Mr. Wilson's War

by John Dos Passos

  Since Lansing’s crowd from the State Department commandeered all the tickets available for Americans, the members of House’s Inquiry, temporarily bereft of their guardian, had to content themselves on January 18 with watching the arrival of the dignitaries from the courtyard of the Foreign Office. Each arrival was greeted by a fanfare and a roll of drums as the plenipotentiary descended from his automobile or carriage. President Wilson removed his silk hat and bared his horseteeth in a good long smile for the benefit of the motionpicture cameras.

  The arrival of the plenipotentiaries was a lengthy parade. The United States, Great Britain and France each had five delegates and, to the surprise of the bystanders, so had Japan. The Japanese diplomats had taken advantage of the Americans neglecting to attend a somewhat surreptitious meeting of the interallied council held in London before Christmas, while House was laid up with the flu, to insist that the British stand by their alliance. At a period in the war when Japanese torpedoboats were desperately needed for convoy service in the Mediterranean, the British had made further promises. So now five Japanese delegates, smiling and bowing and hissing through their teeth, filed in towards the seats allotted to the great powers. Without anybody’s knowing exactly how it happened the Big Four had become the Big Five.

  Next in importance came Belgium, and Brazil, which had also furnished a few torpedoboats; and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, with three delegates each. Then came China, Greece, the Hedjaz, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Siam and the brandnew Czechoslovak Republic, with two. A crowd of nations that had been merely “technical belligerents” followed: Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador and Peru had one delegate apiece.

  The confirmation of Japan’s admission to the inner circle, during the confused skirmishing of the final week before the Peace Conference opened, was a defeat for Woodrow Wilson. Another was the admission of five British dominions, which were also represented on the British Empire delegation, to the sessions in their own right. That afternoon at the Quai d’Orsay, two delegates were seated for Canada, Australia, South Africa and India, and one for New Zealand. As balm for President Wilson’s hurt feelings, he was allowed to remove Costa Rica, ruled by a dictator of whom he disapproved, from the list of technical belligerents.

  When all the delegates were seated in the splendor of diplomatic uniforms or the gravity of frock coats amid the scarlet damask and the ormoulu, under the glittering chandeliers reflected in the long mirrors, amid the smell of furniture polish and musty hangings and pomade and cologne, President Poincaré arrived with a welcoming speech. Amid the applause that followed he waddled from delegate to delegate until he had shaken every hand. Some of the British amused themselves by noting that Mr. Wilson wore oldfashioned highbuttoned shoes.

  Monsieur Clemenceau, in black skull cap and lisle gloves, hastened to assume the chair, provisionally it was announced. President Wilson gracefully proposed him for permanent chairman and he was duly elected. He proceeded expeditiously to conduct the election of vice presidents, a secretary, commissions to deal with this and that.

  The first two items of the agenda were no surprise to anybody. (1) Responsibility of the authors of the war, (2) Responsibility for the crimes committed in the war. The third created quite a hubbub: legislation with regard to international labor. This was a tribute to the Communist threat.

  Clemenceau allowed nobody to catch his breath. He raced through the items. The powers were requested to submit memoranda on these questions. In compliment to Mr. Wilson it was announced that at the next plenary meeting a society of nations would come first in the order of the day. Before anybody had put in a word the Tiger declared the meeting adjourned.

  Harold Nicolson who attended as a young Foreign Office brain described Clemenceau as “highhanded with the smaller powers … ‘Y-a-t-il d’objections …? Non … adopté’ … like a machine gun.”

  As they were getting their coats in the lobby, a friend of Nicolson’s found himself next to the veteran French diplomat Jules Cambon. “Mon cher,” he said, “savez-vous ce qui va resulter de cette conference?” He dragged out his vowels for emphasis: “Une impro-vis-a-tion.”

  “Cynic” young Nicolson called him in his diary.

  It was obvious to all concerned that the plenary conference was too unwieldy a body to accomplish anything. Even before it was organized two delegates from each of the five powers had been meeting regularly in Monsieur Pichon’s room. Now formally named, the Council of Ten proceeded to take up, in somewhat helterskelter fashion, all the questions which had been neglected since the signing of the armistice.

  During the two months that had gone by since fighting ceased on the western front, none of the problems the plenipotentiaries had to deal with had stood still. The situations described on neat white papers in the briefcases of the specialists changed continually, and always for the worse.

  The class war was overflowing the boundaries of Europe. In spite of column after column in the Allied press to the contrary, Lenin was stabilizing the merciless Communist regime. British detachments were seizing the oilwells throughout the Middle East and clear up to Baku, but they controlled very little beyond the range of their sentries’ rifles. In spite of all the French generals could do to stir up reaction and nationalism around the fringes of Bolshevism, Trotsky’s Red Army was regaining lost ground. The people starved, the people died, but the soviet organization remained.

  In the borderlands of Europe and the Near East national selfdetermination was becoming a scourge. Amid famine, cholera and typhus newly hatched republics showed their mettle by attacking their weaker neighbors. In Paris the representatives of all these ethnic groups were tireless in their demands. Outlets to the sea; strategic frontiers, racial frontiers, linguistic frontiers; none of them coincided. Greedy hands were tearing the map of Europe to pieces.

