Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P. Tumulty

I vividly recall the day the Associated Press bulletin reached the White House. I took it immediately to the President who was at his desk in his private office. As I entered, he looked up from his writing, casual inquiry in his eyes. Without comment I laid the fateful slip of paper on his desk, and silently watched him as he read and then re-read it. I seemed to read his mind in the expressions that raced across his strong features: first, blank amazement; then incredulity that even Germany could be guilty of such perfidy; then gravity and sternness, a sudden grayness of colour, a compression of the lips and the familiar locking of the jaw which always characterized him in moments of supreme resolution. Handing the paper back to me, he said in quiet tones: "This means war. The break that we have tried so hard to prevent now seems inevitable."

On February 4th, he addressed Congress, announcing the severance of diplomatic relations with Germany, and stating his hope that Germany would pause before it was too late. On February 26th, the steamship. Aneona, with Americans on board, was sunk, and on the next day the President addressed Congress, suggesting the proclamation of armed neutrality as a final effort to apply pressure to the Government of Germany, to show that the United States was in earnest and would protect its rights against lawless attacks at sea; but these measures failed. Germany seemed bent upon a break with us, and on April 6, 1917, in response to a memorable address delivered by the President on April second, the Congress of the United States declared solemnly that a state of war existed between the United States and the Imperial German Government.

In concluding his war message, the President said:

It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.

I accompanied the President to Capitol Hill on the day of the delivery of his war message, and on that fateful day I rode with him from the Capitol back to the White House, the echo of applause still ringing in my ears.

For a while he sat silent and pale in the Cabinet Room. At last he said: "Think what it was they were applauding" [he was speaking of the people who were lined along the streets on his way to the Capitol]. "My message to-day was a message of death for our young men. How strange it seems to applaud that."

That simple remark is one key to an understanding of Woodrow Wilson. All politicians pretend to hate and to dread war, but Woodrow Wilson really hates and dreads it in all the fibres of his human soul; hates it and dreads it because he has an imagination and a heart; an imagination which shows his sensitive perception the anguish and the dying which war entails; a heart which yearns and aches over every dying soldier and bleeds afresh with each new-made wound.

I shall never forget that scene in the Cabinet Room between the President and myself. He appeared like a man who had thrown off old burdens only to add new ones.

It was apparent in his talk with me that he felt deeply wounded at the criticism that for months had been heaped upon him for his seeming unwillingness to go to war with Germany. As he discussed the step he had just taken, it was evident to me that he keenly felt the full solemnity and tragedy of it all. Turning to me, he said: "Tumulty, from the very beginning I saw the end of this horrible thing; but I could not move faster than the great mass of our people would permit. Very few understood the difficult and trying position I have been placed in during the years through which we have just passed. In the policy of patience and forbearance I pursued I tried to make every part of America and the varied elements of our population understand that we were willing to go any length rather than resort to war with Germany. As I told you months ago, it would have been foolish for us to have been rushed off our feet and to have gone to war over an isolated affair like the Lusitania. But now we are certain that there will be no regrets or looking back on the part of our people. There is but one course now left open to us. Our consciences are clear, and we must prepare for the inevitable—a fight to the end. Germany must be made to understand that we have rights that she must respect. There were few who understood this policy of patience. I do not mean to say this in a spirit of criticism. Indeed, many of the leading journals of the country were unmindful of the complexities of the situation which confronted us."

The President then took out of his pocket an old and worn newspaper clipping, saying: "I wish to read you an analysis of my position and my policy by a special writer for the Manchester Guardian, who seemed, without consulting me or ever conferring with me, to know just what I am driving at."