PRESIDENT WILSON
(A Chronicle in the manner of John Drinkwater.)
Scene I.
—The President’s Chamber in the White House, Autumn, 1918.
Woodrow Wilson, lean, single-purposed, masterful, is signing State documents with inflexible pen. Joseph Tumulty, a chubby little man, is leaning affectionately on the back of the President’s chair, following the movements of his pen with dog-like veneration. The President, still writing, breaks the silence without looking up.
Wilson: Tumulty.
Tumulty: Yes, Governor.
Wilson: I wouldn’t have you think I’m insensible to the merits of your proposals—but I can’t accept them. In the bargainings and shifts of the Allies I must be unfettered, if necessary blindly followed, by the American delegation. Otherwise there’ll be another Congress of Vienna.... It’s not that I criticise our Allies, I would be loath to do that; but I understand their passions and distress. Firmness on our part may perhaps redress the balance.... Where’s Lansing? (The Secretary of State comes in.)
Lansing: Good morning, Mr. President.
Wilson (wistfully): Why—you’re mighty formal, Lansing. I’ve not to convince you again, I trust. Why, Lansing——
Lansing: I hold, as you know, that with the Republicans in a majority in both Houses, it’s an act of, I won’t say folly, Mr. President, but an act of ill-judgment to have them uncommitted to the terms of peace.
Wilson: I’m taking Hoover and White.
Lansing: White means nothing, and Hoover is only an expert. Lodge, Root, Leonard Wood should all go with you as delegates.
Wilson: No, Mr. Secretary. (Tumulty bows his head as if to a blow.) No, a thousand times.
Lansing: They’ll tear up your work otherwise. I speak as your friend, Mr. President. Myself as you know I don’t think extravagantly well of your plan for a League of Nations. I’ve never disguised that. Though a fine ideal it isn’t practical——But setting my views aside, and speaking as a friend to the proposal, because it’s your proposal, I feel bound to say that, if the Republicans aren’t pledged to it in advance, it will never pass Congress.
Wilson (affectionately): Lansing, you’re so logical and clear there seems to be no escape from your reasoning. I’ve no doubt you size up the Republican intentions mighty well. But you’re wrong for all that; and where you go wrong is right at the beginning. Don’t you see the choice of evils before me? If I don’t take the Republicans they may try to wreck my work when it’s done, true; but if I do take them the work won’t be done at all.
Lansing (stiffly): I can’t allow that, Mr. President. They’re good, patriotic Americans.
Wilson: Who says they aren’t? Who suggests for one moment that they won’t do their best for America and the Allies? But will they do the best for the world? (Lansing is silent.) Will they tie the world up in a League against war; or will they inflict a vindictive peace, that’ll do no more than sow the seeds of another?
Lansing: You distrust their patriotism?
Wilson: Never. I distrust their passions. Or say I’m wrong. Say their conception of the peace is the proper one, and mine a delusion. How can we work together? The Delegation couldn’t be depended on to agree in the smallest particular. I should just be playing a lone hand; and the Allies, knowing my house to be divided against itself, would put me aside in the Conference like a cipher. No, Lansing. I’ll go to Paris with those on whom I can rely. I’ll so tie up the peace with the League, that the one can’t live without the other; and if, as you prophesy, I find myself deserted by Congress, I’ll go over their heads to the American people in whose ideals the thing has its roots. That is my final decision.
Lansing: I hope you’ll not regret it.
(He takes his leave. The others follow him with their eyes. The President gives a half laugh.)
Wilson: Ah, if one could only add to the good qualities one’s friends possess, the good qualities one would have them possess.... (He sighs). These Commissions (holding up the papers he has signed), they’re all in order now?
Tumulty: Yes, Governor.
Wilson: Deliver them yourself. (He reads out the names as he hands them over.) House ... Lansing ... White.
The Scene Closes.
Scene II.
—Wilson’s house in the Place des Etats Unis, Paris, in the year 1919. A spring morning. The windows of the room look out upon an old-world square—made safe for democracy by American detectives.
