The Illusion of Victory

by Thomas Fleming

  The New York Tribune crowed over the Senate vote and praised John Sharp Williams for his scurrilous denunciation of Senator La Follette. It also warned of a national conspiracy of “pacifists” plotting to disrupt the war effort. The Los Angeles Times assured its readers there were no plans to send an American army overseas. All that the Allies needed to win the war was munitions. In New York, a young man who called Americans “a lot of skunks” at an antiwar rally got six months in jail.78

  The House galleries were only half full when debate began. With the Senate vote, the conclusion probably seemed foregone. But the onlookers saw some fireworks early in the session. Congressman Fred A. Britten, a Republican from Illinois, stirred a furor when he estimated that 75 percent of the representatives secretly opposed the war but were afraid to say so. Dozens of friends had told him they “hate[d] like the devil” to vote for the war resolution, but were going to do it anyway. A startling wave of applause swept the House and the galleries. An emboldened Britten concluded that “something in the air,” perhaps the “hand of destiny” or “some superhuman movement,” seemed to be forcing them to vote for war when,“deep in our hearts,” they were just as opposed to it as their people back home.79

  Numerous congressmen leaped up to rebut Britten. Some drew applause for flights of patriotic oratory. Others rose to defend him. Chicago Republican William Ernest Mason, who had been a strong proponent of the Spanish-American War, said flatly, “I am against this war because I know the people in my state are not for it.” The debate went back and forth while the northeast wind drove sheets of rain against the huge skylight above the speakers’ heads.80

  A pro-war Republican, Clarence B. Miller of Minnesota, enlivened things by reading a supposedly suppressed paragraph in Herr Zimmermann’s telegram to Mexico:“Agreeably to the Mexican government, submarine bases will be established in Mexican ports, from which will be supplied arms, ammunition and supplies. All [German] reservists in the United States are ordered into Mexico. Arrange to attack all along the border.”

  Antiwar congressmen rushed a messenger to the State Department, which denied the existence of any such paragraph. But Miller kept insisting on its authenticity and waved the paper at them to the end of the session.81

  The next surprise came when Claude Kitchin of North Carolina, the Democratic majority leader, announced that he was voting nay:“After mature thought and fervent prayer for rightful guidance, [I] have marked out clearly the path of my duty, and I have made up my mind to walk it, if I go barefooted or alone.” Robert La Follette, who was among the spectators, led a burst of applause.82

  Implicitly agreeing with La Follette, Kitchin denounced the failure of the United States to protest England’s violation of the right to trade with Germany. He described the North Sea as “strewed with hidden mines.” Kitchin maintained that this failure to treat the two belligerents alike was a fatal flaw in Wilson’s declaration of war.83

  James Heflin of Alabama told Kitchin that he should have resigned as majority leader before he made such a statement—and then resigned his seat. John Lawson Burnett of Alabama said that Heflin ought to prove his patriotism first by enlisting in the army as a private. A shouting match erupted, adding a touch of low comedy to the scene.84

  Hour after hour, the speeches, limited to ten minutes by Speaker Clark, marched on, many making the same or similar points. Like La Follette and Norris, the antiwar minority argued that sinking a handful of ships and killing some American sailors did not constitute a cause for war. They pointed out that the Mexicans had killed far more Americans in Villa’s raids and skirmishes with the Punitive Expedition. Like Kitchin, they blamed the government and U.S. corporations for sending ships into the war zone declared by Berlin—while tamely submitting to the war zone declared by the English blockade of Germany.

  The pro-war speakers answered with outrage over Germany’s “barbaric tactics.” They descanted on how the British only violated property rights in their blockade, whereas the Germans were committing murder. They extended their oratory to a general denunciation of the way Germany was fighting the war in Europe, “raping” neutral Belgium and despoiling the large chunk of France it occupied. They exalted the purpose of the war, as defined by President Wilson. A war for democracy, for the rights of mankind.

