The Illusion of Victory

by Thomas Fleming

  In an astonishing display of his unofficial power, House summoned Secretary of War Newton Baker to his New York City residence for a long conference on Sunday, January 20, 1918. Baker spent several hours with the colonel, discussing the administration’s numerous critics. The meeting did not go well. Baker coolly defended the War Department’s performance, leaving House more than a little nonplused.65

  Probably the most important political result of this contretemps was the emergence of Theodore Roosevelt as the untitled but acknowledged leader of the Republican Party. Before leaving the capital for his home in Oyster Bay, TR gave a speech at the National Press Club that heaped scorn on the “college professor” in the White House. Roosevelt’s daughter Alice and congressman husband, Nicholas Longworth of Ohio, gave him a farewell dinner at their Washington home at which the Old Guard mingled with Republican progressives in a not-so-subtle tribute to the party’s new unity.66

  IX

  The winter of 1917–1918 was as severe in France as it was in the United States—and it found the four American divisions in Lorraine unprepared for the harsh conditions. Still in summer uniforms, the men shivered in unheated barns and attics of farmhouses as the temperature sank to seven below zero. Some soldiers started calling it their Valley Forge winter. They were baffled—and sometimes angry—by the way their country had seemingly abandoned them. Stirred by a letter from his son Archie reporting that his company had worn out its shoes and had no replacements, the former president shipped the doughboys 200 pairs, paid for out of his own pocket.67

  One division had only two trucks to distribute supplies in the fifty square miles across which its men were scattered. They tried to buy horses from local farmers; to a man they refused, making the Americans less than enthusiastic about fighting to save them from the kaiser. French disillusion with the war was all too visible. “A strong feeling of ‘Oh what’s the use?’ was spreading . . . throughout France,” wrote one perceptive American officer.68

  Even more troubling was the number of Americans who returned from their training forays to the front convinced that no one was ever going to break through the enemy’s fortified trenches. Even General Robert Lee Bullard, the new commander of the First Division, confided to his journal: “We cannot beat Germany. She has beaten Russia . . . she is now beating Italy.” On December 13, 1917, Pershing was forced to issue a strenuous letter denouncing the “deep pessimism” pervading his embryo army. Any officer caught saying the war was already lost would be relieved instantly as unfit for command.69

  By this time Pershing had seen quite a lot of the Western Front. He had also watched Americans training under French instructors. He decided the French (and the British) would never break the prevailing deadlock. Their tactics practically ignored the rifle and bayonet. The grenade and the entrenching tool were the weapons of choice. He was appalled by the way the poilus dug foxholes and trenches, almost by reflex, the moment they stopped advancing. Only the Americans could change the situation by restoring the rifle to preeminence and using the “fire and movement” tactics preached by generations of West Point military thinkers, to create “open warfare.”

  When Pershing tried to explain these ideas to a group of American reporters, an Associate Press correspondent asked him if he realized it sounded arrogant to announce he had a recipe for victory without having fought a battle. Pershing glared at the man and snapped,“Of course the Western Front can be broken. What are we here for?”

  The newsmen took an acute dislike to Pershing, which the general cordially reciprocated. When a brash young United Press correspondent named Westbrook Pegler showed up at the AEF’s Chaumont headquarters, he talked his way into Pershing’s office and breezily announced,“I’m Pegler of the United Press. Can you give me a statement on the general situation?”

  “Pegler,” Pershing growled,“get the hell out of my office.”70

  Journalist Heywood Broun, who followed Pershing around France for a while, was bewildered by the general’s appetite for details. He climbed into haylofts and discussed onions with cooks to make sure that the men were being billeted in reasonable health and comfort. He also sternly insisted on West Point basics—crisp salutes, shined shoes and fresh uniforms.

