Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P. Tumulty

The question has often been asked, whether the President freely consulted his experts on the other side, or ignored them. The experience of the gentlemen who conferred with him is the best refutation of this insinuation against the President. Charles Homer Haskins, Chief of the Division of Western Europe, a member of the American Peace Conference, answers this question in these words:

The President was anxious to have the exact facts before him in every situation. Doubtless, there were a number of occasions when he could not consult with experts at a particular moment, but, in general, the President sought such advice, although he naturally had to use his own judgment whether that advice was to be adopted in any particular case.

Answering this same question, Mr. Douglas Wilson Johnson, Chief of the Division of Boundary Geography, and a member of the Peace Commission, says:

Whenever we, in our capacity as specialists, thought we had found something that the President ought to know about, and believed we could not get it across effectively in any other manner, we could ask for a personal conference with him. He was, of course, a very busy man because, unlike the experts who usually had only one problem to consider, he had to do not only with all the territorial problems but in addition with all the problems bearing on the League of Nations, the economic problems, and many other aspects of the peace. Despite this fact I wish to state that while I repeatedly asked for personal conferences with the President on this and certain other problems, he never failed to respond immediately with an appointment. He had a private wire and on occasion he would call us at the Crillon to make appointments on his own initiative or to secure papers, maps, or other documents that he needed in his studies. I will not forget that in one instance he called me on the telephone late at night in my bedroom, asking for some papers which I had promised to supply him, and which had not reached him with sufficient promptness. You can judge from this that he kept closely in touch with the problems he was called upon to consider.

Another question that has been asked is: Did the President have an intimate knowledge of the complicated questions that came before him like the Adriatic problem, for instance? That criticism was answered by Mr. Douglas Wilson Johnson in these words:

In answer to that question I will say that the President kept in constant touch with the experts on the Adriatic problem, not only through the memoranda furnished by the experts but in other ways. I can assure you that there was sent to him a voluminous quantity of material, and I want to say that when we had personal discussions with him upon the question it immediately became apparent that he had studied these memoranda most carefully. It is only fair to say that of the details and intricacies of this most difficult problem the President possessed a most astonishing command.

It has also been said that the President in his attitude toward Germany was ruthless, and yet we have the testimony of Mr. Isaiah Bowman, Chief Territorial Adviser of the Peace Commission who, in answer to the direct question: "Was there not a time when it looked as if the Peace Conference might break up because of the extreme policy of one of the Allies?" said: "Yes, there were a number of occasions when the Peace Conference might have broken up. Almost anything might have happened with so many nations represented, so many personalities and so many experts—perhaps half a thousand in all! Owing to the fact that President Wilson has been charged on the one hand with outrageous concessions to the Allies and on the other hand that he had always been soft with the Germans, particularly with Bulgaria, let us see just how soft he was! On a certain day three of us were asked to call at the President's house, and on the following morning at eleven o'clock we arrived. President Wilson welcomed us in a very cordial manner. I cannot understand how people get the idea that he is cold. He does not make a fuss over you, but when you leave you feel that you have met a very courteous gentleman. You have the feeling that he is frank and altogether sincere. He remarked: 'Gentlemen, I am in trouble and I have sent for you to help me out. The matter is this: the French want the whole left bank of the Rhine. I told M. Clemenceau that I could not consent to such a solution of the problem. He became very much excited and then demanded ownership of the Saar Basin. I told him I could not agree to that either because it would mean giving 300,000 Germans to France.' Whereupon President Wilson further said: 'I do not know whether I shall see M. Clemenceau again. I do not know whether he will return to the meeting this afternoon. In fact, I do not know whether the Peace Conference will continue. M. Clemenceau called me a pro-German and abruptly left the room. I want you to assist me in working out a solution true to the principles we are standing for and to do justice to France, and I can only hope that France will ultimately accept a reasonable solution. I want to be fair to M. Clemenceau and to France, but I cannot consent to the outright transfer to France of 300,000 Germans.' A solution was finally found—the one that stands in the Treaty to-day."

Among the unfair things said about the President during the last campaign and uttered by a senator of the United States, was that the President promised Premier Bratiano of Rumania to send United States troops to protect the new frontiers. Mr. Charles Seymour, a member of the American Peace Commission, answers this charge in the following way:

The evidence against it is overwhelming. The stenographic notes taken during the session indicate that nothing said by President Wilson could be construed into a promise to send United States troops abroad to protect frontiers. The allegation is based upon the report of the interpreter, Mantoux, and a book by a journalist, Dr. E. W. Dillon, called "The Inside Story of the Peace Conference," M. Mantoux, though a brilliant and cultivated interpreter, whose work enormously facilitated the progress of the Conference, did not take stenographic notes and his interpretations sometimes failed to give the exact meaning of the original. Doctor Dillon's evidence is subject to suspicion, since his book is based upon gossip, and replete with errors of fact. The stenographic report, on the other hand, is worthy of trust. I have heard the President on more than one occasion explain to M. Clemenceau and Lloyd George that if troops were necessary to protect any troubled area, they must not look to the United States for assistance, for public opinion in this country would not permit the use of American forces.

Even Mr. Lansing himself in his book testified to the open-mindedness and candour of the President in these words: