Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P. Tumulty

It is so easy and cheap to judge people, even presidents, without knowing the problems they have to face. So much of the President's aloofness at Paris, so much of his unwillingness to expend energy upon unnecessary business, unnecessary conferences, unnecessary visiting— especially the visitors—was due directly to the determination to husband and expend his too limited energies upon tasks that seemed to him essential.

As I say, he worked everybody at the Peace Conference to a standstill. He worked not only the American delegates, but the way he drove the leisurely diplomats of Europe was often shameful to see. Sometimes he would actually have two meetings going on at the same time. Once I found a meeting of the Council of the Big Four going on in his study, and a meeting of the financial and economic experts—twenty or thirty of them—in full session upstairs in the drawing room—and the President oscillating between the two.

It was he who was always the driver, the initiator, at Paris: he worked longer hours, had more appointments, granted himself less recreation, than any other man, high or low, at the Peace Conference. For he was the central figure there. Everything headed up in him.

Practically all of the meetings of the Council of Four were held in his study in the Place des États-Unis. This was the true capitol of the Peace Conference; here all the important questions were decided. Everyone who came to Paris upon any mission whatsoever aimed first of all at seeing the President. Representatives of the little, downtrodden nationalities of the earth—from eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa—thought that if they could get at the President, explain their pathetic ambitions, confess their troubles to him, all would be well.

While the President was struggling in Europe, his friends in America had cause for indignation against the course adopted by the Republican obstructionists in the Senate, which course, they saw, must have a serious if not fatal effect upon developments overseas. Occurrences on both sides of the Atlantic became so closely interwoven that it is better not to separate the two narratives, and as Mr. Creel, upon whose history I have already drawn, tells the story with vigour and a true perception of the significance of events, I quote at length from him:

The early days of February, 1919, were bright with promise. The European press, seeming to accept the President's leadership as unshakable, was more amiable in its tone, the bitterness bred by the decision as to the German colonies had abated. Fiume and the Saar Basin had taken discreet places in the background with other deferred questions, and the voice of French and English and Italian liberalism was heard again. On February 14th the President reported the first draft of the League constitution—a draft that expressed his principles without change—and it was confirmed amid acclaim. It was at this moment, unfortunately, that the President was compelled to return to the United States to sign certain bills, and for the information of the Senate he carried with him the Covenant as agreed upon by the Allies.

We come now to a singularly shameful chapter in American history. At the time of the President's decision to go to Paris the chief point of attack by the Republican Senators was that such a "desertion of duty" would delay the work of government and hold back the entire programme of reconstruction. Yet when the President returned for the business of consideration and signature, the same Republican Senators united in a filibuster that permitted Congress to expire without the passage of a single appropriation bill. This exhibition of sheer malignance, entailing an ultimate of confusion and disaster, was not only approved by the Republican press, but actually applauded.

The draft of the League Constitution was denounced even before its contents were known or explained. The bare fact that the document had proved acceptable to the British Empire aroused the instant antagonism of the "professional" Irish-Americans, the "professional" German- Americans, the "professional" Italian-Americans, and all those others whose political fortunes depended upon the persistence and accentuation of racial prejudices. Where one hyphen was scourged the year before a score of hyphens was now encouraged and approved. In Washington the President arranged a conference with the Senators and Representatives in charge of foreign relations, and laid the Covenant frankly before them for purposes of discussion and criticism. The attitude of the Republican Senators was one of sullenness and suspicion, Senator Lodge refusing to state his objections or to make a single recommendation. Others, however, pointed out that no express recognition was given to the Monroe Doctrine; that it was not expressly provided that the League should have no authority to act or express a judgment on matters of domestic policy; that the right to withdraw from the League was not expressly recognized; and that the constitutional right of the Congress to determine all questions of peace and war was not sufficiently safeguarded.

The President, in answer, gave it as his opinion that these points were already covered satisfactorily in the Covenant, but that he would be glad to make the language more explicit, and entered a promise to this effect. Mr. Root and Mr. Taft were also furnished with copies of the Covenant and asked for their views and criticism, and upon receipt of them the President again gave assurance that every proposed change and clarification would be made upon his return to Paris. On March 4th, immediately following these conferences, and the day before the sailing of the President, Senator Lodge rose in his place and led his Republican colleagues in a bold and open attack upon the League of Nations and the war aims of America. The following account of the proceedings is taken from the Congressional Record:

Mr. Lodge: Mr. President, I desire to take only a moment of the time of the Senate. I wish to offer the resolution which I hold in my hand, a very brief one: