Now, I am in one sense an uncompromising partisan. Either a man must stand by his party or not. Either he has got to play the game or he has got to get out of the game, and I have no more sufferance for such a man than the country has. Not a bit. Some of them got exactly what was coming to them and I haven't any bowels of compassion for them. They did not support the things they pretended to support. And the country knew they didn't,—the country knew that the tone of the cloakroom and the tone of the voting were different tones. Now, I am perfectly willing to say that I think it is wise to judge of party loyalty by the cloakroom, and not by the vote and the cloakroom was not satisfactory. I am not meaning to imply that there was any kind of blameworthy insincerity in this. I am not assessing individuals. That is not fair. But in assessing the cause of our defeat we ought to be perfectly frank and admit that the country was not any more sure of us than it ought to be. So that we have got to convince it that the ranks have closed up and that the men who constitute those ranks are all on the war-path and mean the things they say and that the party professes. That is the main thing.
Now, I think that can be accomplished by many processes. Unfortunately, the members of Congress have to live in Washington, and Washington is not a part of the United States. It is the most extraordinary thing I have ever known. If you stay here long enough you forget what the people of your own district are thinking about. There is one reason on the face of things. The wrong opinion is generally better organized than the right opinion. If some special interest has an impression that it wants to make on Congress it can get up thousands of letters with which to bombard its Senators and Representatives, and they get the impression that that is the opinion at home and they do not hear from the other fellow; and the consequence is that the unspoken and uninsisted-on views of the country, which are the views of the great majority, are not heard at this distance. If such an arrangement were feasible I think there ought to be a Constitutional provision that Congressmen and Senators ought to spend every other week at home and come back here and talk and vote after a fresh bath in the atmosphere of their home districts and the opinions of their home folks.
CHAPTER XXXVI
THE GREAT ADVENTURE
As we conferred together for the last time before the President left Washington for the other side, I had never seen him look more weary or careworn. It was plain to me who had watched him from day to day since the Armistice, that he felt most keenly the heavy responsibility that now lay upon him of trying to bring permanent peace to the world. He was not unmindful of the criticism that had been heaped upon him by his enemies on the Hill and throughout the country. The only thing that distressed him, however, was the feeling that a portion of the American people were of the opinion that, perhaps, in making the trip to Paris there lay back of it a desire for self-exploitation, or, perhaps, the idea of garnering certain political advantages to himself and his party. If one who held this ungenerous opinion could only have come in contact with this greatly overworked man on the night of our final talk and could understand the handsome, unselfish purpose that really lay behind his mission to France and could know personally how he dreaded the whole business, he would quickly free himself of this opinion. Discussing the object of the trip with me in his usually intimate way, he said: "Well, Tumulty, this trip will either be the greatest success or the supremest tragedy in all history; but I believe in a Divine Providence. If I did not have faith, I should go crazy. If I thought that the direction of the affairs of this disordered world depended upon our finite intelligence, I should not know how to reason my way to sanity; but it is my faith that no body of men however they concert their power or their influence can defeat this great world enterprise, which after all is the enterprise of Divine mercy, peace and good will."
As he spoke these fateful words, he clearly foresaw the difficulties and dangers and possible tragedy of reaction and intrigue that would soon exert themselves in Paris, perhaps to outwit him and if possible to prevent the consummation of the idea that lay so close to his heart: that of setting up a concert of powers that would make for ever impossible a war such as we had just passed through. Indeed, he was ready to risk everything—his own health, his own political fortunes, his place in history, and his very life itself—for the great enterprise of peace. "This intolerable thing must never happen again," he said.
No one more than Woodrow Wilson appreciated the tragedy of disappointment that might eventually follow out of his efforts for peace, but he was willing to make any sacrifice to attain the end he had so close to his heart.
He realized better than any one the great expectations of the American people. Discussing these expectations with Mr. Creel, who was to accompany him, he said: "It is to America that the whole world turns to-day, not only with its wrongs but with its hopes and grievances. The hungry expect us to feed them, the homeless look to us for shelter, the sick of heart and body depend upon us for cure. All of these expectations have in them the quality of terrible urgency. There must be no delay. It has been so always. People will endure their tyrants for years, but they tear their deliverers to pieces if a millennium is not created immediately. Yet, you know and I know that these ancient wrongs, these present unhappinesses, are not to be remedied in a day or with a wave of the hand. What I seem to see—with all my heart I hope that I am wrong—is a tragedy of disappointment."
The President and I had often discussed the personnel of the Peace Commission before its announcement, and I had taken the liberty of suggesting to the President the name of ex-Secretary of State Elihu Root. The President appeared to be delighted with this suggestion and asked me to confer with Secretary Lansing in regard to the matter. I conferred with Mr. Lansing, to whom the suggestion, much to my surprise, met with hearty response. At this conference Mr. Lansing said that he and the President were attempting to induce some members of the Supreme Court—I think it was either Mr. Justice Day or Chief Justice White—to make the trip to Paris as one of the Commission; but that they were informed that Chief Justice White was opposed to the selection of a Supreme Court Judge to participate in any conference not connected with the usual judicial work of the Supreme Court.
After this conference I left for New York, there to remain with my father who lay seriously ill, and when I returned to the White House the President informed me that he and Mr. Lansing had had a further conference with reference to the Root suggestion and that it was about concluded that it would be inadvisable to make Mr. Root a member of the Commission. The President felt that it would be unwise to take Mr. Root, fearing that the reputation which Mr. Root had gained of being rather conservative, if not reactionary, would work a prejudice toward the Peace Commission at the outset.