  Among the orators who enjoyed the loudest applause was bearded eighty-one-year-old Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois, for many years the Speaker of the House in its days of Republican majorities. He rose to dilate on the power and resources of the United States,“greater than any other nation on earth.” It was time to commit them to the cause of peace. Pounding on his desk, he roared,“I—shall—vote—for—this—resolution.”85

  The antiwar representatives achieved some poignant (and totally forgotten) moments. Most notable was Edward J. King of Illinois. The lawmaker said that a vote for war on the president’s arguments, with conscription thrown in, would qualify an American soldier to join the men of other nations in W. K. Enwer’s heartbreaking poem “Five Souls”:

  First Soul.

  I was a peasant of the Polish plain;

  I left my plow because the message ran—

  Russia in danger needed every man

  To save her from the Teuton; and was slain

  I gave my life for freedom—this I know

  For those who bade me fight had told me so.

  Second Soul.

  I was a Tyrolese, a mountaineer;

  I gladly left my mountain home to fight

  Against the brutal, treacherous Muscovite;

  And died in Poland on a Cossack spear.

  I gave my life for freedom—this I know,

  For those who bade me fight had told me so.

  Third Soul.

  I worked in Lyons at my weaver’s loom,

  When suddenly the Prussian despot hurled

  His felon blow at France and at the world;

  Then I went forth to Belgium and my doom.

  I gave my life for freedom—this I know

  For those who bade me fight had told me so.

  Fourth Soul.

  I owned a vineyard by the wooded Main

  Until the fatherland begirt by foes

  Lusting her downfall called me and I rose

  Swift to the call, and died in fair Lorraine.

  I gave my life for freedom, this I know

  For those who bade me fight had told me so.

  Fifth Soul.

  I worked in a great shipyard on the Clyde;

  There came a sudden word of wars declared,

  Of Belgium peaceful, helpless, unprepared

  Asking our aid. I joined the ranks and died.

  I gave my life for freedom—this I know

  For those who bade me fight had told me so.

  King added to this tragic parade a sixth soul from America.

  Sixth Soul.

  I worked upon a farm in Illinois.

  The squad appeared; I marched away.

  Somewhere in France, amid the trenches gray

  I met grim death with many other boys.

  I gave my life for freedom—this I know.

  For he who bade me fight had told me so.

  America was going to war, King said, driven by “armed plutocracy crying ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’”86

  At 7 P.M., with no end of speakers in sight, Champ Clark said they would stay in session all night if necessary. At 9 P.M., Clark began to limit the speeches to five minutes. On went the oratory, until at 2:30 A.M. on April 6, the number of speeches had passed one hundred. At 2:45, the legislators at last fell silent and the weary Clark called for a vote.

  The voices reciting yes and no echoed dully in the empty galleries and drifted eerily into the darkness around the skylight. The count went swiftly until the clerk of the house reached the name Rankin. There was a strained silence—and the clerk went on to other names. Uncle Joe Cannon hobbled from his seat to where Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana sat virtually paral
yzed. As the first woman elected to Congress, she had received a bouquet of flowers and an ovation when the House convened on April 2. Now, confronting her first vote, she was in torment.

  Cannon leaned over her and said,“Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country. I shall not advise you how to vote but you should vote, one way or another, as your conscience dictates.”

  On the second call, when the clerk reached her name, Rankin was again speechless. Finally, she struggled to her feet and said,“I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.”

  She sank into her seat and began to sob. The roll call continued until the clerk reached the last name and reported the tally to the speaker. The House of Representatives had voted for war, 373 to 50. Over half the nays were from progressive Republicans in the West, political blood brothers of Robert La Follette and George Norris. The Northeast produced only one negative vote—Meyer London, the socialist member from New York City. Four of the Democratic no votes came from Mississippi, somewhat dulling the edge of John Sharp Williams’s rhetoric. Nine of Wisconsin’s eleven representatives supported La Follette.87

  Speaker Clark signed the war resolution on the spot, but Vice President Marshall, whose signature was also needed as president of the Senate, had long since gone to bed. He signed it the next day, a little after 12 noon. The resolution was immediately rushed to the White House, where the president was having lunch with his wife and his cousin Helen Woodrow Bones. They put down their knives and forks and hurried to the chief usher’s desk in the lobby. There, Rudolph Forster, the White House’s executive clerk, was waiting for them with the document. Edith Galt Wilson handed the president a gold pen he had given her as a gift, and he signed the document without the slightest fanfare or ceremony.

  Forster dashed off to notify reporters. They raced to their telephones. A young naval officer ran out on the sidewalk in front of the White House. Looking like someone fighting off a swarm of insects, he waved his arms to send a semaphore message to an officer in the State, War and Navy Building. Within minutes, wireless operators were flashing the news to navy ships and shore stations around the world. It was 1:18 P.M. on April 6, 1917—which happened to be Good Friday. The United States of America was at war with Germany.88

  Chapter 2

  BIG LIES, GREED, AND OTHER HOARY ANIMALS

  Almost a century after that dramatic week in April 1917, can we make sense out of its tangle of pro-and antiwar passion, the rhetoric of violated rights and democratic visions, the opposing denunciations of the war’s chief antagonists, Germany and Great Britain? The conduct of other wars and the research of numerous historians have shed some light, particularly on the reason why so many Americans—a majority, if the votes of Congress accurately reflected national sentiment (a still debated question)—favored Great Britain, and its allies, France and Russia.1

  To understand the aggressive, often angry pro-war sentiment of the apparent American majority, we must go back thirty-two months, almost three years before April 6, 1917, to one of the most important but largely forgotten episodes of World War I. In the misty dawn of August 5, 1914, the 1,013-ton British ship Telconia, an aptly named layer of undersea cables, hove to in the North Sea off the German port of Emden. On August 4, after a month of halfhearted attempts to defuse the crisis created by the brutal assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, heirs to the Austro-Hungarian empire’s throne, by a Serbian terrorist, the war had begun. An Austrian army assaulted Serbia. Russia, determined to defend its Slav cousins, attacked Germany and Austria from the east. The French, allied with Russia, attacked from the west. The German army marched into Belgium and Luxembourg as part of its plan to outflank French forts and armies along the Franco-German border, capture Paris, and end the war on the Western Front in a month.

  That same day, Great Britain had demanded Germany’s immediate withdrawal from Belgium, citing a decades-old treaty Europe’s major powers had signed guaranteeing that country’s neutrality. Only a handful of people knew the real reason for England’s intervention. Years earlier, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey had negotiated a secret understanding with the French to join them in resisting a German attack. He had negotiated an equally secret alliance with the Russians. Most of the British cabinet did not know about these agreements, which included extensive consultations between the French and British military staffs. They were also concealed from the British Parliament. While his fellow liberals talked peace and forbearance with Germany, Grey had become a confirmed German hater, who saw Berlin’s rising power as a mortal threat to the British empire.

  London’s ultimatum had expired at midnight on August 4, while the Telconia was en route to its rendezvous point off Emden. Fathoms beneath the ship’s keel lay a network of five cables that wended south from Germany through the English Channel, one to France, one to Spain, one to North Africa and two to New York City. On board the Telconia were huge grappling hooks that enabled the ship to retrieve malfunctioning cables from the sea bottom for repairs. Down slid the grapples into the cold, gray depths, and soon, one by one, the five mud-covered sheaths of coppercovered wires were hauled aboard. Each was hacked apart and dropped back into the sea. Henceforth, Germany could communicate securely with the Western Hemisphere only through a subsidiary cable that ran from Liberia to Brazil, a line that was largely U.S. owned.