  As Tasker Bliss put it in a letter to his wife: “The submerged nations are coming to the surface and as soon as they appear they fly at somebody’s throat. They are like mosquitos, vicious from the moment of birth.”

  No one man could keep the details in his head.

  The three worst problems that continuously buzzed about President Wilson’s ears were: first the Japanese contention that the concessions which the Germans had wrung from China in the Shantung area be turned over to them instead of being given back to China; second the Italian demands (somewhat encouraged by House, who in return for Italian backing of the League, had promised Orlando that he would make the President see reason on strategic frontiers for Italy); and third, the disposition of the German colonies.

  Harold Nicolson in his Peacemaking told of being called all of a sudden as an expert on Italian boundaries to attend Arthur Balfour at a conference at the Hôtel de Mûrat. He quoted from his diary:

  “On arrival pickets of police, troops, much saluting. Wilson is much guarded. We are taken up to an upper gallery which contains a glass roof and a statue of Napoleon in Egypt … Balfour is ushered into a room on the right. We others wait outside for two and a half hours, while the drone of voices comes from the next room. Mrs. Wilson passes, her high heels tocking on the parquet, a mass of mimosa in her arms. The old butler enters and puts on the lights one by one. I read The Irish Times.”

  Suddenly the door opened and out came Lloyd George, followed by Bonar Law, Balfour and President Wilson.

  Balfour introduced Nicolson as a young friend who knew all about Italian boundaries. “Now let me see what was it we wanted? Ah yes, Fiume.”

  “No not Fiume, we had all that,” said Wilson. Nicolson noticed his southern drawl.

  President Wilson wanted to know the exact number of Germans who would be annexed to Italy if the frontier were set at the Brenner Pass. Nicolson estimated the number at two hundred and forty or maybe two hundred and fortyfive thousand.

  “Well a matter of thousands anyway,” said the President airily.

  “Yes and anti-Italian thousands,” spoke up Nic
olson, who at that moment was an enthusiast for selfdetermination and for every one of the Fourteen Points.

  “You mean they are pro-German?”

  Nicolson contended that they were pro-Tyrol.

  The President then asked for statistics on Fiume. What was the dividing line between Fiume and Susak? Ashak, corrected Nicolson tactfully; that was the Yugoslav suburb. A mere rivulet divided them.

  The President said the Italians had told him that if you tried to pass from Fiume to Ashak you were certain to be murdered. Nicolson demurred.

  “I guessed he was talking through his hat,” said the President cheerfully. “Well good night to you gentlemen. Good night Mr. Balfour.”

  “We withdrew,” noted Nicolson. “This is called giving expert advice.”

  Nicolson found the President younger than his photographs. “One does not see the teeth except when he smiles which is an awful gesture.” He described the President’s shoulders as broad and his waist narrow, the face very large in proportion to his height. His clothes “those of a tailor’s block, very neat and black and tidy; striped trousers; high collar; pink pin.”

  As they walked downstairs Balfour, who was a courteous man, apologized for having kept Nicolson waiting so long. “To tell the truth the last half hour we have only been discussing whether Napoleon or Frederick the Great could be called disinterested patriots.” Nicolson asked what conclusion they reached. Balfour could not remember.

  At Colonel House’s Oval Table

  It was a relief to Wilson to turn from the illtempered wrangling over geographical and ethnological details that went on in the Council of Ten to the academic calm of the commission, which he was appointed to head at the second plenary meeting of the Peace Conference on January 25, to draw up the constitution for a League of Nations. Drawing up constitutions had been his hobby since he was a college student. This was the sort of thing he had been looking forward to, so House put it, “as an intellectual treat.”

  The meetings took place around a large oval table in Colonel House’s comfortable salon at the Crillon. House stagemanaged the proceedings with his usual selfeffacing hospitality. Wilson and House represented the United States. Cecil and rugged General Smuts—who spoke from experience, nourished not only from books, but from the rude personal vicissitudes of a life studded with victories and defeats in war and in politics—represented the British Empire. Longwinded Léon Bourgeois and a fellow international lawyer represented France, Orlando and a colleague from the Italian Senate, Italy. The Japanese had two and the Belgians, Czechoslovaks, Chinese, Portuguese, Serbians and Brazilians one member each.

  The committeemen were interested and cooperative. The work, based on a draft drawn up by British and American experts who had tried to cull the best out of Smuts’ and Cecil’s and Wilson’s plans, proceeded so smoothly that at the end of ten meetings the document was ready to be presented to the plenary assembly.

  The American secretaries and attendant specialists noted with pleasure the skill and tact with which their President dealt with thorny problems and with some of the thorny characters at the committee table. On February 7 House noted, after a particularly successful session: “Many important articles adopted. Practically everything originates from our end of the table, that is with Lord Rob’t Cecil and the Pres, and I acting as adviser. The P. excels in such work. He seems to like it and his short talks in explanation of his views are admirable. I have never known anyone to do such work so well.”

