Is it not clear in the light of the events that followed the repudiation of the President and his administration in 1918 that he was justified by reason of the unusual circumstances of a great world war, in asking for a "team" that would work in cooperation with him? Some of those who most indignantly criticized him for his partisan appeal attacked him and the measures which he recommended for the peace of the world with a partisanship without parallel in the history of party politics. Some who most bitterly condemned what he did gave the most emphatic proof that what he did was necessary. Nor can they honestly defend themselves by saying that their partisan attacks on the treaty were justifiable reprisal. Before he ever made his appeal they were doing all in their power to undermine his influence at home and abroad, and he knew it. The appeal was no reflection on Republicans as such, nor any minimization of the heroic service rendered in the war by Republicans and Democrats alike in the fighting and civilian services, but the President knew that Republicans organized in party opposition in Congress would not assist but obstruct the processes of peace-making under his leadership. And all the world now knows that his judgment was correct. It will be interesting to read the President's appeal to the country, written by him on the typewriter:
My Fellow Countrymen: The Congressional elections are at hand. They occur in the most critical period our country has ever faced or is likely to face in our time. If you have approved of my leadership and wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, I earnestly beg that you will express yourself unmistakably to that effect by returning a Democratic majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives. I am your servant and will accept your judgment without cavil, but my power to administer the great trust assigned me by the Constitution would be seriously impaired should your judgment be adverse, and I must frankly tell you so because so many critical issues depend upon your verdict. No scruple of taste must in grim times like these be allowed to stand in the way of speaking the plain truth.
I have no thought of suggesting that any political party is paramount in matters of patriotism. I feel too keenly the sacrifices which have been made in this war by all our citizens, irrespective of party affiliations, to harbour such an idea. I mean only that the difficulties and delicacies of our present task are of a sort that makes it imperatively necessary that the nation should give its undivided support to the Government under a unified leadership, and that a Republican Congress would divide the leadership.
The leaders of the minority in the present Congress have unquestionably been pro-war, but they have been anti-Administration. At almost every turn, since we entered the war, they have sought to take the choice of policy and the conduct of the war out of my hands and put it under the control of instrumentalities of their own choosing. This is no time either for divided counsel or for divided leadership. Unity of command is as necessary now in civil action as it is upon the field of battle. If the control of the House and Senate should be taken away from the party now in power, an opposing majority could assume control of legislation and oblige all action to be taken amidst contest and obstruction.
The return of a Republican majority to either House of the Congress would, moreover, certainly be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my leadership. Spokesmen of the Republican party are urging you to elect a Republican Congress in order to back up and support the President, but even if they should in this way impose upon some credulous voters on this side of the water, they would impose on no one on the other side. It is well understood there as well as here that the Republican leaders desire not so much to support the President as to control him. The peoples of the Allied countries with whom we are associated against Germany are quite familiar with the significance of elections. They would find it very difficult to believe that the voters of the United States had chosen to support their President by electing to the Congress a majority controlled by those who are not in fact in sympathy with the attitude and action of the Administration.
I need not tell you, my fellow countrymen, that I am asking your support not for my own sake or for the sake of a political party, but for the sake of the nation itself, in order that its inward unity of purpose may be evident to all the world. In ordinary times I would not feel at liberty to make such an appeal to you. In ordinary times divided counsels can be endured without permanent hurt to the country. But these are not ordinary times. If in these critical days it is your wish to sustain me with undivided minds, I beg that you will say so in a way which it will not be possible to misunderstand either here at home or among our associates on the other side of the sea. I submit my difficulties and my hopes to you.
[Illustration: The President's appeal for a Democratic Congress, as he wrote it on his typewriter and with his corrections. [Transcriber's note: contains a reproduction of the first page of the above-quoted letter.]
In an address at the White House to members of the Democratic National
Committee, delivered February 28, 1919, which was never published, the
President expressed his own feelings with reference to the defeat of the
Democratic party at the Congressional elections a few months before.
Discussing this defeat, he said:
Personally, I am not in the least discouraged by the results of the last Congressional election. Any party which carries out through a long series of years a great progressive and constructive programme is sure to bring about a reaction, because while in the main the reforms that we have accomplished have been sound reforms, they have necessarily in the process of being made touched a great many definite interests in a way that distressed them, in a way that was counter to what they deemed their best and legitimate interests. So that there has been a process of adaptation in the process of change. There is nothing apparently to which the human mind is less hospitable than change, and in the business world that is particularly true because if you get in the habit of doing your business a particular way and are compelled to do it in a different way, you think that somebody in Washington does not understand business, and, therefore, there has been a perfectly natural reaction against the changes we have made in the public policies of the United States. In many instances, as in the banking and currency reform, the country is entirely satisfied with the wisdom and permanency of the change, but even there a great many interests have been disappointed and many of their plans have been prevented from being consummated. So that, there is that natural explanation. And then I do not think that we ought to conceal from ourselves the fact that not the whole body of our partisans are as cordial in the support of some of the things that we have done as they ought to be.
You know that I heard a gentleman from one of the southern States say to his Senator (this gentleman was himself a member of the State Legislature)—he said to his Senator: "We have the advantage over you because we have no publication corresponding with the Congressional Record and all that is recorded in our state is the vote, and while you have always voted right we know what happened in the meantime because we read the Congressional Record." Now, with regard to a great many of our fellow partisans in Washington, the Congressional Record shows what happened between the beginning of the discussion and the final Vote, and our opponents were very busy in advertising what the Congressional Record disclosed. And to be perfectly plain, there was not in the minds of the country sufficient satisfactory evidence that we had supported some of the great things that they were interested in any better than the other fellows. The voting record was all right and the balance in our favour; but they can show a great many things that discount the final record of the vote.