Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P. Tumulty

It will be recalled that European newspapers carried a story of a farewell reception to Mr. Bonar Law, in which he paid his compliments to his chief, Mr. Lloyd George, saying, in substance, that he had seen Lloyd George discouraged only once. It was on the morning when the news came of the great German offensive in March, 1918. Mr. Lloyd George told Mr. Bonar Law that morning that only a vast increase in American reinforcements could save the Allies. A cable was immediately framed, asking Mr. Wilson to send the number of reinforcements necessary. Mr. Bonar Law stated in his speech that an affirmative answer was received from Mr. Wilson the same day.

A prominent Englishman, discussing the President's work in connection with the war, while criticizing what he characterized as the President's ignorance of European conditions, said: "I feel ashamed to be criticizing President Wilson for anything when I remember his practical services in prosecuting the war. No other man in any country gave such firm and instant support to every measure for making operations effective. His decisions were fearless and prompt and he stood by them like a rock. In sending troops promptly and in sending plenty of them, in cooperating in the naval effort, in insisting on the unity of command under Foch, in backing the high command in the field, and in every other practical detail Mr. Wilson had big, clear conceptions and the courage to carry them out."

Those who were critical of the President's conduct of the war forget the ringing statement that came from Lloyd George when the great offensive was on, when he said: "The race is now between Von Hindenburg and Wilson." And Wilson won.

The most important speech made by the President during the war was delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, on September 27, 1918, opening the campaign for the Fourth Liberty Loan.

I recall a talk the President had with me on the way to New York on the afternoon of the delivery of this speech when he requested me to read the manuscript. As he gave it to me he said: "They [meaning the Allies] will not like this speech, for there are many things in it which will displease the Imperialists of Great Britain, France, and Italy. The world must be convinced that we are playing no favourites and that America has her own plan for a world settlement, a plan which does not contain the germs of another war. What I greatly fear, now that the end seems inevitable, is that we shall go back to the old days of alliances and competing armaments and land grabbing. We must see to it, therefore, that there is not another Alsace-Lorraine, and that when peace finally comes, it shall be a permanent and a lasting peace. We must now serve notice on everybody that our aims and purposes are not selfish. In order to do this and to make the right impressions, we must be brutally frank with friends and foes alike."

As we discussed the subject matter of this momentous speech, I gathered from the President's statements to me that he clearly foresaw the end of the war and of the possible proposal for a settlement that might be made by the Allies. Therefore, he felt it incumbent upon him frankly to discuss America's view of what a just and lasting settlement should be. As one examines this speech to-day, away from the excitement of that critical hour in which it was delivered, he can easily find in it statements and utterances that must have caused sharp irritation in certain chancelleries of Europe. In nearly every line of it there was a challenge to European Imperialism to come out in the open and avow its purposes as to peace. Many of the Allied leaders had been addressing their people on the matter of peace; now they were being challenged by an American president to place their cards face up on the table. An examination of the speech, in the light of subsequent events, reëmphasizes the President's pre-vision:

At every turn of the war we gain a fresh consciousness of what we mean to accomplish by it. When our hope and expectation are most excited we think more definitely than before of the issues that hang upon it and of the purposes which must be realized by means of it. For it has positive and well-defined purposes which we did not determine and which we cannot alter. No statesman or assembly created them; no statesman or assembly can alter them. They have arisen out of the very nature and circumstances of the war. The most that statesmen or assemblies can do is to carry them out or be false to them. They were perhaps not clear at the outset; but they are clear now. The war has lasted more than four years and the whole world has been drawn into it. The common will of mankind has been substituted for the particular purposes of individual states. Individual statesmen may have started the conflict, but neither they nor their opponents can stop it as they please. It has become a peoples' war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved in its sweeping processes of change and settlement. We came into it when its character had become fully defined and it was plain that no nation could stand apart or be indifferent to its outcome. Its challenge drove to the heart of everything we cared for and lived for. The voice of the war had become clear and gripped our hearts. Our brothers from many lands, as well as our own murdered dead under the sea, were calling to us, and we responded, fiercely and of course.

The air was clear about us. We saw things in their full, convincing proportions as they were; and we have seen them with steady eyes and unchanging comprehension ever since. We accepted the issues of the war as facts, not as any group of men either here or elsewhere had defined them, and we can accept no outcome which does not squarely meet and settle them. Those issues are these:

Shall the military power of any nation or group of nations be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?

Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and make them subject to their purpose and interest?