protected them against the ag- gressions of Germany; they were demanding universal mili- tary service in the United States as a means of protection against possible invasions. Yet they were organizing banks in South America and China in order to facilitate the com- mercial capture of those markets, in which England had such a vital interest. And aheady American business in those lands had doubled and trebled during the war.^ Must the people and the Government of the United States, in such a crisis, engage in an attempt stiU further to win and finally control commerce in fields where America's friends would inevitably lose? At the very time the President was making the Webb bill an Administration measvure, a foreign trade conven- tion, under the leadership of Alba H. Johnson, president of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, and James A. Farrell, president of the United States Steel Corporation, was dis- cussing at Pittsburg the urgent need of a more aggressive foreign trade policy and asking Congress to pass the Webb bill.^ The President was indeed treading close to dangerous ground. Perhaps he hoped to allay some of the bitter feeling against him and to win to his war programme some of the support of business men. The Webb bill became a law, however, only after much prodding on his part and against the votes of a good many senators who doubted the meaning of Greek gifts, and who, therefore, delayed the passage of the measure until April, 1918. The chief feature of this concession to "business" '"American Yearbook," 1917, p. 609. ' The Literary Digest, February 10, 1917. At the same time George Harvey was attacking the President for his supineness in such matters in his North American Review, 200 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK was the right of exporters to combine for purposes of foreign trade and to pool their expenses and profits; but the Federal Trade Board was to have legal supervision of all such com- binations. It was not long before the Supreme Court passed favourably upon the law and business men began operations under it in foreign trade. Before the end of the great war, the British Government had made similar arrangements in favour of English exporters, and it is inevitable that France and Italy must do the same thing. That is, the allied govern- ments, including the United States, were already adopting one of the German commercial devices when the war ended, a device which had been one of the causes of the war. But Wilson was about to turn from his struggle against the over-weening power of American industry and its financial allies to a greater struggle with German imperialism which was the embodiment of industry, finance, and milir tarism.i German industrial imperialism, not half so power- ful as that of the United States might easily become, had set itself the task of subordinating all Europe to its will and interests. If Germany won, inevitably American industrial civilization must contest with her the supreniacy of the world. No man who understands the rudiments of his- tory could have doubted this in December, 1916. Wilson certainly was master of more than the rudiments of history, even if all his great interests had been devoted to strictly American problems. If, then, Wilson abandoned his domestic policy and the so-called national isolation, he would only advance to meet industrialism on a world stage. It was only a shifting of the struggle from a reform of indus- trial abuses at home to a prevention of greater abuses and lOf course modern industry is not of itself a great evil. Only the seeming necessity of in- dustrial leaders, as formerly with the slavery leaders, to dominate the governmental machinery of a country makes industry such a problem in any would-be democratic nation. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 201 tyrannies of industrial men on a world scale. ^ He knew how little he was changing his programme, as anyone may see from the phrasing of all his public utterances upon the war in the winter of 1917 as well as from the alignment of his enemies both in Europe and America from the day that America entered the war. Moreover, it was plain from the first that industrial and grasping economic leaders of the allied cause were almost as much distressed at the tone of Wilson's inter- vention on their behalf as they were rejoiced to find the vast resources of the United States cast into their side of the European scales. The necessities of history make strange bedfellows. But the whole world stood in instant need of Woodrow Wilson as the third winter of the great German war set in. He and he alone could save mankind from the worst tyranny that had threatened it since the days of Philip II of Spain. Germany was surprised that she had not won the war in a few months. Organized as no other people ever had been organized, industry, commerce, military, social, and intellect- ual departments of her activity all fitting into the general political scheme, the German High Command set itself de- liberately and in most scientific manner to its great task. The Reichstag, despite the former boldness of the socialist group, gave all but unanimous support. Even young Karl Liebknecht announced to the American ambassador that he had confidence in the army and in the cause of the German people.'' The press, without exception, gave all the weight of its influence to teaching the German people that they were, and had ever been, a persecuted race and that now they must fight "to the last man" the most gigantic conspiracy of races 'The President made his appreciation of this evident in his second inaugural. See G. M. Harper's "Addresses of President Wilson, " p. 238. ^James W. Gerard, "My Four Years in Germany," p. 215. WOODROW. WILSON AND HIS WORK and nations in all history. Teachers in the universities and in the schools, and preachers of every creed continued to proclaim now, as at the beginning, the unity of the German cause with that of Heaven itself. The food supply of Germany was long since under the control of the first "food dictator" of the great war. The financial arrangements of the nation were fixed for a long storm; and amazingly skilful captains of armed cruisers were sent upon the seas of the world to harass and destroy the commerce of the allied countries. Every railroad in the empire, as everywhere else in Europe, was primarily en- gaged in war work. The standing army grew enormously till it was reckoned at ten to twelve million fighters. Women turned more earnestly than hitherto to the heavier toil of men in order that the ranks of the army might never lack for human material. The greatest of all arms manufacturing plants, the Krupp works at Essen, increased its operations many fold, while in Austria and elsewhere other similar works put out the greatest guns ever known to warfare. The Berlin and the Chemnitz industrial districts were quickly converted into munitions-making districts. If Germany did not bring the world to her feet, it would not be for the lack of scientific organization and herculean effort. Germany was at the outset the richest of all the con- tinental nations. Her annual income amounted to nine or ten billions; that of England was not much greater, while that of France was very much less. She meant to devote the whole of her wealth to the struggle already begun. There was no hesitation about publishing to the world the extent of her ambitions. Friedrich Naumann put forth his "Mit- teleuropa," a book which outlined the German plans. The world accepted Naumann as an inspired spokesman of the national purpose. Austria, Hungary, and the possible con- THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 203 V ^L^ ntlFDUTANIA . yf A B. R"> l{ ■'■'■ C The Proposed Pan-German Empire quests from Russia were to be united with Germany. The Balkan states and Turkey were to be economic dependencies, and a wide colonial empire was to be set up in Mesopotamia. It was to be a great middle Europe that would hold the world in due awe and reverence. Naumann's book sold by the hundreds of thousands and its author became an important national character.' An intense national and apparently official propaganda looking to the detachment of France from the triple entente was set in motion. France was the noble nation, ein ehrlicher Feind, who must be satisfied. Alsace-Lorraine was to be returned and there was to be no more mistaken hectoring of ^Translated into English by C. M. Meredith; published in London in the summer of 1918. / 204 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK her government or jealousy of her growing colonial empire.' But Great Britain could never be forgiven. Lissauer's famous Hassengesang was sung all over the Fatherland and its author was called to court and decorated with the order of the Red Eagle of the second class. A book was written and published under the name of "Hindenburg's March Upon London" in which the hated enemy was described as broken and brought to the feet of the Kaiser. It was said that four millions of copies of this work were rapidly absorbed in Germany.^ A million copies of a translation of this book were quickly taken in England. Bookstores in New York and Chicago sold thousands of copies of the same translation.' Aware of the fell purposes of imperial Germany, even be- fore the evidence of her amazing military efficiency was made known, British statesmen took the lead in the counsels of the allies. They could not get an efPective army in the field be- fore 1916. They might use their navy, they could lend vast sums of money, and they felt compelled to promise re- arrangements of the boundaries of Europe. If France would only hold the Germans back one more year, France might have the long-coveted Rhine boundary and of course Alsace- Lorraine. Italy, offended at the aggressive purposes of Austria in the Balkans, was promised the Trentino, Trieste, and perhaps the control of the Dalmatian coast if she would join the triple entente. Russia was to have Constantinople ^Many Americans received pamphlets from Germany in 1915 that took that tone and at the same time made England the great sinner, while the Bagdad corridor became the one thing for which Germany fought. ^Both Naumann's "Mitteleuropa*' and the "Hindenbnrg March Upon London'' were written during the 191d campaigns against Russia when successful resistances to the German arms seemed impossible. ■Any people that would quickly absorb four million copies of "Hindenburg's March Upon London" must be strangely possessed. In England and America the book was used as propo* ganda to stir men to resist Germany. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 205 and her warm water harbours, longed for since the time of Peter the Great. Venizelos, the prime minister of Greece, was asked to support the aUies, and the Greeks, too, were to receive "compensations" at the peace.' One must not condemn off-hand to-day these bartering arrangements of European statesmen. Nor may one assume that the peoples concerned would have been greatly shocked if they had known all that was going on. The peoples of Europe, pressed one by another into narrow limits, are now and have long been filled with an intense land hunger of which Americans have little actual knowledge. France wished a wider area; Italy hungers for every possible inch of new soil; Russia, with plenty of land, has been kept from the seas and world markets for two centuries; and Greece is starving for the want of land for her teeming population. Europeans fight for tangible objects .^ Thus England bar- gained for the support and the cooperation she must have, or Hindenburg's imaginary march upon London would prove a reality. Leaving France and England to perfect their arrangements and to win the support of the ItaUan army, von Hindenburg, the hero of the great Tannenberg battle of August 26 — Sep- tember 1, 1914, gathered the immense strength of Germany along the Russian front, which extended from the Baltic to the northwestern corner of Roumanla. Russia was supposed to have twice as manymen as Germany could employ against her. The Russian Grand Duke Nicholas commanded the Russian right, fronting von Hindenburg in East Prussia; the Russian left was commanded by General Alexei Brusiloff , perhaps the greatest of all the Russians engaged in the war. Brusiloff ^These are the conoeseiona of the treaties of London published by the Russian Soviet Govern- ment in November, 1917. 'The United States hungered for Cuba for nearly a century, and Mexico failed only narrowly of annexation in 1847-8. 208 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK began first. Tarnopol, Lemberg, and, finally (March, 1915) Przemysl, with hundreds of thousands of Austrian prisoners, fell into his hands. He crossed the Carpathian Mountains and began the invasion of Hungary. It looked as if Austria- Hungary would be broken away from Germany. But von Hindenburg began in midwinter, even in the dreary East Prussia, his attacks upon the Grand Duke. On February 12th the Russians were disastrously defeated, and two hundred and fifty thousand men fell victims to the superior strategy of the Germans. Then von Mackensen struck at Brusiloff's rear, drove in his strong outposts, and compelled a retreat across the Carpathians and down the slopes of Galicia till all that had been gained was lost and a large part of West Russia and Volhynia, with their stores of minerals and foodstuffs, be- came supply ground for the Germans. At the same time von Hindenburg continued his "drive" into Russian Po- land, Courland, and Lithuania. The richest industrial and railway districts of Russia were in German hands before the end of the summer, and more than a million Russian soldiers had been killed. Another million were prisoners working upon German farms or in German munitions plants, thus helping the cause of their enemies.* To stay the tide of German victory, the English and the French made strong attacks upon the German Unes in Bel- gium and northern France. Terrible conflicts ensued but only small "dents " were made in those well-nigh impregnable positions. The Italians made ready to strike against their "hereditary" enemy, the Austrians, in midsummer, but the d6bicle of the Russians in Galicia left them at the mercy of a large Austrian army. The Italian advance was quickly con- verted in to a defence. Everywhere the German military ma- ^The horrors of this campaign across Poland equal if they do not surpass anything known to modern or ancient warfare. . There can be no doubt that the German High Command meant to terrorize the world. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 307 chine mowed down allied armies and overran allied territory. When the Bulgarians saw how the tide was likely to turn, they cast in their lot with the great General Staff in Berlin and opened their railroads to German armies and German supplies, the latter being hastened to the aid of the Turks now growing panicky at the prospects of the British Dar- danelles expedition. A German general conducted the Tiurkish operations against the British, while von Mackensen himself directed in the early autumn a vast attack upon little Serbia, the Bulgarians delighting to aid their German allies in the cruel work which followed. The Greeks who were bound by treaty to aid the Serbians, fearing the terrific power of the Germans, did not send a man. The King of Greece, a brother-in-law of the Kaiser, now took the lead in pubUc affairs, refusing the services both of Venizelos and his parliamentary majority. Autocracy was the order of the day. It was time to put aside the clumsy and ramshackle thing called democracy everywhere. Had not Germany shown the world the better way, the way of efficiency? In the language of Victor Hugo, describing Napoleon I, The Great General Staff in Berlin was about to embarrass God, so omnipotent had it become. England failed disastrously in her efforts to open the Golden Horn to Russian exports, so much needed in the allied world; and of course French and British military sup- plies could not find their way to the myriad hands of Russian soldiers now aroused to the awful dangers of war for them. The Dardanelles effort cost England many capital ships and a hundred thousand devoted soldiers. As the British with- drew from their dangerous position on the coasts of Galli- poli, the Germans drove the remnants of the Serbians over the mountains of Albania. British and Italian ships took these broken people to Corfu, while Britain and France to- 208 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK gether maintained with difficulty a single position in the region, at Salonika. Such was the end of all the brilliant ex- pectations of the early spring of 1915. The allies were every- where defeated, save upon the ocean.^ And as I have already indicated, the Germans were making the sea more than dangerous to any one who might follow his lawful business upon it. A half-dozen American ships had been sunk and many American lives had been lost. The Lusitania was sunk just as von Hindenburg was moving into Russia and Brusiloff was beginning his retreat across the Carpathians. France changed her ministry; Great Britain was confronted with an Irish rebellion and the people of the United States, divided and provincial as they had al- ways been, were hardly awake to the state of the world. It is no wonder that Germany was drunk upon victory. It was the beginning of German defeat. Her emperor was now confident that nothing could stay the "victorious German sword." The General Staff now laid its plans for the utter break-up of France and for a final onslaught upon hated Albion. There can be no doubt that France literally trembled and that England looked upon the popular and clever Lloyd George as her only hope. President Wilson, who saw and felt all the time that the whole world must reckon with Germany, knew that he could not make a positive move nor even adequately resent the [^wrongs upon American ships and American lives, lest he set loose in his own country the chaos of party rivalries and racial conflicts.^ Were ever the affairs of men in a more critical condition? iH. W. Devinson, "The Dardanelles Campaign," liondon, 1918, ia perhaps the best account of this disastrous British e£Fort. *This view is based upon close study of the American character as well as upon a conver- sation with the President in August, 1915. I am convinced that it will be the verdict of history when all the evidence ia available. See also two French books, " Les fitats-Unia d'Amfeique et le Conflit Europten," Paris, 1919, by A. Viallate and "Lcs fitata-Unis et la Guerre," Paris, 1919, by E. Hovelaque. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 209 Germany moved forward once more. The Crown Prince began the attack upon Verdun on February 21, 1916. He expected to drive the French before him and reach Paris in the early spring. A new German militarist. General von Falkenhayn, was the master strategist at the side of the Crown Prince. The Kaiser stood upon a safe eminence with field glasses in his hand watching for the first signs of dis- aster to the French. Day after day the bloody work went on; a little ground was won or lost; hundreds of thousands of men fell on each side. All the world read the dispatches with intense excitement; but Verdun did not fall. The English had at last got enough men into Belgium to attack. They tried to drive the Germans from the Somme. They did not succeed, but they held great armies of Ger- mans away from Verdun. General Haig announced that the battle of the Somme was a success. The English had held the Germans; they had aided the French; and this had given courage to the Italians and the Russians who attacked with some success on their fronts. The significant fact was that British soldiers had learned how to use machine guns, and British manufacturers had learned to make munitions and tanks, a new weapon in warfare. The more alert of the Ger- man people, watching the increasing unity of their foes and the growing anger of great elements of the American popula- tion, began to fear that their cause might fail after all. But it was only a momentary fear. Roumania, whose interests were with those of the allies and whose leaders were distinctly anti-German, was about to join the allies. They thought the western powers would finally make the new map of Eiu-ope, and, if so, they would like to secure that part of Hungary which was Roumanian, perhaps more. She had an army of five hundred thousand men. Russia still had troops enough to assist her. The die was cast. Roumania 210 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK invaded Hungary in August. Germany replied with an army under von Mackensen. It was accustomed to victory; it was overwhelming in strength and in great guns. The Rouman- ians quickly lost their advantageous positions in the moun- tains; the passes were taken by the Germans; and before Christmas von Mackensen was in Bucharest. Another en- emy had been struck down with lightning-like rapidity. The corridor to Bagdad was safer and wider than ever; and still other rich food- and oil-bearing lands were at the mercy of the General Staff in Berlin. Who could resist? Would not the Allies take notice? It was time for the last great stroke that was to bring peace and world empire. Why should not every- body agree to Germany's great plan? As a means of winning world approval, the German Govern- ment directed its first great peace move toward President Wil- son. The President was supposed to have committed himself irrevocably to peace and even to submission. As a matter of fact, Wilson had said in October, 1916, in a campaign speech,' that the business of neutrality had played out. He had asked Congress and the country to build warships at double the rate any former president had built them; he had urged three different times the building of merchant ships in great numbers; and he had told an Irish agent of Germany in New York that he would feel himself disgraced if he should receive the votes of such men. Could wise diplomats in Berlin or elsewhere bring themselves to believe that such a man as Wilson would not resist the "sink-and-kill" programme that the German admiralty was known to be preparing? The diplomats about the Kaiser were, like the military men, drunk with success; they knew the outside world feared them and they thought that Wilson's "too-proud-to-fight" iRobinson and West, " The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," S58, THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 211 attitude, his patience with them at a time when the condi- tions of American poHtics commanded patience, and his proclamation about keeping neutral "in spirit," meant that he would submit to anything. It was the great blunder of Germany that she attributed fear of a craven sort to men who merely hated war. It was this that had led to the hasty killing of Edith Cavell in 1915, that made a waste of northern France, and subjected civilian populations that fell iato German hands to incomparable hardship. It has ever been the weakness and the crime of military men when suc- cess crowned their efforts. One can not forget that it was General Sherman who said "war is hell, " and then illustrated the theory by practice in South Carolina. But Germany blindly matured her naval programme and sent Wilson the peace message of December 12, 1916. It was a "raw" document which announced in spirit and even in so many words that the world had seen the German ma- chine at work, that conquests were easy to make, that man- kind could not escape the German power and the German kultur, and that it was time to cease the shedding of innocent blood by resisting the German might. If the AUies would lay down their arms and gather about a peace table, they might then learn what the German terms would be. If Wil- son would bring the allied governments to accept this propo- sition, he would do mankind a great service. It can hardly be thought that Germany believed the Allies would thus sub- mit. Yet the proposed submarine weapon was feared. Men dreaded the consequences of the test to which the sailors of the world were to be subjected. If Englishmen and neutral sailors should strike against shipowners, there would be an end of the struggle. If Wilson continued his neutral policy, the struggle would be lost.' ■Jamea W. Gerard, "My Four Years in Germany," 347-377. S12 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK On the 18th of December, Wilson, fully informed by Mr. Gerard in person of the undercurrents of Berlin naval and diplomatic circles, called upon all parties to the war to publish their objects in the waging of such a deadly con- flict. He said that all professed the same ends. If so, why might not all agree to cease fighting? The German reply contained no hint of the terms that would satisfy her, but authoritative leaders in Berlin continued to talk of Mittel- europa, of retaining Belgium, of vast indemnities to be taken from the Allies and even from the United States. The alUed governments insisted that they could never agree to an armistice until Germany gave up Belgium, freed northern France, and made reparation for the damage done to those who had been overwhelmed by the German armies. It was clear enough now that the two groups of powers were not fighting for similar ends. It was only diplomatic necessity that had caused Wilson to indicate that he might have thought otherwise. Nothing came of the German peace ap- peal. Nothing resulted from Wilson's request and the replies of the warring groups. Germany could not stop. The HohenzoUem dynasty had fed the German people sc long upon a diet of conquest that the failure of a great war, like the one then waging, was equivalent to revolution. Wil- liam II, von Hindenburg, von Mackensen, and the rest must have great annexations and great indemnities or abdicate. The President knew this well enough. Every historian realized it. The Prussian ideal had been government by force and war as a legitimate business of states since the time of Frederick the Great. Forty years had been spent in preparation for the moment which seemed just ahead in December, 1916. The submarine was to be the weapon which would bring peace with annexations and indemnities. Chice again Wilson endeavoured to bring about peace. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 213 Dreading, as all democratic leaders must dread, the thrusting of their people into war, he addressed the senate on January 22, 1917 ;^ " I would fain believe thati amspeaking for the silent mass of mankind. ... I am proposing that the nations should with one accord adopt the doctrine of President Mon- roe as the doctrine of the world: that no nation should seek to extend its polity 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, un- afraid, the little along with the great and powerful. . . . I am proposing government by the consent of the governed; that freedom of the seas which our ancestors have urged; and that moderation of armament which makes of armies and navies a power for order merely, not an instrument of ag- gression or of selfish violence." To attain these ends and to set the stage for a new world, he urged: "That it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it may be understood that no other inter- pretation was in my thought. I am seeking only to face reali- ties and to face them without soft concealments. Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation. . . . Only a peace between equals can last."i Here Wilson spoke as a statesman having in mind not only the needs of war-stricken Europe, but the various elements of his own people who must fight a war upon Germany, in the event that he failed to bring the Kaiser to accept the Golden Rule diplomacy. It was the President's last call to Germany to come again within the pale of modern civilization 'Robinson and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," 365-370. 214 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK and make a peace that would not ruin her; if she refused, her moral position would be worse than ever and American unity almost certain. Yet he was not understood. The leading men in the East railed at Wilson's "peace-without- victory" and once again put obstacles in the way of his going into the very war they wished him to enter. They talked of his weakness, his pro-Germanism, of his "weasel words," and his endless notes. Yet a hundred years from now both American historians and the German population will see that he put the imperialists on record before mankind as unwilling to have any other peace than a peace of violence and subjugation. Would Wilson go to war? That was asked everywhere and every day all over the world. Would Congress sustain him with a whole heart if he should go to war with Germany? Would the millions of people of German blood, living in all the great cities of the North, sustain such a war? These latter were questions which some people seemed never to put to themselves. On January 31st, Ambassador von Bernstorff handed an annoimcement to the Secretary of State in Washington saying that the expected move had been made in Berlin: Germany ordered a blockade of England, France, and Italy, closed the ports of Europe to neutrals as well as belligerents, and hence- forth submarines would sink all ships that endeavoured to trade with any of the countries at war with Germany. One American ship, duly painted according to German orders, might go to England each week, and a narrow lane through the Mediterranean to Greece, stiU a neutral country, was marked off for the sailing of an occasional ship! The world was simply told to stand aside while Germany finished her job. Secretary Zimmermann, of the German Foreign OflSce, said to Ambassador Gerard on January 31, 1917: "Give us THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 215 only two months of this kind of warfare and we shall end the war and make peace within three months."' Napo- leon I never issued a more autocratic order. Wilson was asked, just as Belgium had been asked on August 1, 1914, to hold the gun aimed at England, while the Ger- mans pidled the trigger. For the United States to submit would have been as immoral as it would have been for Bel- gium to grant willing consent to the German army in 1914. As I have said before, the Berlin authorities were drunk with what they called their own greatness. It was the one thing needful to the final overthrow of the HohenzoUern dynasty and the complete breakdown of the German system as taught and worshipped since 1864. Although Germans at home and Germans in the United States had said again and again that the United States were hardly equal, as a fighting power, to Roumania, the resources and the vast in- dustrial machine which Wilson would command, in the event of war, were equal to the resources and the economic power of all Europe. Almost gleefully von Tirpitz and the Gen- eral Staff took their chance and challenged Wilson to do his worst. Wilson replied on February 3rd in the sudden and irrevocable breaking off of relations with Germany. From the Congress which had refused to pass a shipping bill, refused to enact his corrupt practices measure, and had for six months failed to pass the most vital and necessary parts of the Adamson compromise of the preceding August, he now asked a blanket grant of power to meet the urgent needs of the new situa- tion.^ The country, however, was at last ready. Germany had revealed herself in ways that the wayfaring man could understand. Western and Southern newspapers that had iJamea W. Gerard, "My Four Years in Germany," 875. 'F. A. Ogg, "National Progress," 394. 216 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK formerly been unequal to an understanding of the issue in Europe talked with hearty endorsement of the imminence of American participation in the war against Germany. The reactionary East that denounced Wilson because he would not compel England to open her blockade on behalf of Ameri- can goods bound to Germany shouted approval. Even large elements of the German-American population indicated sorrowfully that the Fatherland was no longer defensible. It was remarkable how the dis-United States rallied to the President. Wilson felt once more the tremendous weight of the national approval. While America came to his support in unquestioned man- ner, Europe began to realize that something might happen on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Gerard says that Beth- mann-Hollweg feared the consequences of the ruthless sub- marine policy; but Germany as a whole still lived in her il- lusions of supreme power on earth. The English press that had jeered and cartooned Wilson for his request of De- cember 18th, and his "peace-without-victory" address,' now saw some wisdom in Wilson's method. The French, who derided in extravagant language the strange "Monroeism" of the speech to the Senate, sought in a few short weeks to give their pens an entirely different turn. Europe really took notice of Wilson in February, 1917. His "folly " might, after all, interest elder statesmen. It was not a light matter. The German submarine be- gan to take an enormous toll upon the shipping from which Britain, France, and Italy must live. Day by day the published list of sinkings became more ominous. Belliger- ents and neutrals alike went down. Millions of tons of food- stuffs and ammunition were destroyed with the utmost ^The lAterary Digest for February 10, 1917) gives the comment of the foreign press upon the President's diplomacy. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 217 abandon by the Germans. Although the beginning of the great alhed offensive in the Somme region, which came in March, 1917, brought an immediate retreat of the German army over a wide strip of territory to a so-called Hindenburg hue, the events upon the ocean a little later on the very coasts of the United States warned Wilson that if he would save the cause represented by Britain and France, he must hurry. It was not long before a million tons of shipping was sunk each month. But Wilson was making ready his strokes. The secretaries of war and navy had been consulting business men with the view to having matured plans ready in case of war as early as the middle of December, 1916. Wilson entered into relations with these men, later called the "seven dictators." Daniel Willard of the railway world, Julius Rosenwald, of the Sears Roebuck Company, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labour, and others prepared the measures that were later to be adopted so promptly.* But Congress was not ready. It was a body chosen in 1914 and a little out of touch with its constituencies. The President's urgent request for far-reaching powers, granted in the house bill of March 1st, giving him authority to arm American merchantmen, was held up in the Senate and defeated in a notorious filibuster. The men who managed this filibuster illustrate the curious character of American public men as well as the kind of opposition that was still manifested to the entrance of the United States into the great war. The leaders of the group were Stone of the Missouri Democratic machine; O'Gorman the Irishman of Tammany Hall connections; Clapp of Minnesota, and La FoUette of Wisconsin. The Germans of Missouri, the Irish of New York, ^Investigation of the Graham committee as reported in the daily papers of July 7, 191% -The Cliicago Triburie gives a brief account of the investigation. 218 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK and the German-Swedish elements of the Northwest were the motor forces behind these "wilful men," as Wilson charac- terized them. In Germany, the Frankfurter Zeitung char- acterized Stone as a great patriot trying to save his country against the unconstitutional conduct of the president; while the Berlin Local- Anzeiger denounced Wilson as the most "dishonourable man who ever stood at the head of a great state."! Thwarted in his eflPorts to get from Congress the powers he needed and denounced by Germans abroad and in the country in the bitterest of terms, Wilson took the oath of office for his second term on March 4, 1917. In his first in- augural he had summoned all forward-looking men to aid him in the healing of American industrial life. Now he said, showing how well he understood America's relation to the world war: "There are many things to do at home, . . . and we shall do them as time and opportunity serve; but we realize that the greatest things that remain to be done must be done with the whole world for stage and in cooperation with the wide and universal forces of mankind, and we are making our spirits ready for those things. They will follow in the immediate wake of the war itself and will set civiliza- tion up again. We are provincials no longer. "^ It was indeed an anxious time. A new epoch for the United States was beginning. But it may well be doubted whether the American representative system enabled the country to have at the President's side more than a handful of senators and representatives who were half aware of what went on about them that famous day. Congress adjourned in an ill humour, filibustering to defeat not only the bill grant- ^The Literary Digest, March 17, 1917. gives the names of^the Senate fiUbusters and the excerpts from German papers. 'G. M. Harper, "President Wilson's Addresses," 238. THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 219 ing powers that the President thought necessary to the ful- filment of his duty, but a number of important appropriation measures urgently needed in the ordinary operations of the Government.* Both the bitterly partisan Republicans and the provincial and machine-ridden Democrats of that closing session of the Sixty-fourth Congress advertised to the people their utter lack of understanding of world affairs. Their last acts lent strength and a better frame of mind by contrast to the next assembling Congress which was promptly con- vened. At a joint session of the Sixty-fifth Congress, on April 2nd, Wilson read his message recommending a declaration of war on Germany. At the same time he sent the German am- bassador guarantee of safe-conduct from the country. Wil- son spoke as a man of long-suffering patience, driven to war by a ruthless group of autocratic rulers in Berlin. It was to be a war to "make the world safe for democracy." He closed the address with a paraphrase of Martin Luther's fa- mous appeal to Charles V at the Diet of Worms : "I can not do otherwise, God help me." The people, almost without ex- ception^ approved his words and his course. Both the Senate and the House voted on April 6th by large majorities, and without prolonged debate, for a declaration of war. It was ^seen to be a race between the German submarines and the American preparations. If Wilson and the country did their utmost Germany might yet be defeated; if any serious blundering occurred, America would fail and Prance would be dismembered. It was indeed a new day and great issues depended, as often before, upon the words and conduct of one man. >Two years later, in equally critical times, three senators coaducted a similar filibuster. CHAPTER XI "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" A DEMOCRATIC people never makes war with any great show of efficiency. The United States' has conducted its wars with apparently a maximuna of waste and blundering. The Mexican War was probably an exception to this rule; but in the War of 1812, the Civil War and the struggle with Spain, it is difficult to imagine more of blundering and cross purposes without complete failure. In 1917, the nation em- barked upon the most gigantic, if not the most important, of its wars under the leadership of a man who did not believe in wars as a method of solving international problems and a Secretary of War who was an avowed pacifist. Moreover, the political party that must conduct the struggle was the party of plain coimtry folk, of men and women who were not connected with the great industrial concerns and in- terests that lie at the bottom of wars. Everything augured against an efficient and successful conduct of the war of 1917. Yet the opposite of everything expected happened. No other war in which the country has ever engaged was marked with as little of scandal or as much of success and efficiency. The cause of this unexpected turn of events was mainly the leader- ship of the President. The way was cleared for the first strokes of the War *The author does not mean to assert that the United States is a democracy. It is, all things considered, probably as nearly a democracy as Great Britain, 220 "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 221 Congress, the Sixty-fifth, on April 2, 1917. The new body organized promptly, the Democrats holding their own with- out difficulty in the Senate while in the House the Republi- cans were so nearly a~ majority that it was only with the help of three Independents and a Socialist that the Demo- crats could elect the Speaker and retain control of the great committees. This was a good thing from the standpoint of efficient leadership from the White House. It compelled the party in power to remain at its task and pay close at- tention to Mr. Wilson for whom there was little love in either house. The Speaker, Champ Clark, was notoriously out of harmony with his chief; Representative Kitchin, the chair- man of the Committee on Ways and Means, and Repre- sentative Dent, chairman of the Military Committee of the House, were inclined to disagree with the President, the latter going so far as to refuse at the critical moment to in- troduce the Administration Military Bill. Nor were all Senate Democrats in a better frame of mind. Under ordi- nary circumstances and ordinary leadership, this state of things would have meant a return to the old govern- mental impotence. It did not prove to be an ordinary occasion.^ And Wilson's leadership proved at once the most ex- traordinary. When he read his now famous war message practically the whole people applauded. The work of prep- aration had been completed. Men knew at last that impe- rial Germany could not be permitted to go her way unhin- dered into Paris and to a world control; they were ready to fight that this should not come to pass. This popular read- iness Wilson turned, as only he knew how to turn it, into a campaign for democracy. His phrase, "The world must be . 