  Broun mocked Pershing’s assumption that he could “read a man’s soul through his boots or his buttons.” He found a junior officer who thought Pershing’s favorite biblical figure was Joshua “because he made the sun and moon stand at attention.” Like many people, Broun noted Pershing made little attempt to win his men’s affection.“No one will ever call him Papa Pershing,” Broun wrote. Pershing’s staff was outraged and wordily rebutted this latter charge. They also urged Pershing to kick Broun out of France. Pershing canceled the rebuttal, but Broun was soon on a New York–bound ship.71

  In a way, Pershing had to believe in his vision of open warfare. Without it he might have lost control of his army. French and British disappointment with America’s failure to join the fighting continued to grow. As 1918 began, Pershing’s four divisions looked more and more pathetic as a serious army. A disgusted British journalist told an AEF intelligence office, “After eight months . . . you haven’t really fired a damned shot!” An exasperated Pershing told his military censor, Major Frederick Palmer, he feared the worst.“Look at what is expected of us and what we have to start with! No army ready and no ships to bring over an army if we had one.”72

  With Russia out of the war and the failure of Field Marshal Douglas Haig’s Passchendaele offensive, the desperate British and French decided their only hope of victory was changing Pershing’s mind about amalgamating American troops into their armies. In a few months, the Germans would be able to marshal 250 divisions on the Western Front. To meet them, the Allies would be able to muster only 93 French and 54 British divisions, mostly understrength and composed of war-weary soldiers who had lost all confidence in victory.

  David Lloyd George, who was totally disgusted with Field Marshal Haig but did not have the nerve to fire him, because he feared a backlash from Lord Northcliffe and his fellow conservatives, began the new amalgamation campaign with an urgent cable to Colonel House in Washington. The prime minister warned that the situation on the Western Front was about to become “exceedingly serious.” the British cabinet wanted “an immediate decision” on putting regiments or companies of American troops into British units. Otherwise, England might be on the receiving end of the “knockout blow” the prime minister had repeatedly said he was determined to give Germany.73

  House, Wilson and Secretary of War Baker wavered toward surrender. They only wondered if the situation was as critical as Lloyd George claimed. Baker cabled Pershing that they would depend on his judgment—though they regarded “loss of identity of our forces” as secondary to meeting the emergency that seemed to be developing. Pershing promptly replied:“Do not think emergency exists that would warrant putting companies or battalions into British or French divisions.”74

  Thus did John J. Pershing of Laclede, Missouri, pit his judgment against the combined opinions of the commanders of the French and British armies, the prime minister of England, the premier of France, and their cabinets. Further complicating his woes was the appointment of Major General Tasker Bliss as the U.S. military adviser to the newly formed Allied Supreme War Council. Although they were ostensibly friends, Pershing’s opinion of Bliss was low. He had never seen action. His entire career had been in staff and administrative jobs.

  Meanwhile, Pershing found himself confronting the former chief of the British imperial staff, General William “Wully” Robertson. As part of Lloyd George’s attempt to get Field Marshal Haig’s appetite for slaughter under control, the prime minister had transferred Robertson to the Supreme War Council in Paris. There he approached Pershing with a proposition that might be called “partial amalgamation.” Robertson wanted to bring 150 American battalions (150,000 men) to France immediately for insertion into depleted British regiments. They would be taken from divisions that had only begu
n training in the United States and were not slated to arrive overseas until 1919.

  Pershing wavered, though he wondered where and how the British had suddenly found the ships to transport these men. In the previous amalgamation go-round, London said if the Americans insisted on transporting full divisions, they would have to find their own shipping—the British merchant marine could not handle the job. In mid-January 1918, Pershing cabled a cautious approval of Robertson’s proposal. But he insisted it should be a “temporary measure” that would not interfere with American plans to ship enough divisions to create an independent army.

  Getting tougher by the minute, Pershing demanded that Robertson give him a frank statement of Britain’s current military manpower. Pershing had picked up rumors that Lloyd George was holding large numbers of men in England to restrain Field Marshal Haig from another futile offensive.

  Robertson blustered and essentially told Pershing nothing. In fact, there were a staggering 1.5 million Tommies in England at this time, either trained or in training. The British also had another 1.2 million men fighting in other theaters to protect their empire.

  Meanwhile, the British worked overtime on General Bliss when he arrived in London. Lloyd George orated on the desperate need for these 150,000 men; he was followed by three other prominent British politicians who said the same thing in less dramatic tones. General Robertson chimed in, soldier to soldier. Obviously, the British saw this concession as a very large foot in the door that would enable them to lay their hands on hundreds of thousands more Americans for Haig’s mincemeat machine.“They all seem to be badly rattled,” Bliss reported to Washington.“They want men and they want them quickly.” Actually, it was Bliss who was rattled.75

  Robertson followed Bliss to Paris to cement the deal. There they found a different Pershing. He had been talking to the French, who had no desire to see the British get away with kidnapping the American army. They pooh-poohed the British claim of imminent outnumbering and said the Germans could not muster 250 divisions on the Western Front. A more probable figure was 190. Nor would the new arrivals be first-class troops. The Germans had been skimming the best soldiers from the Eastern Front for years. The shipping shortage was another British mirage. Thanks to the addition of the American navy, the Allies had enough warships to launch a convoy system, which was sharply curtailing losses to the Uboats.

  His jaw set, the AEF commander told Bliss and Robertson he had changed his mind. If the British could transport 150,000 unattached American infantrymen, they could also convey six complete divisions—and that was what Pershing now wanted. While Bliss tut-tutted in Robertson’s favor, Pershing said he would let the six divisions train with the British and if an emergency arose on the northern front, Haig could use them. Robertson stamped out in a fury and telegraphed Lloyd George for political reinforcements.

  In one of the most momentous confrontations of the war, Pershing and Bliss met without “Wully” to thrash out their differences. If Pershing had lost the argument, the history of the war would have been altered, almost certainly for the worse. Bliss tried the standard gambit of the staff officer—bucking the decision up the line. He said they should cable Secretary of War Baker their differing opinions and let him decide. Pershing went into his commander-in-chief mode.“Bliss, do you know what would happen if we should do that? We would both be relieved from further duty in France and that is exactly what we would deserve.”

  Bliss capitulated. “I think you are right and I shall back you up in the position you have taken,” he said.76

  Lloyd George, Robertson, Haig and a phalanx of other British generals and politicians tried to change Pershing’s mind. For two days they argued, not always in friendly tones. Pershing bluntly asked why they had so many men in Palestine if a real emergency existed on the Western Front. Would it do any good to beat the Turks if the Germans meanwhile occupied London? At one point, he bluntly accused Haig of double-talk, and the field marshal frigidly suggested that he spoke English better than Pershing. The baffled British turned to Bliss and were dismayed to hear him say: “Pershing will speak for us.”77

  Badly outmaneuvered by the general from the show-me state, the British had to settle for transporting the six complete divisions, a large step toward giving Pershing what they did not want him to have—an independent American army. Much later, Pershing’s chief of staff, James Harbord, said: “No greater responsibility [was] ever placed on an American commander than that which now rested on Pershing. He risked the chance of being cursed to the latest generation if, through his failure to cooperate, the war were lost.”78

  X

  Back in the United States, the stalled war effort, the savage infighting on Capitol Hill and anxiety about Russia’s defection stirred new war rage in superpatriots and government officials. President Wilson led the way in his Flag Day speech on June 14, 1917:“Woe to the man or group of men who seeks to stand in our way in this day of high resolution.” a few months later, Attorney General Thomas Gregory warned dissenters to expect no mercy “from an outraged people and an avenging government.” the New Republic printed a letter from a popular writer recommending that anyone who impeded America’s efficiency in “this righteous war” should be executed. The New York Times declared: “The patience of . . . the country has snapped.” 79

  One of the first victims of this deepening rage was movie producer Robert Goldstein, who had worked with D.W. Griffith on the controversial 1915 film Birth of a Nation. That movie portrayed black-white violence in the post–Civil War South in pro-Southern terms. President Wilson had screened the film in the White House and praised it, helping to make it a huge success. While the United States drifted toward war, Goldstein produced The Spirit of ’76, which attempted to apply Griffith’s epic treatment and strong opinions to the American Revolution. One of the most vivid scenes dramatized the 1778 Wyoming Valley massacre, in which British troops and Iroquois Indian allies laid waste the fertile settlement along the banks of the Susquehanna River, burning an estimated 1,000 homes and killing women and children as well as American militiamen. British soldiers were portrayed spearing babies on their bayonets, the way German uhlans had supposedly killed Belgian children, according to Wellington House and Lord Bryce.

