TUMULTY. No, no, Governor! You did everything a man could—under the circumstances.
EX-PRES. I have said that often to myself: and I hope, sometimes, that it may be true. But a man who gives up anything of the truth, as he sees it, for reasons however good—can he ever be sure of himself again?… It's a new thing for me to ask another man if I have done wrong. But that's the way I feel: I don't myself know. And once, once, I was so sure—that I was right, and that I should win!
(The situation has now become one which the friendly Tumulty would like to control, but cannot. As a "soul-stirring revelation of character" he finds it, no doubt, immensely interesting; but to be thus made Father Confessor of the man whom he has followed with humble and dog-like devotion, knocks the bottom out of his world altogether. Moreover, he has received "domestic orders," and is not properly obeying them; and so, dominated by the stronger will, he glances apprehensively, now and again, toward the door, hoping that it may open and bring relief, but himself sits and does nothing. Meanwhile, insistent and remorseless at self-examination, the Ex-President continues to wear himself out.)
When a man comes really to himself, Tumulty—sees clearly within—does it help him toward seeing also what lies outside, beyond, and ahead—make him more sure that, as regards others, he has done right? I don't know—I would give my life to know—if what I did, when all else had failed, was best. The political forces, prejudices, antagonisms, the powers of evil around me, have been so dubiously deceiving and dark, that I do not know now whether to have been uncompromisingly true to principle would have done any good. Perhaps after to-day I shall know better; perhaps only now have I become qualified to judge—a free man at last. Only in the secrecy of my own heart—now finally removed from all the interests, ambitions, fears, which gather about a man's public career—I do most earnestly and humbly pray that in this one thing I did right—not to discredit myself too utterly in the world's eyes, so that that, at least, might live.
TUMULTY (doing his best). It will live, Governor!
EX-PRES. It may. But in what hands have I had to leave it? To men who have no faith in it, to men who dislike it, to men who will try persistently, sedulously, day in, day out, to turn it back to their own selfish ends. There, in those hands, its fate will lie—perhaps for a generation to come. And it is only by faith in the common people, not in their politicians, that I dare look forward and hope that the instrument— blunt and one-sided though it be now—may yet become mighty and two-edged and sharp, a sword in the hand of a giant—of one whose balances are those of justice, not of power. But I shan't see it, Tumulty; it won't be in my day. If America had come in, I should! That was the keystone of my policy: that gone, my policy has failed. That was my faith—is still; for faith can live on when policies lie dead. Think what it might have been! America, with that weapon to her hand, could have shaped the world's future, made it a democracy of free nations—image and superscription no longer Caesar's—but Man's. That—that was what I saw!
TUMULTY. Perhaps they saw it too, Governor. If they did, it might help to explain matters.
EX-PRES. The Covenant was the instrument—and would have sufficed. So organised, America's voice in all future contentions would have been too strong, and just, and decisive to be gainsayed. Then life would have been in it, then it would have prospered and become mighty. It would have meant—within a generation from now—world-peace. Of that I had a sure sense: it would have come. To make that possible, what I had to yield to present jealousies, discords, blindness, was of no account—only look far enough! For there, in the future, was the instrument for correcting them— the people's vote for the first time internationally applied. And I had in me such faith that America, secure of her place in the world's councils, would have wrought to make justice international, and peace no longer a dream! Was I wrong, Tumulty, was I wrong?
TUMULTY (expanding himself). No man who believes in America as much as I do will ever say you were wrong, Governor.
EX-PRES. But when America stood out—when the Senate refused to ratify— then I was wrong. For then, what I had backed—all that remained then—was a thing of shreds and patches. Nobody can think worse of the Treaty than I do with America out of it, with the Covenant left the one-sided and precarious thing it now is. Had we only been in it—the rest wouldn't have mattered. Call it a dung-heap, if you like; yet out of it would have sprung life. It may still; but I shan't see it, Tumulty; and that vision, which was then so clear, has become a doubt. Was I wrong—was I wrong to pretend that I had won anything worth winning? Would it not have been better to say "I have failed"?