American Experiment

by James Macgregor Burns

  All this would be settled in the future. At the very least, the Nineteenth Amendment stood as a monument to the transforming leadership of five generations of women. And it was a monument as well to a President who, amid the cares and distractions of war, was willing to spend political capital on a cause that he viewed as linked to a fundamental aim of that war—the expansion of liberty and equality, and thus the enlargement of American democracy.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Fight for the League

  THE SS GEORGE WASHINGTON pulled away from the flag-draped pier in the late morning of December 4, 1918. Warships in New York Harbor fired salutes to the little liner, once German-owned and now part of the spoils of war. Crowds were gathered at Battery Park and on Staten Island to see the ship off. As she passed the submarine net and the old Civil War ironclad that guarded the Narrows, passengers on board could make out children waving flags all along the shore. Once in the lower harbor, the George Washington was met by her escort: the battleship Pennsylvania, a dozen destroyers, plus airplanes and a navy dirigible. They all had assembled to see President Woodrow Wilson off for Europe on what all expected would be a historic mission.

  The President had decided to break all precedent and personally represent the United States at the peace conference convening in Paris. Wilson was convinced, as he told reporters aboard the ship, that the Allied heads of state had already decided together to impose “a peace of loot or spoliation” upon Germany, and that only his on-the-spot intervention could redirect the conference to a program for lasting peace. Beyond that reason, however, was Wilson’s obvious, burning desire to participate in what promised to be the most important international meeting in over a century. “The plot is thickening,” he told newsmen with obvious relish. Wilson could no more have stayed away from Paris than Theodore Roosevelt could have sat out the 1912 election.

  The President brought with him to Europe only a relatively small entourage: his second wife, Edith Galt Wilson; his physician, Admiral Cary Grayson; two typists; and most of the members of the Inquiry. As formal Peace Commissioners, Wilson appointed Colonel House and General Tasker Bliss (Wilson’s able liaison to the Allied Supreme War Council), who already were in Europe. The other two commissioners accompanied him—Secretary of State Lansing and Henry White, a nominal Republican and experienced diplomat long friendly with Roosevelt and Lodge.

  Life aboard ship quickly settled down to routine. Most of the time the President remained isolated, talking and dining only with the members of his immediate circle. George Creel was on board, personally supervising the movie that the Committee on Public Information was making about the peace mission. Evenings Wilson and his wife joined the other passengers to enjoy the film exploits of Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks before returning to affairs of state.

  The President had only one extensive conference with the members of the Inquiry during the trip. He was quite frank and specific in laying out his views and goals. While the Americans had no selfish objectives to pursue at Paris, he said, the Allied leaders were bound to each other by a web of secret deals and thus “did not represent their own people.” He discussed animatedly his ideas for a league of nations. A permanent league, whose exact political structure could evolve with experience, was in his view the only guarantee of both “elasticity and security” in the wake of the World War. He foresaw this league deterring future aggressors by cutting them off from trade and communications while world public opinion was roused against them; military force would be necessary only as a last resort. In the meantime, the organization would promote international commerce and administer the colonies of the defeated Central Powers.

  Wilson heartened his advisors by calling on them to guide him on the specific economic and territorial issues involved. “Tell me what’s right and I’ll fight for it,” he concluded.

  His associates tried to take the measure of this American scholar-turned-politician who sought to redirect the destiny of the world with the hammer blows of his ideals. James Shotwell, a historian attached to the peace commission, was struck by the contradictions in Wilson’s appearance and actions. Close up the President had warm eyes and an engaging smile, but from the side his face appeared severe and determined. Wilson remained aloof from the other officials on the ship, yet on Sunday he unselfconsciously joined the sailors singing hymns in their mess hall. Watching Wilson watch a movie, Shotwell saw powerful emotions being held under tight control.

  Escorted by Allied warships, the George Washington moved through mists as it approached the coast of France; then the skies cleared and the liner pulled into Brest harbor in mid-December 1918. The President and his party went immediately to the train that was waiting to carry them to Paris, but Shotwell took a few minutes to walk around the town. He noticed the slate-roofed stone houses, the many women dressed in black among the crowds, and the groups of American soldiers everywhere waiting for orders to sail for home. Most of all, Shotwell was struck by the wall placards that announced the coming of Wilson. One, a “red splash of color on a gray stone wall,” called upon “one and all, without distinction of party” to praise the leader who had arrived “to found a new order on the rights of peoples, and to stop forever the return of an atrocious war….”

  The Mirrored Halls of Versailles

  No American President had ever before met with a foreign leader while in office. Grant and Roosevelt, after they left the White House, did visit a number of heads of state during their travels, but those were social calls rather than serious diplomatic missions. Now Wilson was about to meet with the assembled premiers and foreign ministers of every European power—except defeated Germany and Bolshevik Russia—as well as leaders from nations on five continents. They had gathered to address issues of sovereignty, disarmament, and trade that spanned the globe.

  The global problems were staggering. The war had left 50 million soldiers and civilians dead or maimed; blasted into ruin large stretches of France, Belgium, and Eastern Europe; sent 13 million tons of shipping to the bottom of the sea. Now starvation and typhus—which would kill another 6 million people over the next year—stalked Europe in its first winter of peace since 1914. Nor was there even peace in the east, where Poles clashed with Czechs, Bolsheviks with czarist Whites, Slavs with Italians, Turks with Greeks, and Arabs with Jews amidst the ruins of the old autocratic empires. The leaders of Europe’s three powerful democracies—Britain’s David Lloyd George, France’s Georges Clemenceau, and Italy’s Vittorio Orlando—had been united by the war but now were divided on how best to cope with its chaotic aftermath. The three were hard-pressed to make common cause with one other; how would they deal with the professor-politician-president from the west?

  Clemenceau was the first to greet the American President. The French premier—still vigorous at seventy-eight, broad of chest, with short legs and a yellowish complexion that struck Lansing as the “face and figure [of] a Chinese mandarin”—had earned the nickname “Le Tigre” for his tenacious attacks on any and all political opponents. It had been Clemenceau who had published Emile Zola’s impassioned defense of Alfred Dreyfus, kept the “Affaire Dreyfus” alive year after year in the French press and Chamber of Deputies, and finally won exoneration for the wronged Jewish officer. A cold, ruthless idealist, not much liked but infinitely respected, Clemenceau had been uncompromising in prosecuting the war against the Central Powers, and now he called for peace terms that would prevent Germany from ever again being strong enough to invade France.

  The first meeting between Wilson and Clemenceau went surprisingly well, mainly because both leaders strove to be conciliatory. Much to the annoyance of Colonel House, who still hoped to head the American delegation, Wilson convinced the Frenchman that the President should sit in on the peace talks as America’s chief spokesman; in return, Wilson happily agreed that Clemenceau should preside over the conference. Neither professed to see any conflict between their main aims—for Clemenceau French security, for Wilson the league—and both later took H
ouse aside to express their delight at the way things had begun.

  With some days still remaining before the conference opened, Wilson’s next stop was Britain. There he met with the Royal Family, paraded through the streets of London, and joined the leaders of Britain’s Liberal party in following the returns of the elections in progress. Lloyd George, Wilson’s host, was tremendously heartened by the results as they were telegraphed in to the group gathered around the Cabinet table at 10 Downing Street. The white-maned Prime Minister—devious in his political dealings but unshakable in his commitment to his working-class constituents—was receiving a tremendous popular mandate for his party’s promise to squeeze Germany “until the pips squeak.” Any private doubts Lloyd George might have had about the wisdom of a punitive peace were not visible that night—but Wilson’s were, as he glumly sat watching the British politicians celebrate.

  From England, Wilson traveled to Italy, for his most enthusiastic public greeting of all. The cheering crowds, however, could not dispel the tension in Rome. Italy’s leaders—the short, tenacious Orlando and his Foreign Minister, the “protractedly unreliable” Baron Sidney Sonnino—were determined to gain major concessions of territory as their price for Italy’s fighting on the Allied side. Wilson had already balked at some of their demands, and now the President sparred with his hosts about travel plans and access to the Italian public.

  To varying degrees, therefore, the four democratic leaders—soon dubbed “the Big Four”—were divided by their aims before the talks even began. Once the conference convened, the confusions and cross-purposes were multiplied a hundredfold as each nation and group arose to plead its case. Lawrence of Arabia was on hand to speak for the Iraqis; Ho Chi Minh tried vainly to gain a hearing for Vietnamese independence; the Czechs and Poles sent representatives to argue over the coal mines of Teschen. British diplomat Sir Harold Nicolson remembered the bedlam of “the machine-gun rattle of a million typewriters, the incessant shrilling of telephones, the clatter of motor bikes … the cold voices of interpreters … and throughout the sound of footsteps hurrying” down the mirrored halls of Versailles. It reminded him, Nicolson wrote, of a “riot in a parrot house.”

  Amidst the multiplicity of issues, Wilson did not take his eye off his main concern for a league of nations. Within a week of the conference’s formal opening, he arose to advocate “that a League of Nations be created to promote international cooperation, to ensure the fulfillment of accepted international obligations, and to provide safeguards against war.” Speaking from a draft resolution prepared in consultation with the British, the President declared that the “League should be created as an integral part of the general Treaty of Peace, and should be open to every civilized nation….” The conference voted unanimously to establish a committee, with Wilson as its head, to draft a constitution for the League.

  Over the next two weeks, Wilson attended the general meetings of the conference and also chaired the League committee. In drawing up the covenant of the League, the President worked closely with Colonel House and Lord Robert Cecil of Britain, both ardent advocates of the proposed organization. Even more, Wilson relied on his own ability to lead debate and shape compromise. “The President excels in such work,” House recorded in his diary. “He seems to like it and his short talks in explanation of his views are admirable. I have never known any one to do such work as well.” High praise indeed from a self-styled master of quiet political manipulation—yet House’s opinion seemed warranted. Wilson made important concessions, giving up his own proposal for a statement on religious tolerance (and helping to beat down a Japanese plank on racial equality), and in turn blocked a French call for an international standing army. Overall, the nineteen-man committee took on the air of a college seminar, with several of the brighter pupils making important contributions—Cecil provided a working draft of the covenant, and Jan Smuts of South Africa devised the mandate procedure—but the terms of the discussion clearly being set by Professor Wilson.