  The Presentation of the Covenant

  As the drafting progressed the idea of the covenant more and more assumed a mystical significance to Woodrow Wilson: through all the deep tunnels of his memory the word resounded. It carried him back to the religious dedication of his boyhood, through his father’s sacred stories of the Scots Covenanters who were their forebears, to the Old Testament pact between Almighty God and His chosen people. It irked him that there were people in the world who did not appreciate the divine appointment of his dedication to the great task.

  The French press, which most of the Americans scorned as flippant and venal, was shifting from the reverential treatment accorded “Meester Veelson” during his first days in Paris. Squibs and cartoons were appearing. Wilson’s patience broke down completely when a leading article that he considered scurrilous appeared in the respectable Figaro.

  “President Wilson,” the article read, “has lightly assumed a responsibility such as few men have ever borne. Success in his idealistic efforts will undoubtedly place him among the greatest characters of history. But let us admit frankly that if he should fail, he would plunge the world into a chaos of which Russian Bolshevism is but the feeble image; and his responsibility before the conscience of the world would be heavier than any simple mortal could support.”

  In theory Wilson was all for freedom of the press but this was going too far. Although the signature was “Capus,” he suspected that the voice was the voice of Clemenceau. Edith Wilson led the outraged chorus in the little family party at the Hôtel de Mûrat. The President sent Grayson running to Ray Baker to instruct him to release a story that if the propaganda against the assembled governments were not curbed immediately President Wilson would propose moving the conference to a neutral city. On his way Grayson confided in House.

  House expostulated. “To my mind it was a stupid blunder,” the colonel noted angrily in his diary. Although Mandel refused to allow his newspapers to print any report of President Wilson’s threat, he did tone down, for a while, the gibes of the Paris press.

  On the surface everything was splendor and serenity at the plenary session of the Peace Conference which took place on Valentine’s Day in the Salon de l’Orloge. The fact that the President was leaving that night for Brest in order to reach Washington in time for the closing of the Sixty-fifth Congress added to the air of drama. Monsieur Clemenceau opened the meeting and immediately gave President Wilson the floor. Wilson seemed to his friends to be in unusually fine form when he reported, his fine voice thrilling with pride, the unanimous agreement of the committee representing fourteen nations on the text he was about to read.

  With careful enunciation he read the preamble:

  “In order to secure international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to the use of armed force, by the prescription of open, just and honorable relations between nations, by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual rule of conduct among governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one another, and in order to promote international cooperation, the Powers signatory to this Covenant adopt this constitution of the League of Nations.”

  He went on to read the twentytwo articles, establishing an executive council in which the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan should have the leadership, a body of delegates of the lesser states, a secretariat, the machinery for consultation and arbitration … The High Contracting Parties agreed “to respect and preserve … the territorial integrity and existing political independence” of all member states … An international court of justice, reduction of armaments. Sanctions against transgressors, the abrogation of all treaties inconsistent with the covenant …

  The words “High Contracting Parties” resounded like a refrain from article to article. To many of the men listening in the airless hall it seemed the consummation of twentyfive years of effort to secure a world polity. The President’s speech was received with profound emotion. Tears were streaming down House’s face when he shook the President’s hand in the ovation that followed.

  Although delegates’ wives were categorically excluded, Edith Wilson had induced Clemenceau to get her and Cary Grayson smuggled in. They sat on stiff chairs in a tiny alcove behind a red brocaded curtain.

  “It was a great moment in history and as he stood there—slender, calm and powerful in his argument—I seemed to see the people of all depressed countries
—men and women and little children crowding round and waiting upon his words.”

  The covenant was unanimously accepted and Edith Wilson had the pleasure, peering through a crack in the curtains, of seeing the delegates crowding around to press her husband’s hand. The Tiger had been insistent that she should not let herself be seen or else “he’d have all the other wives on his neck.” The hall cleared fast. When the last coattail had disappeared out of the door Edith Wilson and Cary Grayson tiptoed out of their hiding place. The presidential limousine was waiting for them in the courtyard below. Woodrow Wilson took off his silk hat and leaned back against the cushions. She asked him if he were tired. “Yes I suppose I am, but how little one man means when such vital things are at stake.”

  The President had a last conference with House before setting off for the train. “I outlined my plan of procedure during his absence,” noted the colonel. “I told him I thought we could button up everything during the next four weeks. He seemed startled and even alarmed by the statement. I therefore explained that my plan was not to actually bring these matters to a final conclusion but to have them ready for him to do so when he returned. This pleased him.” House drove with the Wilsons to the station.

  There were the usual palms and flags and red carpets, President and Madame Poincaré, Clemenceau patient behind his mustaches, the Cabinet in frock coats, ambassadors, attachés. Just before the President stepped on the train he sought out his confidential colonel, who as usual was allowing himself to melt into the background. He was seen to place his hand on House’s shoulders and whisper, “Heavy work before you, House.” “He looked happy,” wrote House, “as well indeed he should.”