1 " The American Yearbook," 1917, p. 9, and of course "The Congressional Record," paannir give accounts of this. 222 WOODROW WILSON AND fflS WORK made safe for democracy," expressed the common thought. Its emphasis by the President was tantamount to a return of men's thoughts to the older and better ideals of 1776. But of course the ominous dangers in the world situation, the distressing dispatches telling of the ruthless sinking of ships by German submarines, with the slightly encouraging stories of von Hindenburg's retreat on the Somme, bore upon members of Congress and nerved their hands to a unanimity that was unnatural in the existing state of party strength and party fears. As soon as the committees could get into their places. Secretary Baker submitted a plan of universal military conscription that took the former militarists off their feet. But Congress promptly passed the measure, and before three months had passed the Government, assisted by an enthu- siastic public support and actual assistance in every town and county, had enrolled the young manhood of a hundred mil- lions of people, was setting up vast training camps, and en- gaging hundreds of thousands of carpenters and plumbers to build and equip suitable barracks. Railroad companies and business corporations everywhere yielded first place to the needs of the country. It was amazing to witness, that sum- mer, the efforts qf a democratic people getting ready for war. Great Britain, stimulated by the quick march of Germany through Belgium in 1914, did not prepare so rapidly or so well as did the United States under the leadership of Wilson and the spur of the public will in 1917. Wilson next called for a law authorizing a censorship of press and free speech. He might have followed the example of Lincoln in 1861-2 and suppressed newspapers and im- prisoned individuals without process of law. He preferred to have Congress and the country formally authorize him in such drastic moves. Congress did not quickly follow him in this and he, using the prestige of his popularity, set up about "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 223 the middle of April a bureau of public information which was responsible to him. At the head of this bureau he placed a radical Democrat and experienced newspaper man, Mr. George Creel, who had fought many a battle for free speech. In a very short time this bureau gathered into its offices a score of excellent men who worked faithfully to the end of the war, endeavouring not so much to censor and issue orders to public speakers and writers as to persuade and lead them to pubhsh only such information as would assist the Govern- ment in its efforts to bring Germany to her knees. It was leadership and not coercion that made this work so successful in spite of the constant jealousy of certain members of Con- gress and the inveterate enmity of certain great newspaper corporations. Information was sent daily to the press; agents were sent out to explain the causes of the war to cer- tain elements of the German and Irish population; documents were spread broadcast over the country; representatives were commissioned to aU the allied nations to explain the efforts of the United States and stimulate the enthusiasm of peoples worn out with the long and disastrous war; and propaganda was sent over the hues into Germany. When the history of the war is finally written the work of the Creel bureau will have an honourable place in the record. ^ But as the war went on Congress became impressed with the facts of the case. The various and intricate ways in which German representatives, still in the country, and Americans with strong Germanophile sympathies control- led important industries were brought out by the Federal and War Trade boards. Congress was convinced of the necessity for action, even in a field so difficult as that of rigid control of public speech and public print. The Es- pionage Act was passed on June 17, 1917, and amended upon recommendation of the Department of Justice in May, 1918, 224 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK so as to confer practically unlimited powers upon the Govern- ment. Under the increasing stimulant of war, the Judiciary Committee of the Senate was ready to go much further during the autumn and winter of 1918-19 to protect the country against what was called bolshevism.^ Under the cover of these laws and supported by an over- whelming public opinion, men were imprisoned for speaking too freely, and for giving aid to the enemy; severe penalties of narrow-minded courts-martial were enforced; and some periodicals were temporarily suppressed. Conscientious objectors to military service of any kind proved to be one of the special difficulties. A great outcry was made, particu- larly about the treatment of Eugene V. Debs, whose attitute was perverse and serious in its effects, and about the cruelties of certain military prison camps. It is certain that the Constitution was violated in many of the clauses of the vari- ous laws on the subject of free speech; and the spirit of the older American ideals was ignored from start to finish. It must not be forgotten, however, that it is the duty of CongreiT to wage war when that becomes necessary. The history of the United States from the first year of the Revolution to the close of the Philippine War offers frequent evidence of more drastic punishments and more widespread violations of the ideal of American institutions than even the most ir- reconcilable critic of Mr. Wilson can cite against him. With- out formal law to support him President Lincoln seized thousands of suspected men and thrust them into prison where they remained months and years without charges be- ing preferred against them. He proclaimed martial law in districts where there was no war, and he suspended the writ of habeas corpus upon his own authority. He suspended im- portant newspapers indefinitely and placed armed men at ^Liberals are generally agreed that it went too far. "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 225 election places to control the vote of the civil population.^ Lincoln is the great political saint of the country and he deserves the honour that history has awarded him. Wilson did not choose to do any of the things I have mentioned upon his own voUtion. He secured from Congress the enactment of laws to cover his acts. To the end of the war with Germany he insisted upon mild punishments and refrained, I believe, from ordering anybody before a fir- ing squad. To be sure the United States was far from the scene of conflict, as a distinguished historian has observed,^ and there was less public anxiety. Yet the stress of war was very great in the spring and summer of 1918, and plain coun- try folk who composed the body of the Wilson support thought there were millions of Germans in the country who would defeat the allied cause if possible. In the early days of the war Wilson issued an earnest appeal to the farmers of the country to put forth their utmost efforts to overcome the food shortage of the world. And there was, in fact, a shortage of cereals and provisions in the United States. Moreover, there was, as we have seen, a growing shortage of labour on the farms. To overcome the difficulty which might easily have become a decisive factor in the strug- gle, he called Herbert C. Hoover, who had won the love of the whole liberal world as manager of the Belgian Relief, to or- ganize a food-conservation movement. Congress expressed doubts about allowing Mr. Hoover the powers which his proposed office would require. The President insisted, in accordance with his established view, that one man and only one man should be given the decisive voice in the problem 'J. r. Rhodes, "History of the United States," IV, 164-66. The fact that slave states lilie Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland furnished votes in Congress to sustain Lincoln's pohcies IS significant. ^Professor William A. Dunning in the American Historical Renew, July, 1919. makes an ad- mirable comparison of Wilson and Lincoln in this resDect. 226 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK of food conservation. Congress yielded after some delay and the Hoover "dictatorship" was quickly set up. Higher and guaranteed prices to farmers for certain staple products were announced by the Food Administration or voted by Con- gress. Ejcperts were engaged to deal with the Chicago pack- ers, with exporters of grain, and with farmers' organizations. Posters were sent all over the country advertising what people should eat and what they should drink; agents were sent out to teach men and women how to preserve fruits and vegeta- bles. Efforts were made to prevent the enormous wastage of food in the greater cities. It was in the main a campaign of voluntary effort. Men and women worked for a dollar a year with Mr. Hoover; people saved food, planted war gardens, and otherwise lent aid to the Government in hundreds of ways. But Congress gave the full support of law to the greater operations of the Food Administration, while the President by executive order aided in the regulation and control of millers, the purchase of government supplies, and the export of foodstuffs to Europe. As the United States became early in 1918 the only available source of supply for the feeding of millions of men and animals fighting on the western front, and the whole mass of these supplies was under the control of the Food Administration, the President, acting through Mr. Hoover, became a dictator of world affairs unprecedented in history. It was, though, a dictatorship that could not continue a moment after the close of the war. In all that was done by the Food Administration the De- partment of Agriculture lent enthusiastic assistance. There were state, county, and town agents of the Department where- ever there was a chance for effective assistance or where farmers needed advice and stimulus. All the varied in- dustries that furnished farms with implements, or fruit-grow- "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 227 ers with cans or other supplies, were taken in control either by the Food Administration or the Department of Agriculture. Ill organized as the United States was, under the pressure of Wilson's leadership and the spur of a constantly growing appreciation of the meaning of the great war, Germany her- self was given lessons in national cooperation and energy. The cost of such a war as that of 1917 was a problem of the utmost importance, the more in a country where every priv- ate soldier must receive pay equal to that of officers on the continent of Europe and where young men in the training camps must have something of the comforts amd amusements to which they had been accustomed at home. To meet this cost, which soon amoimted to a billion a month, Wilson had unconsciously made preparation in the income-tax system that had been fairly elaborated before the war came upon the United States. Secretary McAdoo worked out the arrangements which the President approved. The first grant of Congress was for three and a quarter billions of dol- lars; a second grant was made in October, 1917, of more than seven and a half billions. Thus the nation continued in- creasing its appropriations to the cause till somewhat more than thirty billions was actually spent or loaned to the allied governments before the return of the President from the Peace Conference in June, 1919.* How these enormous and unprecedented sums of money were spent will not be known, in detail, until a formal history of the war is published. But in the building of camps for soldiers, the purchase of supplies, the commandeering of rail- roads and ships, the manufacture of guns, aircraft, and am- munition of every kind, great sums were expended. The loans to the allied governments amounted to ten billions. Billions were spent upon the building of new ships, war and 'Estimate of Secretary Glass published on July 9, 1919. Chicago Tribune, July 10, 1919. 228 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK commercial, upon ship-building plants, and upon houses for carpenters who worked for the Government at scores of places. To meet these expenditures, taxes were laid upon ordinary incomes, business corporations, and excess profits at rates that yielded as high as five or six billions a year when the war drew to a close. Some men paid several millions a year taxes to the Federal Treasury; thousands of men paid each a hun- dred thousand a year. States like New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois each turned into the National Treasury a sum of money that equals the total income of the Government before 1900. Not only taxes were laid and collected. Loans were asked twice a year that ranged from two to six billions. The rate of interest was low. But the bonds were over-subscribed each time and the takers sometimes numbered twenty million different persons. These loans were made for short terms, the idea of Wilson and his advisers being that the bonds should all be redeemed in a few years by means of heavy taxation. Although Wilson had not been reared an admirer of Thomas JeflFerson, he and the men about him in 1917 were distinctly of the Jefferson school of leaders. They believed that debts, even in a great world war, should not be deferred to future generations with long-continued payment of in- terest to bond-holders. For a time they insisted that half the cost of the war should be paid by taxation. Secretary McAdoo was of the same mind. Claude Kitchin, the leader of the House, although he was frequently out of harmony with the President, insisted upon this point of view. When the burdens of the struggle doubled and trebled, it was rec- ognized that the payment of a third of the cost of the war out of taxes would be as much as could reasonably be ex- pected. There was some opposition to such unprecedented "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 229 war finance; but the wealthy groups of the North and East were so generally interested in the outcome that resistance amounted to nothing. Most other great wars of the United States had been fi- nanced by bond issues and paid very slowly out of tariff taxes borne by the poor rather than by the wealthy. Some Amer- ican wars created vast amounts of bonds, fluid capital, whose holders quickly acquired an undue control over the Govern- ment itself.^ It was the merit of the Wilson war finance that a great volume of the debt was placed among people of small means and even among day labourers. Instead of asking the willing Federal Reserve banks, with others, to take and place the loans, the Treasury Department set upi agencies of its own to sell the bonds. Although many of the greater financial leaders of the country had never forgiven the drastic changes of the Federal Reserve system, and although most bankers were a little sore at the start, all joined hands and worked without charge and in full harmony with the Govern- ment. The ready absorption of loans that mounted to six billions at one call by a public never before accustomed to take government securities is proof enough of the will and the spirit of all classes. It was a new day and men took it as such. As the nation put itself in war array, the President un- folded more and more the extraordinary powers of the Amer- ican executive. And in a case where the mind of the country was so nearly a unit, as much of these powers was due to moral suasion and high leadership as to the formal enactments of Congress. The farmers rallied to the President; the labour organizations of the country, with the exception of the so-called I. W. W. groups, agreed not to strike, or in the event of strikes to submit to arbitration by the War Labour Board ^For example, at the end of the Civil War. 230 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK of which ex-President Taf t and Mr. Prank P. WaJsh were joint chairmen. Before the end of May, 1917, Daniel Willard, president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, summoned, on the request of Mr. Wilson, all the railroad presidents of the country to Washington where they readily agreed to subordinate all individual and railway interests to those of the Government. A railroad war board was established. Its object was to coordinate the work of transportation and management so that the least possible misunderstanding and cross purposes should interfere with the efficiency of the country at war. From the beginning Wilson worked through and with a group of business men and members of the Cabinet who stood in close touch with the business of war, known since the latter part of 1916 as the Council of National Defence. These were selected simply for their knowledge of conditions and not for political reasons. Some were Republicans, others were Democrats. It was not a question of social policy but simply one of winning the war as soon as possible. These men brought the various interests of industry, agriculture, trans- portation, exports, and finance into harmony. There were subordinate boards connected with the departments of the Government or with the Council of National Defence for every important function. Washington became before the end of 1918 a vast and busy workshop. Thousands of the well-to- do went there and gladly worked without pay; others, experts in the sciences, gathered there to place at the disposal of the public whatever of knowledge or ingenuity they possessed. Wilson said it was a great inspiration to watch the nation at war and to receive stimulating support from so many men of all walks of life who asked nothing for themselves.^ 'An excellent treatment of this whole subject will be found in "The American Yearbook," lor 1918, pp. 38-81, by W. F. Willoughby. "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 231 While the forces of society were applied to the new task, Wilson kept his mind then, as ever, upon his main duty, that of retaining the ear of the great public and of raising the tone of public opinion. Having urged so long the necessity of neutrality and talked of the need for Americans to "keep their heads," of "peace without victory," and of the "obscure causes" of the war, he now sought to stir in the people the necessary indignation toward the German authorities. "The war was begun by the military masters of Germany. Their purpose had long been avowed, expounded in their class- rooms and set forth to the world as the goal of German policy. Their plan was to throw a belt of German military power and political control across the very centre of Europe and beyond the Mediterranean into the very heart of Asia. They would set German princes upon the thrones of the Balkan states, put German officers at the service of Turkey, develop plans of sedition and rebellion in Egypt and India, and set their fires in Persia. From Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is spread. And now they talk of peace. It has come to me in all sorts of guises, but never with the terms disclosed. They have many pawns in their hands. They still hold a valuable part of France. Their armies press close on Russia and overrun Poland. They can not go farther, they dare not go back. They wish to close their bargain be- fore it is too late. The military masters under whom G^- many is bleeding see very clearly to what point Fate has brought them: if they fall back or are forced back an inch, their power abroad and at home will fall to pieces. "But we are not the enemies of the German people and they are not our enemies. They did not originate or desire this hideous war or wish that we should be drawn into it, and we are vaguely conscious that we are fighting their cause, as they will some day see it themselves. They are in the grip 232 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK of the same sinister power that has stretched its ugly talons out and drawn blood from us. If their masters fail, the German people will thrust them aside. A government ac- countable to the people will be set up in Germany, as has been the case in England and France — in all great countries of modern times. "For us there was but one choice. We have made it, and woe be to that man, or that group of men, that seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution, when every principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made secure for the salvation of the nation. We are ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall wear a new lustre. Once more we shall make good with our lives and fortunes the great faith to which we are born, and a new glory shall shine in the face of our people."' In spite of all that critics had said of his former attitude and were soon to say of the new policy, this was no funda- mental change on his part. It is the idealist and the demo- crat waging war upon autocracy. Like Burke of old he could not find a way to indict a whole people. To him the German people was a helpless, deluded race, unconvinced of the great wrong it was doing the world. It was the kind of lan- guage Lincoln held all through the American Civil War, the language of every leader who believes in popular self-govern- ment. While Wilson had professed a complete neutrality in the earlier years and even implied that all parties to the great war were seeking national or class aggrandizement, he had neyer condoned the conduct of the militarists in Berlin. Now he would, if possible, bring down upon their heads the anger of the German people themselves. It was his opportun- ity. Neither the English nor the French leaders could work iFrom a speech made at the Washington Monument, June 14, 1917, in G. M. Harper's "Addresses," 259-64. 1 have condensed and in a few sentences changed the tense. "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 233 thus upon the underpinning of the German system. Once again it may well be noted that it was the way of Lincoln in dealing with Jefferson Davis and his immediate surround- ing, but I do not mean to compare Davis to the German militarists. It took Lincoln four years to win; nor can it be said that he weakened the hold of the Confederate leadership upon the Southern people. Would Wilson succeed? To further Wilson's plans, the French and the English missions of May, 1917, visited Washington and the chief cities of the country. Foreign Secretary Balfour and General Jeff re held conferences with the President and the heads of the departments of the Government. They showed themselves to vast crowds of people and impressed upon the imagination of the coimtry the need of instant and substantial assistance. They crossed the ocean in the midst of the worst of the sub- marine menaces, and men wondered whether they might return unharmed or return at aU to their beleaguered coun- tries. It was a summer of solemn disillusionment. The Russian Revolution was fuUy revealed. Americans instinctively re- joiced. Another republic, possibly a democracy, was about to be set up. Of course the Russian people would continue to fight the German war lords. A moderate socialist, Alexander Kerensky, was quickly elevated to the leadership of the Rus- sian people. He called upon all classes to help him win the war. "Then," he added, "we shall have our republic." Wilson was moved to send a cordial address in which he said: "The position of America in this war is so clearly avowed that no man can be excused for mistaking it. . . . We are fighting for the liberty, the self-government, and the undictated development of all peoples. . . . The prin- ciple is plain. No people must be forced under sovereignty under which it does not wish to live. No territory must 234 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK change hands except for the purpose of securing for those who inhabit it a fair chance of life and liberty. No indemnities must be insisted upon except those that constitute payment for manifest wrongs done. And then the free peoples of the worid must draw together in some common covenant, some genuine and practical cooperation that wiU in eflFect combine their force to secure peace and justice in the dealings of na^ tions with one another. The brotherhood of mankind must no longer be a fair but empty phrase; it must be given a struc- ture of force and reality. . . . For these things we can afford to pour out our blood and treasure.""^ To explain the United States to Russia a commission was sent across the Pacific and through Siberia to St. Petersburg. It was headed by one of the ablest of all American reaction- aries, Elihu Root; but Charles Edward Russell, Socialist, was also of the group. A Red Cross mission was later sent, and Raymond Robins, a representative of the Roosevelt Repub- licans, was placed at its head. Perhaps two score men of all shades of opinion composed the two delegations to Russia. They carried the best of wishes and the promise of all the as- sistance the country could give, if the Russians would con- tinue the fight against Germany. This was asking a great deal from a people literally broken under the wheels of the terrible German war chariot, promising a great deal from a country that must from that time forward lend money, ma- terials, and men to the powers then fighting imder the utmost tension on the western front. Kerensky failed, as any other leader must have failed. The simple Russian peasantry, released from the rigid law of the military system of the old regime, simply laid down arms and returned to their homes. The United States must, therefore, take the place of Russia and send great armies to the western front or see the western 'Vobinson and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," 898-400. "WE AEE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 235 allies broken. Germany was in her strongest position as Russia fell away broken and helpless. Yet she called upon the Pope to appeal to the world for a settlement. Benedict XV, bitterly hostile to the Italian Government and angered at the French for breaking the connection of Catholicism with the French Government, called upon Wilson and the other representatives of the allied powers to enter into pour- parlers for peace upon the basis then existing. It was August 1, 1,917. Germany was the master everywhere and threatening to break with all her power into the plains of northeastern Italy. The moment was well chosen. But Benedict was not a Hildebrand nor an Innocent III. Wilson more nearly resembled the Hildebrands and the Innocents of times past. The country of Luther alone paid court to the head of the Roman Church. Wilson replied toward the end of August in one of his most masterly pieces of diplomacy. To accept the invitation of the Pope would be to set up Germany as the master of Europe and leave the peoples of oppressed regions helpless and in worse plight than ever; Germany would reassemble and re- organize the powers the war had all but given her; Europe would be compelled to maintain a sort of armed truce till the next trial of strength. "We can not take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee of anything that is to endure. . . . We must await some new evi- dence of the purposes of the great peoples of the Central Powers."! But as Wilson took the lead of the nations in dealing with the German oflFer and outward appearances looked well, there was, as we now know,^ great trepidation in the councils of Prance and England. The British ambassador in Rome ■Bobinaon and West, "The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson," 408-411. The dispatches from Weimar during the closing days of July, 1919, make this very clear. 236 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK sent a message in the midst of these public declarations that approached an overture for peace that would have left Germany the mistress of Europe. The western Allies had little faith that the United States would be able to send troops to the western front more quickly than England had sent her great army there in 1916. The task of holding back the mighty Teutonic forces seemed greater than France and England could perform through the long year of 1917 and the early summer of 1918; the task seemed the greater since there was now little doubt that Russia would cease to fight and release all the German troops from the eastern front and allow them to attack France on the Somme. The d^bdcle of Brest-Litovsk was already evident. The great militarists of Germany were convinced that Europe would be at their mercy early in 1918. Wilson alone spoke with confidence. He would have no peace with the Kaiser; he regretted that the Pope had been willing to come to the aid of autocracy. It was bold and warlike coimsel indeed for a pacifist; a mili- tarist, if we are to judge by the evidence the war has supplied us, would have been inclined to make terms. The autumn brought a second revolution in Russia. Fin- land broke away from the main empire and permitted the Germans to prepare there a throne for a HohenzoUern puppet; Ukraine, with its grain harvests offering every in- ducement to the Germans, set up for itself and invited Ger- man troops to assist its new government; Siberia and the eastern stretches of Asiatic Russia offered a tempting bait to the cupidity of Japan. Messrs. Lenine and Trotsky, re- turned exiles respectively from Switzerland and the United States, now ruled in the heart of Russia, the great region of which Moscow is the centre. They had the most difficult of all tasks. Wilson sent them a message, too, hoping to keep them within the great family of nations that resisted Ger- "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 237 many. He was conciliatory. Lenine's reply was: "First break the power of the capitalists in America, put a score of your financial grandees in prison, and we shall be willing to treat with you as an ally."^ There was no hope in Russia. On the western front France wearily held her lines and England struck constantly but in vain against her part of the front. Germany was surely feared in the United States as she had never been feared before. Every day the need of sending an army to Europe seemed to increase. From the beginning there had been many who insisted upon sending an army of volunteers. Wilson resisted this. Colonel Roosevelt, long the staunchest advocate of American intervention in the European war, went to Washington and offered his services as the leader of a division of volunteers which he would raise. It was said that three hundred thousand men would respond to his call. There was a certain demand from England and France that the ex-president should come to their assistance. There was a strong public demand and even a stronger political wish that Roosevelt be permitted to command an army in the trenches. It was claimed that nearly if not all the volunteers would be men too old to be drafted into the National Army. Although Congress gave its consent in the first Army Bill that was passed, Wilson doubted the wisdom of sending such an army. He preferred to send Major-General John J. Pershing, who had commanded the expeditions into Mexico and who was held in high esteem in army circles. The ap- pointment was admirable : and the President's unfaltering sup- port of the general will receive the verdict of history. Pershing was a graduate of West Point, a soldier by profession, and a 'These are almost the identical words, duly translated, that were sent to Washlngtoik 238 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK young officer whom President Roosevelt had advanced over many of his seniors in 1906 to the rank of brigadier. Persh- ing arrived with his staff in Paris on June 14, 1917, and began preparations for the Regular Army that was to be sent in October, 1917. As quickly as possible the Secretary of War and the General Staff worked out the plans for the American participation in the war. The Regular Army, with support from the National Guard, was to make the firstfighting unit. They took over an American sector in January, 1918. In addition there was to be the great National Army that was in training during the autumn and winter of 1917-18. It was hoped that the United States would be able to send hundreds of thousands of aircraft to France and smother the German advance of the next spring. Howard Coffin, an experienced motor engineer of Detroit and a member of the Council of National Defence, was placed in charge of the air- craft service and given six hundred and fifty millions of dollars with which to hasten construction of the proposed air fleet. Engineers were engaged to construct a motor that was to be superior to any machine that was then in use. After disappointing delays the desired model, the "Liberty," was constructed and contracts were let to manufacturers. All through the autumn the work of getting ready to make motors went on. Of course there were rumours of wilful delays and of German spies that disconcerted the public. There were from the start delay and wasteful expenditure of money and labour.^ The Secretary of the Navy was in a better position at the beginning of the war for the navy is always ready to mobilize. Mr. Daniels had been forehanded also and secured the necessary supplies. New and more powerful ships had been ^The extent and cause of waste and delays were admirably set forth in a report which former Justice Hughes made in the spring of 1918 at the President's request "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 239 building for several years. This programme was now hastened. Rear-Admiral Sims, one of the most ardent of the Navy reformers during the last dozen years, was placed in command, and a large part of the war fleet hastened to the aid of Eng- land. Other commanders were set to guard the coasts and harbours of the country. Recruits to the service were secured as fast as they could be trained. Contracts for submarine chasers were given and hundreds of yjichts or other ocean-going craft were taken into the national service. It was only a short time before Sims was at his post in London, dreadnaughts took their places in the North Sea, and destroyers roved the Atlantic in search of the enemy. But the great pubhc saw the end of the year approaching with only a few troops in France and the ocean more infested than ever with German submarines. Men asked daily about everything; the Government could not give out information that would encourage. Wilson endeavoured constantly to stir men's emotions and hopes. He spoke in October to the American Federation of Laboiu" and once more emphasized the democratic char- acter of the struggle in so far as the United States was con- cerned. He urged labourers to lend their best efforts to the building of ships, aircraft, the making of ammunition, and the dispatching of railway traflSc of every sort. Labour could win the war; it might lose the war. But one thing he would have everybody understand, there could be no peace by any other road than that of urgent warfare. Pacifism could no longer be tolerated. There were constant rumours of new German peace proposals as the winter approached. He forewarned men against all such overtures. It was a fore- shadowing of the "force-to-the-uttermost" doctrine that was to be preached the next year. This conciliatory and nerving address to organized labour 240 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK was but preliminary to the greater mobilization of all the forces of the country that Germany might to be baulked ere it was too late. One of the most important items of this en- ergetic course of the President was the taking over of the railway systems of the country on December 28, 1917. It ^ill be remembered that, in May preceding, Wilson brought all the railroad presidents into cooperation with the Govern- ment. A sort of priority system of forwarding was set up and agents of the War Department, cooperating with others from the Department of Agriculture, determined what goods should have precedence and what roads should yield strategic termini to the use of other roads and the public. As the Germans continued their frightful way into northern Italy, it was seen that no railroad and no private interest must be permitted to delay the fullest and quickest activity of the Government. To improve the transportation system Wilson "took charge" of all the great roads and placed Secretary McAdoo in personal control.' It was a bold thing to do. But very few quarrelled with the President for it. The tem- per of the country was such that anything Wilson thought to be necessary to defeat the Germans would have been tolerated. The need of quick support to the Allies was the one criterion by which things must be judged and performed. The President said that it was not because the railroad officials had failed; it was to secure unity of action. He asked all parties in interest to lend their utmost help, and there can be no doubt that both the labour and the capitalist elements quick- ened their pace. One thing that was significant for the future was the plain intimation of the great railway brotherhoods, engineers, firemen, and conductors, about the same time, that they would not consent again to become the employes of the iThifi move was duly explained in a message to Congress on January 4, 1918. "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 241 private owners of the roads. They were anxious to serve the public, but not the capitalists and absentee owners of the railways. Another thing that caused some thought among the dis- interested was the promise of the President to have the Government pay the stock- and bond-holders of the railroads an income equal to the average of the returns of the roads during the preceding three years, that is, at the high rate of earnings which the great war had given them. This guar- antee of dividends was to continue eighteen months after the close of the war. Of course the public must pay all such charges. Moreover, the conditions of the time made im- mediate increase of wages to a vast army of employes neces- sary. The public must also pay this. At the close of the war both the high fixed charges and a wage fund of at least a biUion dollars annually more than had been paid under private ownership would have to be met. Thus the war was compelling revolutionary social changes. Whatever poli- ticians and interested security holders might wish, the "scrambled railroads" could never be entirely unscrambled. Besides a powerful interest, the bond- and stock-holders would inevitably become attached to a system that guar- anteed incomes. Wilson said in his statement of the case: "I earnestly recommend that these guarantees be given by appropriate legislation, and given as promptly as circumstances permit. I need not point out the essential justice of such guarantees and their great influence and significance as elements in the present financial and industrial situation of the country!" There was indeed nothing else to do. The President did the one thing needful; but he laid the foundation for the per- manent public ownership of all the great transportation lines in the near future. Labour was then intimating as much; «42 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK now It will have nothing less than a final and permanent dis- missal of the capitalistic element in the problem. When thi; railroads become public property, other great interests will inevitably follow the same course. It is not politics; it is not what men call dogmatic socialism. It is the way marked out by events, from which there is no escape. But while domestic events took this significant turn, even more serious omens appeared in the international skies. In December the German and Austrian governments sent representatives to Brest-Litovsk to conclude a peace with broken Russia. Germany had agreed to accept the formula which the Bolsheviki annoimced to the world in November, 1917, namely, that there were to be no annexations and no indemnities in any peace which Russia should make. Con- fronted, however, with unarmed men, the Grermans exacted a peace that dismembered Russia and also huge contribu- tions of gold. While this bold announcement of the German policy was making, a vast army of Germans and Austrians fell upon Italy, drove General Cadorna from the Julian Alps, and crossed one Italian river after another until German guns threatened Venice and the rich industrial region of the North. The fall of Italy seemed imminent at Christmas, 1917. It the Italian resistance were broken, nothing could prevent Germany from organizing all that historic northern country that lies between Venice and Milan. From Piedmont, the German generals would then descend upon southern France, and make useless all those defences on the Somme front which had so long withstood all attack. In Paris, in London, and in Washington the worst was daily feared. Moreover, the use which Germany was able to make of the new social "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" US gospel which came out of Russia was very threatening. Not only the Italian soldiers, but the war-worn Frenchmen hearkened to the so-called "new freedom." Mutinies were threatened in the French armies. Ill news came upon every wind. From the Far East came veiled threats that, after all that had been done in Europe, the war might yet be lost if Japan did not receive her price. When the great war opened Japan quickly showed a dis- position to make the utmost use of the world crisis for her own advantage. Great Britain held vast possessions in the Far East; France was mistress of an empire to the south of China; and the Dutch held rich islands in the Pacific. Japa- nese statesmen declared that the civilization of the West was about to fall and that the time had come for Japan to realize her world mission. The very language of Prussia and her Junkers was daily reproduced in the papers of Tokio. Count Okuma, whether in office or out of office, voiced the ambitions of the Japanese imperialists. To any one who read the news of the Far East in 1915-17, it was clear enough that Britain and France must play a very careful r61e in every part of the world, lest Japan oust them from China and set up a vast protectorate from Siberia to the Indian Ocean.* In order to prevent Japan from making such use of the occasion, England and France promised everything possible. It was a case of winning or losing the war with Germany. Japan did indeed decide to cast her lot in 1914 with Britain and France and drive Germany out of the Shantung peninsula, at the same time releasing British ships in the Pacific for service in home waters. When, however, this great service was done, Japanese statesmen began to threaten China with complete subjection; England and Holland with the seizure of ^This view is the result of the study «f many speeches and articles which appeared in the Japan Rmew and other publications friendly to Japan. 944 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Borneo, Java, and Sumatra; and Prance with the loss of Cochin China.i A ready agreement with Germany might easily have been made.^ Before the autumn of 1917 was old British leaders urged Wilson to "Keep Japan off of us!" When Wilson was summoning all men to join him in making a world free and safe for all peoples, the little along with the great, a commission was sent to Washington to wring from him concessions that were designed to subject China to Japan and make of Japan the mistress of the Far East. Nothing shows better the spirit with which many men of all countries went into the great war than the demands of Baron Ishii upon the United States. There was nothing in the East from Siberia to the Philippine Islands that the Japanese might not have had if they had promptly gone over to the German side. Every thoughtful observer feared every day that Japan would make this move. England and Prance asked a great deal of Wilson when they said "Keep Japan off of us." Could Wilson perform the service? And if so what must be the means ? He could grant them concessions in Mexico and equal rights in California, but the country would have repudiated the grants with the deepest anger. He could leave them a free hand or a semi-free hand in China, and let distraught China pay the cost. The people of the country would denounce that, but with less of anger than the other. Wilson chose the lesser of two evils. He could not exactly refuse to Japan in China what England had enjoyed there nearly a hundred years. In other words, the economic exploitation of the Shantung penin- sula was tacitly accepted in the Ishii-Lansing Agreement of 1917. It was plainly that or a German victory everywhere. One may take one's choice.' ^A definite campaign for extensive annexations reached this climax in the autumn of 1917. *It was reported that an American newspaper correspondent carried the statement of BAhmann-HoUweg, that Japan was about to desert England, directly to the British Foreigl Office in the autumn of 1917. "This is the writer's interpretation of what transpired. "WE ARE PROVINCIALS NO LONGER" 245 Wilson was hardly through with these negotiations when Congress reassembled in December. Many of the members were angry at the turn of things. Many were scared, as half the world was desperately scared, at the onward march of the German legions. Wilson remained perfectly cool. He addressed Congress, saying: "Nothing shall turn us from our course"; he spoke words of sympathy for the Russian people fallen into the hands of an implacable foe; he reassured the various subjugated nationalities of eastern Europe. i Once again several of the so-called fourteen points were clearly enunciated. Congress gave assent if not approval. But neither Congress nor the country really imderstood what was meant by such far-reaching propositions. From the evi- dence that became vocal and even shrieking immediately after the signing of the armistice with Germany, the articulate elements of the country had no thought of supporting the President in what he so nobly enunciated in the winter of 1918. Nor did Wilson himself think that business men would willingly consent to any Golden-Rule diplomacy at the end of the war. He nevertheless moved forward under the impulse of a certain weight of approval from the inarticulate masses, as well as under the necessity of appealing to the hard-pressed masses of Europe who vaguely hoped that Wilson might prove to be a sort of Messiah who might save them from the hard lot they had suffered for a thousand years. Germans, Italians, and Frenchmen looked at that time to the President of the United States as the hope of the world. Thus Wilson came to the greatest of all his war messages, that in which he formulated the fourteen points. It was the climax of Wil- son's moral leadership. A great lawyer, accustomed to the *The press dispatches of August 6-7, 1919, in all the American papers reveal the gravity J. F. Rhodes, " History of the Vaited States," cited above. Noi does Rhodes give the whole of the dark picture. 852 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK New England admired for fifteen years after Lincoln's death; and of Thaddeus Stevens who was the soul of the drastic re- construction policy of 1866 which was substituted for that of Lincoln. I say one must not judge too severely. From the day the "wilful eleven" senators blocked some of the most important war moves of the President in March, 1917, Republicans had avowed that there was a truce of party politics for the period of the war. Wilson and the Democrats accepted the vow. But a distinguished leader of Republican opinion said to the writer at the time that it was an empty vow, that there was no truce. Empty or otherwise, there was a certain effort of people who could not ^ctually accept any Democrat as president to refrain from : denouncing him in the presence of strangers. Strange as it Smay appear, the older, gentler, and well-to-do Republicans of the cities of the North could not reconcile themselves to the reality that Wilson was the lawful head of the nation.* Now these very best people of the North, in the midst of a great war, were compelled to submit to the leadership of Wilson, a Democrat and almost a democrat. But all through the summer of 1917 there were outcrop- pings of public hostility. The Boston Transcript and the Chicago Tribune, the latter a hotly pro-German paper in 1914, derided the President with such remarks as — "We are at war but not in it."^ There were flings at the President because he had refused to send Colonel Roosevelt to the front. And George Creel's Bureau of Public Information, as well as Mr. Hoover's Food Administration, was daily attacked. The former was a clownish aflFair; and the latter an autocracy in league with the Chicago packers. That was ■An eminent hiatorian haa said that such was the feeling of his neighbours from the begin- ning of the Wilson presidency. 'Quoted from The Literary Digttt, May ig, 1917. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 253 the small talk of the opposition. Of more moment was the movement in Congress in July, 1917, to create a committee of both houses to assist the President in the conduct of the war. Democrats as well as Republicans joined in this effort. It was a scheme similar to that which the Republican mem- bers of Congress endeavoured to fasten upon Lincoln during the Civil War.^ The charges against Lincoln were very similar to those constantly urged in Congress against Wilson. When the movement gained sufficient headway to attract national attention, the President issued a vigorous statement to the effect that divided authority was perilous, that he could not make use of such an agency of Congress even if it were set up, and he pointed convincingly to the attitude of President Lincoln. There was no reply. Thus ended the first skirm- ish.2 But Lincoln's situation in 1862 was different from that of Wilson in 1917. It was the majority party in Congress which endeavoured to set up an extra-legal executive agency in 1862, and the majority in Congress corresponded fairly with the sentiment of the East. But in 1917 the minority in Congress pressed the idea, supported by Democrats who felt themselves aggrieved or were otherwise out of harmony with Wilson. The minority in Congress, however, in 1917, represented the dominant social and economic elements of the East, those very kindly and earnest folk who could not really feel that any Democrat was rightfully president. This made it certain that the abortive attempt of the summer of 1917 would prove to be only the beginning of a greater cam- paign if the war continued and blunders of any sort gave any fair grounds for hope of success. It must not be for-"^ gotten that Wilson has had to fight for his position almost ■J. F. Rhodes, "History of the United States." IV, «OS-20S. \ 'A fairly good discussion of the subject appeared in The Nation for August 2, 1917. 854 WOODROTV WILSON AND HIS WOKK every week since 1913 in a way that a representative of the industrial interests of the country would not have been re- quired to fight.* Colonel Roosevelt was sorely disappointed at the refusal of the President to allow him to command a great army of volxmteers in France. And the disappointment was magni- fied into a grievance by vast numbers of perfectly devoted Americans. Medill McCormick, a representative in Con- gress, visited Europe at the time and gave out statements to the press that the ministries of France and England were constantly wondering why Roosevelt was not sent to France, that high military men asked him everywhere why Wilson "shelved " General Wood.' One may be a little surprised that any European statesman should allow such statements to stand unchallenged. But, as I have already pointed out, European statesmen were themselves much disgusted that the Ameri- can people should have chosen such a man as Wilson in the first place. Nor had the election of 1916 quite shown them that Colonel Roosevelt was not the better representative of American opinion. In the interview between Wilson and Roosevelt of May 7, 1917, when the plan for a division of volunteers under command of Roosevelt was under discussion, Roosevelt said: "Wilson raised the question of equipment. I told him what he already knew — that the Allies would give me all the equip- ment needed from their ample stores. They have the equip- ment. They need men. I told him it would be preferable to use the English or French rifle, first because they were ready and again because to use a different type of rifle and ammunit ion would mean to complicate transport problems."' iThis, 1 think, will be agreed to by all who have observed the course of events with any degree of penetration. 'Washington Poit, January 23-24, 1918. ^McClurs'i Magazine for October, 1919( page 26. Roosevelt is reported VBrbatim. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 255 But Wilson did not allow Roosevelt to go. General Wood, who had the reputation of being the best trainer of troops in the country, was retained at home, first in one of the great camps and then in another. This was regarded by many as a studied affront to the general. And the President, as- sisted by the Council of National Defence, continued to con- duct the war according to his own ideas andperiiaps with too little consultatwn^o| membgia^l hothJiQiisfis of Congress. The^^aywas preparing for a contest that would stir the country. Colonel Roosevelt took the lead. In the Outlook and in the Metropolitan Magazine he renewed his bitter attacks upon Wilson and the Administration. He declared that "we did not go to war to make democracy safe." He compared the President to the German leaders in that he had talked of a peace of equals only a little while before he entered the struggle, and because as a "combination of glib sophistry and feeble, sham amiabiUty" he could not wish for any but a "soft" peace. Roosevelt was bitter in a great deal that he said and did even during the "truce." Nor is it possible for the historian to acquit him of personal ends and personal disappointments. Even the presidency had had for him some of the aspects of private property. And Lincoln he could not with patience allow anybody else to quote. It was hardly different with the great following that stirred Roose- velt to think himseff an injured and suffering statesman. It was with his •followers as it had been seventy-five years before with those of Henry Clay. One dared not criticize the chief lest one make a personal enemy of a chance acquaintance. And everyone of these devoted folk felt that the country's ills would all be cured in a moment if only the strenuous colo- nel were in Wilson's place. It can not be surprising, then, that Roosevelt opened a 256 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK general attack upon Wilson in September, 1917; nor must it be forgotten that he received hundreds, even thousands, of letters almost daily urging him to worse attacks than even he was willing to lead. The book "Foes of Our Own House- hold," the corrected proof of which he turned over to the publishers on September 1st, was intended as a "big-gun" attack upon the President and his cabinet, none of whom ever received praise from Roosevelt, except Garrison when he left office. The worst foe was the President.' Roosevelt forgot that he had said in May that the United States should use the guns and ammunition of the Allies both because they had an abundance and because such a use of material already on the ground would conserve tonnage of which there was not half enough. And he also forgot en- tirely that it had been Senator Lodge and the other Re- publicans in Congress who had defeated the shipping bills of 1913-17. He drew upon his wide reading to make the Government ridiculous. He compared its chiefs to "three women and one goose."* "We drifted stern foremost into the^ war." "As yet we have not a single big field gun at the front; we are short of rifles, of tents, of clothing, of everything." In a newspaper article he said that we were borrowing guns from France and England and had shipped 200,000 coffins to Europe.' He forgot what he had said in May, and he lost sight of the fact that the President could not answer him by a plain statement of the facts, lest he, too, injure the country. Common men, moreover, did not know that the Allies had asked the Government to send men to use their supplies and thereby conserve the shipping necessary to feed both the allied armies and the civil populations so >"Foes of Our Own Household," 76. ^lUd., p. 30. All this and endless other such inconsistent and harmful statements will b« found in the same book from page 43 to the close. ^Sworo testimony in the Berger trial in Chicago. — The Tribunci December S7, 1918. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 257 sorely pressed. They thought that when a man Hke Roose- velt declared that nothing had been done, that no guns were put into the hands of American soldiers, and that even cloth- ing was not being provided, that their representatives in Washington were actually guilty of almost treasonable neglect. Unable to remain at home longer and content himself with such criticism as I have quoted, Roosevelt set out upon a torn" of the country in furtherance of the political truce of the preceding spring. At Johnstown, Pennsylvania, on September 30th, he cried aloud that "we did not go to war to make democracy safe"; in Detroit he continued the attack; in Chicago there was no intimation that the President was worthy of the Nation's support; and in New York, on Octo- ber 5th, before an immense audience of the "best blood" of the city, he denounced the idea of an "easy peace" that the President might favour and he urged that Wilson was to be compared with the German rulers themselves.* The tour which occupied the month of September was one rallying campaign to all those who hated Wilson from ancient and conventional motives, to all who could not understand the note of humanity that ran through the President's speeches, and of course to those partisans who did not desire to be just. The conclusion to many members of Congress was that nothing less than a coalition cabinet, with Roosevelt as its chief, would meet the situation. It was an extraordinary proposition, although the example of the breakdown of the Asquith ministry and the substitution of a coalition of all parties during the preceding year undoubtedly gave example if not precedent for such a proposal. But the plan was not for a cabinet representative of Democrats, Republicans, and Labour leaders; it was a plan primarily to put powerful Repub- TA. Nation for October 2S, 1917. 258 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK lican leaders into responsible positions for the period of the war. To understand the proposal one must assume that Mr. Bryan or some defeated predecessor of his had set up a claim, say during the Spanish War, for the headship of an extra con- stitutional cabinet, that he had then gone to Washington in person to lead the movement against McKinley while all the leading papers of the South coupled the names of Bryan and McKinley as the prospective joint authorities in the country. It is unthinkable that the Republicans or even the Democrats of the North would have countenanced any such movement in 1898. And yet the breakdown of the McKinley war or- ganization was almost complete. No historian looking on in the winter of 1918 could have a doubt as to what Wilson wotdd do when the case was presented to him. The newspapers of the industrial districts prepared the way for the decisive move before Congress met. On Decem- ber 12th, Senator Chamberlain, Democrat and chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, proposed a drastic investigation of the War Department and its widely heralded "shortcomings." Mr. Chamberlain was the senator who had collaborated in the autumn of 1915 with Secretary Gar- rison on behalf of universal conscription and universal mili- taiy service. The President, as we already know, refused to follow the lead of Chamberlain and Garrison and the latter re- signed and was proclaimed a.hero by the opposition. Senator Hitchcock of Nebraska, who had never been in accord with the Wilson Administration, joined Chamberlain. Senator Reed of Missouri was then, as he has been since, in bitter opposition. He attacked practically everything that was done at the White House. The investigation was quickly, almost joyously, voted.^ Secretary Baker testified before ^The "American Yearbook" gives a good summary, pp. 3-5; The lAierary Digest, Decem- ber Zi, 1917, gives press comment. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 259 the committee of the Senate on January 10th and 11th. He was not free to tell what the agreement with the Allies about supplies and shipping was.but hedid makea remarkable show- ing for what had been done. His conclusion, which is strictly historical, was: "No army of similar size in the history of the world has ever been raised, equipped, or trained so quickly. ■■ He acknowledged that blunders had been made, that sick- ness in the camps had interfered with the work, and suffering and death had followed the hasty encampment of more than a million young men; but he insisted, and showed ample reason for insisting, that the operations of the Nation in its great undertaking were going forward admirably and that men must exercise patience in their eeal to break the power of Germany, else they would aid the enemy in their intem- perate haste to see everything and criticize everything. Of course the senators were not satisfied. 'The Republic- ans were not satisfied. The industrial section of the country could not be satisfied when none of their acknowledged spokesmen was in high executive office. It is a pity it is true; but it is true. Senator Chamberlain insisted that the Government had broken down, a strange statement from a leader of the Democratic party, such a statement as only some extraordinary state of mind can explain. But he was not content with a merely legislative attack. An elaborate plan was worked out to stage Chamberlain's opposition to the President. The papers reported that an eminent Philadel- phia manufacturer, Kern Dodge, was in Washington, between the ordering of the investigation and Christmas, urging Colonel Roosevelt for Minister of Munitions in a new war cabinet that Congress was to create.^ It was claimed that ^Mra. Humphry Ward in "Fields of Victory." New York, 1919, in appendix shows that Eng- land never at any time had a million men Jn France. 'Washington dispatch to the New York Times, December 24th. 260 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Roosevelt would be the American Lloyd George. Newspaper comment was to the effect that Wilson welcomed Roosevelt. A front-page article in the Washington Post talked glibly of the new arrangement as though it were the most natural thing in the world for Congress to set up a second cabinet with powers superior to those of the established Cabinet and subordinate only to the President. The intense depression of the season and the dislike of business men for the idealism of the fourteen points, which they everywhere interpreted as possibly meaning a near ap- proach to world free trade, led to a quick formation of a plan to unhorse Wilson. The investigations into the War De- partment, although they revealed certain cross-purposes and conflicting authority, showed a great work well advanced. The errors and confusion were used by the opposition, as such things have always been used, to support an ag- gressive attack and to make Colonel Roosevelt head of a war cabinet. On January 19th, a luncheon was arranged in New York in honour of Senator Chamberlain and Julius Kahn, Republican leader of the group in the House of Representatives which had long urged universal military service upon the coimtry. Chamberlain, Democrat, and Kahn, Republican, gave the movement a bi-partisan appearance that was cal- culated to impress the country. At this luncheon Senator Chamberlain solemnly declared that "the military establish- ment of America has fallen down." It had faUen down "because of inefficiency in every bureau and department of the Government of the United States." He then added that the Senate Military Committee was trying to do something, trying to set up a munitions chief who should really save the country and the world from disaster. It was a remark- able thing for a leading Democrat to do. What made it a definite challenge to the President was the plain fact that ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 261 the conduct of the war was to be taken partially, if not largely, out of his hands. Moreover, nineteen hundred of the "very best" people of New York were present at the luncheon. Elihu Root presided. When Chamberlain sat down. Colonel Roosevelt jumped to his feet in dramatic fashion applauding with all his might and declaring his hearty appro val.^ Important newspapers like the New York Times, the Boston Transcript, the Providence Journal, and scores of others in the industrial districts, united in the declaration that the Government had failed, that Wilson's Cabinet was a farce. The New York Tribune said that the European governments agreed that the United States had failed.^ The Manufacturers' Record, of Baltimore, the bitterest opponent of Wilson from the start in 1913, was cited as a Southern industrial organ utterly hopeless of Wilson and Baker. It was all the logical and planned result of the campaign of opposition that had gone on since September. Whether Colonel Roosevelt would or not he must be the leader and the beneficiary of the campaign. If the Chamberlain scheme succeeded, a war cabinet would take over part of the duties of the presidency and there would be intense and bitter feel- ing in Washington with Roosevelt the inevitable co-tribune of Wilson. It was the first great gun of the congressional campaign of 1918, which in turn would be the beginning of that of 1920. Senator Chamberlain returned to Washington to press his scheme for a war cabinet. Neither he nor any other of the leaders had consulted the President. It was, in fact, intended 'The New York Timet for January 20, 1918, gave a full account of the luncheon. All the papers in the country "carried" the story in full. Old men met on the streets of leading cities next day and said: "What about Chamberlain? Is he not a great patriot?" 'The Literary Digest, February 8, 1918. 262 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK as an administrative revolution. On January 22nd, Wilson gavfe out a statement that Senator Chamberlain's New York speech was an astounding and absolutely unjustifiable dis- tortion of the truth. He added that he had not been con- sulted about the proposed war cabinet and that he must as- sume that Mr. Chamberlain was an out-and-out opponent of the Administration. But in spite of all, Roosevelt went to Washington on January 23rd, set up a miniature court at the home of his son-in-law. Representative Longworth, where he directed the fight upon the President and where Chamber- lain and scores of other members of Congress, besides admirals and diplomats, called to pay their respects or to plan the maneuvers so auspiciously set afoot.^ For a time it looked as if Wilson would be unable to weather the storm. But he met the situation. Mr. Edward R. Stettinius of the house of J. P. Morgan, which had handled much of the mimitions business for Great Britain since 1914, was called to Washington and asked to straighten out the cross purposes of the War Department and to become a sort of minister of munitions in the Wilson Administration. Stettinius readily accepted; and the part of the public which had no partisan interest to serve was satisfied. Mr. Baker was contented and none of the bureau chiefs resigned. When the general public came to realize what was afoot, a quick rallying to Wilson occurred. Of course every im- portant Southern paper supported him. The Springfield Republican, of Massachusetts, made staunch defence of the Administration and even the New York Times gradually changed its tone. But now, as on a hundred other occasions, the Western and Northwestern papers and public gave the decisive voice. William Allen White of the Emporia Gazette >The "Ameiicao Yearbook" foi 1918, p. 4, gives the best aummary of the movement in Congresa. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 263 said that the country had named the President in 1916 and the country must abide the decision, distasteful as that might be. "There is no use crying over spilt milk," he added, humor- ously. Most other Northwestern papers held the same tone. They would not have a war cabinet. Nor had they lost con- fidence in the President. It was now that Wilson made one of his quickest and most masterly moves. The Democrats in both houses had suffered themselves to be frightened or, at any rate, disorganized by the extraordinary attacks which I have just described. Many of them were sore about patronage, the price of wheat which Wilson would not allow to be raised, or the difficulties of the War Department. And the world-wide depression lent gravity to the crisis. Democrats were giving increasing support to the Roosevelt plan for a war cabinet. The turn in public opinion in the Northwest and the increasing conviction that a new cabinet with Roosevelt at its head would make for conflict at home rather than increased strength abroad non- plussed them. Wilson suddenly sent in a bill asking for all the powers that were proposed for the new war cabinet and many more. He first asked the most reactionary Democrat in the Senate, Martin of Virginia, to introduce his bill. Martin refused, although he was the official leader of the body; he could not be a party to the granting of such dicta- torial powers as the President asked even though he hac^ been the dictator of Virginia for twenty years. -' Senator Overman, a very cautious states rights man, but a real friend of the President, introduced the bill early in February, 1918. The idea of a new war ministry with what was called a "he-man" at its head was still uppermost in congressmen's minds. The one thing the investigation into the affairs of the War Department had shown was that the bureau chiefs and the red tape of peace-time affairs were 364^ WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK responsible for most of the diflSculties complained of. This Wilson had in part remedied by the appointment of Stettinius. His new bill would go still further. It would give the Presi- dent power to rearrange the bureaus and fix duties to suit himself. It would empower him to set up new machinery for war work which the President thought necessary. It would make Wilson as much of an autocrat as Lincoln had been at any time during the Civil War.^ •Mr. -Chamberlain was immediately relegated to the scrap heap by this proposal. Everybody began to discuss it. Men who had demanded more war powers for "he-man" work could not complain that the President asked even greater powers. The public liked the boldness of the move. Since Wilson asked for these extraordinary powers for the duration of the war only, business men who had wanted the war cabinet were contented. People generally desired action if it could be had. They were less particular about any particular man in action. Roosevelt, although he was never deserted by his followers, was now like Chamberlain, without a grievance. The movement that had been aimed at a divi- sion of the powers and the duties of the President had failed. But Hoke Smith and Reed, of the judiciary committee of the Senate, persisted in their opposition to anything Wilson pro- posed. Sherman of Illinois was quite as bitter and spec- tacular in his attacks. But the issue was settled when Chamberlain and some of the Republicans, like Borah and Nelson, announced that they would vote for the new grant of powers. The irreconcilables continued obstructive tac- tics till April 29th when by a vote of 63 to 13 the bill was passed.^ The House acted quickly and the issue was closed. '"The United States Statutes at Large," 65 Cong., Vol. 40, pt. 1, pp. 556-7. ***The American Yearbook," 1918, gives account of the Senate discussions, pp. 5-6. Of course The Congresnanal Record, paasim, gives details. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 265 Wilson was more powerful than ever and every day the events of the war added to his prestige. _, As already described, the legislation which gave the War and Navy departments immense sums, the military situation in the world, the control of the vast railway and shipping businesses of the United States, food control, the sedition act, and all the interests and powers devolving upon the presidency due to the fixing of unprecedented income taxes and the collection of the Liberty loans made Wilson the master of America. And the fact that the United States was the one great solvent and fresh power of the world just entering the war lent Wilson still other powers that no other man of any country ever exercised. What gave anxious thought to conservative men in the North after the failure of the plan for a war cabinet and a shar- ing of responsibility and leadership with the Republicans was the so-called internationalism of Wilson. People are inher- ently conservative. They love the old ways. If the war was to close with old institutions discredited it would be worse to conservatives hke Lord Lansdowne in England or Senator Gallinger in the United States than a German victory, for after all the Junkers did protect property and keep people in their proper places. But Wilson had begun in 1913 with the statement that the people then resumed control of their affairs. He followed with an amazing programme of action that practically transformed the government, its tarifiF sys- tem, its banking arrangements, and most of all its methods' of Federal taxation. Every industrial district and eveiy" financial group felt the change to be a blow. And when Wilson at last entered the great war, the great articulate elements of the country which had fought him from the be- ginning and which had always urged him into the struggle, found him declaring it a revolution, a people's war through- 266 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK out the world against all groups and systems everywhere which sought to exploit men. The fourteen points were already christened the fourteen commandments which all conservative interests must combat. He said to the Senate on February 11, 1918, that we fought for a "new international order" and without that new order at the end of the war the world would be without peace. And likewise disconcerting was the closing remark of the same address that the power of the United States "will never be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement of any selfish interest of our own.''^ It was the language of the Mobile address and a self-denial which great numbers of people were unwilling to make and which many newspapers had de- nounced when it was first made. In New York, where the President was given an unprece- dented ovation on May the 18th, the same semi-revolutionary thought seemed to pervade his appeal on behalf of the Bed Cross. It will be remembered that in no other war had the Government gone directly to the people foi- its loans. The bankers had had a monopoly of the management and profits of war loans. Bankers were present to hear Wilson in great numbers on this occasion. He said: "You can not take much satisfaction in lending money to the Government, because the interest which you draw will burn your pockets. It is a commercial transaction; and some men have even dared to cavil at the rate of interest, not knowing the in- cidental commentary that that constitutes upon their at- titude." Now New York bankers were the very men who cavilled at the rate of interest. They were the men who had insisted most upon American entrance into the war; and they heard with poorly veiled anger this shrewdly dealt diagnosis of their own case. Nor was the compliment to the hard- 1** Address of the President to Congress," February ll, 191S. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 267 working women of the Red Cross without its valuable reve- lation of Wilson's spirit: "It fills my imagination to think of the women all over this country who are busy to-night and are busy every night and every day, doing the work of the Red Cross, busy with a great eagerness to find out the most serviceable thing to do, busy with a forgetfulness of all the old frivolities of their social relationships." The old frivoli- ties! What had not the members of the Chevy Chase Club said about him for withholding himself from their frivoHties? And what had fashionable Washington folk not said about a President who would have no contacts with their time- consuming and over-sophisticated set? In every address, notably at Mount Vernon on July 4, 1918, Wilson renewed the ideas of the fourteen points and of the new international order. At New York on September 27th, when he said his worst about Germany and her auto- cratic system, he recurred again and again to "a people's war," "sweeping processes of change," and the new interpretation to be put upon Washington's Farewell Address. He repeated the idea that business men still thought they were playing a "game of power and playing for high stakes." His closing paragraph was a warning to European statesmen to say in public whether they thought his interpretation of the war and its purposes was in any sense wrong or contrary to theirs. Wilson talked like a free spirit, a man who would make the world over if it could be made over. And the daily unfolding powers of the country were such that no European statesman could then dispute his purposes. He was in the heyday of his power. A master in Washington in spite of the known hostility of a majority of Congress because an American president must always be a master in time of war, he meant to make men think again about fundamental human 268 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK rights. He would make capitalists know the limitations of their power; he would compel labouring men, as in the case of the Government arsenals in Connecticut, to realize their responsibilities to the country and to society everywhere. Yet Wilson knew that most great men of his own country were bitterly hostile. He said to a personal friend early in September, 1918, that a larger sum was being expended to defeat his friends in the then pending congressional campaign than had been expended to defeat himself in 1916. Recent judicial proceedings show this to have been a correct judg- ment. He feared that European statesmen were still blindly opposed to an enlightened international policy; that members of Congress would not make themselves fatniliar with the great tasks they were elected to perform; that, after the end of the great struggle, men would fall again to quarrelling over the loaves and fishes. The faith of the people in him and in his interpretation of their desires, he said he knew with an instinct that he could not doubt. To some who saw him and talked freely with him in the month just before the first adverse election of his presidency and the armistice, he was humorous, apt with a telling story, frank in the discussion of great men and greater events. He received the news of the American victory at St. Mihiel with perfect satisfaction, as if hehad expected it, but without that boisterous joy which has marked other leaders of opinion and observers of football games. It was a sad thing, the whole great war with its pos- sibly useless toll upon human life, useless unless men would make a different peace from that which they had ever made before. Such a man and such a leader could not but meet with IhQ bitterest resistance. Six years he had been in power and " ' at years they had been! It was not that men do not wish 1 ^^ht and justice and even mercy to prevail in the world, or ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 269 in the United States. They fear new things. Representa- tives of old social forces like the Republican party could not contemplate a worse future than that which Wilson would inaugurate. Or, granting with Mr. Taft that they would do the same in office which they condemned out of office, Republicans could not approve a man whose whole conduct and line of policy pointed inevitably to a new political dy- nasty in the United States. It would have have been equiva- lent to political suicide for the opposition to approve Wilson; and great party groups do not commit suicide, however seri- ously individual leaders may take the current of events. There was nothing else but a party struggle for the autumn of 1918. And when Wilson was at the very height of his power both at home and abroad he must contend strenuously for a majority in Congress, even when he knew that the leaders of his party would count a Democratic victory as only a little better than a defeat, for it would add to the power of the President whom they feared and even hated. I have said that the failure of the movement for the war cabinet added to the President's prestige. It left a sting with those who had hoped to compel him to acquiesce in the form- ation of a coalition government and thus at last acknowledge that he and his party were incapable of conducting the affairs of the country. In the United States parties bear a different relation to each other and to the country from that in other constitutional governments. The Republicans represent, as all must know, the older social and economic forces of the North. Its leaders are generally more expe- rienced in large affairs, and its voters are apt to be better edu- cated than the voters of the rival party. Republicans belong to the fashionable and exclusive clubs. Few Democrats are seen in such places. Republicans own the great blocks of industrial and railway stocks. They sit on the boards of 270 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK the great banks. Such men and their supporters and con- nections can not conceive of a successful Federal administra- tion without their presence in the Cabinet. That was one of the reasons for the violent attacks of the autumn and winter of 1917-18. Now, Wilson was about to prove that he and his colleagues could manage the greatest business any nation ever managed without official Republican aid. And for more than five years these very "unknown provincials" had actually succeeded and won four successive elections, if we count that of 1910. If the older social elements of the North were ever to return to the helm, they must win the congres- sional election of 1918. That was, in fact, the logical con- clusion of the fight of January. The Democratic party, as I have made clear in these pages, is the party of the older social forces of the South, farmers • and small townsmen in the main. They have a great tradi- tion behind them, a tradition that reaches back to the Declara- tion of Independence and to Thomas Jefferson, the founder of a political dynasty that continued in power for twenty- four years. The republic itself is the work of farmers and its ideals are farmer ideals. This gives the Democratic party a hold on life that seems to defy all opposition, even long periods of banishment from the places of power. But this party had not been in power since the election of Lincoln;* in reality, they had not been in power since the retirement of Andrew Jackson. Its leaders, often enough experienced in local affairs and sometimes conspicuous in Congress, are not accustomed to ministerial responsibility. They have shown a sort of deference to Republican leadership, as for example in tariff revision, that tended to increase the Republican complacency. But at the same time an ancient party, with a U have never considered Cleveland's two terms as real Democratic supremacy. Cleveland, altliougli democratic at the beginning, was never free to do any great work. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 271 vast section like the South behind it, can not confess to in- abiUty to govern. Their very provincialism confirms them in their self-confidence. Once in office, they could not for a moment agree, as the British Liberals did in 1916, that they were unequal to their tasks. Certainly Mr. Wilson would never admit or imply that he was not equal to his high func- tion. Nor are there any Republicans who now maintain any such contention. Conspicuous ability has been the out- standing feature of his career as President. That very com- manding ability and political astuteness were the main spurs to the opposition. Wilson was about to foimd a political dynasty. He must be defeated. Thus the two elements in the national life confronted each other as the elections of 1918 approached. The Republicans must carry all their industrial states and a few Western states. The emergency led to the closest coSperation of all the factions of 1912. Roosevelt met Taft in a New York hotel and renewed their erstwhile friendship, or at least ap- peared to do so. Mr. Hughes, who had held the two wings of the party fairly together in 1916, contributed his share of the work. Hiram Johnson of California, who had been ac- cused of "electing Wilson" in 1916 by his maneuvers in his state, did his utmost to be counted regular. The greater banking and industrial interests lent "oil for campaign pur- poses." From the Republican point of view it was only a genuine harmonizing that needed to be done. Enough Re- pubhcan voters were certainly in the country. Republicans like Democrats, generally, being born not made. The President sought to strengthen his side in the conflict by attaching to himself Progressive and able leaders like Henry Hollis of New Hampshire, Bainbridge Colby of New York, Victor Murdock of Kansas, and Francis J. Heney of California. These were all states in which there was a 372 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK closely divided population as between the older Republican- ism and the newer democracy, which Wilson preached. And many Republicans in those states were open-eared Progres- sives before 1912. Other men of a more strictly political complexion the President undertook to make messengers of his faith— Governor Walsh of Massachusetts, with an intensely Irish support; Senator Lewis of Illinois, supported by the Dunne and opposed by the Sullivan forces; and Joseph Daviess of Wisconsin, a weak knight-errant of Democracy. Still another class of people in the North were influenced greatly by the close political friendship between Wilson and Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labour, and Henry Ford, the "erratic" manufacturer, of Michigan. Through all of these the President pressed his case in the industrial region. And the more men of the char- acter of Colby and Ford and Heney admired him, the more the souls of Southern Democrats like Senator Simmons and Senator Underwood were tried. But all held together just as the diverse elements of the Republicans held together; and the campaign was very bitter, despite the "adjom-nment of politics." I have remarked already in these pages that whoever attains high political leadership in the United States has a very complex and diflBcult task. A chance blunder or a silent unrecognized influence may play havoc with the plans of the best of men. The German Government, suddenly aware of the catastrophe that lay just ahead, changed its prime min- ister, assumed the garb of a parlour socialist, and called upon Wilson for an armistice upon the basis of the fourteen points! It was October Sth that the new Chancellor, Prince Maximil- ian, sent this offer. Of all the surprises that could have come at that time this must have been the greatest to Wilson. To have the Kaiser talk his fourteen points! The explanation ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 273 was that Germany knew she was beaten, and she thus recog- nizeid that Wilson, a sort of umpire in the great war till the winter of 1917, was the only hope of a tolerable peace from the Berlin point of view. Germany professed liberalism and democracy and asked for the benefits accorded to a new convert, wished a baptism from the great Democrat. Wilson replied two days later asking for evidence of true conversion. His note, which might have been a repetition of Grant's famous demand at Fort Donelson, was true to his character and career. "Does the imperial Chancellor mean that the German Government accepts the fourteen points?" "Do the military men of Germany agree to withdraw all their armies from occupied territory?" And finally, "The Presi- dent wishes to know whether the Chancellor speaks for the old group who have conducted the war, or does he speak for the liberated peoples of Germany?" These were Wilson's queries. They were natural from him. They were not astute traps as some wise men said they were. He could not be- lieve his own ears and he wished to make sure, the more since any response at all would reveal the character of the new ministry in Berlin and at the same time show the people of Germany what the reality was. The queries of Wilson were astute in that they were frank and simple. His queries were not unreasonable, the less so since he, like Lincoln, was not a man of passion and anger, but an in- tellectual who counted the value of his words and estimated the distant consequences as well as the immediate results of his moves. The country, however, was not Wilson, much as some men believed in him. Common men can not wage war and keep in good humour. They reply in kind. The Ger- mans were the Huns, not one of them should be permitted to escape the consequences of their cruel war. For a whole year the President and especially his lieutenants had neces- 274 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK sarily stirred men to anger; officers in the training camps had taught young men to swear and work themselves into the necessary state of mind for driving their bayonets through wicked and vicious men, Germans, at the front. How else was war to be conducted? Did not the Germans do thesame? This spirit had permeated the body of the people. It had not taken possession of Wilson, as it had of Lloyd George or Clemenceau. The people could not understand the Wilson tone. Easterners who had for years imagined that their houses were in imminent danger of German aircraft were beside themselves with rage. Southerners who always took Wilson as their spokesman, if not their prophet, were non- plussed. Why did he not say: "You d Huns, lay down your arms and take what's coming to you?" The exchange of notes' in early October thrust another and a disturbing influence into the sectional and social conflict al- ready being waged. And as the time for balloting ap- proached Wilson appealed directly to the people over his own name to "return a Democratic majority to both the Senate and House of Representatives," otherwise he would be em- barrassed as their spokesman both in domestic and foreign affairs.' At once a bitter cry went up from all Republican groups that the presidency had been used unfairly against an honest opposition, observing the truce of the preceding win- ter. The Democrats, realizing that the President was im- mensely stronger than their party, made the utmost use of the appeal. Whether it produced any effect has been de- bated till the present moment. But one thing is clear from the discussion, namely, that the conflict and the motives to the bitterness of the campaign were sectional quite as much as partisan. •The notes and press comment in The LUerary Digest, October 19, 1918. *Tbe appeal and comment in The Literary Digest, November 16, 1918. ROOSEVELT OR WILSON 275 Theje sult was a victory for the I?£pul)licans. Both the Senate and the House would be organized when they next assembled, sometime after March 4, 1919, by the Republi- cans. There were no Progressives on the list of successful candidates. But the majority in the Senate was so close that the Republicans could control the body only by appeas- ing and conciliating the offended and persecuted La FoUette of Wisconsin. And La Follette was more of a German in political support than a Republican. In the House the majority was larger. Speaker Clark, who had never been inwardly a friend of Wilson, would be displaced by a speaker who would organize the body in the interest of the conserva- tive and industrial North. And. finally, in May, 1919, when Congress was called in special session. Speaker Gillett and every chairman of nearly every important committee in the House was found to represent the great industrial states of Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. It was a transfer from the leadership of the agricultural South to that of thg^^mdustrial North. The change was sectional.' But Wilson, having won a magnificent victory in January when the country seemed to be least satisfied with the con- duct of the war had now, on the eve of the great negotiations, when, above all, he needed a united country behind him, lost control. He must negotiate a peace, set up that new demo- cratic world of which he had written the sketch in the four- teen points, with the majority of his country out of sympathy with him, and Congress seeking cause for fault-finding, cause even for impeachment! It was a bitter cup that had been handed him; but it was not more bitter than other presidents have been compelled to drain. Jefferson was almost exactly in the same predicament the last year he was in office. Jack- son felt the foundations slipping from under him before he ^Statement of Nicholas Longworth in Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1910. 276 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK turned over his baton of leadership to Van Buren in 1837. And a visitor to the House of Representatives the last year of Lincoln's life was introduced with loud and sarcastic words: "I introduce you to the only friend of the President in this house ! "' Must it ever be so? Truly, one may refuse to envy presidents. But how would Wilson succeed in the great adventure? What would that world peace be of which he had talked so nobly? That query must be answered in tlie next chapter. ilsaac N. Arnold, "Life of Abraham Lincoln," p. 385. CHAPTER XIII THE GREAT ADVENTURE EVENTS moved fast in the autumn of 1918 and the whole world was in a state of tense excitement. Presi- dent Wilson was the one trusted leader of the liberal forces of mankind. On September 29th, two days after the bellige- rent speech in New York, the military authorities of France and Bulgaria concluded an armistice at Salonika. Six days later the Central Powers made their dramatic appeal for a peace based upon the fourteen points. On October 18th, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary issued a decree that "Austria must become, in conformity with the will of its people, a confederate state, in which each nationality shall form on the territory which it occupies its own local autonomy." This was an attempt to save the Hapsburg monarchy by an appeal to one of the fourteen points. It was true to the general philosophy of the Central Powers from the beginning that a responsible head of a government might cast adrift peoples whom it had agreed to aid. The fourteen points had been offered to the Central Powers nearly a year before in the hope that the bloody campaigns of that year might be avoided. They had not been accepted. They had been jeered at by Germans and Austrians. Between January and October, 1918, President Wilson, as one of the many war measures, and in accordance with his general ideal of the self-determination of peoples, had recognized Professor Masaryk as the president of Czecho-Slovakia, with fairly 277 278 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK definite boundaries. Moreover, Protestant America had re- garded the people of Czecho-Slovakia as unfortunate and oppressed fellow Christians, since the Thirty Years' War.' He had also agreed to recognize the claims of the Jugo-Slavs of Austro-Hungary to independence. Although a great num- ber of Germans in the United States promptly indicated their sympathy with the Austrian plan, Wilson announced on October 19th that many events had transpired sLuce January, that the United States would not regard the so-called auto- nomy of the subject peoples of Austro-Hungary then to be provided for as valid. The various peoples of that distracted region had already determined their own fortunes. On October 30th, Turkey made her submission. And on the same day the military authorities of Austro-Hungary offered to surrender to Italy. Five days later the Haps- burgs signed an armistice that left that former great mon- archy perfectly helpless before the inter-allied conference in Paris. There was nothing else but for the Hohenzollerns to submit, bitter as that alternative undoubtedly was. Men everywhere recalled the ominous threats to crush France in the early days of the terrible struggle, the millions of copies of "Hindenburg's March Upon London" that were sold over the whole world, and the claims of the Pan-Germans that they would have Russia, France, England, and the smaller powers all at their mercy. The Kaiser's speeches about his shin- ing sword, his understanding with God himself, and the warnings that all men must abandon the seas of the world till Germany could work her will upon Europe, could not be removed from the minds of men, as. they never can be erased from the pages of history. It was a bitter pill. But K)n July 4> 1018, a mass meeting of Czecho-SIovaks in Independence Halli Philadelphia, iuusd a formal Declaration of Independence. President Wilson lent his support to this merenunt ftnd finally announced American recognition of Czecho-Slovakia on September i, 1918, THE GREAT ADVENTURE 279 orthodox churchmen and simple country folk remember well the saying that "pride goeth before a fall," and that great arrogance but invites destiny to do its work. The Kaiser made his submission by hastily deserting his country on November 10th. On the next day the last great armistice was signed. The German empire which Bismarck had built upon "blood and iron," as he had been fond of boasting, lay in ruins. The whole race of German princes lay prone upon the ground.' Never was a more marvellous series of events; never did a group of nations more richly deserve their fate than did those powers which had associated with Germany in her long and terrific assault upon the rest of mankind. Any close observer of events of October and November, 1918, can hardly have failed to notice that Wilson was taken by surprise. Germany had such a superb organi- zation; the German people were apparently so devoted to their Hohenzollem leadership; and they had won so many campaigns in which they had been expected to exhaust their power, that few Americans really believed their eyes and ears as one astounding piece of news followed another. The American army command had more than two million men in France and a million three hundred thousand at the front. American munition makers were just beginning to deliver their most terrible weapons of war, including immense quan- tities of the deadly mustard gas; great naval guns, mounted on specially made railway cars, were being prepared to meet the heaviest German guns; while the combined British and American war fleets were developing their extreme efficiency day by day. That Germany would suddenly throw up her hands and quit had not been expected anywhere. That was supposed to come in the summer of 1919. And by that time 'The "American Yearbook," 1918, givei excellent summariei of all these events, pp. 110-KL 280 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Wilson expected to have his plans ready both for a cau- tious reconstruction at home and a fixed programme at the Peace Conference. He had always been forehanded. In November, 1918, the Central Powers were crushed like an egg-shell. The President for once in his life was unready; he fell back upon a political hand-to-mouth regimen.^ Europe now lay in ruins. Russia was torn by factions, led by men to whom hatred was a master motive, and broken by Germany into half a dozen helpless states. The peoples who had fought Germany so long were at the point of starva- tion, not excepting England once the richest of them all. From eight to ten million soldiers had been killed; more than that number of other men, women, and children had lost their lives as a resxilt of the war. The United States alone of the great peoples of the world remained rich and prosperous, stronger both in man power and in resources, than any likely com- bination of nations. At the head of the United States, as a strange fortune would have it, stood the one idealist in high position in all the world, a man who could speak in tones that none could hush, and to whom all the oppressed peoples every- where looked as to a second Messiah.^ It was a terrible responsibility. How would Wilson meet the coming tests, greater tests than were ever put to any other leader of man- kind? If the people of the United States had been united that November day when Wilson actually began the new ordering of the modern world, great things must quickly have been aiJ- compUshed and indeed a new era inaugurated. The sudden turn of things would not have worked so much ill. But the reader of these pages knows that the United States was iThia seems evident in the President's address to Congress on December S, 1918. ^Ray Stannard Baker, who was in Europe at the time as a reporter for the President, in a leries of syndicated articles for the American newspapers, October-NoTcmber, 1910. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 281 not then, and had never before been, anything Hke a unit.^ I will not rehearse here the evidence of the sharp and grow- ing sectional hostility, the distress of the best of Republican men and women that Wilson should be President at that great moment, or the suppressed anger of hosts of Germans who could not forgive him for bringing down upon the heads of the German rulers the awful doom that came with the armistice. Every intelligent man who sees what goes on in our cities or hears what is said upon the market places of the country towns knows that the existence of these elementslieg^ atived the idea that we, as a people, could then function in \ world affairs as a unit. "^ -^ \ To make the situation more difficult, the recent election gave responsibility to a group of men in Congress who either from deep-set economic or bitter partisan reasons must op- pose the President, no matter whether he did well or ill. And the very nature of Wilson, as well as the effect of his writings upon government, stiffened his neck against the leaders of the new majority. Wilson believed in the principle of a re- sponsible ministry, such as that of Great Britain; but, al- though the election had gone against him, he could not re- sign. Indeed it may very well be doubted whether the Democrats would not have won a great victory if the Presi- dent's name had been on the ticket. The American system is not a flexible one. The people of the country, knowing that Wilson must represent them in the coming peace con- ference, for reasons most conflicting and confusing, deliber- ately weakened his hand. They set up a Congress which in the nature of things must be guided by men who were both political and personal enemies of the President. And before the election took place, as if to commit the country to a foreign policy opposed to that of Wilson, Colonel Roosevelt ^Except perhaps at certain emotional climaxes like that of April, 1917. 282 WPODEOW WILSON AND HIS WORK and Senator Lodge made up and announced a Republican foreign programme in which Wilson's ideas were flaimted.' The Roosevelt-Lodge terms were Mnkly imperialistic. They reasserted the doctrine of might and hate which the Germans had exhausted. But the opposition leaders were not content merely to resist the diplomacy of the President. They gave the peoples of the allied coimtries the opinion that the United States favoured theirmore ruthless policies rather than the milder and more humane views of Wilson. A poll of the press of the coun- try during the latter days of November, 1918, would reveal an unprecedented disposition to thwart the only man who could constitutionally speak for the country. Revenge, indemni- ties, and drastic economic repression were the common talk. And when Wilson decided to go in person to Paris, there was a loud protest in Congress, although the question did not, of course, come to a vote. Newspapers like the New York Sun insisted that the President did not represent the country. Two of the most eminent lawyers of the East gave out studied opinions that, if Wilson left the shores of the United States, he would ipso facto cease to be the head of the nation.^ An effort was made to get an order of court to de- clare the office of president vacant, and it was publicly stated that the Vice-President must enter the White House. For weeks the front pages of the newspapers were almost daily occupied with stories of this sort. One paper insisted that ninety-five per cent, of the people viewed the President's trip to Europe with "misgiving and dislike." With Congress in an ugly frame of mind, the country recently committed to a return to Republican ideas, and the great body of conserva- iThis is too well understood to require proof. But to those who may wish proof reference is made to the files of the Chicago Tnbune, December 19, 1918. 'George W. Wickersham, former attorney-general, and ex-Senator George F. Edmunds. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 283 tive America fearful of those "ideals" which would not allow Wilson to take something out of the common European d6bMe for the United States, the President certainly had reason to fear that he would not be able to press the country's cause successfully before the assembled diplomats of Eiu"ope and the whole world.^ Nor did the older social elements of Europe wish Wilson to appear at the conference. The efifect of Wilson's fourteen points was certainly very great in Germany and in Austro- Hungary. Wilson did as much to break the power of Germany by the constant repetition of his ideals as any military commander whatsoever. This was all well enough so long as the war was actually waging. But when it ceased, the London Saturday Review, true to its character, declared against them. Stephen Pinchon, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, agreed with the London conservatives in the view that Germany must pay huge indemnities and that in- dividual Germans must hang by the hundred for obedience to the orders of an emperor already dethroned.^ Mr. Lloyd George was preparing to wage a campaign for a retiu-n of a parliament friendly to him on the cry of "pay to the last shiUing." It seems that no one stopped to estimate what it would be possible for the German people to pay in half a century. The sum of the damage which they had done, and seemed glad to do at the time, including the havoc wrought in Poland, Russia, Roumania, Servia, and Italy, as well as that done 'Chicago Tribtme, December 2, 1018. This paper throughout the late autumn and winter continued to quote the London Morning Post, a bitterly anti-American paper with a reported circulation of only 30,009, aa the press of London. It seldom if ever took note of what the London Daily News or the Manchester Gltardian said. In London and Paris the imperialistic press quoted the Chicago Tribune and other similar American papers as the "press of the United States." *The Literary Digest, November 16, 1918, gives brief quotations to that effect. 284 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK on the western front and upon the sea, must have been greater than the sum of the wealth of Germany, Austria, and Hun- gary. If actual damages amounted to so much what must indemnities, levied after the Bismarckian ideal, have totalled? At the time a great demand was being made up in the United States, in England, and France for the last dollar, there was a vigorous and popular campaign in each of the coun- tries concerned against the purchase of any kind of goods from Germany.^ Men who are called wise appeared to think that one or two hundred million dollars could be collected from peoples with whom nobody was to trade, and living in regions that did not produce foodstuffs sufficient for their own consumption ! Men shrunk from the Metternich philosophy that a whole people might be destroyed and the world not suffer, and yet they proposed terms of settlement which must either have destroyed Germany entirely or left her to nurse a grievance too great to be borne in peace." Wilson did not agree with men who urged such impos- sible measures. He stood upon his fourteen points. Be- cause he did not, like Lloyd George, join in a campaign of pure demagoguery;* because Wilson refused to talk wildly and hoped to bring Germany penitent back into the family of civilized nations, he was attacked by men of the highest political and social standing in every country. One can not but think of Colonel Roosevelt's language during the last months of his life; and thousands who have so long admired him must apologize or make explanations or allow ^Manufacturer's Record^ quoted in The Literary Digest, November 9, 1918. 'Isaac F. Marcosson in New York Times, of December 5, 1918. and many other papers re- flected this view: "The allies do not want any feelings of altruism to prevail." See also New York Timts, December 12, 1918. "This is' a harsh term to apply to a man who did the world such a tremendous service as he rendered during the long war. But there seems to be no doubt that he knew that the promises he made on his campaign of 1918 could not be fulfilled. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 286 him to be classed as something less than a statesman. What made Wilson's part so difficult was the fact that German leaders and German papers constantly spoke of Wilson as the friend of the Central Powers. The Frankjurter Zeit- ung, the best paper in Germany, said: "Wilson will fight on our side for freedom of trade and freedom of navigation."'^ And the masses of the German people looked to him dur- ing the months of November and December as the one man in the world who might temper the hand of justice and certainly avert the sword of revenge. He could not announce his programme without weaken- ing himself and injuring the cause he served. The moment he made his purposes concrete every interest in the world that must suffer would begin to form combinations against him.^ Thus in spite of his widely heralded open diplomacy, his "open covenants openly arrived at," the bitterest oj)- position at home that any president had encountered since Andrew Johnson and the declared distrust of leaders in all the allied countries, he set out upon his journey. The members of the mission which accompanied him were Colonel Edward M. House, Secretary Lansing, General Bliss of the army, and Henry White, an experienced Republi- can diplomat of the McKinley-Roosevelt period. When the list was published there was an outcry. Some iasisted that senators should have been appointed, as had been the case when the treaty with Spain was drawn.' But Wilson knew that he was not limited either in the constitution or by precedent to any particular class or classes of persons. His •■The Literary Digest, November 23, 1918. 'New York Times, December 3rd, made a strong though friendly demand for an itemized statement of his aims. One of the bitter debates of the Senate on this subject occurred on De- cember 4th. It was reported in all the papers of the country the day the President sailed. ^McKinley and the negotiations with Spain, 1898, will be found well described in C. S. Olcotfs "Life of WiUiam McKinley," Boston, 1916, II, Ch. 28. There was only one Demo- crat on the McKinley peace commission. 286 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK contention then, as when he was a mere student of the opera- tions of the American Government, was that the president had full and absolute control of diplomatic aflFairs until a treaty was completed. Then the Senate's fimctions began. But he also knew well as a politician that a president often finds that his treaties are rejected for good or for no reasons whatever. If a great world treaty, such as must conclude the World War, were rejected by the Senate it would be a calamity. Why, then, did Wilson, in view of the recent election and in view of the importance of the occasion, not undertake to conciliate the Senate? That question can not be answered till many people now living pass away. But if one look about the country in 1918, there appear good reasons, if not sufiBcient ones, for the Une of policy pursued by the President upon the eve of the most important move of his or any other man's life in half a cen- tury. In the first place, a group of senators, such as Mc- Kinley appointed, must inevitably have fallen into quarrels and disagreements once they were in Paris, such quarrels as weakened and almost defeated the American mission which ' negotiated the treaty of Ghent in 1815. The RepubUcans of the Senate would have been impossible. The appoint- ment of Democrats would not have been better in the then state of party and sectional opinion. But ex-President Taft, who was known to be friendly to the President, or Mr. Hughes, would have satisfied the opposition. There was a strong feeling that Elihu Root* ought to have been selected. There could hardly be any reason to doubt that Mr. Taft would have been a loyal and hard-working member of the mission. Yet Mr. Taft was needed at home. His appointment would have given rise to the feeling that the President wished to perpetuate the split between the Ta:ft and the Roosevelt 'AntCi p. 861, explains why close personal relations between Wilson and Root were impossible. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 287 wings of the Republicans. Nor can there be any doubt that Republicans would have pressed Mr. Taft to stand firm for certain things which Wilson opposed and vice versa.'- Wil- son's old idea of undivided responsibility and the desire to hasten the negotiations rather than allow them to lag because of debates with his colleagues probably decided the appoint- ments. Nor was any real quarrel in order about the personnel of the mission. If the Democrats were equal to conducting the Government, then they were equal to conducting the negotiations. Lansing and House had worked conspicu- ously with the President through many crises, and there had not been serious complaint. Nobody made any opposition to General Bliss when he was first appointed to serve on the inter-allied conference. And as to Mr. White, the Republican party had held him in too high esteem in the great days that were gone for any cavil to be made in 1918. His ability, if not his representative character, was unquestioned. But there is another angle to the President's mission to Europe. In one of Wilson's earliest contributions to period- ical literature he said that there was growing up in the coun- try a cult to which historians and economists were giving their allegiance,^ a "cult of all the facts, the facts and nothing but the facts." It was the beginning of the German influence among American scholars. Wilson protested that if men ever did succeed in gathering all the facts they would not know what to do with them. And more than once in his early public life and even when he was seeking the nomination for the presidency he openly declared his distrust of experts. He believed in mastering the salient features of a problem or a movement and then applying reason, common sense, and ^The Boston Serald and the New York Globe, with most other prominent Republican and to-called independent papers made it perfectly plain that representative Republicans could not support his ideals; "akin to those of the British Labour Party," said the Qlobe in derision. •The Ntw Princeton Renem, HI, 188-89. 288 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK a little of that understanding of human nature of which he has shown himself at times such a master, till he arrived at a judgment as to what should be done. He instinctively feared experts. In this he was the very opposite of the Germans who worship the expert. And his reason is that so many ex- perts who pass for great in their fields are themselves be- wildered, and they bewilder others, when put to the test of leadership. I think the President has allowed his earlier observations of his teachers and perhaps his colleagues on college faculties to influence his judgment too far. He found that he could not get on in the great reforms of his first years in office with- out the experts, although it must be confessed that some of them tried him sorely. But when he was about to sail for Paris he overcame all his scruples and took half a shipload of experts. It became a subject of some fun-making and not a little ridicule in Paris. There was an idle expert at every street corner in Paris ready to tell the President at any moment that the universe would collapse unless he made a certain specified decision within twenty-four hours.' However, it was not the President who brought these specialists together; it was the patient Colonel House who for more than a year endeavoured with might and main to collect from as many as two hundred scholars such of the greater facts in the world as in their expectation would be needed at Paris. These men, it must be recorded to their credit, were glad to give of their time and stores of tested knowledge to the Government without charge, in some cases not even receiving refund of travelling expenses nor even presenting bills for them. From October 1, 1917, till the sailing of the George Washington on December 4th for Paris every country in the world, its geography, economics, ^There are ever many saAi men in Wasbington. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 289 boundaries, history, and ethnology, was studied, analyzed, reviewed, and charted for the benefit of the American com- missioners. There were diagrams of the coal fields, descrip- tions of the resources of the Shantung province of China, sketches of the racial mix-ups on all the borders of Russia, and lists of "good things" which it was expected that some far- seeing minister might covet. If ever a national delegation had all knowledge at its elbow, it was that of the United States in Paris. Nor did this work cost the Government anything like market value, much as some unfriendly critics of Colonel House derided and found fault. That there were some inexperienced men, some unwise people who were trusted with important matters, and some experts more enthusiastic than learned does not invalidate the work as a whole. It only advertised it as honest and truly representative of the nation. Thus the President en- deavoured even against his prejudices to equip himself and his colleagues for their tasks. And on several occasions the information that was gathered and was always within reach served a most important purpose. Only the British com- missioners were equally well served. But British statesmen have for generations studied and really known, each for him- self, the world and its racial and economic bearings; and they were perhaps the masters of the Americans, after all, in this respect. Without the House commission they must have been very much the superiors of all their rivals and com- petitors, if rivals and competitors are fair terms for describ- ing Britons and Americans in Paris. Being the representative of rural America, of the older Protestant elements of the country as against the newer and modern industrial and urban groups, Wilson was the butt of attack and hostility till the very day of his sailing. Some European leaders of liberal views could not 290 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK understand how the opposition in the United States could justify itself in attacking the men who must represent them at a great international council board.^ When the United States Chamber of Commerce met early in December, just as Wilson was leaving New York, the press dispatches from the gathering declared that business as there represented was sharpening its tomahawk for a conflict with the President. Resolutions were offered asking for representation at Paris; the Webb Law, allowing American business men to combine against foreign business men in their export operations, must be amended and strengthened; a new protective tariff must be enacted to protect struggling American concerns against European competitors; the railroads must be returned to private ownership, and the vast American war-time shipping must be placed in private hands, duly subsidized from the public treasury. Only a bitter partisanship or a frenzied dis- trust of the President could have suggested such a programme at that critical time.^ Fashionable New York was disgusted and bitterly contemptuous of the President's entourage. There was hardly a well-known social "light" on the whole sailing list. Women of "the highest circles" tried to make fun of all the women about the President, as if that could affect results. , Articulate America was certainly in no mood for compli- ments that December morning when Wilson's ship lifted anchor. But inarticulate America was there to say him Godspeed. Great crowds of people crowded the wharfs, seeking a glimpse of the man whom they somehow trusted *Mr. P. W. Wilson, a former member of the British House of Commons, a New York cor- respondent of the London Daily News, expressed amazement at the attitude of New York CSty in the winter of 1918-19. 'The newspapers of December 5-7, 1918, were filled with the doings of the convention. A quieter tone was introduced and pressed toward the end of the meeting, as shown by the offi- cial proceedings. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 291 and from whom they expected great things, too great things from mortal hands.^ The workingmen of the country had come to admire Wilson, even if they had not been able to vote for him in 1916. The Radicals of New York showed an enthusiasm for him which did quite as much harm as good, for Hebrew and German Radicals do not command the support of that staid, practical democracy which has never quite lost its hold on the country. Women's organiza- tions, except that purely partisan group still burning the President in effigy in front of the White House, expressed their faith in him. The common man of the United States, in spite of the groanings of the conservative press, was con- tent to have Wilson go to Paris. He did not expect, as some great lawyers said they expected, to see any convulsion of either the political or the natural world the moment the George Washington passed beyond the territorial waters of the United States. And if the inarticulate folk of the United States looked upon Wilson as a great democrat set out upon a momentous mission, the mass of European peasantry, shopkeepers, and day labourers looked forward to his arrival in Europe as men looked in mediaeval times to the second coming of Christ. A great friend, rich as all the riches of this world could make one, kindly and sympathetic as only a great soul can be, and a fearless champion of the poor who had been "handed about from sovereignty to sovereignty for a thousand years," he was, even in the twentieth century, a "saviour" of Europe, fearless of rulers, diplomats, and rough-shod generals. A brother of Georges Clemenceau is reported to have said that no man since Jesus so filled the hopes of European mankind, and he added, after the excitement of Wilson's reception was ^An experienced newspaper man who was present has said that the editorial offices of thff city were sucprised at this and changed their tone at .the last moment. 292 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK, passed, that history would award the President the highest place in her pages since the time of the Galilean.^ In soberer phrase, Wilson did command more of the devo- tion of the masses of men in Europe than he did in his own country. They had been so sorely tried during four terrible years; they had been for so many centuries without a friend in high places, with the exception of Gladstone; and they had seen for so many generations the futility of wars that they could not fail to offer an almost sublime homage to the western President who journeyed to bloodstained Europe to redress the wrongs of nations and classes alike. The President had said that he was but a Scottish peasant. Eye witnesses whose word can not be doubted say that the expression of approval and even of enthusiasm was beyond all description. People from every district of France, soldiers from the field, women from every walk of life, and the grandees who had for a century contested at every step the progress of democracy in Europe united to pay Wilson hom- age.^ Whether this meant that a plebiscite would have re- sulted in an acceptance of the fourteen points or whether it meant that Frenchmen took this means to influence Wilson to abandon his fourteen points, one can not say. What- ever may be said, France had not made such a demonstra- tion since the time of the first Napoleon. But the American press that had opposed him since 1913 gave disparaging accounts of the reception in their news columns and made similar comments in their editorials. One of the chief of these dispensers of information said it was al- most a frost, that the French looked on in Paris with silent *This was reported by one of the newspaper correspondents to a friend of the writer ia Washington. It may or may not be absolutely correct, but it represents the thought of many Europeans. *New York Times, December IS, 1918. The Times had changed its attitude toward Wilson. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 293 indifference. It was "satisfactory from a national point of view, " but it was no real demonstration of enthusiasm. Nor did the event command a cross-page or even a top-page head- line, as almost any murder in the "red-light" district of its city always did.^ A little later Wilson went to England. There was the same outpouring of popular enthusiasm. Whether those in high station really wished this preacher of the doctrines of primitive Christianity to visit London or not, the most highly placed men in England joined the demon- stration. It is a fact now too well known all over the world that Wilson's visit to Paris, London, and Manchester, as well as the hurried trip through Italy from Turin to Rome and return, was one constant succession of unprecedented demon- strations. >^- '' Bernard Shaw, the critic and reviler of officials everywhere, for once avowed his admiration. He published a series of arti- cles in the Hearst papers in which he made Wilson a Messiah for ancient and suffering Europe.^ The leaders of the British Labour party lent Wilson all the support they could com- mand. The Liberals were so proud of Wilson that they for- got Lloyd George. The Irish never tired of saying that he must grant them that independence which Irishmen had won for the Americans in the Revolution of 1776. The Germans, looking on from their terrible isolation, asked in their press if Wilson would not give them a chance to make a demonstra- tion. And both Irish and Germans in the United States gave evidence of the warmest approval. But the fire under the surface of political things broke out fiercely when Premier Clemenceau announced in the very 'The Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1918. ^The Hearst papers had been moderately friendly to the President since April, 1917. Thia was about the last evidence of that war-made approval. In January, 1919, the old revilinga were renewed. 294 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK midst of Wilson's triumphs in England, on December SOth, that France stood for the old alliances and the old balance of power. Immediately the French Chamber of Deputies gave their approval to the premier in a vote 380 to 134. If Wil- son thought the fourteen points were accepted, he had only to read the daily comment of the American press handed him by a representative of the Creel bureau. The Boston Transcript said: "Perhaps European statesmen have learned what the majority in the United States think and, knowing a little of the powers of the Senate under the Constitution, they prefer to be in harmony with that majority than with a repudiated president." It argued that Senator Lodge was the true representative of American opinion. Wilson replied at Manchester in rather sharp phrases to the French min- ister. But he could not reply to the American press. He went on capitalizing popular opinion in Europe, accumulat- ing strength as best he could, and actually challenging the existing authorities in the allied countries till his Italian visit was concluded. It seemed that he might possibly win in the coming struggle, win what every one of the parties to the Peace Conference had already agreed to."^ Yet everyone who knew Wilson realized that he did not intend to set up a contest with the constituted authorities of the allied countries in any revolutionary sense. All his writings from early manhood ran counter to that. His four years of far-reaching reforms in his own country showed his true character. He would not tear ddwn hoary institutions, but stir men to wholesome renovations. His purpose was to make great men stick to their commitments, made in the days of distress and terrible disaster. He warred against the temptations of success, against the misuse of powers which ^Th* Liierary Digest, January 11, 1919, gives press comment and the vote of the French deputies. 1 have abbreviated somewhat the typical language of the TramcripU THE GREAT ADVENTURE 295 overwhelming success always makes so easy. But he was no revolutionary, even if kings did sit a little uneasy in London and Rome. He sat down to a royal feast at Windsor Castle. He was dined by Lloyd George in London and, when he appeared the second time in Paris, he returned Clemenceau's warm greeting with apparent sincerity. The statement about the old balance of power, the challenge of December 30th, he would not discuss; not even the overwhelming vote of the Deputies seemed to disturb him, as the hostile demonstra- tions of the Republican majority in the United States ap- parently had not done. He said a little later: "It is not men that interest or disturb me primarily; it is ideas. Ideas live; men die." I can not understand his confidence and hope during the months of December and January of that mo- mentous winter. Is Wilson one of those royal natures who believe that the gods work for them? Or was it a sort of fatalism that sustained him in the belief that events would compel men to accept his ideas? Leaders must have votes. Wilson seemed to think that reason and the lessons of his- tory would avail against votes, against powers already set up. At any rate, he was bringing to an end his long cam- paign of emotionalism by which he hoped to stimulate man- kind to the point of doing what all liberal-minded men hoped for, what all conservative and timid men feared. ' I can not take the time to review the most remarkable of all his trips while in Europe, the journey to Rome. There the conditions were ripe for revolution. Great masses of men were within a few short days of actual starvation. The largess of the United States — if one may call loans on small prospect of repayment largesses — kept Italy going. Her industries, her food supply, and her very transportation 'An excellent interpretation of the situation will be found in the Contcmporartl Rmea, Auguati 1819, by H. W. Harrii. 