  After just ten meetings, the committee’s work was done. On February 14, Wilson addressed the general session of the conference, reading and commenting upon the finished covenant. “A living thing is born,” he concluded. “It is definitely a guarantee of peace.” H. Wickham Steel wrote in the Paris Daily Mail that Wilson’s presentation had “lifted” the affairs of the world “into new dimensions. The old dimensions of national individualism, secrecy of policies, competitive armaments, forcible annexations … were raised, if only for an instant, to a higher plane on which the organized moral consciousness of peoples, the publicity of international engagements and of government by the consent of and for the good of the governed, became prospective realities.”

  The only question, wrote Steel, was “How long will the instant last?”

  While Wilson framed his plan for the League, the other American delegates and experts were left largely to their own devices. With the President’s consent and some general supervision by House, the Inquiry members gradually became negotiators, in their own right, on the questions falling within their special spheres of expertise. Shotwell and the others found themselves engaged in days of exhausting but exhilarating work on issues of finance, navigation and trade, territorial adjustment, and the like.

  Amidst the “whirlpool of political intrigue” slowly engulfing the delegates, the issue of Russia loomed large. None of the Western democracies had yet extended recognition to the Bolshevik regime in Moscow. Instead, France and Britain were helping to finance various of Lenin’s adversaries in the civil war engulfing the country. The Allies maintained a blockade of Russia’s ports and even landed troops to fight the Bolsheviks. While the World War was still on, the British and French had persuaded Wilson to send a small expeditionary force to northern Russia and a second force to Vladivostok on the Pacific—an intervention by the United States that was, in one scholar’s words, both “extremely reluctant and severely restrained,” though from Moscow’s standpoint, of course, a flagrantly hostile act. With public clamor to bring their troops home increasing, the Allies and Americans now sought a way out of the imbroglio in the East, a way out of the intervention of which George F. Kennan would say later, “never, surely, in the history of American diplomacy has so much been paid for so little.”

  On January 22, Wilson proposed that the various warring factions in Russia meet with Allied representatives at Prinkipo, in Turkey, to attempt to hammer out their differences. The Bolsheviks hedged their reply to Wilson’s proposal, but the anti-Bolsheviks rejected it outright. Then young William Bullitt stepped into the breach. Meeting with House and with Lloyd George’s private secretary, Philip Kerr, Bullitt won approval for a fact-finding mission to Moscow. Accompanied by Lincoln Steffens and two military men, and armed with a set of general proposals suggested by Kerr and House, Bullitt left Paris on February 22.

  One week earlier Wilson too had left, traveling in the opposite direction. The Congress was about to end its session, requiring him to return to Washington to sign legislation. Even more important, the League Covenant was completed, ready for presentation to the American people. Already the President was hearing in Paris echoes of opposition to the League building among politicians back home, and he sought to forestall his critics from organizing the public against his proposal. Before sailing from France, Wilson cabled the members of the Foreign Relations Committees of both houses of Congress, inviting them to meet with him at the White House to discuss the League Covenant.

  Wilson clearly needed to mend his fences with the Congress—particularly with those Republicans whose votes would be necessary if the League were to gain two-thirds approval in the Senate—largely owing to his own political miscalculation. The previous October, in an effort to strengthen his hand before the Paris negotiations opened, Wilson had called upon the public to return a Democratic majority in the upcoming congressional elections. The call backfired, galvanizing Republican opposition; the GOP swept into control of the House by fifty seats, and acquired a precario
us majority of two in the Senate. That slim majority elevated Wilson’s arch-opponent Henry Cabot Lodge to the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

  Debate on the Covenant began while Wilson was still in transit, with opponents labeling it everything from “an international quilting society” to “the most impudently un-American proposal ever submitted to the American people by an American President.” Landing in Boston on February 23, Wilson fired back at the critics, saying that in defense of this cause it was a pleasure to indulge his “fighting blood.” Three days later, however, he adopted a conciliatory tone in meeting over dinner with the congressional leaders. Those who had come to the White House determined not to be convinced by Wilson went away unmoved; Senator Frank Brandegee of Connecticut described the session as a “tea with the Mad Halter.” Another Republican, however, John Jacob Rogers of Massachusetts, carried away a much more favorable impression.

  “I thought the President appeared extremely well,” Rogers wrote to Henry White in Paris. “He submitted himself to quite rigorous cross-examination for two hours, answering every question, easy or difficult, as fully as possible and with apparent candor…. There was no suggestion of a feeling of militant arrogance about him. He apparently tried to give the impression that he really was one of the circle in the East Room, who was answering rather than asking questions only because he had been so recently in Paris, and had been a factor in the preparation of the instrument under discussion.” Even Lodge admitted to Henry White that Wilson had patiently answered questions for two hours—but added, “We learned nothing.”