  Goldstein opened The Spirit of ’76 in Chicago in the summer of 1917 and ran afoul of the local police censor. The producer went to court and successfully argued for his right to exhibit the film. But the bad publicity kept moviegoers away, and Goldstein headed for Los Angeles, where he made another try at attracting an audience after getting the approval of local censors by removing several scenes. In the exhibited film, he restored the scenes—and was promptly arrested.

  The film was seized and Goldstein was soon in court. The docket read United States vs the Motion Picture Film The Spirit of ’76. In the prevailing atmosphere of war rage, no one regarded this listing as even slightly ironic. The judge found Goldstein guilty of exhibiting “exaggerated scenes of British cruelty,” which might make people “question the good faith of our ally, Great Britain.” The court held that the film was likely to sow disloyalty and insubordination in the armed forces and thus violated the Espionage Act. He sentenced the stunned moviemaker to ten years in the federal penitentiary.80

  In Missouri, local vigilante groups began sending out white and blue and red cards to those suspected of dissent. The white card meant the person was under surveillance. The blue card meant he or she was in danger of arrest. The red card meant the Secret Service would soon be visiting. The State Council of Defense reported that so far, it had not been necessary to send a red card. The white and the blue induced silence. Other state councils issued booklets urging people to report anyone who offered “destructive criticism” of the government. In Hartford, the Connecticut Home Guard invaded a Socialist meeting and demanded a pledge of allegiance to the flag.“This city must be purified,” the Home Guard’s leader declared. The New York Tribune reported on January 22, 1918, that ten-year-olds were being organized in an
“Anti-Yellow Dog League” to detect disloyalty among their neighbors.81

  The Bolshevik seizure of power and the Russians’ defection from the war intensified American ire at critics of capitalism. Many Americans, including the editors of the New York Times, made little or no distinction between Lenin’s far left radicals and American Socialists. “Thanks to Russian Socialism,” the Times wrote on December 13, 1917,“the Germans now outnumber the French and British on the Western Front.”

  Part of the reason for the Times’s near hysteria was the New York mayoral election of 1917, which pitted an openly antiwar Socialist candidate, Morris Hillquit, against the incumbent mayor, John Purroy Mitchel, and the Democratic candidate, John F. Hylan. The Times endorsed Mitchel, a progressive reformer who was embarrassed by his Irish roots. To prove his patriotism, Mitchel used smear tactics against Hylan and Hillquit, calling them both pro-German (the way he had earlier smeared State Senator Robert F. Wagner). Hylan won easily, but Hillquit polled 142,178 votes, only a few thousand less than Mitchel’s total.82

  Elsewhere in the country, the campaign against the Socialists was conducted with a ruthlessness that went far beyond editorial condemnations. In South Dakota, when the state chairman of the Socialist Party said he was a conscientious objector, he was sentenced to twenty years in the state penitentiary. In Newport, Kentucky, Herbert S. Bigelow, a prominent Cincinnati minister and progressive reformer, was seized by masked men on his way to address a Socialist antiwar meeting. Driven into the countryside, Bigelow was stripped and lashed with a blacksnake whip. His head was shaved and he was drenched in crude oil. In Milwaukee, former Socialist congressman Victor Berger wrote in his newspaper, the Milwaukee Leader, that Congress was simply “a rubber stamp of Woodrow Wilson and the Wall Street clique.” Postmaster General Burleson banned the Leader from the mails—a tactic that had already silenced many other Socialist journals.83