Adventures in Journalism

by Philip Gibbs

In my first article for The New York Times, recording my impressions of America, I slipped out the phrase that “I was all for Wilson.” I received, without exaggeration, hundreds of letters from all parts of the United States, “putting me wise” to the thousand and one reasons why Wilson’s doings in Paris would be utterly repudiated by the Senate and people. He had violated the Constitution. He had acted without authority. He had tried to commit the United States to his scheme of the League of Nations against their convictions and consent. On the other hand, there were many people who still regarded him as the greatest leader in the world and the noblest idealist.

Ignorant, like most Englishmen, of the parties and personalities of American politics, at that time, I kept my ears open to all this, but couldn’t avoid falling into pitfalls. I made a delightful “gaffe,” as the French would say, by turning to one gentleman in the Union Club before he acted as my chairman to the lecture I was giving there, and asked him to tell me something of Wilson’s character and history. It was Mr. Charles Hughes, ex-governor of New York, and defeated candidate for the Presidency against Wilson himself.

It was the last question which I ought to have asked, as people explained to me later. But I shall never forget the fine and thoughtful way in which Mr. Hughes answered my question and the subtlety with which he analyzed Wilson’s character, without a touch of personal animosity or a trace of meanness. I was aware that I was in the presence of a great intellect, and a great gentleman.

I had the opportunity of talking to Mr. Hughes in each of my three visits, and when he was Secretary of Foreign Affairs in Washington, and each time I was more impressed with the conviction that he was likely to become one of the greatest statesmen of the world, and, unlike many great statesmen, had a fine and delicate sense of honor, and a desire for the well-being, not only of the United States but of the human race.

Between my first and second visits Wilson’s tragedy had happened, and the United States had refused to enter the League of Nations. The Republican party had swept the country, inspired by general disgust and disillusionment with the Peace of Versailles, by a tidal wave of public opinion against any administration which would involve the United States in the jungle of Europe’s racial passions, and by a general desire to be rid of a government associated with all the restrictions, orders, annoyances, petty injustice, extravagance, and fever of the War régime. As a friend of mine said, the question put to the electors was not “Are you in favor of the League of Nations?” but “Are you sick and tired of the present administration?” And the answer was, “By God, we are!”

President Harding reigned in place of President Wilson. Owing to the kindness of a brilliant American journalist named Lowell Mellett who had acted for a time as war correspondent on the Western front, and who seemed to have the liberty of the White House, the Senate, Congress, and every office, drawing-room, and assembly at Washington, I was received by the President, and had a little conversation with him which ended in a message to the British people through The Review of Reviews, of which I had become editor. It was a message of affection and esteem for the nation which, he said, all Americans of the old stock regarded still as the Mother Country—a generous and almost dangerous thing to be said by a President of the United States.

A tall, heavy, handsome man, with white hair and ruddy face, the new President seemed to me kind-hearted, honest and well-meaning, without any great gifts of genius or leadership, and a little timid of the enormous responsibility that had come to him. A year later I saw him again, and had the honor of introducing my son Tony. He was surprised that I had a son of that height and age, and it reminded him instantly of an anecdote referring to Chief Justice White and a little lawyer who introduced a tall, husky son to him. “Ah,” said the Chief Justice, “a block of the old chip, I see!”

It was due to my friend Mellett again that I had the opportunity, and very extraordinary honor, for a foreign journalist, of giving evidence before the House Committee on Naval Disarmament. It was a Committee appointed to report on the possibility of calling the Washington Conference. I was summoned to give evidence in the House of Congress without any time to prepare notes or a speech, and when I took my place like a mouse in a hole in the center of a horseshoe of raised seats occupied by about twenty-five members of the Committee, I was in a state of high tension which I masked by a supreme effort of nerve control. For I was, to some extent, speaking not only on behalf of Great Britain, and taking upon myself the responsibility of expressing the views of my own people, but on behalf of all idealists in all nations who looked to the United States for leadership in the way of international peace. I knew that I must be right in my facts and figures, that I must say nothing that could give offense to the United States, and nothing that would seem like disloyalty to England, while telling the truth, as far as I knew it, without reserve, regarding England’s naval and military burdens, the dangers existing in Europe, and the sentiment of the British people.

After a preliminary statement lasting ten minutes or so, to which the Committee listened in absolute silence, I was closely and shrewdly cross-examined by various members, and had to answer very difficult and searching questions. It was one of my lucky mornings. I came through the ordeal better than I could have hoped. I was warmly congratulated afterward by members of the British Embassy who told me I had said the right things, and I honestly believe I did a tiny bit of good to England and the world that day. The New York Times and other papers published my address verbatim and it went on to the records of Congress. Anyhow, it did no harm, and I was thankful enough for that.

My lectures on the second visit had nothing to do with the War, except in its effects, and I spoke entirely on the subject of European conditions, always with a strong plea to the United States to come in boldly and throw her moral and economic influence on the side of international peace and reconstruction. From the very first I took the line, which I held with absolute conviction, that Germany would be unable, after the exhaustion of war, to pay the enormous indemnities demanded by the Peace of Versailles, and that if Germany were thrust into the mire and went the way of Austria, Europe would not recover from financial ruin. At the same time I pointed out the rights and justice of France, and gave her view fairly and generously, as I was bound to do, because of my illimitable admiration of French heroism, my enormous pity for French sacrifice, my certain knowledge of French danger. My argument was for economic co-operation between the peoples of Europe, as the only means of saving that civilization, with demobilization of hatreds as well as armies, and a new brotherhood of peoples after the agony and folly of the war.