  Six months later, after some friendly persuasion from London, which undoubtedly included plenty of pounds sterling, this link too was eliminated by one of Telconia’s sister ships. That meant Berlin had to depend on Guglielmo Marconi’s newly invented and somewhat undependable wireless—and all these messages could be intercepted and deciphered by British cryptanalysts.2

  The New York Times reported the cutting of the main cables on August 6, 1914. The reporter dutifully noted that from now on,“all word of happenings in Germany must pass through hostile countries—Russia on the east, France on the west, and England on the north.” (These three allies would soon be known to newspaper readers as the Triple Entente.) The consul general of Germany’s chief ally, Austria-Hungary, in one of the greatest understatements of the twentieth century, told the Times: “The cutting of that cable may do us great injury. If only one side of the case is given . . . prejudice will be created against us here.”3

  A week after Great Britain entered the war and began frantic efforts to ship an expeditionary force to Belgium, Parliament passed a Defence of the Realm Act, soon to be known as DORA, which gave British censors the power to scrutinize every word that went from England to the United States and elsewhere in the world. American reporters in England and at the battlefronts in France soon learned this meant only stories that favored the Triple Entente would leave the British Isles. Some reporters tried to cover the war from Berlin, but they had to send their stories through the neutral Netherlands to London for cabling to the United States. The British censors also read their copy. On August 2, 1916, a group of American correspondents in Berlin signed a protest complaining that their dispatches were constantly “suppressed, mutilated or delayed” by the London censor. Americans were not getting the “vital half ” of the most important events of the war.4

  II

  Within a month of declaring war, the British prime minister, Herbert Asquith, put his friend and member of Parliament, Charles F. G. Masterman, in charge of propaganda. A journalist and author of some note before he turned to politics, Masterman took over several floors in Wellington House, a London office building not far from Buckingham Palace. Masterman warned his staff that they would toil in secret and be thanked or honored by no one for their efforts. He swiftly convened meetings with top British authors, such as H.G. Wells, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Conan Doyle and John Galsworthy, to enlist them in the large effort he contemplated. They consented without a demur. On September 19, 1914, fifty-three writers subscribed to a statement in the Times of London, calling on Englishmen to “defend the rights of small nations” against
“the rule of Blood and Iron.” Wells, who liked to describe himself as an extreme pacifist, was soon to declare:“I hate Germany, which has thrust this experience upon mankind, as I hate some horrible infectious disease.”5

  Masterman early saw the importance of a separate propaganda department for the United States. Its immense wealth and resources were essential for the survival of His Majesty’s empire. For this task, Masterman chose a fellow member of Parliament, Sir Gilbert Parker, a Canadian-born bestselling author of novels about the Canadian Northwest (a region he had never visited). The books featured absurdly unrealistic characters and numerous scenes of blood and gore.

  Although Parker’s novels were trash and a British newsman described him as “an ass and self-promoter,” he was a clever, enormously energetic man. Thanks to his books and frequent visits, he had many friends in the United States. He assembled an excellent staff of assistants, which included historian A.J. Toynbee of Oxford. They combed Who’s Who in America and other sources to assemble a mailing list of 260,000 influential men and women. Sir Gilbert also arranged for a weekly report from the British embassy in Washington, the American Press Résumé, to keep him in close touch with the public mood as it manifested itself in America’s 20,000 newspapers. He supplied 360 papers in less populated states with a weekly “newspaper” that purveyed London’s line on the war. He arranged for American reporters to interview more than one hundred prominent Englishmen, from the prime minister to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The numerous VIP speakers Parker dispatched to the United States to win hearts and minds also provided him with voluminous reports on what stories and themes worked best. By 1917, Parker had 54 people working for him.

  In March 1918, when the Americans were safely in the war, Parker published an article in Harper’s Monthly in which he bragged about his role in persuading the United States to intervene. He claimed that he always cautioned British speakers to avoid exhorting Americans to join the hostilities. These missionaries had embarked on a task of “extreme difficulty and delicacy,” and the results could only be obtained by letting the Americans make up their own minds that “German policy is a betrayal of civilization.” The latter remark is a graphic glimpse of Parker’s objectivity.6