296 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK system depended upon the United States and Great Britam. There was every reason in the world for the Italians to make demonstrations. They made them. But the leaders of the different parties and even the high officials of the Govern- ment sought to restrain the public and endeavoured to keep popular emotion within official bounds.* At Milan the Presi- dent broke his own rules a little and let his feelings be known rather more than he had done elsewhere. He was almost persuaded to be a socialist. It seemed that the people almost worshipped him. Did the Italians even then expect to bend Wilson to their imperialistic demands on the Dal- matian coast, whereby they meant to close that coast against Jugo-Slavs, Hungarians, and Austrians alike? But Wilson's great task was about to begin. All these trips, the speeches he had made, and the hints to the rulers, and the reactionary forces that were gathering their strength for the encounter were but the climax to a campaign which he had begun with the declaration of war against Germany. The greatest things that mankind has ever done have been done through leaders who knew how to appeal to the emo- tions of men, to their higher natures as against their more selfish instincts. Wilson is a master in the art of stirring /^he feelings of vast multitudes. He is perhaps not a great ' orator, but he is the most consummate master of con- vincing statement known to American history, with the V possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. His statements read like perfect demonstrations in mathematics. There is no appeal from them but by a confession of the meaner mo- tives of one's nature. It was his purpose to put out, restate, and reiterate the same higher purposes of the better spirits of all nations until he had created enough moral enthusiasm ^statements of eye witnesses who were in a position to know what maneuvers the Govern- ment made. THE GREAT ADVENTURE 297 to carry men up to the high altitude of a noble peace, a peace that all mankind would ever quote and repeat, as men quote and repeat the Declaration of Independence. That was his objective. Would he succeed? He had made a great campaign, he had drawn to himself most of the Liberals of the world; he had awakened the remote and inarticulate races of the earth; and he had made of the Democratic party an element of support, although its leaders were not consumed with any fires of self-immolation. The challenge of Clemenceau, the prince of European reactionaries, was proof of the sweeping momentum of the President's purposes. The heated anger of the Bourbon groups in the United States, increasing in temperature with every succeeding wave of enthusiasm that broke at the feet of the President, was still clearer proof. It was an anomalous, unprecedented situation, that in which Wilson found himself in Paris early in January, 1919. All the world looked on; even poor Germany, licking her wounds and making piteous cries for food, made a part of the spec- tacle. But the day of emotionalism, good as emotionalism may be, in history, had gone. Reason and selfishness must now have their day. How would the modern St. George maintain his fight in that tightening atmosphere? CHAPTER XIV THE DAY OF RECKONING WHEN the conference met on January 15, 1919, in Paris, tlie new appliances of modern life — the cable, the wireless, and the ubiquitous daily press — allowed aU mankind to sit by and listen. All mankind was supremely interested; all nations had felt the blows of the German militarists; and every European people was confronted with certain starvation if perchance the struggle were renewed or the grain fields of America failed. Some of the peoples, like those of Russia and Austria-Hungary, ill-trained, war-weary, and without hope for the future, had lost all control of themselves and added the menace of chaos to the fear of starvation. As I have said, the people of the United States alone were strong, well- nourished, and making money as no other people had ever made money, either in time of war or peace. In 1914, the foreign commerce of the United States amounted to $3,900,000,000. In 1918, it amounted to $9,200,000,000. The balance of trade in favour of the Ameri- cans in the former year had been $324,000,000; in the latter it was $3,000,000,000. In 1914, the citizens and corporations of the United States owed the citizens and corporations of foreign coimtries about $4,000,000,000; in 1918, all this pri- vate debt had been paid and doubtless a greater one against Europe had been contracted. But the governments of Europe owed that of the United States nearly $9,000,000,000. It has, since December, 1918, been increased to $10,000,000,000! 898 THE DAY OF RECKONING 299 Was there ever anything like it before? In the Far East American business men were becoming the masters. In South America, the trade of the United States was more than three times as great as it had been before the war. Into Mexico, in spite of all the newspaper talk of enmity and war- fare, three times as great a volume of American goods entered as ever before. Nor was this prosperity all. The domestic trade of Ameri- can business men, which in 1914 had totalled $30,000,000,000 annually, in 1918 amounted to $68,300,000,000. The grain and cotton crops of the United States in 1914 were worth about $5,000,000,000; in 1918, they amounted to the huge sum of $12,000,000,000.1 Iq tj^e United States, while thirty billions had been spent in the effort to save the world from German domination, every man who had a share in the direction of what are called the producing and trading classes was making money. Besides, labour received wages unprecedented and silent capital earned returns that were amazing. Only the salaried folk — the teachers of men's children, clerks in small businesses and coimtry banks, and the officials of governments, national, state, and city — ^had not felt the new prosperity, were in fact compelled to wear patched clothes and walk while all the rest of the world drove past them in limousines or Fords. ' This prosperous America Wilson represented at Paris. And this prosperous America had, as we know, gotten away from him in the November elections. Besides, he was at the end of a long term of office and naturally weaker in political re- sources than he had been since the day he first entered the White House. The armistice released Republicans from any, even imaginary, political truce. It released Democrats from that unwilling support that a party gives to a president whom its chiefs do not like. All presidents steadily lose in power 'The New York Timet economic survey, January 5, 1010. 300 , WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK as tHeir second term draws to a close. It is but human nature. Politicians, like lords and nobles, face the rising, not the declining, sun. Only there was no rising sun in the Democratic party in 1918-19. Moreover, that rich and roistering America of 1912 had had enough of reforms, or re- straints of business, of endless preachments about unselfish ideals and worlds made safe for democracy. A much richer America was now breaking those social leading strings which Wilson had managed to fasten about it. Although Wilson was the foremost statesman of the world, although every important spokesman of the greater allied powers had agreed that his programme should be their programme at the peace table, he was the weakest man in Paris, except as the champion of inarticulate mankind and as the monitor of men's consciences. Wilson's party in Wash- ington followed him tm willingly; the opposing party was literally panting to rend him asunder; and the great agencies of publicity were now beyond his control."- The wealth of America, the foodstuffs and the credits to buy clothing, were nominally at his command. He might ask Congress to vote bilUons to aid stricken Europe; he might call upon generous people to give to the Red Cross; and he might threaten a re- fusal of coal and oil so needful for European industry. Therein lay what real power he had. His great name and his moral leadership were about all else that he had. This he knew, if he did not avow. A selfish statesman would have remained in Washington during the winter of 1919 and mended his "broken fences," leaving the peace of the world to be mended by those who had broken it. On the other hand, Georges Clemenceau, his greatest op- ponent in the absence of a German delegation, had been in ofl5ce only a year. He had saved France from the very jaws >1 am not unaware of the seizure of the cables* in the preceding Norember. THE DAY OF RECKONING 301 of death. He represented in his own person all the romance of the long struggle of France against despotic Germany since the terrible Franco-German Treaty of 1871. He had signed the beautiful and tragic protest of France against the rape of Alsace-Lorraine. He had fought alongside the great Gambetta; he had resisted, as prime minister, the encroach- ments of Germany in the touchy Morocco days; and he had edited for years his famous journal, L'homme libre, the Free Man; and when that was subjected to the censorship, he changed the name to L'homme enchainS, the Man in Chains. He had been a sort of "Prometheus Bound" in France till the great crisis of the war of 1917-18 called him to high office. He it was who had never said peace, had never breathed a thought of discouragement, who had ever said, "war, war, war to the last man."' From the day Clemenceau entered office, against the wishes of the President of France, against the outcries of the moderate press and all the socialists, his career had been one unprecedented success, a series of triumphs. He went almost daily to the front during the darkest days of 1918; he held men firmly to their tasks; he united France; he put into prison the famous statesman and world financier, Joseph Caillaux; he banished the former cabinet member, Malvy ; and he put to death the notorious German spy, Bolo Pasha.^ Most important of all, in May, 1918, when the German guns were thundering at the very gates of Amiens and a strike of 400,000 munitions and other workers in and about Paris threatened the very existence of France, it was Clemenceau who persuaded the workers to go back to their tasks and main- ^The best and most recent biography of Georges Clemenceau in Englisli is that by H. M. Hyndman, New York, 1919. 'The Springfield Republican, Odoher 30, 1919, gives a good brief account of these prosecu- tions. 302 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK tained an undaunted front. Few were permitted to know of the gravity of the situation; those who did know believed the "Tiger " had saved the aUied cause.^ Thus, when the ar- mistice was signed, no general of France took precedence over the premier. The French senate, in which there were life-long enemies, and the Deputies, where the socialist bloc had, even when his cause was the country's cause, never lent him a vote, gave him an ovation upon the announcement of victory such as no other French statesman had received since those inexplicable demonstrations that had been show- ered upon the worthless third Napoleon. He broke under the excitement and shed tears like a boy. He reminded men in his old age of Gambetta in the prime of manhood. Fifty years he had fought, but never prayed for the day he then saw. It was dramatic; it was French; and Clemenceau was French in every fibre. Cynical, witty, informed upon every subject that a states- man should know, experienced in the great, cruer world, dis- illusioned of his early faith in socialism, doubtful of men's motives, faithful to facts and only facts, Georges Clemenceau was a second Bismarck, standing where the first Bismarck stood in 1871, only on the French side of the arena. True to himself, at the very climax of Wilson's reception in England, he went before the French Deputies and asked a vote of con- fidence in favour of the old diplomacy, the old balance of power and sharp political bargaining. He swore eternal enmity to everything German; he vowed anew that France should have her reparation, that no illusions of a better world order, no league of nations should swerve him an inch from his course. Armaments, legions, military training, an- nexations, and indemnities were his weapons. It was again "blood and iron." Truly Bismarck was not dead. iSee a reuarkable article in the 8uneji for May 10, 1019. THE DAY OF RECKONING 303 And France stood in sore need of all that he asked. Her total wealth at the beginning of the great war was hardly $50,000,000,000. Her industries were greatly diversified, agriculture being the most important. Her mines and her industries lay mainly in the region bordering on Germany and Belgium, Paris and Lyons being the principal exceptions. Now that the war was over, agriculture was half ruined; the great foreign wine trade was almost destroyed — in part by the war, in part by the changing habits of Americans; coal mines had been ruined by invading armies; and the machinery of the industrial belt had been either destroyed by the Germans or carried beyond the Rhine to strengthen the hands of their enemies. A great stretch of the country was a barren waste. Economists estimated that France had suffered a loss of $40,000,000,000. Of course this estimate was in the money of 1919. The debt of France was hardly less than $25,000,000,000. Annual expenditures were $2,000,000,000. The people were unwilling or unable to pay a seventh part of the annual burden in taxes, and imports exceeded exports by $2,000,000,000 a year! Moreover, the French people were about to lose the loan of $7,500,000,000 they had made to Russia before the great war! The whole business of the country was upon a paper basis; and France owed the United States $2,500,000,000, the very continuance of her food and fuel supplies depending upon the United States and England.' Discouraging as this state of things was, Clemenceau stood out boldly for his country. He knew that matters had been infinitely worse more than once before in French history, while now at last the "hereditary enemy" lay prostrate be- fore him and Alsace-Lorraine was ready for the taking. Nor was there doubt in his mind that the French border should be 'The "American Yearbook," 1918, pp. 151, 38*; an excellent if distressing article on the economic state of Europe will be found in the CoiUemforary Renew, September, 1919. 304 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK moved to the Rhine from Strasbourg to Cologne. The dream of a thousand years should be realized. The champion of anti- clericalism, of republicanism as against socialism, of nation- alism of the most ardent type, France was his god and pa- triotism his creed. He was the greatest pagan of his country and his time; and he" looked upon the Germans quite- as the good Emperor Hadrian had looked upon their ancestors eighteen hundred years before, as crafty barbarians. Thus Wilson's one great opponent, antithesis even, was the man who had saved France, the Frenchman who was daily grow- ing in strength and prestige with his countrymen, mounting to a place in the affections of Frenchmen not rnilike that of Napoleon I. Clemenceau, the realist, trained in the lan- guages of Europe, in the harsh and cruel philosophy of the continent, without mercy for his enemies and without respect for English-American liberalism, would meet the President and endeavour to vanquish him.* As between Wilson with his country officially against him, and Clemenceau with his star still rising, Lloyd George of England would be the umpire, although I am not unaware of the importance of Italy and Japan. But critical and im- portant as were the demands of these two powers, they and their cases were but pawns for the French premier. France, Italy, and Japan were all in the same class; they represented the old diplomacy, the old cruel Machtpolitik of Bismarck. Lloyd George was perforce the umpire. And Lloyd George was and is a strange combination of liberalism and reaction, as deft as Talleyrand and as ready as Cavour. He had beaten every rival off his trail, had been on every side of every great problem of the last decade of English political history, had broken down the old-fashioned, frock-coated, easy- ^Tliis picture is, I thinlc, a just one, in spite of the fact that he and President Wilson seem to be good personal friends. THE DAY OF RECKONING 305 going liberalism of Sir Herbert Asquith and, just as the terms of the armistice began to sink satisfactorily into the minds of every-day Britishers, he called an election for De- cember 14th. He made a campaign that compelled the support of aU the less alert and the unthinking masses as well as that of the old gentry and aristocracy. There was to be no quarter for the "Kaiser and his minions," the last penny of damages was to be exacted and the allies of Britain were likewise to have their way upon the defeated Central Powers. He was not so coldrblooded as Clemenceau, nor so ruthless in declar- ing his purposes as Bismarck had been half a century before. But he called into play all the hatred of which Englishmen were capable and won a victory which gave him an over- whelming support in the House of Commons. Asquith himself was beaten; Arthur Henderson was left at home, while Sir Edward Carson, the knight-errant of Ulster, and Bonar Law, the chief of the Unionist party, were placed be- side him as the spokesmen of Britain. Out of sixteen woman candidates for seats in the House of Commons only one, an Irishwoman, was elected. It was one great shout of victory and of conservatism that went" out to the world from this unprecedented election. It was in spirit and result a simi- lar election to that which had occurred in the United States a little more than a month before, only Lloyd George was the beneficiary of the British campaign while Wilson had been the loser in the American campaign. But England's aflfairs were not in so promising a condi- tion as these appearances might lead one to think. The na- tional debt was $50,000,000,000 and the annual budget was nearly $12,000,000,000. Taxation was yielding, however, nearly $5,000,000,000 a year. England was borrowing $2,500,000,000 from the United States which would make her debt to the United States $4,000,000,000. The European 306 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK allies, however, had borrowed from England about $8,000,000,000.1 These are unprecedented transactions. They show that Britain and America held the purse-strings of the world. But of the two powers Britain's outlook was far worse than that of her western associate. When the war began every great financial transaction was engineered from London or the conditions on which it was conducted were fixed in London. It had been so for two centuries. It was to be so no longer. New York was now the money market, the financial dictator. Nor was British trade likely to re- coup its losses in a hundred years. It could never again be what it had been. Germany had set out to destroy France and usurp the economic leadership of Great Britain. The result was that France stood in bad stead in January, 1919, but likely to recoup somewhat from Germany, while England had lost her economic leadership to the United States. English thinkers of the silent commercial sort and British noblemen of the class of Lord Lansdowne could not look upon this state of things with the least degree of allowance; and Lloyd George was apt to feel the weight of their influence when he went to Paris. But another element had entered into the British situation. British labourers were more powerful than any other labour group in the world. They had the best and sanest leadership. They had published to the world a social and economic programme which the Presi- dent said was almost as good as his fourteen points. British labour, as an organization, had been sadly beaten in the election yet British labouring men held the fortunes of Eng- land quite as much in their hands as did Lloyd George him- self. The coal miners, the railway men, and the longshore- men had entered into a combination which was called the triple alliance. They meant to compel a readjustment of the •"The American Yearbook," 1918, pp. 141-4g, 388. THE DAY OF RECKONING 307 relations of Labour and Capital, even during the sessions of the Peace Conference, in such a way that a measure of democracy in industry should be secured. Moreover, British labour agitators were not in the habit of throwing bombs into helpless crowds or pronouncing the most arbitrary dicta of social upheaval, after the manner of the Russian proletariat or certain elements of American labour. British labour was apt to effect results, even when it was nat strong in Parliament; and British labour had Mr. Wilson for an ally because of its sanity. Thus the three really great figures sat down to the peace table in Paris on January 15, 1919. At the very first one of the fourteen points came up for decision. Open covenants openly arrived at was a great principle that could not be Uved up to, much as its acceptance might have aided Wilson and his cause. At the very moment the decision was to be made, every one of the greater parties to the coming negotia- tions was involved in secret diplomacy. The President, if he grasped the world situation as be certainly did grasp it, knew that the Japanese would be thrown into a turmoil if his purposes in regard to China were made known. Lloyd George was already contemplating a wise and revolutionary movement looking toward a pacification of Russia that could not be revealed to British newspapers aforetime without de- feating the very object aimed at. Every other chief at the table was in similar plight in half a dozen matters and committed in some things to programmes that could not bear the light of publicity. Suppose Wilson, for example, had announced his suspected opposition to the growing Italian imperialism! Again, if open covenants openly arrived at were made the rule, the hundreds of British and American newspaper cor- respondents, after the manner of British and American news- paper management, would get "scoops" on the news, for 308 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Italy did not have the wires or even the paper for the trans- mission and publication of the news. Japanese newspapers could not afford to pay the cost of transmitting the proceed- ings of the conference half around the world. Australia was in like plight. Open discussions, therefore, meant an American-British monopoly of the news. But that was not the worst of it. The greater papers of the United States were opposed to Wilson's mission altogether, opposed to the four- teen points and in sympathy with the social philosophy and purposes of Premier Clemenceau rather than those of the president of their own country. If every suggestion, every remark of every member of the conference were to be made in public, as speeches are made in the Parliament of Great Britain, the members simply would not have talked and the conference would have resolved itself into Quaker conclave. The approaches, the suggestions, and the vital understandings of the delegations would have been made in some other way. Much as open sessions must have advanced the cause of democracy, it was hardly possible that Lloyd George, Cle- menceau, and Orlando, leading parties to a score of secret treaties or understandings in the different crises of the war, should then agree to open covenants. The majority decided, almost without discussion, against the first of the Wilson principles. The President might have defeated the decision if he had refused to abide by it. That might have been permissible journalism, now and then, in the United States. It would have been poor statesmanship at Paris. But the President's prestige suffered greatly in the partial abandonment of the principle of publicity. A second item in Wilson's programme of world readjust- ment was already determined against him, the problem of the freedom of the seas. That had been a doubtful matter from the first. Great Britain is a scattered empire of Britishers, THE DAY OF RECKONING S09 loosely bound together by a sort of racial sympathy. The only substantial connecting force is the great navy and its consort, the British merchant marine. Since the days of Nelson, this navy had patrolled the seas of the world and kept the highways of commerce open, especially for the bene- fit of England and her system, but also for the rest of the world. Germany never at any moment of her great struggle denied that the oceans were open to her in time of peace. And since such an empire as the British must ever favour a pohcy of partial or absolute free trade, the trade of Germany with British colonies had been quite as free as between Germany and her own outlying dominions. These are vital facts in the case which Wilson could not overlook. It was, however, the century-old Jeffersonian principle of free trade in time of war that Wilson's second point con- templated.^ Free ships make free goods had been the old slogan. It had been aimed against the British marine autoc- racy of the Napoleonic wars. Prussia had favoured it. Russia had favoured it. France, of course, favoured it after Trafalgar.^ But the United States changed her attitude during the Civil War and as a result came near to a war with England in 1862. In the Spanish War freedom of the seas was a minor issue. But in both the Civil War and the War of 1898 the principle, if not the fact, of an actual blockade mitigated the American violation of the principle. Wilson's idea in 1918 was to revive free trade upon all the seas and to secure universal peace in which navies would rap- idly become obsolete. That was what Jefferson, whom Wilson would never regard as a godfather to his political children, *In spirit, if not in actual phraaing, nearly everything Wilson advocated during the great war was preached and urged by the American Hevolutionista of 1776 and by Jefferson during bis presidency. 'Louis Martin Sears in American Politual Scietun Rmea, August, 1919, gives an excellent account of Jefferson's ideals in this great matter. 310 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK always contended.^ If the league of nations were set up there would be no difficulty. But Englishmen, so near the fighting front and so frequently threatened with invasion from the continent, could not believe in the efficacy of any remedy but that which had been applied successfully against Napoleon and William II. And before they would agree to the armis- tice of November 11th, they compelled the President to aban- don or reinterpret the "freedom of the seas." The interpre- tation was a yielding of the point. It was made a part of the armistice and there was nothing further to do about it. But lest Wilson and his supporters in the United States should endeavour to reopen that discussion at Paris, Lloyd George and practically every other responsible British statesman made it clear during the days preceding the assembling of the Peace Conference that England would never yield the point. It was too much for weak human nature, especially British nature. In this the English behaved in quite the same spirit that Clemenceau behaved when there was talk of French disarmament on the German frontier. All of which showed that the President alone had any real faith in a league of nations.* Another problem of equally vital importance, from the Wilson point of view, came to discussion quickly. Before anything could be taken up for definite settlement some com- mon attitude toward Russia must be taken. It was the "acid test" and more important than the question of open diplomacy. The Spartacans were making headway in Ger- many. Lenine had a firm grip upon Russia. Other Euro- pean peoples might fall under the new social "illusion." Nei- ther reparations nor indemnities would avail if Germany and *I know Jefferson sometimes weakened in his pacifism. But any understanding of his life sustains the view of the text. Henry Adams, "History of the United States," I, US, ft nj. ■WiUiam Allen White in The Saturiav Evmim Pmt, August 16, 1919. THE DAY OF RECKONING 311 Austro-Hungary became another Russia. But should Len- ine's spokesmen be seated at Paris? Or should the confer- ence endeavour to find a way to give the masses of the Rus- sian people a chance? Lloyd George,' doubtless with Wilson's approval, gave it out that the Bolshevist Govern- ment might be recognized and its representatives might perhaps be accepted.^ Wilson certainly tended in the same direction and Colonel House was of the same opinion. That would have meant first that the Lenine government would at once become less eruptive and gradually settle down to the ways of peace and conservatism, as all radical governments have done in the past when they became "legitimate." Besides, the Russian world would have become a more or less close collaborator of British and American statesmen in Paris. British and American economic and financial leaders would have begun at once to set the distracted and undeveloped country to rights. Russia would have become another economic bonanza as the Rocky Mountain region was to the North after the American Civil War. Wilson, Lloyd George, and Lenine, strange as this comment may seem to some, would have rearranged the world and written the terms of the peace. It was a great dream that came near to reaUzation.' But Clemenceau defeated it. British con- servatism reacted in feverish opposition and Lloyd George has not yet been willing to confess his far-seeing purpose of January, 1919. American conservatism could not for a mo- ment rise to such statecraft and Wilson has never intimated whether he was, in fact, in sympathy with the Lloyd George 'New York Times of January IS, 1919, contains a rather bitter protest against Lloyd George's attitude. ^The Literary Digest gives American press comment in issues ot January 11, 18, and 25, 1019. 'W. C. Bullitt's story reviewed in The Literary Digest, September 21, 1919, and exploited by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations early in September only indicated the directions of the political wind in January, 1919. 312 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK proposal. To have recognized Lenine in 1919 would have been a similar stroke to that of the English of 1815 when they made a quiet alliance with Talleyrand at Vienna in order to combat the grasping realism of Metternich and his Russian and Prussian allies. But, as I have said, Clemenceau defeated the purpose. He did so with the support of men like Lansdowne of Eng- land and the Republican leaders of the United States Senate. The outcome was the Wilson proposal of the Prinkipo con- ference to which the Bolshevist Government agreed to send delegates.' The other Russian governments refused to meet the Bolshevists. One crisis had passed. Far-seeing Liberals thus lost a great chance. It was now the business of the conference to follow Clemenceau and compel Russia to pay its debt to France of many years' standing. Moreover, Siberia lay open to Japan and Japan was sending seventy thousand troops into Siberia. Japanese statesmen were not likely to recall these troops upon a mere resolution of the Peace Conference. Japan talked then, as she has ever talked, of manifest destiny, of annexations, and of economic exploitation. Japan was and is the Prussia of the East. If Britain and America refused to deal with Lenine alon,e ^nd the other Russian parties refused to go to Wilson's ren- dezvous in the Black Sea, then Wilson and Lloyd George must contrive some method of assisting the French to col- lect their debt; and all three powers, France, England, and the United States, must manage to keep Siberia from falling into the hands of Japan. The outcome was the policy which now prevails. It has never been avowed. It could not be avowed, for that would have challenged Japan; and Japan is the only nation in the world that is not sick of war and militarism. France sent troops to southern Russia; iThe FrmUpo conference proved a fiasco. THE DAY OF RECKONING 313 England sent troops to northern Russia, and the United States was to take care of the Siberian railway.' A great opportunity was suffered to slip. The reason was the ab- sence of a sufficiently well-instructed public opinion in Britain and America as evidenced in the elections which lyid taken place in the two countries only a few months before. Be- sides, Democracy herself would hardly have been wise enough to support a wise and liberal policy toward Russia. The decision in favour of closed sessions, the failure of the free-seas contention, and the lost opportunity of making peace with the Bolsheviki were victories for Clemenceau and the European point of view. The President had pronounced his Christian ideal. But European statesmen are not Chris- tians. Wilson, having felt the ground slipping from under him since the sudden collapse of imperial Germany, now made a resolute stand for item five of his fourteen points. That is, for a new treatment of colonial possessions. It was the prin- ciple of the Mobile address which Ambassador Page had felt constrained to explain before a British audience^ just before the great war, the principle that governments everywhere must seek the true ends of the peoples of backward countries and not their own ends. This involved the Monroe Doctrine ; it must be handled with gloves. But the German colonies offered a great opportunity. Wil- son seized upon it. These colonies were not to be parcelled out. They were to be made mandatories under a league of nations, a connecting link among the nations, much as the common possession of the Mississippi Valley was made the binding link of the American states in 1787. The President would make a fight for this idea. It was his first great fight ^The writer haa no other support for this analysis than the well-known facts in the case. What else can they mean? •A. B. Hart, "The Monroe Doctrine," «41. 314 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK for the league of nations.' He knew his strength. Repub- lican opposition at home might not be rallied against him upon this. The Irish and the Germans would support him; and all the Liberals everywhere would sustain him. But immedi- ately the Australian premier, Hughes, appeared before the conference and demanded Germany's South Pacific posses- sions. The French Colonial Secretary, Simon, followed Hughes and asked on behalf of France for the African Came- roons and Togoland, with the privilege of enlisting soldiers in the colonies for the exploiting country. That is, Lloyd George and Clemenceau spoke through these men in behalf of very definite parcels of the earth's surface. Italy stood aloof and Japan said nothing; but both Italy and Japan had simi- lar objectives. The issue was joined. Debates and arguments followed. The friendly tone of the French press changed to one of open hostility. Lloyd George declared himself for a league of nations and for the mandatories, as Wilson named his method, but only after the German colonies had been distributed. Clemenceau lost patience with Wilson and his "impractical ideas," while Premier Hughes conducted a press campaign against the President. What was said in confidence in th? conferences was repeated in the newspapers till Wilson made effective protest. After a long struggle the British delega- tion yielded and the mandatory principle was adopted.^ It was the first victory that Wilson had won, and the result is to be found in the league of nations constitution, article 22. This victory displeased the Australians. It was rather more satisfactory to the Japanese than otherwise; but it convinced the more liberal element of British public opinion that some kind of a league of nations was assured. From that time 'Bay Stannard Baker in the Springfield Republican for October 30, 1919. 'loid. THE DAY OF RECKONING 315 Lloyd George and the British public in general tended to support Wilson. In the United States Mr. Taft and scores of other leaders discussed and urged the league idea upon the press and the pubhc. Before the end of February public opinion was apparently very largely in favour of this major , point in Wilson's programme.^ It was an important victory, but the fight for it revealed other secret agreements between Clemenceau and Lloyd George than those which the Russian Bolsheviki had published in November, 1917. Besides, and this was the most significant fact of the last days of January, it became plain that the British held the decisive vote; and British public opinion, being more mobile than that of the United States, was Wilson's decisive asset. Having lost his election in the preceding November, he might now win his world programme through the support of British liberal- ism. Wilson became more popular in England than Lloyd George. That was an advance, but whatever Wilson may have hoped to do on behalf of the Irish was in part lost. The Irish had set up their revolutionary Sinn Fein Government and challenged both England and the Peace Conference. On the other hand, the Gei-man elections which came at the close of the first deadlock of the conference gave the world assurance that what is called democracy, and not social- ism, was to be the creed of the new republic. Overwhelming majorities sustained the moderate plan for a national assem- bly and the continuance of the influence of what is called "middle-class morality." In fact, Ebert and his regime in Germany were but German editions of the progressivism of Wilson. The world rested easy. The conference itself settled down to work as though it would continue and have its arrangements accepted at the end. ^Newspaper poUa showed very widespread popularity of the idea in January and Februai7« 1919. 316 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK But if Wilson were to succeed with his "impractical no- tions" he must himself take the helm. He had shown in the struggle about the German colonies that "skin-deep Amer- ican Christianity" was perhaps a match for the paganism of Paris. Already Wilson had insisted that the adoption of a league constitution, applying his fourteen points in so far as that was possible, would provide solutions for many problems. A commission for drafting the constitution of a league of nations had been appointed. Wilson was its chairman. Lord Robert Cecil and General Smuts of England were its next most important members. Leon Bourgeois of France and Premier Orlando of Italy were other members. But if there was to be a league, Wilson and his British friends must shape it. Upon Britain and the United States alone depended its success. As early as August, 1915, Wilson had said to personal friends that the war must not end without a league which should out- law war. The idea grew upon him. He lent his aid to the campaign which the American League to Enforce Peace was making. And when he went to Paris, it was everywhere un- derstood that he would urge some scheme of a world-federa- tion. It was, in fact, the great reason behind his whole war programme. Without the hope of this realization he would not have gone to Europe.^ He worked day and night with his group. They formu- lated a plan early in February. It was the first and better draft which appeared in print later in the month. It was general in terms. Its aim was disarmament, cooperation of the great nations in a general council to sit continuously, and cooperation of all the peoples of the world in a larger assembly which should gather at stated times for the discus- sion of subjects vital to the peace of the world. And there 'William Allen Whitf in The Scdurday Evening Post, August 16, 1919, says that the league would not have been mentioned there but for hia insi itence. THE DAY OF RECKONING 317 was to be a definite system of control and guidance of the undeveloped peoples, a system whereby the more enterpris- ing nations and their citizens might develop natural resources without coming into constant conflict with suspicious natives, and without beginning rivalries that might lead to wars be- tween the great nations. The outline was simple. It gave no country an undue advantage, except the English who al- ready held in undisputed control great peoples and vast spaces of the world like India and Egypt. But no one could have expected that Great Britain would give up such pos- sessions any more than it could have been expected that the United States would give up Texas or New Mexico. "^ It was certainly a beginning. Wilson insisted that the league should be made a part of the treaty. That looked radical indeed to men who had but yesterday acknowledged the need of any league at all. Resistance followed. But before the middle of February it was evident to everyone that the members of the conference could not agree upon any treaty at all without some such organization as the league contemplated. France demanded a Rhine confederation which should be carved out of West Prussia. It should be a satellite of the French Government. Moreover, France must have the Saar Valley in fee simple in addition to Alsace- Lorraine. Of course the reparations were not to be over- looked. But Lloyd George and the British, although they might have agreed in 1915 to the secret treaty with Russia looking to this end, were now opposed. General Foch and all the military men insisted that nothing less than a Rhine frontier would insure peace. .They talked like Napo- leon I, as all military men are wont to do. Lloyd George's enemy. Lord Northcliffe and his syndicate of newspapers, ^Tbe Yale Review for September. 1919, contains an able review of the inception and growth of the league idea in Farii by Charlea Seymour. 318 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK took the French point of view. Northcliffe occupied a resi- dence in Versailles to be close to the British delegation at all times. The British premier was in a fair way to be over- thrown. The situation was critical even in mid-February, In Italy an equally critical situation developed. Baron Son- nino and Senor Orlando, the governing voices in Rome, were inclined to be moderate expansionists in view of the economic condition of Italy, as well as in remembrance of the history of the war. There was a party of ardent imperialists in Italy, as there is in the United States. Italy is overpopulated as it has been for hundreds of years. The imperialists de- sired to save the loss of millions of emigrants by securing lands for them in the near East, anywhere in the Mediterran- ean basin. At the same time they insisted that the future was destined to be warlike as, indeed, the past had been, and hence they must annex the mountainous coasts of the eastern Adriatic, seize and fortify every harbour from Venice to Cattaro if not to Corfu, and make of the ancient sea an Italian lake, as the British had done with the greater Mediter- ranean in the eighteenth century. It was a magnificent plan. The armistice had already weakened the Wilson doctrine of the self-determination of peoples in recognizing Italian sov- ereignty over Austrians in Tyrol and over Slavs about Trieste. Why might not the whole Wilson programme be scrapped? This idea appealed to a powerful member of the Italian parliament, Giolitti. This able leader had before the German war exercised a controlling influence in Italian politics and finance. He had been the constant supporter of the German influence in Italy. During the war he was associated with the defeatists and on more than one occasion threatened to change the course of Italian history. His theory was that the Allies would be defeated, that Italy would suffer in con- THE DAY OF RECKONING 319 sequence, and finally that through neutrality alone the coun- try could prosper and increase its power in the world. When the war came suddenly to an end and Austria, the enemy of a thousand years, broke into pieces, he found the Govern- ment still moderate. Orlando was, in fact, a partial sup- porter of the Wilson ideal and by no means certain that he should ask more than had been assured in the armistice. The opportunity was too great. Giolitti made a complete political somersault. He organized a movement looking to the annexation of the whole Dalmatian coast. Fiume was the least that could be asked. The militarists joined him. The so-called strategists of the navy were delighted. The jingoists of the type of d'Annunzio aided the Giolitti | group. Suddenly a powerful opposition appeared in Parlia- ment. The moderate Government was attacked for its failure to seize the great moment in Italian history. This movement was going on while Wilson was pressing his league idea. It was not completed until early in April.' But Clemenceau could no more allow an imperialist Italy to seize all the strategic points on the Adriatic and Subject Austria, Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, and the Jugo-Slavs to her wUl than he could assent to the return of the Saar Valley to Germany. Imperialism is a game that any one with an army and a navy can play. France hardly knew how to thwart Italy without a breach which would play at once into Wilson's hands. Clemenceau began to think of the league of nations. It might, after all, serve some purpose. While Italy prepared, despite her appalling economic de- pendence, to play the great game, Polish statesmen laid out a state which was to stretch from the Baltic to the Black Sea and which was to absorb Danzig and large areas of settled 'C. E. Merriam, "Italian Politics and Parties," Chapter VII, a book not yet publiiihed, kindly loaned to the wiiter. 320 WOODIIOW WILSON AND HIS WORK non-Polish territory. Ancient Poland was to be re-erected and the maintenance of the peace of the Baltic region was to be her peculiar mission. Clemenceau, like the leaders of France in the seventeenth century, thought that a good scheme to keep Germany busy on that frontier. Here again was a problem and a solution that would have been but the beginning of another war. If Italy was to be the mistress of the new Balkan ensemble and Poland the manager of a simi- lar tragedy on the frontiers of old Russia what were the bene- ficial results of the war? Simply the absence of German imperialism? Really, the commissions of the conference which set about remaking the map of Europe while Wilson worked upon the league constitution were not making the headway that simple, old-fashioned diplomats had expected. There was no other way but that of the "simple Mr. Wilson" as Clemenceau was wont to say. It was therefore agreed with some misgivings that there should be a league, that the league should be a part of the treaty itself, and the first outline of its principal clauses was formally proclaimed to the world.'^ Thus the complex and pressing difficulties of prostrate Europe were to be put in a way of settlement. British Liberals and the American President were about to find a way forward, in spite of the handicaps. As Wilson took ship for Washington to sign a score of bills that required his presence and to per- suade a recalcitrant congress that the world expected great things of it, Europe experienced a second warming to the "impracticable man from America." But as the European statesmen began to settle down to ac- ceptance of the Wilson ideal, at least in a measure, the wish on their part to have the United States assume the greater ^William Allen White i^ves a good account of this part of the negotiations in The Saturday Evening Post, August 16, 1919. Andre Tardieu, "The Truth About the Treaty," 1981, is the most important book on its subject. THE DAY OF RECKONING 321 part of the allied debt incurred in the war against Germany took rather definite form. If there was to be a world league and victorious nations were to be denied the spoils of war, then the league should take over the international debt, the United States bearing a disproportionate part because of her immense riches and her late entrance into the struggle. Wilson might have his league and a new world order mighl, be set up, if the United States would consent to this.* It was not a wholly unreasonable proposition. It showed, moreover, that European statesmen had read American his- tory. The new world-state, if it were to be set up as Wilson and his liberal-radical friends wished, should, like the Federal Government of 1789, take over the debt which had been in- curred in preparing the way for it. The amazing point was that sensible men, who knew the United States, should sup- pose that Wilson could bring about the adoption of such a plan in a single state of the American Union. Wilson's victory, as he was about to set out for America, threatened to be too complete. Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Orlando, if they were to enter a new world federation, would go all the way and ask the President to go with them. Wilson returned by way of Boston and there gave voice to his zeal and enthusiasm for the league. The outlook seemed good. But he was only running into a new hornets' nest. The success of his league with British approval only gave the million or more of Germans and German sympathizers in the United States an issue. They could not denounce the armistice. They could not oppose the President as such lA personal letter of January 8, 1919, from one of the American commissioners reads: "It is common to hear that the United States should not only cancel the Allies debts, hut that vpe should go back to August 1. 1914, and share the debts that England, France, and Italy have piled up in order to defeat Germany. The suggestions go even further in that they ask that the debts . be apportioned according to the resources of each nation and that an allowance should be made br the loss of man power." 322 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WOB!k without risk. They could attack any specific idea, the more if it forced a secondary r6le upon Germany. Germans who had shouted for Wilson as he talked in France and in England about the new day, the day of peoples as against govern- ments, now turned overnight from enthusiastic supporters to violent opponents.^ The fact that' British statesmen favoured the league and the additional fact that Wilson had not of his own strength ordered the demolition of the Grand Fleet, and thereby vi- olated the terms of the armistice was argument enough for another milUon Irishmen to desert the President whom most of them had voted for in 1916. Whatever England favoured was to be opposed by Irish leaders and Irish churchmen of high rank. A great congress of Irish societies was arranged to meet in Philadelphia, in Independence Hall, while Wilson was in Washington. It was intended to endorse Irish in- dependence and then a delegation was to be sent to warn the President against his course. What a world we live in ! The Germans had defeated the campaign of Mr. Hughes by shout- ing and voting for him. The Irish had done much to elect Mr. Wilson by the same course. Now both Germans and Irish proposed to defeat any league of nations and any settle- ment of Europe that left British power and British prestige unbroken. With whom might Wilson work out a solution? Clemenceau? That could not be. With the new German leaders? No American chieftain could endure the odium of such an alliance. With English statesmen ? Then he must lose a large part of the strength the last election had left him! With all this plainly before him in every newspaper, the President went on to Washington. There he met a group of the leaders of Congress. They proved intractable, irreconcil- ' 'Any examination of the German papers will show this. The author knows a score of peoplt ,irho made the sudden chahge. THE DAY OF RECKONING 323 able. Senator Lodge talked Irish. Senator Johnson talked Irish. Penrose of Pennsylvania supported Lodge and John- son, two strange bedfellows. Democrats were bothered about the Irish. A cabinet officer was reported to have said that he dared not make a speech in a northern city. It was the Irish. The great Irish meeting in Philadelphia, blessed by a cardinal and approved by archbishops, held high language, passed resolutions for Irish independence^ and appointed a delegation, 'led by a former Democratic governor, by an Irish labour spokesman, and by a justice of a state supreme court who had trod very near the edge of treason to the United States at a critical moment of the war. While Wilson argued in the White House with senators and representatives on behalf of the league of nations, these influential delegates of a great segment of the American nation asked a hearing. They were refused. They showed an angry temper and al- most demanded a hearing. It was granted them in New York the evening before the President sailed the second time for Paris, the evening of March 4th. Justice Cohalan, Wilson would not see. But two of the delegates of the Irish Americans followed the President to Paris, obtained permission to visit Ireland, there fraternized with the extremists of the Sinn Fein party, made speeches and protests umtil the British Liberals lost all patience and the British Government refused to hear the returning Ameri- cans when they reached Paris a second time. They did see the President a second time, learned from him what any one must have known already, that the Irish cause was more hopeless then than it had been at any time since the war closed. How could Wilson intercede for the Irish when the Irish made their case the only case in the world, when their leaders proposed to compel the world to wait upon them, lAs the Czecho-Slovaks had done July 9, 1918; see ante, p. 378. 824 WOODROW WILSON AND mS WORK and even to precipitate another war if they did not get ©c- actly what they asked, including the subjection of Protestant Ulster to the will of Catholic Ireland? In the midst of this stirring excitement, the Senate of the United States showed the metal of which its members were made by the adoption of a resolution calling upon the President to press the cause of Ireland before the Peace Conference. John Sharp Williams was the only senator who had the independence to oppose this unprecedented attempt of that body to queer the rela- tions of the country with the most friendly nation in the world. These are some of the complications that Wilson found in his own country when he submitted the first draft of the league of nations. It was, as I have said, a document of the greatest simplicity. It outlined in general, rather than in specific, terms the plan of future international cooperation. It did not mention the Monroe Doctrine. It omitted all reference to the Japanese demand for racial equality. Im- mediately the leaders of the Senate demanded the incorpora- tion of a statement specially excepting the Monroe Doctrine from any jurisdiction or even discussion in the proposed league assembly or council. They asked, further, that the United States should be granted leave to withdraw from the league upon the giving of notice. And Senator Knox, form- erly Secretary of State in the Taf t Administration, began his onslaughts upon the league as an agency of future wars, as a plan for the abandonment of every sovereign power of the United States and the wilful flaunting of all the sacred teach- ings of Washington. Mr. Taft was so impressed by the vigour of the opposition that he cabled the President at the critical moment urging him to acquiesce in certain proposed amendments.* It was the United States that now came to the fore and the >New Yoik Times, April 2, 191». THE DAY OF RECKONING S25 very leaders in the United States who had attacked Wilson most violently because he went slowly into the war were now the men who would employ every possible weapon to anger the British, weaken the President, and postpone the pacifica- tion of the world. Yet one need not express surprise. It was human nature, human nature in a rather aggravated form. The groups of the country were not united.' This dis-unity now expressed itself, because it might do so with- out appearance of disloyalty. And there was the deep- seated party issue. Republican leaders, accustomed to occupy the seats of responsibility, could not, even in a grave crisis, recognize inwardly the fact that they were not in con- trol of affairs. But the object of the President's return to Washington was to sign the great appropriation bills that were to be passed during the last days of the session of Congress, to hold conference with Cabinet and other officials upon the state of the country, and to seek to apply remedies to things that needed remedies or avert ills that might be averted. What happened? A group of senators who had stood well with the nation for many years, men who had supported Mr. Taft in the stormy days of 1912, and other men who had sung "On- ward Christian Soldiers " with Roosevelt in the Progressive convention, now united to thwart the President at every tiu'n. Two years before these same leaders had bee'n out- raged at the conduct of Senator La Follette and his "wilful" colleagues because they defeated the war purposes of the country in a spectacular filibuster. Now, three senators, led by Sherman of Illinois, with the consent of Lodge and Johnson, themselves aspirants to the presidency, filibustered to death aU the great appropriation bills. The railway administra- tion bill, appropriating more than half a billion dollars, a great *The "melting pot" had not done its work. ^^^^-'"""^ 326 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK education measure which had the approval of all sections of the country, and the general supplies bill were all alike de- feated while the President waited in the capitol to sign the needed laws and thus keep the wheels of government going in accordance with immemorial custom. This happened in a senate nominally Democratic and friendly. What might not happen when the next Congress assembled? Men denounced Wilson because he had gone away from Washington. Men of influence and power all over the East declared that he had de- serted his post of duty. Now, when he had returned and waited to do his duty, three members of the Senate took away every chance of his doing it; and influential men in the industrial centres of the North approved. Nor had these unexpected events been without effect in Paris and London. The men at the Peace Conference who still wished a peace without the assistance of the United States, save in the capacity of Santa Claus, took a new cue from the American dispatches. Their conversion to the principle of international good will, as indicated in the accept- ance of the league of nations idea, had not been very thorough. Wilson knew the changing tone. But he set out once agaia, as I have already indicated, for Paris, without calling Con- gress in extra session, there to resume his lone battle for his ideals. In his address before a great audience in New York he showed no signs of the distress under which he laboured. Ex-President Taft generously spoke from the same platform. He, too, urged the adoption of a constitution for a league of nations as the only possible conclusion to the great war. The former president risked much with his party associates who were then on their way home to renew their attacks upon the President and all his works.* ^The New York Times of March 5. 1919, gives an^account of the meeting and the text of Wilson's address. THE DAY OF RECKONING 327 Wilson said that he would not come back "till it was all over over there," playing upon a popular war song of the day. He urged that it was not a party issue that he was pressing, that the peoples of Europe were in extreme need of peace, that he could not account for the ignorance of world affairs shown by his leading opponents; and he besought men to think of the future, of the ages to come, not the exigencies of the hour. He closed with an optimistic note. He ex- pected that, in spite of all, the conference would rise to its high obligation and set the world ,upon a better way and that Americans would yet repent their bitter opposition to the league idea. There was ample time to think as the George Washington returned him to the scene of conflict in Paris. Should he yet win a just peace and a, promising league of nativns? CHAPTER XV THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE WHEN Wilson returned to Paris a second time, March 13, 1919, he found that under the leadership of Clemenceau the league of nations and the proposed treaty, as agreed upon January 25th and confirmed February 14th, had been sepa- rated.* The news from Washington greatly influenced the members of the conference. Certainly they endeavoured once more to write a treaty in which enormous indemnities and the Rhine boundary should be secured to France, in which Italy was to have her way in the Adriatic, and Japan was to have the German islands in the northern Pacific and the Chinese province of Shantung. No one talked seriously of a league of nations. Wilson was thought to be a defeated man, even Mr. Arthur J. Balfour and the other British leaders had ap- parently deserted the President.^ It was to be a quick agree- ment now upon a "strong" peace, a resolute attitude toward Russia, and a prompt return to business as usual. The four- teen points were to be "scrapped," not even the terms of the armistice serving as a restraint. How foolish, then, must have appeared the talk of the President on the night of his departure from New York! He had said to the Senate leaders and to the country that the league and the treaty should be so interwoven that they could not be disentangled. He had said as much in New 'William Allen White, in The Saturday Evening Post, August 18, 1919, "Hearings," Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 66tli Congress, 1st Session, Vol. 2, p. 1331. 'Bay Stannard Baker in Springfield lUytMican, November 6, 1919. 328 THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE York in September, 1918. And the conference had agreed on two occasions that this should be done. On the day of his arrival in Paris no one seemed to take him seriously when he talked as if there was still no doubt on the point. The Euro- peans had not taken the measure of the President. As I have shown already in these pages, European statesmen had never taken him seriously, except when it proved absolutely neces- sary to gain his support or lose the war. Wilson was the only eminent man in the world who really thought that the principles on which the United States entered the war were to be incorporated in the terms of j the peace. Yet people blamed him for playing a lone hand! But on March 17th he published a statement in the French papers that there must be a league of na- tions and that it must be an integral part of the treaty. It set all Paris agog. Upon what real power could the President rest any such pretensions as that short announce- ment assumed.'' Wilson had at that time three sources of influence in the world: he could refuse, as President of the United States, to accept the treaty when finished; he could cease approving the grants of hundreds of millions of credit to European governments; and he could announce that, in his opinion, the moral forces of the world should not approve the proposed settlement. But as President the majority of Congress was against him, and to have taken the first course would have challenged the very elements in American life most hostile to him and which had prevailed in the last election. If he took the second course and refused to lend credits, on which American exports were sent abroad, he would have practically laid an embargo upon American trade. For without the support of the United States the credit of both France and Italy, to say nothing of the smaller countries, would have collapsed. 330 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK The effect of such a course would have been terrible both at home and abroad. It would have brought that universal panic which so many business men^and economists were predicting every day.^ The third course was the only one left. How much moral strength Wilson had one may never say. But it was even at that late hour very great. Only it could not be tested with safety, for so long as his actual programme remained unpublished, great numbers of Germans in the United States might sustain him, similar numbers of Irish voters would shout for him, and that body of British opinion which Lloyd George had flaunted in the last campaign would look to him as its spokesman. Even to try to win a great struggle without the legislative support of his own country, when many of the other elements of support were intangible and when British liberalism was discredited, was boldness that approached rashness. And yet timidity was the charge of the American Liberals ! But Wilson has another source of strength. His personal presence, his unparalleled power of persuasion, his voice make him a force in any group, I was about to say the dominant force in any group of men. Few men, not already hardened partisans, who have come into close relation with him have been able to resist his appeals. Although the one master of the conference after Wilson, Clemenceau, could not be touched by these influences, the British felt them keenly. Lloyd George and Lord Robert Cecil, if not Mr. Balfour, made certain proof of this every day they worked with him. And it was, after all, the attitude of the British delegation which determined Wilson's success and even prevented the break-up of the conference without a treaty or a league.^ ^Harold G. Moulton in Yale FUviffio, October, 1919, and in many other publications duiiag the wiater and spring of 1919. This View rests upon an examination o{ all the available'evidence rather than upoB speafic piooL THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 331 On MarchlSth, Wilson, Clemenceau, andXloyd George were in serious conference. There can be little doubt what the President said. Clemenceau's contention was doubtless what it had ever been : indemnities that would bind Germany for ^a hundred years, five hundred years, Stephan Lauzanne suggests in the North American Review,^ and the coveted Rhine frontier. Lloyd George must bring the two together. For a week there was deadlock. On March 26th, it was an- nounced that there would be a league of nations. That much Clemenceau would yield. And it might be a part of the treaty. Only Wilson must agree to an American-British- French alliance against Germany. That is, the conference got back to the point where it had been on January 25th P If France must content herself with Alsace-Lorraine and mere reparations, then the critical economic situation must not be made worse by any recognition or relief of Russian radicalism which did not secure the repayment of the seven billions of loans to the old imperial regime. Nor would Clemenceau ever consent to a clause in the treaty or the league which al- lowed Austria to unite with Germany. Wilson could hardly consent to any repressive measures in Russia. How could foreign powers compel the Bolshevists to pay the debts of Nicholas and his predecessors? And what could Wilson say if the idea of the self-determination of peoples were brought to naught in the fixing of a decree ^igaihiTthe union of groups of the sanie nationality such as 'Germany and Austria? It was Wilson versus Clemenceau, with Italy on the side of Clemenceaii, and Lloyd George wav- ering. The subject of German indemnities disturbed him. Everybody who read the dispatches realized that the crisis was at its worst and that a break-up of the conference 'November, 1919. •The New York Times, March 87, 1919. 332 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK was not at all unlikely. To compel Wilson to yield, a vig- orous campaign was waged from the very day he embarked from New York. From the United States came the news that Mr. Bryan insisted upon an amendment to the proposed league exempting the Monroe Doctrine.^ Before the end of March Wilson knew that Messrs. Root and Taft would favour and ask the same thing.^ Cardinal Gibbons, hitherto counted as friendly to the Presidenti announced on April 5th, when all the world knew that Wilson was ill and in bed, that he was opposed to the league and that he, too, would have the treaty hastened. The most casual reading of the American news- papers during the latter part of March and the early days of April will disclose the fact that a wide-flung campaign against the league and for a "hard peace" was being con- ducted. The leaders of the Republican party__were doing their utmost as must have been expected.^ ^Unquestioned success of Wilson at Paris would have been the ruin of their party for a decade to come. J) If Wilson asked Clemenceau to amend the league covenant, it would be the first step in the conclusion of a treaty that would violate many if not most of the fourteen points, for if he were compelled to ask for a great American concession how could he refuse Clemenceau his demand? But the Boston Transcript announced that the fourteen points had been repudiated in the November elections. Even the New York Times, a steady support hitherto, began to say "hurry the treaty." The "backfire" from home was certainly both rapid and severe as the final decision approached. Wilson's first statement upon reaching Paris had been that the league ■The New York Times, March IS, 1919. It is not suggested that Bryan was influenced by the press campaign. >md., April 2nd. *Th« Littrary Digest, April ISth, shows the nature of the criti^'im. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 333 constitution would not be amended,' a statement that probably did as much harm as good. Nor was the campaign in Europe less intense. The attitude of the Irish was well expressed in a pronouncement made in Paris on March 10th, by John T. O'Kelley, the Sinn Fein envoy: "We have pleaded and spoken gently to President Wilson long enough. The time has come for acts. We can stop ratification of this league of nations in Congress if the Irish question is not settled."^ By settlement was meant absolute independence. The British opposition was indicated by the London Daily Express, the Globe, the Pali Mall Gazette, the Saturday Review, and the vitriolic Morn- ing Post, not to mention the Northclifle papers, already bent on the overthrow of Lloyd George.^ The London Globe called Wilson's attitude "autocracy." The Daily Express lamented his stubbornness. The Pall Mall Gazette said that he simply did not know the mischief he was doing. The Northclifle papers attacked Lloyd George because he did not support with sufficient vigour the French demands for the Rhine frontier. The whole conservative element in parliament seemed to unite in a campaign to overthrow the prime minister, an event which might have caused a break-up of the Peace Con- ference. And Christabel Pankhurst, the suffragist leader, declared in a wildly applauded speech in London that Wilson and, Lloyd George were the villains of Paris, they were the shields of Bolshevism. In Paris the pressure was more direct and at the same time more subtle. When Colonel House undertook to prepare the way for the Monroe Doctrine, as an amendment to the league, the British helped him on by ready agreement. This •The New York Timet, March 16, 1919. 'Ibid., March 10th. ^IbitL, March 18th to April 10th, gives the best reflex of London opinioB. 334 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK was on April 20th. The next day the Swiss tried in a meeting of the neutrals gathered in Paris to mediate on this delicate subject. Admitting the Monroe Doctrine into__the_Jeague covenant meant a weakening of the President. It gave his opponents the best possible opportunity to press their claims. Italy, seeing her advantage, immediately demanded Fiimie, on pain of recalling her delegation. The French returned to their huge indemnities and strengthened their claims for the Saar district, even for the Prussian region that lay north of the Saar basin. The diplomatic maneuvers were making fast, when the Japanese renewed more vigorously than ever their demand for the recognition of the equality of all peoples.* The President intimated on April 1st that he would leave for home if the Rhine frontier were longer demanded. His reply to the persistent French argument was that he would not create another "Alsace-Lorraine." It was this ceaseless heckling of Wilson by the French militarists about the annexation of all German territory west of the Rhine that caused the long de- lays and that was breaking his health. If there was ever a clear case of short-sighted social reac- tion against a far-sighted liberalism, it was just this intense struggle between Clemenceau the realist and Wilson the idealist. The one reviled the fourteen points as the "four- teen commandments," the other appealed to the Golden Rule as a safe law of politics. The one insisted upon violatr ing the terms of the armistice only a few months old, and yet pleaded for the sacredness of secret treaties made in 1915; the other urged the binding character of the armistice and insisted that secret treaties must be discarded." The irony of it all was that these contentions and appeals could not be •The New York Times, March 17th, 20th, 21st, 23rd, and AprU Srd. ^Testimony of Secretary Lansing before Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Wash- ington Post, August 12, 1919. Robert Lansing, "A Personal Narrative," 1921, does not add to our in"ormaLion about tlie struggle at Paris- THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 335 made in the open witliout an immediate disruption of the conference which all men feared, perhaps feared too much. The last phase of the deadlock came under circumstances well worth a review. Colonel House and Lloyd George had authorized a secret mission to Russia a day or two after Wilson's departure for Washington. William C. Bullitt, a clever and apparently very vain correspondent of the Phila- delphia Ledger, headed the mission.^ Bullitt understood that certain instructions which both House and the private secre- tary of Mr. Lloyd George gave him would probably be acceptable as a basis of negotiations with the Bolshevist regime in Russia. It was the renewal of the very important proposal of Lloyd George and the President when the con- ference met. That the whole thing was much in doubt was evidenced by the profound secrecy of the undertaking. It was a most delicate thing, for public opinion in France was overwhelmingly opposed to any dealings with Lenine, and public opinion in England and the United States was hardly less hostile. Messrs. Bullitt and Lincoln Steffens, and a captain of the army were taken to the border of Russia on a British war vessel. They reached Moscow and within a week securpf! certain propositions from the Soviet Government on which peace and a lifting of the blockade might be arranged with the conference. But Lenine stipulated that the ofifer of terms must come from the powers in Paris and not from himself and that April 10th was the last day on which over- tures would be received. The tone was the tone of a victor in war." Mr. BulUtt, exultant that his mission promised success, returned to Paris at the end of March, at the very ^Bullitt's story was told to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations^ September IS, 1919. "Hearings," 66th Congress, Ist Session, Volume S. 'The documents in these negotiations are given in the "Hearings'' of the Senate committee above mentioned and cited, pp. 1248-50. S36 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK moment when the deadlock was apparently beyond the Presi- dent's power to break except upon a withdrawal of the American delegation. While Clemenceau was asked to give up the Rhine frontier, to agree to moderate reparations, and to submit the fortunes of France to the protection of a league of nations in which few men in France had any faith, Mr. Bullitt insisted that this secret mission should at once be recognized, that the whole allied world, in spite of the growing hostility of the British press to Lloyd George, should make overtures to the head of the Soviet Government.^ The President thought he could not safely press the matter then. The plans of Mr. Bullitt, if not his associates, natur- ally leaked into the press of Britain and the United States.^ There was widespread disapproval. The student of history will hardly doubt that the acceptance of the opportunity offered in the Bullitt proposals, which included an agreement on the part of the Russians to repay the French loans, would have been wise and salutary. But their acceptance meant the certain overthrow of Lloyd George and the probable appearance of NorthclifFe as the head of the British delegation at Paris. That, of course, would have been the signal of victory for Clemenceau, and Wilson would have stood with- out even the vacillating support of Lloyd George. Upon the refusal of the President to urge the conference to accept the proposals from Russia, Bullitt resigned in a spirit that revealed a rare mind. One would have supposed that he was the next ranking member of the American com- mission. And it must be said that every paper of con- sequence in the United States published the vituperative iThe story is told with dramatic effect before the Senate leaders not one of whom would have lent a shadow of support to the President if he had urged recognition of Lenine upon the coa- fwence. See "Hearings" for September 12, 1919. >LittTary Digtit, April 13, 1919. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 337 letter he wrote to the President in which he announced that the United States should never either sign the treaty or adopt the league, that Wilson himself had abandoned the leadership of mankind^and consigned the world to another century of war.^ Bombastic and unreasonable as this attack upon the President was it proved to be the signal for organization and renewed war upon Wilson. The Nation now sent one of its leading correspondents to Washington to bring about an alliance between the extreme radicals of New York and the Bourbons of the Senate.'' "I have always liked Congress whole-heartedly. It is a good American body," said its correspondent. That was doubtless true. The amusing part was that the spokesman of extreme radicalism, advocate even of the soviet system of government, should have said it. On April 3rd, Wilson fell ill. He kept to his bed nearly a week. At the same time Hungary turned Bolshevist and Austria seemed on the verge of anarchy. Japan revealed her unyielding will to despoil China. The Poles must have a great empire that stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and Greece would not be content without the possession of Con- stantinople. Clemenceau remained obdurate. It was thought that the President could not long withstand the pressure. The Echo de Paris expressed the common feeling when it said on April 5th: "The league of nations lies in pieces in Hotel Crillon." Wilson made public his message for the George Washington to sail for Brest to be in readiness for him.' When he called for his ship, the London Times and its sub- ordinate papers renewed their attacks upon Lloyd George. There came a respite in Paris for a few days after the Presi- >The New York Nation, May 31, 1919. ^Lincoln Colcord in The Nation, May 31, 1919. ■The New York Times, April 1-7, 1919. 338 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK dent rose from his sick bed. It looked to some as if the party of Clemenceau would yield. It only looked so. Wilson had made it plain to all the world what he wanted. A league of nations with powers, an international agreement based upon the fourteen points. This league he wanted so much that Clemenceau realized that he would give much for it. A new way to defeat the President was devised. On April 10th, three hundred and seventy members of the House of Commons signed a telegram to Lloyd George demanding a quick and a hard peace, that is, a defeat of Wilson. Six days later Clemenceau's minister for foreign affairs asked the French Deputies for a vote of con- fidence. It was given on a vote of 334 to 166.^ The radicals of the world had said that Clemenceau would be overthrown if he repudiated the fourteen points. This was the reply. Wilson heard it. On the same day, the 16th of April, Lloyd George met the conservative opposition in the House of Com- mons and likewise received a vote of confidence. Instead of yielding the lines of the deadlock were tightening. There had been exactly one month of absolute deadlock. Would Wil- son yield or would he risk a break-up of the conference? As nearly as the facts now allow one to say, he at last agreed to Clemenceau's demand for a temporary alliance between France, England, and the United States; and Clemenceau yielded the French demand for the Rhine frontier. That meant compromise. Immediately Italy laid an ultimatum upon the table. It was Fiume or Italy would cease to negoti- ate. The same day the Japanese or others, who knew well the old game of diplomacy, started stories that Japan had been promised Shantung by both France and England, that Japan had been offered most favourable terms from Germany in 1917, and that the starving fifty-seven millions of Japanese »The New York Times, AprU 11th and 17th. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 339 must have land, more land. The United States would not allow Japanese to emigrate to either of the Americas, where hundreds of milUons of men might be fed and clothed. The United States would not allow the Japanese to seize and hold Siberia where there were other vast areas of land un- occupied. It was unfriendly, un-Christian; the Japanese government could not stand a day if Shantung were not granted. "Japan could not view without apprehension the moral awakening of four hundred million Chinese."* Clemenceau and Wilson had agreed to compromise the great issue! For ten years^ Wilson had taught revolution, revolution after peaceful methods, to be sure. Constitutions, laws, and social habits which everywhere upheld the unpre- cedented inequalities in modern society created by the in- dustrial revolution of the last century he would amend, repeal, or ameliorate. Even governments had been attacked on his tours through England and Italy. It was a day of the self-determination of peoples, a new-old struggle for democ- racy. As a result of this constant preaching he had been elevated to the governorship of a state, then to the presi- dency of the United States, and now he stood in Paris, con- fronted by the ancient enemy of all revolution, of democracy. His own country was officially against him; its articulate elements had grown tired of his reforms, and had learned how to thwart him. Appealing still to common men everywhere, he had adjourned his American struggle to Paris where the world was his parish. It was a great moment in history. Could it be turned to account for world democracy? In Germany just four hundred years before there stood another professor who had published ninety-five theses whose ^A widely^circulated statement of Viscount Ishii. 'From the day when the struggle at Princeton became acute and typical of the great social struggle outside mere college walls. See Chapter 111 of this book. 840 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK eflFect was revolution. Every year the fame and power of the new leader spread till German public opinion was stirred to its very depths. His sermons and his marvellous pamphlets on "The Babylonian Captivity" and "The Freedom of a Christian Man " had aroused in the minds of simple and op- pressed men all over Germany that hope of a millennium which has again and again in history :Qamed forth and consumed some of the dross of overgrown materialism. But when scores of thousands of peasants, under the leadership of Hans and Heinrich, prepared to act upon the new principles Luther warned them against their simple logic. Actual revolution he could not inaugurate. The terrors of a national, if not a world-wide, social conflict he dreaded. He trembled be- fore the consequence which his keener mind pictured to him. He compromised and approved a ruthless slaughter of the poor peasants.* Confronted with all the facts of the complicated case in Paris, would Wilson join the Radicals of Russia, stir the emo- tions of the great masses of unknown men everywhere, and challenge his own country by breaking up the conference? That was the alternative and every keen-minded man in Paris knew it. Wilson wished to persuade men; violence and war he hated now as when he was a teacher of young men at Princeton. Moreover, as a historian, he knew that reforms im- posed by violence turn to reactions. Hence Wilson and Lloyd George and Clemenceau patched up the great compromise. The treaty with Germany and the league of nations for the world, as they were offered on May 7th, were the result.'' But the immediate consequences of an agreement be- >A. C. McGiffert, "Martin Luther and His Work," Ch. XVII, gives an excellent account tf this part of Luther's career. 'New York TijmB, April 19, 1019. The details oE the treaty bearing upon boundaries, repa- ration, and plebiscites were being prepared by the so-called experts. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 341 tween Wilson and Clemenceau threatened disaster to the cause the President had nearest his heart. Orlando, sorely pressed at home, now demanded for Italy all that had been promised in the pact of London and Fiume besides. Wilson undertook to reply by his favourite method of open covenants openly arrived at. He drafted a very able and a very persuasive appeal to the people of Italy. It was of the very essence of democracy. No historian can ever condemn its spirit or tone or the wisdom of its publication. If open diplomacy ever had a strong case, it was in that of the Fiume appeal of the President. The reasonableness of it was said to be attested by the initials of Clemenceau and Lloyd George upon its margins. On April 23rd, when the Italian parliament was about to give voice to its will as both the French and British parliaments had done on April 16th, he gave the ad- dress to the newspapers. There was one great outcry that rose from every town and countryside of Italy. Men denounced this appeal to the people over the politicians' heads. Wilson only repeated what everybody had agreed to in the armistice; he pleaded for his fourteen points ; he besought the Italians and the world at the same time to try for once to apply the principle of simple justice.^ But Italy replied in a rousing rejection of the proposition. Orlando returned, as Clemenceau and Lloyd George had just done, with the full endorsement of his country.* The London Telegraph denounced the appeal to Italy as Wilsonian "brusqueness," the London Express said Wilson had only "waved a red flag at the Italians." Clem- enceau and Lloyd George denied, if not in their own words certainly in the words of their subordinates, that they knew anything of the President's "rash" purpose. On April 26th 'The address will be found in The New York Times of April 184, 1919. ^The Sonnino-Orlando ministry waa a little later overthrown. 342 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK Clemenceau telegraphed tlie former Italian Premier Luz- zatti that French secret promises were certainly not "scraps of paper." The telegram was made public. It was a chal- lenge to Wilson. And Clemenceau knew that he had worked three months to make a scrap of paper of the armistice. Nor did the Italians outside of Italy take a different view from the rampant nationalists at home. In Paris, in London, in New York and Chicago, rousing Italian meetings were held. They denounced Wilson. The American Italians cabled their an- -ger hot across the Atlantic. Senator Lodge declared in a widely published address in Boston that Fiume belonged to Italy, and that the President had no business to meddle in the affairs of other nations,^ as if going to war had not been meddling in the affairs of others. Perceiving, like good diplomats, that the time was pro- pitious, the Japanese delegation now pressed its one great demand, abandoning all others, the control and economic exploitation of Shantung. England could not deny them. Had not England held for three quarters of a century similar sway over the Shanghai valley? Clemenceau could not deny his support, for France, too, had her hands upon the decrepit body of China. Italy would support Japan; Japan would support Italy. Both would abandon the conference altogether if they did not get what they wished. The Re- publican party in the United States could not oppose Japan. Had not Mr. Roosevelt himself approved the seizure of Korea in July, 1907? And had not Mr. Knox, while Secretary of State in 1910, tacitly approved the same Japanese overlord- ship of Manchuria? Nor was the Democratic party very much concerned about the fate of Shantung. Having yielded at all, the President now yielded on Shantung, The whole thing nearly broke his heart, nothing more than the cruel •The New York Timu, April 27. 1919. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 34S demands of Japan. He tried to parry the fell blow at the sovereignty of a friendly and confiding power. Then he sought to exact from the Japanese a guarantee that the "lost province" would be restored on a given date. He failed in both. There is no denying that the fourteen points, that the terms of the armistice, were violated in the treaty about to be agreed upon. Wilson was "greatly saddened, knowing that public opinion was hardening against him at home."' But what else could he have done? Wilson knows history better than most other statesmen have known history. And they who know history realize that to forgive a people that has committed a great wrong is wiser than to punish them. But the millions of disabled or war-worn men in the iallied coun- tries, the score of millions whose kinsmen lay in the oozy ground of a hundred bloody fields, did not know history. They will never know history. They could not forgive Germany or the Germans. Wisdom is not the part of such folk. Few men have been able to rise to the level of Abraham Lincoln, and Lincoln himself did not live to test his doctrine of love. Wilson yielded to force majeure, thinking wisely, if the writer may express the opinion, that mankind was after all neither democratic nor Christian. In the words of a Republican observer and witness to the events he describes the President had fought the good fight: "If ever an American statesman had tried in a valiant struggle for the ideals of his people, it was Woodrow Wilson at Paris in the spring of 1919. He had indeed faced the Beasts at Ephesus."^ Perhaps one ought to say "for the ideals of the great mass of inarticulate people in his country" although one may not be sure of this. At any rate, the work was done, and at the plenary session of the conference on April £8tli, •William Allen White in The Saturday Evening Post, August \B, 1910. Hbii. S44 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK the main features of the treaty were agreed upon and the cove- nant of the league of nations was duly incorporated. The next day Stephan Lauzanne spoke for articulate France when he said that four times Clemenceau had surrendered to Wil- son: 1, when Japan was denied the racial equality that all peoples should have; 2, when Belgium was denied the seat of the league of nations; 3, when France failed to get the Rhine frontier; and 4, when the European allies allowed Wil- son to amend the league of nations constitution in the spe- cific exemption of the Monroe Doctrine from the jurisdiction of the assembled nations. The Italians were equally dis- pleased. They had not been granted Fiume. Japan alone seemed to be satisfied. The German Government was asked to send a delega- tion to Versailles to receive the verdict. It was to be a great pageant. The very haU in which the German empire had been proclaimed was now to witness the undoing of the work of Bismarck. Clemenceau, never unconscious of the ruthlessness of 1871, was to announce the terms of the peace. Germany, ignoring the liberal stirrings of men every- where, appointed as the head of the delegation Herr Brock- dorff-Rantzau but recently an obedient and willing instru- ment of the imperial regime.^ Herr Bosch, leading manu- facturer of poison gases, magnate of Mannheim but yester- day, was also a member of the commission! Economic and technical experts of every class composed the remainder of the forty-four leaders who went to Versailles. Two hundred others were attached to the commission. A special hotel was reserved for their use, and the people of the town and of the city of Paris were warned to keep away. Guards were kept about the delegation throughout their stay lest the still- >The New York Times, May 4, 1919, gives a list of the members of the German commissioa vith a short sketch of their hves- THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 345 surging French wrath burst forth and mar the great oc- casion. On May 7, 1919, the anniversary of the sinking of the Lvsitania, Premier Clemen ceau handed the Germans the text of the treaty. He said: "The time has come when we must settle our accounts. You have asked for peace. We are ready to give you peace. . . . Everything will be done with the courtesy that is the privilege of civilized na- tions. . . . It is the second treaty of Versailles. You may be sure we intend the treaty's guarantees to be suflBcient. And you have two weeks to study it and make answer. ""^ Brockdorff-Rantzau replied:" We know that the power of the German army is broken. We know the power of the hatred which we encounter here. 1 . . I do not wish to answer reproach with reproach; but if wrongs were committed in the heat of battle, who is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands since the armistice.''" It was the language of unassuaged anger and passion on both sides. Both speakers still thought in terms of military power. How much more effective would the German case have been, had some German democrat, like Foerster of Munich, who had suffered under the heavy hand of the Kaiser, made reply to the French? He could have disclaimed for the new Govern- ment all responsibility for the war, could have said, as Thiers said in 1871 : "We had no part with Napoleon III; we do not de- fend what has been done in the name of our country." An ill fortune decreed it otherwise. The treaty and the league were then put out and received, in so far as the German people were concerned, in the spirit of an age that men hoped had passed. 'The New York Times, May 8, 1919. Coleman PhilCpson, "Termination of War and Trea- ties of Peace," New York, 1916, pp. 380-391, gives Franco-Prussian treaties of 1871. One may see here the model on wliich Clemenceau would have shaped the treaties of 1919. The author is under obhgations to his friend Henry Milton Wolf of Chicago for calUng his attention to tills important work. 346 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK The settlement, as Clemenceau called it, compelled Ger- many to accept responsibility for the war,i restore Alsace- Lorraine, agree to international control of the Saar coal fields for fifteen years, yield Danzig indefinitely to the needs of restored Poland under international supervision, cede ter- ritory to Belgium, Denmark, Poland, and renounce all claims to territory outside Europe in favour of the league of nations. She must agree to recognize and later, if she joined the league of nations, guarantee the independence of Poland, Czecho- slovakia, and German Austria. In internal afifairs she must abolish military conscription, reduce her army to 100,000 men,' destroy, and promise never to rebuild, her former fortresses on the eastern side of the Rhine, and agree to cease the manufacture, importation, and exportation of the mate- rial of war. In order that these conditions be carried into effect Germany must agree that the allied governments might occupy, at German cost, the bridgeheads of the Rhine until the terms were met. The German navy had already been surrendered to Great Britain, as custodian for the allied governments. But the navy of Germany upon which so much enthusiasm had been lavished since the accession of William II was never in the future to consist of more than six battleships, six light cruisers, and twelve torpedo boats. There were to be no more submarines. The Kiel Canal was ordered to be opened on equal terms to all nations, as are the Panama and Suez canals. Germany must pay 20,000,000,000 marks' damages at once and agree to pay all actual civilian damages done by her armies during the war, as assessed by international commis- sions set up for the purpose. She must restore to Britain and the other allied peoples the shipping, ton for ton, which she 'The text of the treaty will be found in The Congrfssional Record, 60tb Congress, 1st Session, pp. 835-889. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 347 had sunk or destroyed; she must give all the allied nations the so-called "favoured-nation" commercial advantages, as these had existed in 1914, and allow railway and canal transit through her territories to the allied and associated peoples. The Kaiser was to be extradited from Holland, where he then dwelt in exile, and be delivered by Germany to an allied tribunal for trial. Many millions of tons of coal were to be delivered each year to Belgium and France in return for the coal that had been taken during the war. Machinery taken or destroyed during the conflict and forced loans exacted from allied populations and banks were to be restored. Cattle and horses seized and carried away must likewise be returned or paid for. And there were to be a score of international commissions, set up by the allied powers under the auspices of the league of nations, whose business it should be to assess damages and enforce all these decrees. There were also to be plebiscites of the peoples involved in the transfer of ter- ritory from Germany to Denmark and Poland. Germany was not to interfere with these nor to protest, when, in con- sequence, Danes and Poles, long accustomed to acknowledge German sovereignty, changed their citizenship. These are hard terms. No other nation in modern times was ever compelled to submit to terms so drastic and far-reaching. It would take fifty years of toil and industry to lift the burden of debt incurred and, of course, most Germans would inevi- tably regard their burdens as grievous and unjust. Few penalties have ever been welcome to those that bore them. President Ebert and the other German leaders declared that Wilson had betrayed Germany. Philip Scheidemann said: "President Wilson is a hypocrite and the Versailles treaty is the vilest crime in history."^ Germans in the United States took the same view. The editor of The Nation called the ^The LOerary Digat, May 24, 1919. 34.8 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK treaty "the madness of Versailles." Of Wilson lie said: "The peoples of the world see revealed, not a friend faithful to the last, but an arrogant autocrat and a compromising politician."^ The editors of the New Republic condemned especially the economic features of the treaty. The Dial lamented that the abandonment of the fourteen points was the price which Wilson paid for the league of nations; while one of the or- gans of the Non-Partisan League of the Northwest declared; "Wilson went to Europe the idol of all its common people. He returns literally without friends."^ The press of neutral countries, particularly those papers that had found excuses for the invasion of Belgium at the beginning of the war, (expressed the same bitter feelings. Russian soviet opinion was of course contemptuous, and both British and French labour leaders indicated their deep and sincere disappoint- ment that Wilson had not been able to inaugurate a new era. They did not, like radical groups in the United States, denounce the President.' Wilson himself expressed bitter disappointment in an address before the Paris Political Science Association. He declared with evident sorrow that mankind seemed not to be ready for the new day. His hope was in the league of nations. When the passions and the vindictiveness of Europe had calmed, he believed that the covenant of the league of nations would be used to correct the harsh and irritating parts of the treaty. Under the league future generations would function and slowly build an international organization that would make an end of wars.^ TAe Nation, May 17, 1919. ^Literary Digest, May 81, 1919. 'With the exception perhaps of Mr. Austin Harrison of London. 'This view seems to the writer to be in accordance with the experience of men in the pML THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 349 It was a noble thought; and none will deny that Wilson all but gave his life for it. His abiding and unfaltering faith in it was one of the causes of the French persistence in the fight upon his fourteen points. What was the league? A loose association of sovereign states that was not to infringe upon the absolute independence of any member. It was to include every nation, although for the moment Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Soviet Russia were not to be members. For a hundred and fifty years the idea of national unity and perfect national sovereignty had been perhaps the most im- portant social force in Western civilization. For it Lincoln had waged a terrible war and given his own life. For it Bismarck and Cavour had wrought like modern Titans, like Jesuits who justified any means, so the end was desirable. Now, when nationalism was in its full flower, Wilson set about modifying that perfect structure reared upon foundations that had cost so much blood and tears and treasure. And the logic of history and events compelled him to do so. He would, in the very phraseology of the Fathers of the American Union, set up a confederation. It was to have no powers of taxation, but it might ask the various member states to con- tribute to its necessary work. It was to have no direct jurisdiction over individuals, but it was to prescribe rules, hours, and conditions of labour. It was to set up no armies or navies, but it was to supervise the armaments of all member peoples. Its business was to arbitrate the differences among states, to reason with peoples that were wrought upon by politicians to make war, and to set limits to the exploitations of capitalists in order that men might be saved ^rom the calamity of another great war. It was to sugg^t and enforce by moral pressure that very deliberation which the hot-tempered leaders of Germany would not permit in the summer of 1914. Moreover, it was to guide the fortunes of weak or backward 350 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK peoples, like the folk who inhabit Africa or bring rubber out of the forests of Brazil, and prevent cruel economic oppression, as well as the hitherto common practice of egging barbarous peoples to war upon each other for the benefit of superior races.' These influences, the international conferences, and the moral forces were to emanate from the ancient city of Geneva. It was historically fitting that the city of John Calvin should be the capital of the league of nations. There a permanent secretariat should have charge of clerical and notarial affairs of the league. There the assembly of the world federation was to meet from time to time and discuss the common con- cerns of mankind. Each state was to have one vote, and resolutions of the body were to be carried before a smaller council for final action. The council should be composed of representatives of five great powers at fitrst, later of nine; that is, Germany, Russia, Hungary, and Austria were ex- pected to take their places in the central world body after a short period of probation. Voting would be by states and an important resolution, to become effective, must pass unani- mously except for the] opposition of a state whose conduct was under consideration. And any state not represented in this executive council should have the right to be heard on any matters vital to its people. All states were to agree to submit their cases to this body for arbitration and each one was also to agree to arbitrate disputes according to the verdict of the council or, in cases where this was not thought to be possible, wait six months before resorting to any warlike measures. Finally, if war should occur, contrary to the votes and good oflSices of the council, the people initiating such a war was to be boycotted by all the other states of the world. Moreover, no nation was to negotiate any agreements or iThe treaty and the league covenant nill be found in The CongtMaianal Record, 6etb Con- giess, 1st Session, 835-889. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE S61 treaties but upon presentation, registration, and publication with the league council. And it must not be forgotten, that every state that entered the league should recognize and de- fend the boundaries and assist to keep the peace of the world, as arranged in the treaty. The league was to be a stabilizer of the world. But where grievances and unjust boundaries were set up in the treaty there was a remedy. China might protest before it the continued holding by Japan of the Shan- tung province, and the council must hear and decide its pro- test. Himgary might complain at the conduct of Roumania , or Germany at the pretensions of Poland, and both would get a hearing and doubtless get relief. It was not an outlawry of war as so many idealists who had followed Wilson to Paris wished, as almost every German and Irish leader in the United States contended that it must be. To ask that was to defeat the league idea. But no historian, not bound by nationalistic or racial prejudices, no thoughtful man, save those who have no faith at all in the efforts of common men, will deny that it was a noble plan, well framed and admirably calculated to effect the utmost that mankind would support. It was worthy of the Presi- dent of the United States and worthy of men like James Bryce and John Morley who, in their old age, endeavoured to crown their ]ong and useful lives with an act that should bless mankind for all time. To secure the adoption of this tenta- tive agreement by all the powers represented at Paris Wilson had yiglded to terms in the treaty with Grermany that were regarded by him as unwise; he had yielded to certain obvious viomLons of his fourteen points; he had even permitted the dangerous guarantee of Shantung to Japan. ^ Trom the very day that Wilson landed in France, the European diplomats and most of their responsible leaders had *The President himself said as much on his Western tour. 352 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK distrusted the idea of such a league or any league. Clemen- ceau, as the apostle of the real, jeered it. Practical British- ers and imperialistic Italians had said they would accept the league, if first they received the good things which allied victory put within the power of the conference to grant them. And from the fateful day of the congressional elections in November, responsible leaders of the Republican party, aided by political opponents of the President in the Democratic ranks, had declared that the Wilson ideal was wrong, that the league would violate all the teachings of the Fathers, and that its adoption would be the beginning of the end of the Re- public. These were hereditary foes of the Administration, those older social forces in the North who could never think that the agrarian and provincial elements of the country ought ever again to aspire to control. They also represented a large, purely business element of the nation that wished, above all, to have no central world-power pass upon economic barriers, the reasonableness of tariffs, or limitations upon commercial exploitations. They feared England purely upon a commercial basis. These men and forces Wilson had been compelled to reckon with in the matter of the Monroe Doctrine and in the more important problem of an ultimate world free trade. Their influence had compelled him to ask that peculiar amendment to the first league covenant the ask- ing of which gave Clemenceau his first real victory over the President. Under the leadership of alert, able, and inveter- ately hostile men, other groups of the United States were glad to range themselves without asking questions of their new allies. Before the Germans submitted the treaty and the league to their government, the lines were already drawn for the last great struggle. The Senate would be the arena, as it had been so often before in the history of the United States. THE TREATY AND THE LEAGUE 353 The people would be the witnesses, the jury in a certain sense, although it was too late to hope it was without prejudice in the case. After weeks of argument and some minor amendments the German commissioners signed the treaty including the league of nations covenant. It was on June 28, 1919. Wil- son had called Congress in extra session; he now hurried home to render account of his mission and to urge the country to hasten a decision in order that the whole woi-ld, torn by nearly five years of unprecedented war, might have peace. He laid the work of the Peace Conference before the Senate on July 10th, and announced that he was ready to appear before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations at any time to ex- plain the treaty. There were other and pressing problems before the nation, as pressing as problems could well be. The railway situation was almost menacing; the state of things in the soft coal fields foretold a nation-wide strike of the workers; and in Mexico there were stiU the difficulties and temptations that had confronted him in 1913. Cwilson had laid down his real task when he went to war with Germany; nehad been compelled to try his philosophy, and bis ideals Upon a warring world; and now he came back to Washington tdi findrhimself t)itterly opposed by the forces in modern life that had fought him at every step in Paris. If anything was clear to thoughtful men, it was the fact that industrial civil- ization knew no national boundaries except for its own pur- poses, and that any leader of the United States who endeav- oured to make the world a little more democratic must fight great industry, at every turn and everywhere. Wilson had changed only the geography of his fight, nothing more. BuL his work in Paris was fairly before the Senate and the country. It remained to be seen whether common men could be made to understand the issue. CHAPTER XVI AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY AS I have shown in a former chapter, Wilson's world- leadership was broken in the congressional elections of 1918, perhaps the most important of all the popular decisions of recent times. When in that election the people of the United States endorsed the Roosevelt-Lodge slogan to "put the Germans behind the bars, put them in a padded ceU," they abandoned the Wilsonian doctrine.^ This was the language of the dominant wing of the Republican Party. Yet the majority which they won was due to the votes of very different groups of the population. In the East as well as in the West the Germans almost to a man voted with these extreme Re- _— -puljlicans in Order, as some of them said, to "punish Wilson." Nor was it different with the Irish in the large cities who were disgusted with the idea of the country being in alliance with Great Britain. Thus two very large elements of the population gave their support to a programme of vindictive- ness, "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." In order to punish Wilson for going to war, the Germans and the Irish united behind leaders who meant to fix a Carthaginian peace upon Germany, such as Germany indeed had declared that she would visit upon the allies.^ "Supro, 270-7fi. 'Statements of Roosevelt and Lodge will be found in J. F. Moors, "The Great Issue", 27-35. The Springfield Republican, November 18, 1920, gives an analysis of the vote in certain dis 354 AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 355 This decision left Wilson two lines of procedure. One was to remain in Washington and fight a losing struggle with Congress, at the same time trying to guide the negotiations at Paris. The other was to go to Europe and seek to use his prestige in such a way as to secure a peace that would commend itself to the American people in spite of the recent verdict. The former alternative was urged by all his op- ponents, including Secretary Lansing; the latter was pressed upon him by most of his friends and by all those liberal- minded folk who still hoped for a peace of reconciliation, an honest efifort to make an end of war. Wilson's decision is well-known. It was natural. Nor will historians cavil that he endeavoured to carry with him a group of assistants who were in sympathy with his ideals. Machiavellian strategy probably would have suggested the appointment of certain bitter opponents as commissioners in order that they should bear a share of the responsibiHty. But that was not done, or not intentionally done. And as I have shown, Wilson returned with a treaty that was only half as good as he had hoped and worked for. In Paris, Secretary Lansing announced that the work was mainly bad. In New York the so-called liberal periodicals denounced it as a pact with the devil. In Washington the senators who had demanded that Germany be put behind padded prisoq. Tiars now turned toward the German voters of the country and asked if ever there had been a more cruel treaty. A "leading newspaper procured a copy of the treaty before it was duly submitted and heralded it to the country as if it had been the pact of thieves that would convict every one tricts of New England. I have made similar analyses of the vote in Indiana congressional districts, notably the 3d and 12th. and also a study of Vanderburg County, Indiana; similar studies of the vote in Missouri and Minnesota reveal the same drift. It was plainly a con- certed purpose of these elements to punish Wilson for going to war. It was theu: first chan' e. Republican leaders egged them on. 356 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK who had put his hand to it.^ It was plainly the old party game at its worst, a plan to weld together, through hatred of Wilson, the business interests, the Germans, the Irish, and other unassimilated nationalities. And to party gave up what was meant for mankind. If Wilson were to succeed he must move quickly. It was to be the supreme test of Presidential leadership. And now the penalties of his former successes came home to him. He had pressed through Congress his greatest measures only by "crowding" congressmen in a way that congressmen always resent. He had hardly a score of real friends in the two houses of Congress, including the Democratic mem- bers. And some leading Democrats in the various states were his bitterest enemies, men who had been defeated for reelection because of his advice to their constituents. The country had approved his conduct, I believe, in every such case; but the country was now disposed to use the malcon- tents to punish Wilson.^ It could hardly have been other- wise. Cleveland was in a similar plight when he declared in 1894 that his own party leaders had betrayed the interests of the country. All the Democratic machine forces were fight- ing WUson. Of course aU the Republican machine leaders were doing likewise. Nor had Wilson a phalanx of office holders who would swear by him. The postmasters were mostly on the civil service list and the last men in the world to jeopardize their positions by loud talk. The reformers, the men who had shouted loudest when he was reelected in 1916, were now denouncing him because he had not overborne the ^The Chicago Trihune in whose editorials Wilson had only recently been condemned as too friendly to the Germans. ^Senator Vardaman's case comes readily to mind. There had been similar cases in several other states. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 357 delegates of the other nations at Paris and compelled them to agree to a treaty that included each and every one of the fourteen points, even when the country had but recently said that it did not believe in the fourteen points at all.i When Wilson was about to attempt to wring from an unfriendly Congress its approval of his work at Paris, and just as he was making ready to argue with the voters of the country who had in their last election condemned him upon pluralities that totalled two millions, he was more seriously ill than he had been at any time since his career began. During most of the closing weeks of July, 1919, he was com- pelled to seek relief through the agency of electric baths and massages. Doctor Grayson was a constant attendant and al- ways in anxious suspense about his patient. Seeking recreation from aU his worries, Wilson resorted to the presidential yacht, Mayflower, at week-ends and thus for a day or two at a time endeavoured to rest. But there was no rest. Everybody who visited Washington wished to see the President. And himdreds of thousands to-day condemn and even denounce him because he could not grant their requests for interviews. He was called "egocentric." He was declared to be the most secretive of men. Washington society hated him with a consuming hatred. But all the time it was mairdy the con- dition of his health that forbade him to give time to anything but the most pressing public business. And for this he was ever ready. Never has a president attended to the func- tions of his office under such terrible handicaps, imder the constant threat from his physician that he would speedily fall a victim to his work. Yet the public, knowing full well that he was not a vigorous man, daily increased its *This attitude is best expressed in the editorials of The New Republic, pa39im. 358 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK demands and multiplied its complaints about trivial as well as great concerns.^ ; As the struggle over the treaty became intense, the Euro- peans who would be most benefited by a prompt ratification intensified their campaign of disparagement. Italy com- plained in August that she had not been included in the proposed treaty between France and the United States, under which the former country was to be guaranteed against another German attack. The poet d'Annunzio was in the midst of his campaign for the seizure of Fiume. On Septem- ber 12, 1919, the wild Italian made a sensational entry into the coveted port, and proclaimed that the Italian flag should never be lowered.'' All over the world men jeered Wilson for this turn of events and leaders of the Peace Conference, still in session in Paris, seemed to enjoy the embarrassment of the President upon whose success de- pended the very stability of their own countries. People asked Wilson in derision: "Where is your millennium?" . • The Germans, entirely oblivious of the fact that it had been Wilson, and Wilson alone, who had prevented the annexation of all their country west of the Rhine to France,' ignoring his great service to them and mankind as a whole in pre- venting a victorious and destructive march in the autumn of 1918 of the allied armies through Germany and into Ber- lin, now redoubled their angry denunciations. Nearly all German-American papers and periodicals in the United States preached the same gospel of hate, as they endeavoured to solidify the German vote for 1920. And the cartoons of Jugend and Simplicismus in Germany strove to outdo ^Andrew Jackson was frequently ill while he was President, and he suffered sometimes intensely, but he was never in peril of hi^ life, and he was frequently told so by physicians. ^E. J. and C. G. Woodhouse in "Italy and the Jugo-Slavs" have given a good account of this aftermath of the Great War. ^Andrew Tardieu, "The Truth about the Treaty," mokes this clear beyond a doubt AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 359 Raemakers himself in vicious cartoons of Wilson. While Frenchmen never thought of relenting in the least in their age-long hatred of the Germans, they now increased their dislike of Wilson. Because Wilson delayed offering the so-called reinsurance treaty with France to the Senate until he could get some assurance that the main treaty would be favourably acted upon, French leaders complained that the Anglo-Saxons, who had saved them, were jockeying them. Nor was it merely the work of disappointed statesmen. Foch did not stand alone in his denunciation of Wilson. The French elections of November, 1919, resulted in an over- whelming victory for the reactionaries, but when the Cham- bers proceeded to choose the next President they defeated Clemenceau largely on the ground that he had yielded too much to Wilson.i Italy, Germany, and France would have no more of Wilsonism. In England, the coalition Government leaned more and more to the Tory point of view. Mr. Lloyd George was unable to calm the Irish volcano. The reason- able Home Rule plan of Sir Horace Plunkett upon which Wilson and Colonel House had bestowed so much attention was repudiated by both the Sinn Feiners and the Ulsterites. Force was then applied after the manner of the Germans of 1914. Lord French and Sir Edward Carson paraded in Dublin on August 20. Henceforth it was to be war in Ireland, which was equivalent to war upon Wilson in the United States, where Irishmen are proverbially more Irish than the Irish at home. Moreover, the British Government took a stiffer attitude in Mesopotamia and in the application of her mandate for the German colonies in Africa. The mission of Earl Grey, for whom Wilson was known to enter- tain a high regard, to the United States could hardly succeed, 'The "American Yearbook," 1919, p. IBi. 360 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK for he brought as an attache a man whose retirement Wilson had been compelled to request in^918, because of offen- sive and undiplomatic conduct, (^verybody was putting his "worst foot foremost" at the most critical time in world history since armistice day. [ To make matters worse, Earl Grey, not seeing the Presid^t in person, established connections with members of the Senate who were at the moment doing their utmost to discredit the President.' Even if things had gone smoothly with Earl Grey in Washing- ton, his cordial reception by the President would have in- tensified the bitterness of the Irish and the Germans, just then giving uproarious receptions to de Valera, former Governor Dunne and Frank J. Walsh, as they went about the country denouncing Wilson, his treaty and "perfidious" Britain.* Not only did the leaders of the great European nations feel compelled by their supporters and peoples to make Wilson's fight for the treaty doubtful. The heads of the small states, even those who held their positions because of Wilson's diplomacy, turned upon him. The Poles, following now the lead of Prance, were seeking to wrest from Bolshevik Russia vast stretches of territory on which only scattered Polish settlements were to be found. The Jugo-Slavs blamed Wilson because d'Annimzio and the Italians demanded and held Fiume, their one way to the sea and world markets. War between the two contestants appeared imminent at the moment Wilson must argue that the treaty would put an end to wars. Rumania marched into Hungary, took away vast booty, and held the capital for a considerable time; and Greece seized parts of Turkey without awaiting iHis efforts, reported in the press, were doubtless intended to further the cause of adoption, but they were nevertheless harmful in their effect. "See New York Timet, July «1, 1919. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 361 the award of the Peace Conference. Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, and Armenia were still the objects of angry gestures among the great powers.^ The President must in the nature of the case cry peace when there was no peace. Thus, without united support in his own party and with the bitterest hatred known to the halls of Congress since the days of Andrew Johnson dominating the minds of the op- position, without powerful economic support in the country, with a cabinet whose members were decidedly deficient , in the gift and art of public speaking, and with all the leaders of Europe putting obstacles in his way, Wilson now addressed himself to the greatest task that any American statesman, save Lincoln, ever undertook. His first moves were, after the manner of happier days, designed to clear the ways of problems accumulated during his absence, while the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations endeavoured to incubate a policy. But the encumbrances in the way threatened at once to become the major problems. The mounting cost of living and the public fears that there was to be no end to the extor- tions of privileged business enterprises demanded immediate attention. The Federal Trade Commission had finished its great and valuable investigation of the meat packers,^ which supplied the facts for a solution of the most important food problem. A conference of the President, the Cabinet, and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission was held during the closing days of July. On August 8, Wilson ad- dressed the two houses, announcing that he would use the powers of the Government to lower the price of flour, reduce The "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 161-194, gives the story of these contests and dis- orders. ^Report of The United Statea Federal Trade Commieman on the Meat-PacUng Industry, Washington, June 24, 1919. 362 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK the price of cold-storage products by putting on the market the Government's reserves for war purposes, prosecute offenders where possible under the law, and focus public opinion upon evil-doers wherever the law proved ineffective. New powers were asked to enable him to punish profiteers, to have the cost of goods at place of origin marked upon the packages, require Federal licenses for corporations doing interstate business, control the issue of corporate securities, and make further investigations as to the cost element in mounting prices.^ This was a long step forward. Business men feared it was only the beginning of other steps toward rigid Government control and partial ownership of certain g^eat interests. The country was excited. Congress was angry and sore, hardly knowing its own mind, except that it did not like positive leadership. The reply of the packers in this state of things was to reduce the prices paid for hogs and beeves at place of original shipment by one third. On August 8, 1919, hogs sold at the farms for 21 cents a pound on the hoof. Before September 1, they sold for 14 cents a pound. The prices paid for beeves took a similar turn downward. But the price of dressed meats to consumers in the cities remained the same or mounted higher during the next twelve months. That was the reply of business men to the demand for a lower cost of living. It touched Wilson's leadership at the weakest point. The farmer was to suffer while no one else got relief. Wilson was not extricating himself. On August 14, the farmers of the West appeared by delega- tion before the President and demanded that he manage to reduce the cost of living without lowering the price of grain. At the same time, the cotton farmers, whom the •Summary of this address will be found in the "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 18-19; also verbatim in Congressional Record^ August 9, 1919. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 363 Westerners envied because the price of their crops had escaped Governmental regulation, were organizing all over the South to demand forty cents a pound for all their output.' These were two powerful elements of Wilson's strength. They were about to abandon his leadership. Even before these events, the heads of the American railway brother- hoods, complaining bitterly of the rising cost of living, had/ seen him and asked immediate solution of the railway prob-' lem. These more conservative labour leaders reported that the membership of their organizations was breaking away from control and about to inaugurate strikes indiscrimi- nately. Anticipating the return of the railways to their stock- holders at the end of the war, Mr. Glenn E. Plumb, a railway labour leader of wide experience, had worked out the so-called Plumb plan of railway operation. The idea was to bring about a cooperative management among the owners, the workers, and the Government, such an arrange- ment as would satisfy the workers and give them a return that was regarded as proportionate to their contribution, leave a reasonable margin of profit to the investors, and give to the public a better service. That was the ideal. Wilson favoured some such arrangement, but he had not made up his mind that the Plumb method was the best arrangement. Moreover, the treaty demanded immediate attention, the railways might wait. To that end, perhaps with a knowl- edge of the President's wishes, the Federation of Labour at its meeting in June had refused to endorse the Plumb plan. The threatened strikes seemed to him in part a move- ment to coerce him into taking up the railway problem before the treaty was adopted. That would have amounted 'The Nation, vol 108, pp. 348-49. =The New York Times, August t, 3, and 4, 1919. ■~fi 364 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK to an abandonment of the treaty and the substitution of an exciting campaign about the national railway policy .1 During the whole period of the negotiations at Paris, the country had been nervous. In February, 1919, a so-called general strike was called in Seattle. The shipyard workers struck for higher wages, when wages seemed to most people inordinately high. On February 6, all other organized workers struck. Factories and restaurants closed doors; trolleys ceased to run; newspapers did not appear, a fact that disturbs the pubUc out of all proportion to the import- ance of the press. To prevent immediate suflfering a com- mittee of the strikers issued permits to milk-carriers, physi- cians, and druggists, and workers were allowed to continue the operations of telephone, water, and light plants. The workers were the masters, actual government was about to pass into their hands, for theirs was the power of life and death. It was revolution. To break this strike was the one thing needful, and Mayor Ole Hanson made a national reputation by his handUng of the problem. He did break the strike, but he left laboiu" people restless, even revolution- ary in tone.* Quick upon the heels of this event came the story of the formation of the "one big union," for which the Industrial Workers of the World were the sponsors. Although there was slight chance of success in this venture, men were every- where exceedingly nervous. The kidnappers of 1917 who had seized labourers at Bisbee, Arizona, and deported them were now arrested, and suits for six millions in damages were pressed against the mining and railway companies that had instigated the kidnapping. The offenders were permitted by the Government to settle out of court at the rate of "Glenn E. Plumb, "The Plumb Plan," Washington, D. C, 1919. ^The "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 456-457. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 365 five hundred to fifteen hundred dollars for each man taken away from his home. Feeling ran high against labour every- where for this success in the courts. The American Legion at Bogalusa, Louisiana, was reported to have killed four labour leaders without provocation. Meanwhile, the trial of the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World in Chicago kept alive the excitement. In January forty-six members of the organization were found guilty and sentenced. But on June 7, 1919, fifty-six leaders of the same organization had their indictments quashed at Wichita, Kansas; on the follow- ing day, however, they were reindicted on other charges. The Mooney case was all the while a subject of the keenest interest, the President having exhausted his powers in efforts to bring about the retrial of that famous labour leader, imprisoned in 1916 upon perjiu-ed evidence.^ Fear, suspicion, and hatred ruled the relations of capital and labour, the more since the demand for workers outran the number of workers in a manner unknown to American history. What made this excitement the more intense was the mailing from New York on June 3 of a great number of bombs to leading capitalists in all parts of the country, in the apparent hope that these would explode in the hands or houses of the receivers. One of the bombs was exploded on the doorstep of Attorney-General Palmer, and probably added to the ill fortunes of thousands of innocent foreigners during the next year. During August, 1919, there were wild-cat strikes all over the country: in Government ship- _ yards, on the docks of New York, in the various trolley and underground transportation systems. Even the police of Boston went on strike and all but converted the governor of that state into President of the United States, because ^Mooney's sentence to death was commuted to life imprisonment. For brief statement about Mooney, see "American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 461-452. 366 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK he at the last moment was persuaded to act vigorously. Late in August the railway shopmen demanded higher wages from the Director General of the railways, threatening an immediate walk-out unless their demands were acceded to. Wilson ordered the men to defer their grievances upon penalty of military intervention, in case of contumacy. But at the same time the hordes of workers in the steel miUs of the country made ready for a nation-wide strike. Their case was espoused by the Federation of Labour, whose leaders had cooperated with the President so vigorously during the war and at Paris. Moreover, the steel workers were shown to have a genuine grievance.^ They asked mainly for the recognition of their leaders, that is, for the privilege of collective bargaining, demands which the Government had recognized under all administrations for twenty years. If the steel strike materialized, Wilson would be compelled to take a hand. He was presented with the statement of their purpose while he was touring the far West on be- half of the treaty. He begged the men to defer their demands till a better season. They refused, and Wilson was brought into conflict with the Federation of Labour, .a thing that no Democratic President may permit without serious risk, for presidents set up by that party are closer to labour than those who represent the Republican Party .^ With all these dangers and menaces to his leadership and to the adoption of the treaty, Wilson was brought to the point where he must take sides. He might join the railway men, the steel men, labourers in general. If he did so, he not only challenged business, he must be prepared for the opposition of the farmer elements of the South and ^Report of The World Inter-Church Movement, 1920, endorsed by bishops and other leaders of the Protestant churches. 'Compare President Charles W. Eliot's article, Atlantic Monthly, October, 1920. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 367 West, where organized labour has few friends, and where few men even seek to understand the difficulties of workers in the great cities. Wilson is a Uberal. He sought during August, 1919, to mediate between Labour and Capital, and being of the party and faith of democracy, he inclined to the side of Labour. If now he actually took that view, he must seek to work with the Federation of Labour and force business to surrender, or he must espouse the more radical cause and take steps looking to revolution. Few statesmen wish to risk revolution, for that defeats its own purpose, ex- cept in extreme cases. Wilson had no other choice but to call an industrial conference. That he did upon the eve of his departure for the West. But he did not do this before he tried to induce Congress to act with him. /Congress did not wish to aid him in any venture. Hence he invited WSb. to participate in what was calledTEe President's Industrial Conference which was set for October 6, when he expected to return from his western speaking tour. He would then preside over the gathering and seek a way out of the in- dustrial wilderness. The body was to assemble in three branches, capital, labour, and the public. Many of the ablest men in the country accepted service in this body.* High hopes were set upon the undertaking. It was, however, the President's movement. If the treaty were accepted and the conference found a way to bring Labour and Capital into better relations, Wilson would recover the great prestige of the summer of 1918. Clearly the interest of the country required that he should succeed. Would he be permitted to succeed? Another problem of equal political though not equal social importance now pressed upon Wilson's attention, the prohibition question. The Eighteenth Amendment '"The American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 28-30. 368 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK had already been added to the Constitution, and the Federal Supreme Court had declared that all the long road to adop- tion had been regularly followed. There was nothing for wet mouths to do but become dry. The majority had spoken; that majority had then been increased to two thirds of the states. It was fixed. The only remaining question was the congressional definition of intoxicating drinks.i From Wilson's point of view a drastic enforcement act would be premature. People must learn more of the value of abstinence from drink. So great a change must come through education. He preferred to delay the prgjubition- ists' programme until public opinion could catch up a little. Moreover, he wished the treaty, which concerned the whole world, especially its economic life, to take precedence. Besides, the Democratic party of the North was rather more wet than dry, while the-DemoCTatic^?crty" of 'tbE'South was the reverse. This affected Wilson's "lea'dersbip'Ti^i^jL, Again, the labouring groups of the North wefe""almost in- variably wet, while the farmers of-the country were generally dry. Here was another chance of a rrhrm the President's support.,. In spite of these complications the leaders of "iie Prohibition forces pressed for immediate action. This was not because they wished the treaty to fail; they wished to strike while the iron was hot. Prohibitionists were gen- erally churchmen and as a rule liberal in politics, and so desired very much the prompt adoption of the treaty. It was one of those dilemmas that democratic government is often confronted with. Neither side could well surrender, although the historian cannot overlook the partisan advan- tage that is ever taken of such a situation. Wilson's intense interest in his own great work, his physical exhaustion, as well as his tendency to consult with too few outsiders, i"The American Yearbook," 1919, pp. 55-58, gives tLe facts. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 369 led him into a semi-hostile attitude. The Prohibitionists slowly became skeptical of him, which made them press their own case the more intensely. This divided the Demo- cratic Party; it angered Labour; it gave men an excuse to abandon Wilson's other and greater work. When hearings were held on the proposed Volstead act, there was much bad feeling; there was more bitterness among liberals than augured well for future trials of strength. But the Volstead bill became a law. It gave drastic powers to Federal oflScers who were to enforce the measure. The bill reached Wilscpi after his return from the West, and the Presideiit>etoed itT A few hours after the veto was returned to Congress, the bill was repassed in the House upon a vote of 178 to 55, a warn- ing to the President. The charm of the great leader was disappearing. Men were no longer afraid of his opposition. He had surely fought a great fight since November, 1918, and he was by no means without power and influence. But members of his own party were now forward in public at-j tacks upon him. -■ — — "^ All this while the Senate refused positive action on the treaty. Its leaders really liked the treaty. They wished it were more severe rather than more moderate in its stipula- tions about German reparations. The league was rather too weak for Republicans of the Taft wing of the party. The so-called radicals, Johnson and Borah, would have no league of nations at all. It was to them evidence of a permanent peace with Great Britain — a condition which American politicians have dreaded since 1776. ' / Besides, the Republi- can leaders of the Senate were hearing from their constituents in a way that made them doubt the wisdom of their course. There is a report well vouched for that one important Re- ^The "Autobiography of Martin van Buren," American Historioai Report, 1919, gives a re- markable history of this influence in American President-maldng. 370 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK publican member of the Committee on Foreign Relations de- clared in a semi-jiublic speech that, if Wilson were to die, the Senate would adopt the treaty without change.^ Another report that the writer cannot doubt is that it required extraordinary outside bolstering during all that autumn to prevent Senator Lodge from acquiescing and recommending the adoption of the treaty, including the league. That was the better nature of bitter partisans responding to the better judgment of the country acting through unoflBicial channels. Wilson was about to succeed in spite of the defeat of 1918, in spite of the weaknesses of a treaty which was worse than it should have been because of that defeat. If he won, the labour problem might be ironed out in the coming conference and the labour situation in the world would be smoothed in the international labour conference to be held in Washington under the auspices of the League of Nations the following November. Wilson was due to win. Could he be permitted to win? In the hope of speeding up things, he imdertook to bring members of the Senate into conference. Then he invited leaders to the White House for private discussion. Senator Borah won for himself a unique and unenviable position in history by refusing to soil himself by contact with a President who will surely go down in history as one of the very noblest of all the men who have ever led the nation.^ And certain so-called liberal periodicals took occasion now to applaud the deed and to publish Mr. Borah's platform in which he declared that, if the Republican Party accepted the League of Nations, he would form a new party and make certain the defeat of the Republicans in the next campaign. 'Statement of a New England senator repeated to the writer by a prominent Republican two or three days after the event, September, 1919. The New York Times, August 17. 1919. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 371 This was not the conduct of men of balanced judgments. It was hysteria.' Pressing to a conclusion, Wilson now asked the Senate Conunittee on Foreign Relations to meet him for conference at the White House. He hoped to focus national attention upon the one great issue and to induce the Senate to respond to that very pressure which he knew to be bearing down upon the members of that body. On August 19, the Sena- tors sat down with him in the Whitfe House — Senator Borah still keeping himself unspotted from contact with the wicked. Wilson certainly does not appear the wilful and stubborn man that he had been charged with being in reports of that long and trying discussion. He declared at once that the Shantung award did not please him any more than it did Senator Johnson. He made plain that the treaty was very much of a compromise, that France had not secured the Rhineland for which French imperialists had clamoured in Paris, that Italy had not really secured Fiume, and, above all, that the talk about the six British votes in the proposed assembly of the League of Nations was absurd. When one Senator suggested that the United States had received none of the booty of war, he replied quietly that he had not thought of asking for any booty. He did not argue. He simply explained that the treaty was an accommodation, that it must be adopted promptly as such, else the nation would suffer, and of course the rest of the world was abeady suffering. The Senators showed a rather angry spirit; they were clearly uneasy and still in doubt whether they ought to do wljat they had made up their minds not to do at any cost. (There were prickings of_conscience. that_ day . Al- though th5~confCTence continued till long after the usual lunch hour, the Senators did not risk the friendly influence '■TU Nation, vol. 108, p. Hi. 372 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK of lunching with the President and of the conversation that must have followed. It was with rather bad grace that they left the White House, having resisted all suggestions for confidential discussions. They must have their stenog- rapher; they could not trust the President. They were clearly afraid of his influence upon themselves.^ No one can read what the President said on that occasion without feeling the immeasurable superiority of his position to that of the men who sought to make him appear to be an enemy of his country and its people. And at the time leading Republicans like Mr. Taft and Mr. George W. Wickersham brought all the influence they could command to sustain the President. President Eliot wrote unanswerable argu- ments for the newspapers; most leaders of church and educa- tional life lent themselves without stint to the same purpose. The New York Times, by no means a Democratic organ, the Indianapolis Star, the Chicago Evening Post, and the Rocky Mountain News, all Republican papers, gave full endorsement to Wilson's advice to the Senate. It was all in vain. Then the President made known that he would agree to any amendments or interpretations that did not deprive the treaty of its vital parts. He had never pretended to give assent to any part of the treaty that would abridge the powers of Congress. He knew, as everybody knew, that he could not abrogate the constitution under which he worked. But he was willing, glad to have Congress reserve specificaUy all such powers. He was wUling to have the Monroe Doctrine definitely exempted from the operations of the League, although he knew that such reservation gave ^Senate Document, No. 76, 66ik Congresa, 1st Session. These fifty pages of print will forever show how kindly and how earnestly Wilson strove with the bitterest of antagonists to secure what was clearly to the best interest of the country and the world. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 373 Japan or any other power the right to naake a similar reser- vation. All this and more was known to the members of the Senate. But as a member of that body said to a constituent in Maine, Wilson .might dra^w^^ a great treaty, propose-a worid peace that was without flaw, jButltfae^itepub- licans would, never .jaJEvv^ his work_to succeed. "That," said the Senator, "was decreed before~Ee went^_ Paris.' The "Senate had brow-lieaten Cleveland eight years; it had driven John Hay to resign from the McKinley cabinet; and it had refused assent to most of the best measures of the Roosevelt presidency.' How could it now forego the chance to break the one leader whose career had been and still was a reminder that some things were not right in the coimtry? The bitterest of the opposition leaders hardened their hearts and the more moderate stifEened their necks; all chances were to be taken. Wilson must be broken. Hoping stiU for a happy outcome, Wilson seFout upon the tour of the West on the night of September 1, 1919. He endeavoured to carry his office with him in order that the routine work of the Government should not suffer. His first address was at Columbus, Ohio. It was noted that Governor Cox, Democratic leader of that state, did not pre- side at the meeting. Nor did the audience prove to be the enthusiastic, earnest, semi-religious gathering that Wilson had been wont to address in Ohio in 1916. The Germans were not there. The Irish did not press the hem of his garment, as they had done on former occasions. At Indian- apolis there was more of enthusiasm, and in St. Louis a demonstration. Was the Middle West lost? I believe the spirit that ever denies, the spirit of the East, of racial hatreds and economic interests, had already permeated that 'Letter from said constituent to the writer, February 8, 1921. 'W. B. Thayer, "Life of John Hay," pp. 215-230, gives interesting testimony on this subject. 374 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK section. Wilson showed that he thought so in that he did not visit Pittsburg and Chicago. There Democratic gather- ings had aheady hissed the mention of his name.^ J An editorial in a New York weekly had declared with evi- dfeat joy that Wilson would never again speak to vast and [enthusiastic gatherings of his fellows. Was it coming true? f^t Kansas City, Des Moines, and Minneapolis, Wilson did speak to great audiences, audiences that spoke the English language without an accent. But were there enough men who loved their own coimtry and the cause of democracy Jiving in doubtfid states of the North to save the situation? 'That was the doubtful query wherever Wilson went during that now famous journey. More than once he said on the trip that he was not satisfied with some clauses of the treaty. But taken altogether he urged men to accept the treaty because u provided the means of correction both of the Shantung and the reparations section. Even Ireland would get its chance under the league. As he travelled westward, Lyman Abbott, President Lowell of Harvard, and some two hundred and fifty other eminent men published an appeal to the country on behalf of the treaty.^ A^till the Senate remained obdurate. It did more. It called William C. Bulhtt, a former confidential official of the State Department who had turned venomously upon the President in Paris, as a witness before its Committee on Foreign Relations. Bullitt undertook to repeat con- fidential matters in the presence of former Secretary of State, Knox, who even allowed the witiiess to be the first to suggest the impropriety of deciphering in public the confi- ^1 have followed the reports of the New York Times for these meetingSi but have also read the reports of the Chicago Tribune carefully. *The New York Times, September 13, 1919. See also Hearings of the Senate Committee on Fateign Relations, 66th Congress, 1st Session, vol. H. Testimony of September li, 1019. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 3J5 dential code of the Government! What embarrassed Wilson was not the revelation of confidential matters, but the statement of Secretary Lansing made to Bullitt in Paris, that "the American people did not know what the treaty and the League of Nations let them in for." It was the first time in American history that a secretary of state had placed himself in direct opposition to his own chief at a critical moment — ^at the very moment that vital national interests were in the balance. Webster had not done so when he disagreed with Tyler. Blaine resigned when he decided to become a candidate for the Presidency against his chief, Harrison. Jefferson differed radically with Washington, but he did not publicly appeal to the coimtry, as LauaingL permitted Bullitt to do, against Wilson.^ — v. While the President wrestled with all the complicated difficulties, Senators Johnson, McCormick, and Borah started upon a tour to coimteract the influence of the Presi- dent, a thing which, Uke Lansing's conduct, was also n^ When President Taft toiu-ed the country on behalf of the worst tariff that the country had ever had, the Democratic senators of the time did not trail him across the country. When President Johnson made his "swing around the circle" in 1866, not even the rancour of Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner suggested a senatorial circus to counteract him.* Li Chicago the three senators spoke to a great, hissing, shouting audience of Germans and Irish, some of whom called out "Impeach him, impeach him."^ Senator s sa tjapop the platform and heard men who love only^veiBeas_Jaiids hiss their President and shout_J ' Impeach 3Jygi"_mth£u^ rebuke. At the same time the Democratic senator, Reed, under the spell of the same kind of audiences, went about *Mr. Lansing's "Personal Narrative," p. 270 and on, does not explain. 'The Chicago Tribune, September 11, 1919. 376 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK the country on similar errands. While Messrs. de Valera, Frank J. Walsh, and former Governor Dmme conducted their campaign of denunciation against Great Britain, and raised what they claimed to be millions of dollars for the Irish cause. Wilson continued his way. In Oregon, in Washington, and California his receptions and the demonstrations in his behalf were so remarkable that politicians took anxious notice, but even there difficulties thickened about him. A delegation of laboiu" extremists made demands upon him that he was compelled to rebuke. He endeavoured always to make them and all men feel that one thing at a time is the only safe rule for the solution of public problems, and that the treaty was the one thing needful: "Quick ratification, a definite peace, will cure the ills of the world. If we do not get this we shall have economic disaster."' And the nat- ural consequence of defeat would be the helplessness of labour, stagnation of business, and exploitation of the farmer! This was a warning, not a threat. The ablest of business leaders as well as the best of workingmen already foresaw coming events. Economists everywhere urged that there was trouble ahead. Events have surely shown that Wilson was right in his forecast. Could the President continue the killing pace? Half ill when he left Washington, he had not been at his best on the tour. And the carping criticism that came daily from the East, the unfriendly taunts of certain great newspapers, "Go back to Washington," did not add to his vigour and faith. In California he spoke under the stress of racking pain. In Utah all about him were imeasy lest he literally fall in the fight. Before reaching Wichita, Kansas, Septem- ber 25, 1919, Admiral Grayson stopped the train and took •The New York Timet, September 19, 1919. AN APPEAL TO THE COUNTRY 377 the President upon a rapid run of a hundred yards to test the patient's powers and to set his circulation going more freely. All to no purpose. Wilson collapsed as the party neared Wichita. His appointment there for the next day was cancelled. The train was hurried to Washington, and the country gradually came to understand that the President was a broken man. He endeavoured for a few days to renew his former activity; but it could not be. At the moment when he hoped to see] the treaty accepted with a few reser- vations and definitions, he became too ill to press matters further. He did sign bills; he vetoed some measures; and now and then he conferred with members of the Cabinet. But he could not preside over the industrial conference that gathered on October 6. And little was done toward accom- modating the differences of Capital and Labour. The great steel strike took its fateful course, and Government troops were employed to keep order, as indeed they ever must be employed in certain contingencies. The international labour conference assembled in Washington under the auspices of the League of Nations, but Wilson's voice was not heard at its sessions. His great career was ended. "Everything was balled up," a condition which he had ever sought to prevent. The country was leaderless, its most urgent business must wait upon a national election that could not be held until November, 1920; and the world must likewise wait till March 4, 1921, before a serious attempt could be made to relieve its woes. All eyes were upon Washington and upon the country, while hundreds of thousands faced starvation for want of American cooperation in world affairs. CHAPTER XVII POLITICAL SABOTAGE THE Senate of the United States now sought to take up the leadership of the world, to formulate a policy that would first of all destroy Wilson, and, succeeding in that task, would then endeavour to substitute a programme of national selfish- ness for that more idealistic programme which the stricken President had urged upon men everywhere. The dpportim- ity and the awful responsibility did not chasten the spirits of men who had long proclaimed themselves the "most august legislative body on earth." The Constitution of the United States gave them the power to advise the President in foreign affairs, to consent or give approval to treaties. The circumstances of the time and the sufferings of millions of people all over the world now rendered their position supreme, autocratic in the last degree, a thing which groups of men seem to enjoy with less sense of responsibility than personal autocrats generally manifest. Many times in American history have minorities of the Senate held up the affairs of the country for months and years, even when the will of the people was flouted. It was only upon the earnest intervention of Mr. Bryan that the treaty which ended the Spanish war was adopted. As I have indicated on a former page, a combination of Democrats and Republicans de- feated for years the best work of John Hay. But one need not condemn. For more than a hundred years the people in pursuance of their ideal of a perfectly 378 POLITICAL SABOTAGE ' 379 balanced government, a scheme designed to thwart leader- ship, had observed this particular habit of senators, and some of the most fatal policies ever put into eflfect were pressed in this way by senators who have been honoured in their day, if not on the pages of informed history. The people of the country are responsible; they have never seriously endeavoured to change their Constitution in this respect; they do not now, in view of the risks of long deadlocks, even wish to change it in favour of responsible leadership. Americans like a government that can be deadlocked; they are afraid of able leaders who conceive great ideas and seek to do great things for the nation. This has been so from the beginning; it seems Ukely to continue.' /^-~' The leaders of the Senate had two tasks in 1919. une was to make Wilson appear to be the worst President the country had ever suffered from. The other was to withhold approval of the treaty until the various un-American e\§.- ments of the country could be aroused to the "criffi^ of Wilson." When these two tasks were performed, the sena tors would quietly agree upon the next presidential candidate] and then persuade the Republicans in the national conven- tion to nominate him. No one can doubt that all this work was done with consummate strategy. It is the pur pose of this chapter to show how the r6le was played, and howtEe work of Wilson was affected, how the fruits of the war were essentially lost because of it. The election. of 1918 presented the Republicans of the country with one of those embarrassing situations which Republicans know so well how to meet. In Michigan Truman H. Newberry had conducted a campaign for his nomination which made the Lorimer scandal of 1910 fade *Mr. Henry Jones Ford, in his "Cleveland Era," American- Chronicles series, has given a most accurate picture of senatorial behaviour during two presidencies. 380 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK into insignificance. Both the Governor and the Lieutenant- Governor of Michigan stated publicly that the Newberry case was a scandal which the party could not palliate or excuse.^ In the election that followed the primary debauch, similar conduct was continued. All of this was duly brought out in the trial in the United States court at Detroit when Newberry was sentenced to two years in the penitentiary." It was a bad case. What gave it an embarrassing aspect was the fact that Colonel Roosevelt had refused to sit down to lunch with Senator Lorimer when he was under investigation, that Senator McCormick of Illinois had started his public career by the most unmeasured denunciation of Lorimer. Now followers of Roosevelt, McCormick, Senator Johnson of California, and Senator Cummins of Iowa must seat Newberry or lose the control of the Committee on Foreign Relations, lose perhaps the whole fight upon Wilson. This was a dilemma. It becomes clearer when we recall that the majority, including the prospective vote of the new Michigan member, would be only two. If Newberry were unseated, the majority would be one. That would give the deciding vote to Senator LaFollette — then under charges, urged in bitterest language by Republicans like Lodge and Roosevelt, of having sought to betray the country in war time by unlawful speech. LaFollette certainly did not love his party colleagues. If he should fail the Republicans, what embarrassments would follow! Nor was the vote of three or four other Republican senators beyond doubt, if it came to a tie. And in case of a tie the Vice-President, a Democrat, would give the controlling vote. The Republi- >The Cmgreisional Recori, February 6, 1919, p. 8807. ^The United States Supreme Court has recently declared the proceedings unconstitutional on the ground that the law of 1911 was unconstitutional, a strange ruling in view of scores of other decisions of the same court. POLITICAL SABOTAGE 381 cans must seat Newberry, regardless of scandal and of the possible consequences to the party. This decision became clear when Senator Pomerene of Ohio endeavoured during the months of January and February, 1919, to force a public investigation of the case. After some demur by Senators Lodge and Townshend, and after it became evident that the Democratic Senator Reed intended to aid the Repub- licans in their proposed breaking of the President, it was openly declared that the Republicans would filibuster till the end of the session if any investigation were pressed.^ It was at that moment that the Democrats made their first great blimder in their defense of the President and his cause. They might have focussed public opinion upon the unparalleled scandal of a campaign that had cost six hundred thousand dollars, and thus they might have roused the coimtry to the true state of things. Hoping to save the government from having all its affairs held up by a filibuster, they allowed their opponents to escape, only to find a few weeks later that the filibuster came anyway and the most urgent appropriations were denied.^ The Republicans outgeneralled the Democrats, for they had escaped a real public investigation and they had then manoeu- vred so that the President would be compelled to call Congress and not simply the Senate together at an early day^ Newberry was to be seated, the Comjnittee on Foreign Relations was, therefore, to be composed of the bitterest enemies of the President, and the Senate majority would risk all in the effort to undo the settlement at Paris. It is a curious fact that the Republican leaders who had de- 'The Congretrimal Record, February, 1919, pp. 2817-18. ^It is quite probable that Democratic leaders were so much interested in what is called the "pork" features of the appropriations that they made only a feint of attacking the Newberry corruption. 382 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK clared that nothing should be done in one of the greatest cases of debasing an electorate in the history of the country now turned upon the Wilson administration and tried to convict it of shameful waste of public funds. In the midst of the Great War the Government, supported by all who favoured the allied cause, had built ships at reckless expense. Nearly five millions of tonnage was added to the shipping of the country during the years 1918-1919. It was a race for victory. The expense was enormous. The moment the war ended the Republicans, as any other party opposition might have done, immediately picked upon this as a reason for defeating the Wilson leadership. Investigations were held; witnesses were subpoenaed to appear, and many, very many people made it the first interest of their thinking to convict the members of the Shipping Board of corruption. The nearest approach to conviction came in the case of Charles M. Schwab, a Republican "doUar-a-year man," who was clearly not guilty and who with tearful earnestness avowed to the country his immaculate innocence. His conviction would hardly have served the purpose of men whose purpose it was to champion the cause of business on a large scale. Of similar import was the re-investigation of the men responsible for the waste of hundreds of millions in the abortive effort to send a vast air fieet to the western front in 1918. After the most careful examination of wit- nesses, no one was found who had corruptly used public moneys, although blunders and recklessness were brought home to many of those who were responsible for the Govern- ment's policy. Even more was expected in the investigation of the supply department of the American Expedition to France. In the winter of 1919 great stores of army supplies were sold to the French at very low rates. During the days of active hostilities the officers of the supply department POLITICAL SABOTAGE S83 spent money lavishly in order to serve the men at the front in the best possible manner. General Charles G. Dawes was the responsible head of this service. When the investi- gation seemed to be finding its way to a round denunciation of the Department of War, General Dawes, an orthodox EepubUcan, appeared before the committee and boldly defended the conduct of the war in France."^^ So keen was the scent of some of the leaders of the opposition for im- agined wrong-doing that on two occasions the President's brother-in-law was charged with appropriation of public funds to his own personal ends. A certain banking firm in Washington, whose officers had waged war upon the Comptroller of the Currency since 1913, seemed bent upon proving the guilt of this kinsman of Mrs. Wilson. On two occasions the press of the country featured this effort and gave the voters the impression that Wilson had maintained personal connections in office, but at the close of each inves- tigation every charge was shown to be false if not malicious. These are but a few of the typical cases. The leadership op Congress was so hopeful of bringing home to the Democrats evidences of corruption and personal peculation on a vast scale that it was not until early in the year 1921 that the last committee of the House of Representatives finally gave up the effort. Neither the President nor any member of his Cabinet was ever shown to be guilty of the least wrong-doing, a record that has hardly been paralleled since RutherfojdiB- Hayes. Not only so, none of the various boards that ad- ministered the great affairs of the country during the war was shown to have been guilty of anything more than waste, and that under circumstances which historians will refuse to condemn. But the campaign from the summer of 'Reports of all these investigations will be found in Hearings qf the Military Commiii§e~^^^ the Bouae of Repreaentativea, G6th CoTigress, lat Session. 384 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK 1919 till the election in 1920 was based largely upon the claim that "an enormous waste of public funds" had laid upon the people a "huge tax burden and the high cost of living."' Men who organized their opposition in the Senate ttpott the necessary vote of Truman H. Newberry made the country believe that the spending of great sums of money in the hope of hastening the end of the war was next to criminal! For two years nearly every great newspaper in the industrial states published scare articles intended to prove that Woodrow Wilson was the most wasteful if not the most corrupt President who ever occupied the White House. The protests and the answers of those who took the trouble to defend Wilson never gained a hearing, even when they were published. ^ Another and a very effective slogan was that Wilson was a confirmed and narrow-minded Southerner, who looked upon his office as a means of plundering the rest of the coimtry in order to enrich his own section. It is a common saying in the United States that any man may become President. Yet there is nothing more certainly fixed in recent American history than the fact that no one living in the South can be nominated or elected leader of the country. So many men and women still "think as their fathers shot" that even a Southerner long resident in the North is a very doubtful nominee for the presidency. Wilson is a Southerner by early environment, but his ideals are the ideals of the Ameri- can Revolution; his thinking was and is international in the sense that early American ideals were international. But the aim of senators and the managers of the press, as a whole, was to make him appear a provincial of the Old South.^ •The Chicago "Daily News Almanac," 1912, p. 230. 'The New York Tribuns maintained this attitude. In an editorial of November 4, 1920, Wilson's life and work are summed up as sectional and Southern. POLITICAL SABOTAGE 385 The deepest underlying grievance against Wilson on the part of the masters of industry was the income tax, including the excess profits schedules. That law was charged to him, and it drew from the pockets of New York alone about a third of the total returns to the income tax bureau. AH the South did not pay as much as did the state of New York. Instead of sympathizing with that section in its poverty. New Yorkers developed a frenzy of hatred for Wilson.' Boston could not endure the mention of his name but in de- rision; and in Chicago, in the clubs of the North everywhere, he was so hated that some eminent men announced in the presence of the writer that it would have been better to have permitted the South to have her self-determination in 1861: "then we should have escaped Wilson." Although the cause was economic, it was Wilson's supposed Southern- ism that was discussed as the cause. When Senator Lodge discussed the league of nations or the subject of self-determination, he took pains to say that the South had demanded self-determination in 1861. That was the worst he could say. Northerners everywhere understood that. "Vote as your fathers shot." When Mr. Lloyd George discussed the Irish problem, he compared the Irish demand for freedom with the former Southern demand for self-determination. That was the worst he could say. He never thought of the American Revolution, or of the struggle of the English against Napoleonic domination, or of the friendliness of the Southern people to England's better causes — ^it was always the South, the hated South, Wilson's South, and Wilson's idea of self-government that must be held up to scorn.' If the South that failed could be made •The New York Timet, AprU 18, 1920. 'See, for example, an amusing discussion of this South-baiting habit in G. K. Chesterton's syndicate article, May 1, 1921. 386 WOODROW WILSON AND HIS WORK the model for all unpopular causes, if Wilson could be condemned as a Southerner, he would surely go down to defeat, because he must win the votes of several Northern states. To make this obloquy more effective, the siUy boasts of certain Southern newspapers about the army camps and the great nitrate works at Muscle Shoals were reprinted widely in Chicago and other cities. The South boasted of Wilson and his works; why was he not simply Southern?' It was a far cry from Wilson the provincial to Wilson the internationaUst; but this was perhaps the next most effective line of attack. The New York Tribune said that Wilson's internationalism was developed as a screen to cover his southernism. That was indeed a stretch for people who claimed to be intelligraji,^ but anything hostile to Wilson was acceptable to men ^ho w ere in a frenzy to destroy him and all his wor k.j Senator Lodge charged, and the people of the North believed the charge, that Wilson Tiad-created 9mmw''