Cummings on campaign trip covering Middle West and coast. Will be away six weeks. My own opinion is that it would be unwise at this time to act upon suggestion contained in Springfield Republican editorial. [The editorial suggested that the President withdraw his name from consideration in connection with a third term.] This is not the time to say anything about your attitude toward matter discussed in editorial because there is a depression in our ranks and a feeling that our prospects for 1920 are not bright. Republicans would say you had retreated under the threat of defeat and the cause of the League of Nations would be weakened instead of strengthened. The issue of the League of Nations is so clear-cut that your attitude toward a third term at present is not a real cause of embarrassment. In fact, I can see great advantage to be gained for the ratification of the League by giving the impression that you are seriously considering going to the country on the League of Nations. Am strongly of belief, as you know, that you should not under any circumstances consider or accept nomination for third term. In this matter I have very few supporters in our party. A trip I just made to Illinois and St. Louis over Decoration Day convinces me that a big drive will be made to induce you to allow your name to be used again. The Presidency for another four years would not add one whit to the honour that will be yours and the place of dignity that you will occupy in the hearts of our people when the League of Nations is consummated and your present term expires.
Upon your return to this country and with a clearer perception of what you are trying to do, there will come a turn of the tide in our favour. Many factors not now very clear are leading in that direction. The Republicans by the selection of Penrose have made the Republican party again the stand-pat party of America and their failure, which will become more evident as the days pass, to correct abuses that some months ago they called grave, will prove more and more the strength and value of Democratic policies.
Prosperity now sweeping in from coast and Middle West will soon be upon us. Even business which turned away from us in last campaign in the hope that Excess Profit Tax and other burdensome taxes would be reduced, will soon find out how fatuous and futile is the Republican policy. Many Progressive leaders will soon come to the front and will take up the work left undone by Roosevelt. My opinion, therefore, is that what action you take in this matter should await the turn of the tide so that as the hopes of Democracy rise and success for 1920 looks more promising than it does to-day, then that time in my opinion will offer the psychological moment for you to say what really is in your heart about a third term and thus help not only the party but the League of Nations. Therefore, until the psychological moment comes, the politic thing to do is to keep "mum" about this matter and await the happenings of the future.
TUMULTY.
A clear, inside view of the feeling of the man toward the Treaty, his deep heart interest in it, and his characterization of the opposition were disclosed in a speech delivered by him to the members of the Democratic National Committee at the White House on February 28, 1919. This speech is now published for the first time, and is as follows:
The real issue of the day, gentlemen, is the League of Nations, and I think we must be very careful to serve the country in the right way with regard to that issue. We ought not, as I know you already feel from the character of the action you have just taken—we ought not even to create the appearance of trying to make that a party issue. And I suggested this to Mr. Cummings and the others who sat by me: I think it would be wise if the several National Committeemen were to get in touch with their state organizations upon returning home and suggest this course of action—that the Democratic state organizations get into conference with the Republican state organizations and say to them: "Here is this great issue upon which the future peace of the world depends; it ought not to be made a party issue or to divide upon party lines; the country ought to support it regardless of party (as you stated in your resolution); now we propose to you that you pass resolutions supporting it, as we intend to do, and we will not anticipate you in the matter if you agree to that policy; let us stand back of it and not make a party issue of it." Of course, if they decline, then it is perfectly legitimate, it seems to me, for the Democratic organization if it pleases to pass resolutions, framing these resolutions in as non-partisan language as is possible, but nevertheless doing what citizens ought to do in matters of this sort. But not without first making it a matter of party record that it has made these approaches to the Republican organizations and has proposed this similarity of action. In that way we accomplish a double object. We put it up to them to support the real opinion of their own people and we get instructed by the resolutions, and we find where the weak spots are and where the fighting has to be done for this great issue. Because, believe me, gentlemen, the civilized world cannot afford to have us lose this fight. I tried to state in Boston what it would mean to the people of the world if the United States did not support this great ideal with cordiality, but I was not able to speak when I tried fully to express my thoughts. I tell you, frankly, I choked up; I could not do it. The thing reaches the depth of tragedy. There is a sense in which I can see that the hope entertained by the people of the world with regard to us is a tragical hope—tragical in this sense, that it is so great, so far-reaching, it runs out to such depths that we cannot in the nature of things satisfy it. The world cannot go as fast in the direction of ideal results as these people believe the United States can carry them, and that is what makes me choke up when I try to talk about it—the consciousness of what they want us to do and of our relative inadequacy. And yet there is a great deal that we can do, and the immediate thing that we can do is to have an overwhelming national endorsement of this great plan. If we have that we will have settled most of the immediate political difficulties in Europe. The present danger of the world—of course, I have to say this in the confidence of this company—but the present danger in this world is that the peoples of the world do not believe in their own governments. They believe these governments to be made up of the kind of men who have always run them, and who did not know how to keep them out of this war, did not know how to prepare them for war, and did not know how to settle international controversies in the past without making all sorts of compromising concessions. They do not believe in them, and therefore they have got to be buttressed by some outside power in which they do not believe. Perhaps it would not do for them to examine us too narrowly. We are by no means such ideal people as they believe us to be, but I can say that we are infinitely better than the others. We do purpose these things, we do purpose these great unselfish things; that is the glory of America, and if we can confirm that belief we have steadied the whole process of history in the immediate future; whereas if we do not confirm that belief I would not like to say what would happen in the way of utter dissolution of society.
The only thing that that ugly, poisonous thing called Bolshevism feeds on is the doubt of the man on the street of the essential integrity of the people he is depending on to do his governing. That is what it feeds on. No man in his senses would think that a lot of local Soviets could really run a government, but some of them are in a temper to have anything rather than the kind of thing they have been having; and they say to themselves: "Well, this may be bad but it is at least better and more immediately in touch with us than the other, and we will try it and see whether we cannot work something out of it."
So that our immediate duty, not as Democrats, but as American citizens, is to concert the most powerful campaign that was ever concerted in this country in favour of supporting the League of Nations and to put it up to everybody—the Republican organizations and every other organization—to say where they stand, and to make a record and explain this thing to the people.
In one sense it does not make any difference what the Constitution of the League of Nations is. This present constitution in my judgment is a very conservative and sound document. There are some things in it which I would have phrased otherwise. I am modest enough to believe that the American draft was better than this, but it is the result of as honest work as I ever knew to be done. Here we sat around the table where there were representatives of fourteen nations. The five great powers, so-called, gave themselves two delegates apiece and they allowed the other nine one delegate apiece. But it did not count by members—it counted by purpose.
For example, among the rest was a man whom I have come to admire so much that I have come to have a personal affection for him, and that is Mr. Venizelos, Prime Minister of Greece, as genuine a friend of man as ever lived and as able a friend honest people ever had, and a man on whose face a glow comes when you state a great principle, and yet who is intensely practical and who was there to insist that nothing was to be done which would put the small nations of the world at the disposal of the big nations. So that he was the most influential spokesman of what may be called the small powers as contrasted with the great. But I merely single him out for the pleasure of paying him this tribute, and not because the others were less earnest in pursuing their purpose. They were a body of men who all felt this. Indeed, several of them said this to us: "The world expects not only, but demands of us that we shall do this thing successfully, and we cannot go away without doing it." There is not a statesman in that conference who would dare to go home saying that he had merely signed a treaty of peace no matter how excellent the terms of that treaty are, because he has received if not an official at least an influential mandate to see to it that something is done in addition which will make the thing stand after it is done; and he dare not go home without doing that. So that all around that table there was coöperation—generous coöperation of mind to make that document as good as we could make it. And I believe it is a thoroughly sound document. There is only one misleading sentence in it—only one sentence that conveys a wrong impression. That can, I dare say, be altered, though it is going to be extremely difficult to set up that fourteen-nation process again as will have to be done if any alteration is made.