Peacemakers—Blessed and Otherwise / Observations, Reflections and Irritations at an International Conference

by Ida M. Tarbell

The ceremony was for the dead sacrifice, but the feature of it which went deepest to the heart and brought from the massed crowds their one instinctive burst of sympathy and greeting was the passing, almost at the end of the procession, of the War’s living sacrifice—Woodrow Wilson.

The people had stood in silence, reverently baring their heads as the bier of the soldier passed, followed by all the official greatness of the moment—the President of the United States, his cabinet, the Supreme Court, the House, the Senate, Pershing, Foch. And then, quite unexpectedly, a carriage came into view—two figures in it—a white-faced man, a brave woman. Unconscious of what they were doing, the crowd broke into a muffled murmur—“Wilson!” The cry flowed down the long avenue—a surprised, spontaneous recognition. It was as if they said: “You—you of all living men belong here. It was you who called the boy we are honoring—you who put into his eye that wonderful light—the light that a great French surgeon declared made him different as a soldier from the boys of any other nation.”

“I don’t know what it is,” he said, “whether it is God, the Monroe Doctrine or President Wilson, but the American soldier has a light in his eye that is not like anything that I have ever seen in men.” Woodrow Wilson, under God, had put it there. His place was with the soldier. The crowd knew it, and told him so by their unconscious outburst.

His carriage left the procession at the White House. Later the crowd followed it. All the afternoon of Armistice Day men and women gathered before his home. All told there were thousands of them. They waited, hoping for his greeting. And when he gave it, briefly, they cheered and cheered. But they did not go away. It was dark before that crowd had dispersed.

But this expression of love and loyalty and interest in Woodrow Wilson is no new thing in Washington. For months now, on Sundays and holidays, men, women and children have been walking to his home, standing in groups before it, speaking together in hushed tones as if something solemn and ennobling stirred in them. Curiosity? No. Men chatter and jibe and jostle in curiosity. These people are silent—gentle—orderly. You will see them before the theater, too, when it is known that he is within, quietly waiting for him to come out—one hundred, two hundred, five hundred—even a thousand sometimes, it is said. They cheer him as he passes—and there are chokes in their voices—and always tenderness. Let it be known that he is in his seat in a theater, and the house will rise in homage. Let his face be thrown on a screen, and it will receive a greeting that the face of no other living American will receive. It requires explanation.

The people at least recognized him as belonging to the Conference. And, as a matter of fact, the Conference never was able to escape him. Again and again, he appeared at the table. The noblest words that were said were but echoes of what he had been saying through the long struggle. The President’s great slogan—Less of armaments and none of war—was but another way of putting the thing for which he had given all but his last breath. The best they were to do—their limitation of armaments, their substitute to make it possible, were but following in the path that he had cut. The difficulties and hindrances which they were to meet and which were to hamper both program and final settlements were but the difficulties and hindrances which he had met and which hampered his work at Paris. From the start to the finish of the Conference on the Limitation of Armament, the onlooker recognized both the spirit and the hand of Woodrow Wilson as the crowd recognized him on Armistice Day.

There was another figure in the memorial procession which deeply touched the crowd and which stayed on, uninvited. She came with the dead soldier boy. She stood by him night and day as he lay in state, followed him to the grave in which they laid him away at Arlington, a symbol of the nation’s grief over all its missing sons. She did not go with the crowds. She took her place at the door of the Conference, and there, day by day, her solemn voice was heard.

“I am the mother of men. Never before have I lifted my voice in your councils. I have been silent because I trusted you. But to-day I speak because I doubt you. I have the right to speak, for without me mankind would end. I bear you with pain, such as you cannot know. I rear you with sacrifice, such as you cannot understand. I am the world’s perpetual soldier, facing death that life may be. I do not recoil from my great task. God laid it on me. I have accepted it always. I give my youth that the world may have sons, and I glory in my harvest.

“But I bear sons for fruitful lives of labor and peace and happiness. And what have you done with my work? To-day I mourn the loss of more than ten million dead, more than twenty million wounded, more than six million imprisoned and missing. This is the fruit of what you call your Great War.

“It is I who must face death to replace these dead and maimed boys. I shall do it. But no longer shall I give them to you unquestioning as I have in the past, for I have come to doubt you. You have told me that you used my sons for your honor and my protection, but I have begun to read your books, to listen to your deliberations, to study your maneuvers; I have learned that it is not always your honor and my protection that drives you to war. Again and again it is your own love of glory, of power, of wealth; your hate and contempt for those that are not of your race, your color, your point of view. You cannot longer have my sons for such ends. I ask you to remold your souls, to make effective that brotherhood of man of which you talk, to learn to work together, white and black and brown and yellow, as becomes the sons of the same mother.