From Tiberias, our route led us to Damascus, where we spent several days exploring this most ancient of cities, and the beautiful surrounding country, and visiting the very attractive ruins at Balbek. Thence, we went to Beirut where the Syrian Protestant College is located—one of the finest American institutions in the Near East. Here we visited a very interesting Jewish settlement also. We then journeyed to Mersine, Adena, Tarsus, and Rhodes, returning to Constantinople on May 1st.
CHAPTER XII
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1916
IN January, 1916, I applied to the State Department for a leave of absence, so that I might pay a visit to the United States, which I had not seen for more than two years. I had begun to feel the effects of the nervous strain of my labours to avert the terrible fate of the Armenians and Jews. These labours, and my experiences with German diplomatic intrigue in Constantinople during the war, have already been described in my earlier book, published in 1918 under the title, “Ambassador Morgenthau’s Story,” to which I must refer any of my readers who are interested to pursue my Turkish experiences further.
I spent the first few days after my return to the United States with my old political friends in Washington, and I was shocked at the prevailing political atmosphere. Not one of the numerous men high in the Administration with whom I talked had the slightest hope that President Wilson could be reëlected that fall. They were all convinced that, as the breach in the Republican Party had been healed, our political opponents were prepared to present a united front and were determined to win; and that, on the other hand, the Administration had made so many enemies in the preceding three years that the President’s defeat in November was a foregone conclusion. Tammany had received no consideration at his hands, and was very bitter; and hence there was little likelihood of our carrying New York. “Organization leaders,” otherwise the bosses, generally, had been ignored, and the party machinery was rusty from disuse, where it was not actually broken down by dissension. William G. McAdoo told me frankly of his intention shortly to resign from the Cabinet and return to private business. Josephus Daniels spoke hopelessly of the political outlook. Frank L. Polk and Franklin D. Roosevelt gave me the same picture of party dissension, apathy, and despair. Even Senator James A. O’Gorman of New York, whom I had known for many years as a man of native optimism and Irish courage, said to me: “Henry, it is sheer insanity to talk of reëlecting President Wilson. He hasn’t a ghost of a chance. I am convinced that the Democratic Party will be buried under a Republican landslide this fall.” But after listening to my enthusiastic arguments to prove that the President simply must be reëlected and that we could convince the country of this necessity, he shared my conviction. He said: “Henry, if I had had your viewpoint on this matter earlier, I would have modified my attitude. But I have gone too far now: with my record behind me, I cannot make a fight for reëlection as Senator.”
My conversation with these men shocked me, but did not depress me. It aroused my fighting spirit. To my mind, the reëlection of President Wilson offered not merely an opportunity for partisan advantage, but I felt profoundly that the condition of international affairs made it a vital necessity to our safety as a nation, and to the cause of humanity the world over, because the rest of the world was looking to Mr. Wilson to be ultimately the man who should bring about peace. I pointed out to my friends the force of these arguments, and the folly, from our national point of view, of changing Administrations at such a critical juncture in our history. If a Republican were elected in November, Mr. Wilson’s hands would practically be tied for the remaining four months of his Administration, while the President-Elect would be equally impotent to take effective measures to safeguard our interests in international affairs.
I stressed the need to arouse the party from its lethargy, and to begin at once a powerful and nation-wide campaign to reëlect the President. The Cabinet officers at Washington responded to the enthusiasm which I poured into this enterprise, and I soon had some members of the National Committee awake and actively coöperating. At a conference with Mr. Burleson, I discovered that the Congressional Campaign Committee had done nothing. He sent for Mr. Doremus of Michigan, whose duty it was to launch this Congressional campaign. He painted a gloomy picture of the outlook for the Congressional elections. “We have no money to help the boys make their fights for reëlection, and we have no one to whom we can go and get it. Many of them are thoroughly discouraged, and see no use in trying to do anything for the party, so they are just waiting for the end and planning to go back into private life.” I asked Mr. Doremus: “What is the minimum amount necessary to start vigorous work for their reëlection? I don’t want to know how much you want, but how little you can possibly get along with.” He named a modest figure, but declared that even this was impossible to raise. I promptly under-wrote it personally, and he went to work eagerly; and he afterward reported to me that this action greatly changed the attitude of the Congressmen when they realized that help was at hand to make a real fight for the election. It practically created several hundred active campaign managers at a stroke.
I then returned to New York, and on my own responsibility, leased national headquarters at No. 30 East Forty-second Street, signing the lease in my own name, after I had shown the rooms to Colonel House and Charles R. Crane, who approved my selection. I bought and rented furniture, typewriters, and other supplies, and got everything in shape so that the moment the approaching Convention was over, and the new Campaign Committee named, they would find the tools for their work ready to hand, and could go on the job without the delay we had experienced in 1912.
In view of the hopelessness which I had found among the party leaders, and in view of the very narrow margin by which Mr. Hughes was defeated the following November, I take pride in the consciousness that my activities were one of the necessary factors that led to Mr. Wilson’s reëlection in 1916.
I shall return later in this article to other dramatic incidents of that campaign, including some of the exciting events of Election Night that are not generally known.
Meanwhile, in addition to the negative difficulties of apathy and despair, there were numerous positive troubles that needed immediate attention. I shall describe one of these problems in which I was called upon to take a hand personally in straightening it out. It concerned the appointment of a Postmaster for New York City. Here was a dangerous political situation. The late John Purroy Mitchel was then Mayor of New York City, and was making a splendid record. His presence in that position was of course a standing annoyance to Tammany Hall, which he had fought all his life. Tammany was already irritated enough at the Administration, because of President Wilson’s unbending opposition. Some of the party managers in the Administration at Washington had thought to placate Tammany by a tardy recognition of the “Wigwam” in the shape of an appointment of a Postmaster agreeable to Murphy. Postmaster General Burleson had manipulated this arrangement, and when I arrived in Washington, I found that the appointment of a Tammany man to be Postmaster had proceeded so far that the commission was on President Wilson’s desk for him to sign. The man to be named was Joseph Johnson, who was an intimate associate of Murphy’s, and who had done some very aggressive publicity work for Tammany Hall. Murphy had had him appointed Fire Commissioner of New York under Mayor Gaynor, and Mayor Mitchel had displaced him when he succeeded Gaynor. In retaliation, Johnson had taken great pleasure in spreading political propaganda adverse to Mitchel, so that there was an intense political feud between the two men. I realized that Johnson’s appointment as Postmaster would deeply offend the better element of the Democrats in New York, and would cause such dissension as probably to result in our losing the state and national election. I knew, too (and this was perhaps of even greater importance), that Johnson’s appointment would be so repugnant to the New York World that this brilliant champion of President Wilson and his policies would be disgusted and would lose the fine enthusiasm that made its support so effective. I therefore went to the White House, and called upon President Wilson.