Woodrow Wilson sits in a deep armchair by the table. His colleagues Clemenceau, David Lloyd George and Orlando are grouped around him.
Wilson: Gentlemen, a little merriment would season our labours. (Polite murmurs.) There was a man, a Confederate soldier, in our civil war, who soliloquised thus on a long hard march: “I love my country, and I’m fighting for my country; but if this war ends I’ll be dad-burned if I ever love another country.”
The Others (spiritlessly): Ha! Ha! Ha!
Wilson: Signor Orlando, you don’t laugh.
Orlando: No, sare.
Wilson: I’m sorry. The point of my story was somewhat directed to you. I feel rather like that Confederate soldier. I took the American people into war; but I don’t mean to have them dragged into another by a bad territorial settlement in the Adriatic!
Orlando: Well, Fiume can be waiting.
Wilson: All things can wait. But don’t, I beg you, fall into error. My view of that matter will never change. Monsieur Clemenceau, Gentlemen, be with me in this I entreat you. (A brief silence.) And now, Part I of the Treaty. We are agreed to incorporate the Covenant of the League of Nations there? (There is still silence.) Gentlemen, I can’t think that you hesitate——
Clemenceau: Sur cette question de la Société des Nations. Il est bien entendu, n’est ce pas, que la Traité de Garantie, La Pacte, entre La France, Les Etats Unis, et la Grande Bretagne——?
Wilson: Why, Mr. Lloyd George will answer for England, but I guess there’s no doubt at all concerning America.
Lloyd George: As the President says, I answer for Great Britain. I have agreed in her name that, in certain conditions, she shall be bound to act with France. On the fulfilment of those conditions, she will so act.
Clemenceau: Alors, en principe je suis d’accord.
Wilson: In principle. Yes, Monsieur. In principle we have never differed. But on the concrete proposition that this Covenant as drafted be embodied in the Treaty——?
Clemenceau: Well, I do not object.
Wilson: You take a weight from my mind.... I wish to be frank, Gentlemen. I am not happy about the voting of the British Empire in the Assembly of the League. I can’t disguise from you that it’s a difficult provision to explain to the American people. It may antagonise them. I make a final effort. Mr. Lloyd George, would your Dominions be irreconcilable to exercising their vote in one Empire delegation?
Lloyd George: They would reject it, Mr. President. I myself would move the rejection. (A brief pause.)
Wilson: I put the question formally. That the Covenant, as drafted, stand embodied in the Treaty of Peace. (Aye.) Gentlemen, I thank you for your forbearance. These questions of the Saar Valley and Danzig.... (They pass to other business.)
The Scene Closes.
Scene III.
—The anteroom of a public hall at Pueblo in the Western States, during President Wilson’s tour on behalf of the Treaty of Versailles. September 25th, 1919. When the door is open, the speaker’s voice in the main hall is distinctly audible.
Admiral Grayson is waiting anxiously. Mrs. Wilson hurries in.
Mrs. Wilson: The President—it’s critical. He must be persuaded against continuing this tour.
Grayson: I have been saying that, ma’am, for a long time.
Mrs. Wilson: But it grows more urgent. I left the platform to find you. How he’ll finish I don’t know. He was swaying and the utterance seemed more difficult each minute. Nothing but his iron determination sustains him.
Grayson: Nothing but the depth of his convictions and his devotion to the task he has begun, have brought him so far.
Mrs. Wilson: You must prevail on him, Admiral. If he breaks, the League breaks. Use that with him.
Grayson: Prevail. Have you ever tried, ma’am, to prevail upon a monolith? (Tumulty enters, jubilant). How does it go?
Tumulty: He’s carrying them. The old wonderful Wilson touch. Listen.
He throws open the door. The President’s rich, musical voice, full of power, is borne in upon them.
Mrs. Wilson: Why, he sounds to be quite recovered.
Grayson (reverently): Hush, ma’am. It is the voice of a prophet.
Wilson (off): Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I believe that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face. There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth, and we are going to be led by it; and it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace, such as the world never dreamed of before.
Prolonged applause. The President enters, followed by local magnates and his staff.
Tumulty: Oh, Governor, this is the best you’ve ever done.
Wilson: Tumulty, it does me good to hear you speak so. I guess—why, surely this building is strangely unsteady—or—Everything’s going. Why, Grayson, it’s—it’s dark.
Grayson: Bear up, Sir. A touch of vertigo. You’re tired.
Wilson (horror in his eyes): No. My speech. Failing. I can’t—articulate.
He sinks into Grayson’s arms, and is lowered into a chair. Mrs. Wilson falls on her knees beside him.
Tumulty: In God’s name, Admiral——?
Grayson: Paralysis. The tour is over.
They prepare to carry the President away.
The Scene closes.
Scene IV.
—A room in the White House. January 16th, 1920. Woodrow Wilson, a shadow of himself, is at his desk. Tumulty as usual is behind the President’s chair. The President is reading a telegram.
Wilson: Tumulty, this is bitter. Bitter.
Tumulty: Yes, Governor.
Wilson: They’re meeting beyond the sea in Paris. The League that received birth in American ideals. And the chair of America is empty, not by the declared wish of the people—I’d not believe it, were such a wish expressed—but by the strength of personal rancour in the Senate. It’s unbelievable.
Tumulty: And no one there to represent American ideals and aspirations!
Wilson: Brazil. This telegram says the Brazilian spoke for the whole American continent: that was brave and far-sighted of him. But it cuts me to the heart to think that the duty of speaking for America should rest elsewhere than on us.
Tumulty: It’s hard.
Wilson: Hard? It’s cynically false. Tumulty. I can’t believe that is the wish of the country. I will take them the Covenant with my two hands, reason with them, explain....
Tumulty (gently): No, dear Governor, you have done all that a man could do. Another effort would waste your life——
Wilson: I would give it gladly.
Tumulty: To no purpose, now.
The Scene closes.
Scene V.
—The Presidential Room at the Capitol, Washington. Just before 12 noon on March 4th, 1921.
Woodrow Wilson, Marshall, the Vice-President, and Tumulty are waiting for the hour to strike that will make Warren Harding President of the United States of America, and Wilson a free citizen again.
Wilson: They have been great years to live in. I’ve tried to be worthy of them.
Tumulty: And succeeded, with Lincoln and George Washington, Governor.
Wilson (shyly): You put me in mighty good company. Anyone can be great in great times. The events we’ve been through called for something superhuman. I wish I could have given that.
Marshall: No man could have done more, Mr. President. Some day the world will see it.
Wilson: Marshall, I’m not ambitious for the world to see any such thing. I want my work to prosper. That is all.
Tumulty: It has made a beginning.
Wilson: A small beginning, a halting beginning, but a beginning, yes. Yet when I think of what the League could be doing to facilitate a general settling down to peace, if only America were behind it— And yet again, perhaps it is well. Maybe, if things had not so fallen out, the weaknesses of the thing we made would not have become manifest, until it was too late for improvement.
Marshall: You think it has weaknesses?
Wilson: The highest product of man’s mind, the law, is full of weaknesses, Marshall. How can this new conception have escaped them? But the idea will surely triumph. I have faith.
Tumulty: The new administration will kill it, if they can.
Wilson: I have faith.... It must be nearly time now.
A tall, spare man followed by his colleagues walks into the Chamber. This is Senator Lodge, the President’s life-long political foe.
Lodge (stiffly): Mr. President, we have come, as a Committee of the Senate, to notify you that the Senate and the House are about to adjourn, and await your pleasure.
Wilson (rising with majesty): Senator Lodge, I have no further communication to make. I thank you.... The few seconds now remaining no more than suffice me to lay down the authority derived from my office. (The clock strikes twelve.) Gentlemen, I wish you well, and farewell. Come, Tumulty.
He goes. Simultaneously a roar of applause without, proclaims the accession of President Harding.
The Scene closes.
[THE END.]