One afternoon in November of that year I had already risen to address a great theatre full of business men in Milwaukee on the importance of their giving the vote to Wisconsin women when a telegram was handed to me: “President Wilson will receive us at the White House on November 23rd. Please return at once.—Schwimmer.”
I had not the faintest conception of what it was about. I looked at the message and read it twice. I was unable to believe my eyes. I had never sought an interview with the President. I had no business of sufficient importance to warrant my seeking his presence. I have always had too much respect for the time of busy men in high office to seek to use it on matters of other than the gravest consequence. I was filled with annoyance at having been placed, without my knowledge or consent, in the position of an intrusive and self-important busybody. But there was the invitation. The arrangement had been made. And my one consolation lay in the thought that the approachableness and well-known courtesy of the “First Gentleman of America” had made the thing possible and would make it delightful. But my indignation against the “meddlesome Matties” who had so outrageously interfered did not cool and is alive at this hour.
I had several important public engagements in Wisconsin and Illinois to fulfil, which I could not cancel without causing a vast amount of inconvenience and expense to organizers, so I wired that it would be a pleasure to attend at the White House if the meeting could be arranged for November 27.
I travelled a day and a night from Chicago to New York, tried there to find out what it was all about, heard a few vague stories sufficient to let me know that it had to do with the peace propaganda, and left the next morning for Washington. I arrived in Washington at 3 p.m. and was taken in a large automobile to one of the theatres where a big meeting was in full swing. Rosika rose to speak after I had taken my place on the platform. Her speech froze me to my chair with its passionate exaggerations: “Millions and millions of people are dying on the battlefields and in the homes of Europe,” she said, which since that time has become only too true. “Millions and millions of men are praying for peace,” which was totally untrue. If “millions and millions” of men in Europe had wanted peace they could have had it. “The soldiers of Europe are looking to you to deliver them——” and so on.
I had had no part in calling the meeting. I could only guess its purpose. I had no idea under whose auspices it was being held nor who was finding the money for it. My peace sympathies were unquestionable, but when I rose to speak I felt myself under a real obligation in the interests of truth to neutralize the impression made upon the minds of the audience by Rosika’s burning words.
“Alas!” I said, although these may not have been the exact words, “I am not able to say out of my own experience that the men of Great Britain are praying for peace. On the contrary they are voluntarily enlisting in millions for what they believe to be the most righteous cause they have ever served. The appeal I make to you is not to act in the belief that you are thereby saving millions of unwilling men forced by cruel tyrants to enter a war which they hate, but by conferring with other neutral nations to discover some terms, honourable to all concerned, which shall save from what they believe to be the absolute necessity of killing and being killed, the gallant young manhood of every nation which is in this fight.”
The meeting over, we drove to the White House through a great concourse of people. Frau Schwimmer and myself were received by the President with the dignity of a grand seigneur joined to the simplicity of a plain American citizen. I liked him. I believed in him. When years later men in Europe laughed at his idealism, I recalled my impression of him and felt he was sincere. When he failed, after the first awful shock of the failure, I believed he had failed where no man could succeed. During our conversation with him his hatred of the war was clear. His desire to maintain the peace in America and restore it, if possible, to Europe was unequivocal. He expressed very warmly his sympathy with the idea of a neutral conference. But the thought of practical difficulties oppressed him. Would China and the South American Republics be invited to such a conference? What should be the basis of representation? Would such an effort be looked upon with favour by the fighting Powers? Could anything be done except through the ordinary diplomatic channels? He welcomed Lord Courtney’s brave speech in the House of Lords and hoped it might be symptomatic. He looked for signs of a growing peace sentiment amongst the belligerents but found few. I agreed with him on this last point and remained silent. Rosika grew voluble, bitter, insulting. She hinted at America’s munition profiteering. The President flushed a little and looked annoyed.
“Surely,” he said warmly, “there are such profiteers in other countries?”
We talked for half an hour or more. The great crowd of men and women outside stood in silent prayer for the success of our effort. They were mostly members of religious organizations; and it was so arranged. Numbers of reporters with pencils and notebooks in hand surrounded us and pursued us in automobiles to the hotel where we had taken up our quarters. Here the secret spring of it all was revealed!
In a sumptuous suite of apartments at the Great Washington Hotel sat the great man. And in another equally sumptuous sat Rosika, with her army of secretaries. Her rooms were filled with costly flowers. Her meals were served privately by waiters specially chosen for the work. Messengers whose sole business appeared to be to attend to Frau Schwimmer’s every wish ran in and out in a constant stream. Newspaper men waited in the ante-room for such crumbs of news as she was disposed to scatter. Well-dressed and important-looking men and women left their cards. Busy, intense, energetic life thrilled through the whole of the hotel. Something more than the usual was afoot. What could it be?