"1683-1920" / The Fourteen Points and What Became of Them—Foreign Propaganda in the Public Schools—Rewriting the History of the United States—The Espionage Act and How It Worked—"Illegal and Indefensible Blockade" of the Central Powers—1,000,000 Victims of Starvation—Our Debt to France and to Germany—The War Vote in Congress—Truth About the Belgian Atrocities—Our Treaty with Germany and How Observed—The Alien Property Custodianship—Secret Will of Cecil Rhodes—Racial Strains in American Life—Germantown Settlement of 1683 and a Thousand Other Topics

by Frederick Franklin Schrader

The crowning event of the raging spirit of repression was the passage of the Overman bill creating the Espionage act, consideredelsewhere, under which every liberal paper was tampered with in one form or another, and public assembly, the right of petition, freedom of speech and the press became a memory.

A vigorous reaction against the President set in during the fall of 1918. Down to that period he had practically had a free hand in dealing with the conduct of the war and with the European situation. There had been a protest by Senators against the disregard shown that body by the President in the initial negotiations at Paris, but so completely had the Executive dominated the high legislative body, his treaty-making partner, that the protest took the discreet form of a round-robin, which in turn was not only disregarded, but characterized as a presumption to hamper the action of the President.

The November election of 1918 was coming on. The President in Paris issued an appeal to the voters to elect a Democratic Congress to strengthen his hands. Diplomatically, steps were inaugurated to insure the end of the war by the voluntary abdication of the Kaiser in time to influence the elections with the news of a crushing victory over Germany. The name of Minister Nelson Morris at Stockholm, Sweden, as also the name of Senator James Hamilton Lewis of Illinois, was brought into connection with rumors of negotiations looking to the surrender of Germany on the basis of the Fourteen Points in time to enable the news to be flashed to America on the eve of the election as the crowning achievement of the President. But the psychological moment passed. The elections occurred on November 7, the German debacle four days later.

Although it was well understood that a victory was at hand, the Republicans swept the country. The great Democratic majorities were reversed, not only in the House, but in the Senate. The Republican leaders interpreted the result as an endorsement of their party, but it was really a popular vote of protest that could find no channel of expression other than the Republican party because of its opposition to the administration on party policies, though in accord with it on many of the radically oppressive measures of domestic policy in the prosecution of the war.

With the Republicans in control of both branches of Congress, the President’s dominating influence began to wane rapidly. When it began to be apparent that his visit to Europe, where he had been hailed by millions as the Moses of the New Freedom, was marked by one concession on his part after another to the superior statescraft of Premiers Lloyd George and Clemenceau and that his famous Fourteen Points had been reduced one by one to zero, the magic slogan, “Stand by the President,” was forgotten. Some one said that on his way to Utopia he had met two practical politicians.

A year preceding men were arrested for failing to stand by the President, as treason to the institutions of the country; now the tide had turned, the rallying cry had lost its force. The country waswitnessing the spectacle of its President stepping down from his pedestal to play the game of European politics in the secrecy of a closet, not with his equals, but with mere envoys of sovereign powers, guided by radically different interests from our own.

Thence on the President was at open war with the Senate, which had been kept in ignorance of the peace negotiations and discovered that a draft of the League of Nations covenant, including the treaty with Germany, had been in the hands of the Morgan banking group while the high treaty-making body of our government had been ignored in its demand for information.

A few courageous Senators, notably Reed of Missouri, Democrat, and Borah of Idaho and Johnson of California, Republicans, began to analyze the treaty, and showed that while Great Britain was accorded six votes the United States would have but one vote in the League, and that China had been ravaged by the ceding to Japan of the Shantung Peninsula as the price of her adherence to the League of Nations. Senator Knox directed attention to the ravagement of the German people by the terms of the treaty, and, though a conservative, evidenced the vision of a statesman and patriotic American.

The outlook for the treaty began to darken from day to day. The administration was still confident, and statements from the White House declared the treaty to redeem all of the Fourteen Points of the President’s peace program. But the constant assaults upon it by Senators Reed, Borah and Johnson in speeches in various parts of the country eventually aroused the administration to its danger.

A conference with the President was brought about at the White House in the summer of 1919, at which the Chief Executive expressed himself ready to answer all questions, and a committee from the Senate waited upon him to submit a series of inquiries. It was in the course of this interview that the following colloquy occurred: