Mr. Taft’s endorsement of the Covenant as then drawn moved me, at our journey’s end, to telegraph to Washington suggesting that he join President Wilson in an exposition of the League before a great mass meeting. The reply came back that such a plan was already being put into execution. It was carried out at the gathering on March 4, 1919, in the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, on the eve of Mr. Wilson’s return to Paris.
That night, when the Democratic President of the United States walked on the stage with the Republican ex-President, the audience seemed almost justified in thinking that the Covenant had been lifted above partisanship and that the Magna Charta of the Nations was secure.
This conviction was strengthened by Mr. Taft’s address. He delivered it without any apparent exertion. He had thoroughly mastered the general subject during his long connection with the League to Enforce Peace, he had secured the draft of the Covenant, locked himself up with it, analyzed and digested it. He had “tried out” the subject in conferences with specialists, and presented it before popular meetings across the Continent. Now, for one hour and a half, he discussed this historic document in all its national and international phases. His address, given with natural and admirable simplicity, the quintessence of deep thought, was complete, technical, erudite, judicial: the reading of a momentous interpretation by the future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. The speaker injected some of his native geniality into his delivery; but not for that reason alone did the vast audience listen ninety minutes without a sign of restlessness: the believers, the doubters, and the active opponents were spellbound by his logical and convincing argument.
During all this time it was more than interesting to watch the fixed attention that the President was giving to the address. We all wondered what was going on in his battling brain. Some of us noticed for the first time a nervous twitching in his cheek, undoubtedly a reflex of the tremendous harassment that he had undergone in Washington.
He had come back to America to sign some bills before the expiration of Congress on March 4th, and brought with him this Covenant. Now, before his departure for Europe, he listened to the fine approval of his ideal by his predecessor, who, though prominent in his party and highly esteemed by all Americans, was not speaking with final authority: the Senate had to approve the Covenant before it could become binding on the United States.
So Woodrow Wilson, whom the peoples of the world were ready to accept as their leader, had to return to Paris knowing that the thirty-seven Senators who had signed the “round robin” were pledged against him in terms which could have no other purpose than to notify our Associates at the Peace Conference that the Senate would not confirm any League of Nations projected by him. With this fear in his heart, he was on his way to resume his participation in the greatest diplomatic struggle of modern times. This evening, he saw again unmistakable evidence that if the American people possessed the authority and could express it, they would undoubtedly grant him the necessary power, without restrictions or reservations, to enter into an agreement, which would help to lift the world out of the mire of militarism to a higher plane, where wars would disappear, where international peace and justice would prevail, and where the combined efforts of mankind, purified and energized by its moral elevation, would be diverted from its destructive pursuits and concentrated on the promotion of happiness.
That evening I brought Homer Cummings home with me. We were both buoyed up, tingling from the enthusiasm of that great meeting, yet fearing that this League of Nations might be shattered by partisan politics.
As we settled down in my library, I said to Cummings:
“Homer, you are really neglecting your duty as National Chairman unless you undertake immediately to present to the American people the attitude of the Democratic Party toward this League of Nations, and denounce, in the unmeasured terms that it deserves this violent opposition that has developed against it.” I told him that it required a real Philippic, and then related to him my own recent experience with Demosthenes, which occurred at a dinner given to some Greeks, when Dr. Talcott Williams told an anecdote of Hellenic influence on modern life.
Williams said that some twenty-five years ago he had asked a Princeton college professor whether there was, in his opinion, any way of affecting current thought except through the pulpit or the press. The professor replied that there was the forum, and that, for his own part, he was fitting himself for the forum by a careful study of Demosthenes. Years passed, and Dr. Williams met the professor again and reminded him of his youthful conviction.