March 19 was judgment day. By this time, Hitchcock later admitted, 23 Democratic senators had decided to vote with Lodge. If the minority leader could not hold the rest of his party in line, the treaty would win a two-thirds majority. Throughout the long day, Hitchcock worked on wavering senators. On the floor, several Democrats who had decided to disobey the president urged their confreres to follow their example. The most moving speech came from Senator Thomas Walsh of Montana, who had supported Wilson on virtually every issue since 1912. Walsh said he would cast his vote to ratify not because he approved of Lodge’s reservations but because a majority of his fellow senators did, and he accepted their judgment. But the overriding issue was the importance of the United States joining the League of Nations, where it would play a vital role in preserving the peace of the world.25
The first three Democratic senators to answer the roll call voted yea. Excitement mounted in the packed galleries. Was there going to be a mass defection of the Democrats? The fourth Democrat to respond, gray-haired Senator Charles Culberson of Texas, hesitated for a long moment, his face revealing not a little uncertainty. Then he voted nay. It was the signal the southern Democrats needed. They began adding nays in obedience to their fellow Southerner in the White House.
Another tense moment came when Gilbert Hitchcock voted. A yea from him—which was what he wanted to say—would have been an even stronger signal to waverers. But Hitchcock remained the sort of politician who can sometimes be the noblest of men, and at other times the saddest, a loyal follower. He voted nay with the president. Years later he would confide to a friend that it was the greatest mistake of his life.26
In the end, 49 senators voted yea, and 35 voted nay. That was 7 votes short of a two-thirds majority. Among the Democrats, 21 had voted their consciences and defied the president. But 23 Democrats had remained obedient to Wilson’s orders and they were joined by 12 irreconcilables, who would have voted nay no matter what Wilson or Lodge said or did not say. There is little doubt that without Wilson’s savage letter of March 8, the treaty and the covenant would have been ratified. But that legislative victory would not have made the treaty a living thing. The deluded man in the White House would have almost certainly have refused to sign it—and still demanded his great and solemn referendum.27
IX
About 16,000 men remained on duty in the American sector of the Rhine bridgehead—a mere ghost of the once stupendous AEF. The Americans continued to get on well with the Germans in their sector. The same could not be said of relations in the British and French sectors. In the British sector, German civilians were required to remove their hats when they met a British officer on the street. The Germans soon stopped wearing hats, no matter how low the temperature dropped. The British also imposed draconian controls on local newspapers and regularly opened personal mail. A curfew required all Germans to be in their homes by 7 P.M. every night. All clocks were set for Greenwich Mean Time—as if the British sector were part of the United Kingdom.
The French were even more unpleasant. They published a list of 180 books that were banned and regularly suspended newspapers for comments regarded as hostile to the occupation or the Treaty of Versailles. French officers frequently lashed Germans in the face with their riding crops when they failed to get off the sidewalks quickly enough to permit them to stride past. Even more infuriating from the German point of view was the composition of the French occupation force. Some 25,000 were colonial troops from Senegal and French Morocco. These black and brown-skinned soldiers were selected, the Germans maintained, to humiliate them and violate their women. In no time, newspapers in the rest of Germany whipped up a frenzy about mass rapes of German women that more than matched Wellington House’s stories about 1914 Belgium.
On February 1920, while the Americans argued over the treaty and the league, the Allies added to the Germans’ rage by abruptly demanding the surrender of the kaiser, his three sons and some eight hundred German generals, admirals and government officials for trial on unspecified charges of war crimes. Articles 227–230 of the treaty entitled them to make this demand. Massive demonstrations swept all parts of Germany. The Netherlands declared it would not surrender the kaiser and his family to anyone. The German army let it be known that it was prepared to fight to the last man to resist this ultimate Schmachparagraph. They also hinted strongly that they would seek an alliance with the Russian Red Army to resist an attempt to seize these men by force.
The German government, realizing it would be out of business in twenty-four hours if it surrendered anyone, stalled. Weeks went by without a sign of British or French mobilization. Realizing the Allies had no stomach for an invasion of Germany to enforce their demand, the Weimar government offered to try certain officers on the list in German courts. The Allies lamely accepted this compromise. Sixteen men were eventually tried; six were convicted. They received trivial sentences.
In the midst of this uproar, Adolf Hitler and his supporters reorganized their political movement and gave it a new name, the German National Socialist Workers Party (in German, Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeitpartei). Focusing their wrath on the Treaty of Versailles and the men who signed it, the party’s slogans became “Down with the November Criminals!” and “Down with the Marxist-Jewish Betrayers of the Fatherland!” the streetcorner pronunciation of the first word in the new name soon had everyone calling these angry power seekers the Nazi Party.28
X
In the United States, public enthusiasm for the treaty and the league sank rapidly after the second failure to ratify. Popular frustration bred an equally negative attitude toward the entire war. The ongoing chaos in Europe did little to alter this the-hell-with-it mood. The Los Angeles Times editors summed up the prevailing atmosphere: “It is quite impossible to tell what the war made the world safe for.”29
American companies were clamoring for some sort of closure, so they could begin doing business with Germany, once one of America’s most important trading partners. The Republican leadership decided the best answer was a resolution declaring the war was over. The United States had entered the war by a majority vote in Congress. Why not end it the same way? If Wilson vetoed it, he would further antagonize the already alienated voters.
The election of 1920 was already on everyone’s mind. When the peace resolution was introduced in the House on March 19, 1920, the Democrats reacted with raging speeches that denounced the idea as an underhanded attempt to embarrass the president—which was about 50 percent of the truth. One of the war’s chief foes, Congressman Claude Kitchin of North Carolina, went into a denunciatory spasm and suffered a cerebral thrombosis that left him almost as paralyzed as Woodrow Wilson. But the resolution cleared the House by almost 100 votes.
In the Senate, Henry Cabot Lodge and Philander Knox added a very senatorial second thought. They resolved that the war was over, but that the United States retained all the advantages accruing to it under the Treaty of Versailles. This triggered a spate of Democratic speeches castigating this idea as dishonorable and cowardly. The antis tried to portray the move as the equivalent of a separate peace that left the Allies in a lurch. In the light of Wilson’s attacks on the French and British as militarists and imperialists, the argument fell flat. The Republicans replied that the only war still in progress was the one Woodrow Wilson was waging “against American citizens and American industry.”30
Wilson vetoed the joint resolution, calling it “an ineffaceable stain upon the gallantry and honor of the United States. ” the Republicans failed to muster a two-thirds majority to override it; the desperate Democrats voted as a bloc in both houses. Without an issue besides the treaty, the Democrats clung to Wilson, even though many feared he was trying to walk on water wearing the political equivalent of concrete shoes. The Republicans ended the day all smiles. They sensed the mounting disillusion of the American people with Woodrow Wilson’s rhetoric. The next scene in the drama of the great and solemn referendum now shifted from Congress to the national convent
ions.
XI
One man who watched this uproar with more than passing interest was newly promoted general of the armies John J. Pershing. The title was largely honorific, but it had a very satisfying ring to it. Soon after the armistice, various VIPs nominated the AEF’s commander for president. When Pershing admitted he was a Republican, the vice president of the National Republican League thought he was a cinch to repeat General Ulysses S. Grant’s performance in 1868. One former senator and old friend urged both political parties to nominate Pershing on a national reconciliation ticket in 1920.
Pershing’s father-in-law, Senator Francis Warren, advised him to deny any ambition to be president. That was the best way to stir a groundswell. Besides, there was another general running hard for the White House: Leonard Wood. He was portraying himself as Theodore Roosevelt’s heir, the man whose bold embrace of preparedness had helped win the war. By this time, Pershing detested Wood as a loudmouth and grandstander and studiously avoided imitating him.31
Pershing’s former aide, George Patton, now a tanker with almost no tanks (the army had dissolved the Tank Corps, in effect telling the tankers to rejoin the infantry or the cavalry) worried about Wood’s candidacy. If he won, Pershing “would command the island of Guam.” Pershing told him not to worry—a Wood victory would produce his instant resignation from the army.
Pershing went to some lengths to deny he was a candidate. He told one lady friend that he would be a “damned fool” to run for president. But Pershing was human. He thought he had won the war and could not resist comparing himself to other generals who had reached the White House. Besides Grant, there was Zachary Taylor, thanks to the Mexican War, and Andrew Jackson, thanks to the War of 1812. Not to mention George Washington, whose victory in the War for Independence made him the inevitable first president.32
Pershing did not object when old friends from Nebraska, which he considered his home state, formed a Pershing for President Club and began touting him as the state’s favorite son. For the first few months of 1920, Pershing acted like a candidate, though he never said a word about running. Secretary of War Baker, anxious to avoid a clash between Pershing and the incumbent chief of staff, acerbic Peyton March, sent the general of the armies on a nationwide inspection tour.
Pershing brought along many of his AEF favorites, and the trip took on the character of a royal progress. In thirty-two states, local VIPs held receptions and banquets to welcome the conquering heroes. Pershing turned on the charm, wowing women as usual, kissing children and greeting AEF veterans with hearty handshakes. In speeches, he hailed American patriotism and urged voters to support universal military training so America would never again be caught unprepared to fight a war.33
Unfortunately, the general had liabilities that Woodrow Wilson’s performance in the White House slowly turned into impediments. Pershing was Wilson’s appointee, and the voters’ disenchantment with Wilson soon extended to his war. Much if not most of this disenchantment emanated from Republicans. A Pershing nomination could be viewed as an oblique endorsement of Wilson’s war. By 1920, this was something most Republicans were unwilling to do. Nor was the push for universal military training the best political move in the prevailing atmosphere of disillusion with the war.
On April 20, Nebraska held a Republican presidential primary. Pershing’s friends launched a vigorous campaign, replete with mailings, admiring articles by selected reporters and heavy newspaper advertising. The other candidates were Senator Hiram Johnson of California, one of the liberal irreconcilables, and General Leonard Wood. Pershing finished third. In Michigan, in a field of five candidates, he finished a dismal fifth.34
Undaunted, his friends persuaded the general to make a statement at a Washington, D.C., reception in his honor. Pershing said he was not seeking the nation’s highest office, but would not “decline to serve” if the people summoned him. The Washington Post made it a page-one headline. A few days later, the Literary Digest reported a nationwide poll on eight possible Republican nominees. Pershing ranked eighth. A magazine commissioned a writer to find out why this was happening. He reported a widespread conviction among politicians who had spent some time in France that most of the 2 million doughboys in the AEF would vote no on the proposal to put Pershing in the White House.35
Still, the general refused to abandon his by now almost clandestine candidacy. As the Republican convention loomed, he wrote his old friend Charles Dawes, urging him to make sure someone would be on hand to push his name to the front if the delegates deadlocked. It was a hope almost as forlorn as Woodrow Wilson’s great and solemn referendum.36
XII
The Republicans convened first, on June 8, in Chicago. They were confident but by no means complacent, because they confronted another potentially disastrous split in their ranks. Most of the League of Nations irreconcilables in the Senate were Republicans, and they were led by two hotheads, Hiram Johnson and William Borah. They had already served notice that they might bolt if the idea of ratifying the treaty with the Lodge reservations appeared in the party’s platform. The mere suggestion of a replay of the 1912 election gave everyone nervous tremors. Johnson had run for vice president with Theodore Roosevelt on the Progressive Party ticket in that ruinous year.
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge was chosen temporary chairman, a tribute to the parliamentary skills he had displayed in the Senate, holding the fractious GOP majority together. Lodge was determined to repeat the performance in Chicago. This meant a platform that did not upset the irreconcilables, but still paid some sort of lip service to the idea of a league of nations—if not to Wilson’s version. After several tries, Lodge and Elihu Root, once more demonstrating his lawyerly brilliance, came up with a plank aimed at being all things to all men—and women, who were voting for the first time. In 1919, the Republican-led Congress had passed the Nineteenth Amendment, giving women the vote, and the necessary number of states had swiftly ratified it.
The plank praised the idea of some sort of international association “to preserve the peace of the world.” This association should be based on “international justice” and should “provide methods” that would promote an “instant and general international conference” when war threatened the world. Former Secretary of State Robert Lansing called it “about as near a void as science permits.” Nevertheless, given the situation inside the Republican Party, it was a political masterpiece.37
Lodge’s keynote address more than made up for the lack of specifics in the Republican platform. It was a relentless attack on Woodrow Wilson, the peace treaty and his version of the League of Nations. There were artful taunts, such as noting that after keeping America out of war when America wanted to fight, Wilson had now “kept us out of peace.” He praised the Republican senators who had defended America’s sovereignty from Wilson’s utopian internationalism. At the same time, Lodge insisted that the United States had a role to play in the world, and would play it responsibly, as it did in 1917, when the Republican Party heartily affirmed the decision to throw “our great weight into the wavering scale.”38
Lodge’s speech was considered a huge success. He had proved himself adept at both managing his party and catching the national mood of disillusion with Wilson. His estimate of that mood also led him to collaborate in choosing a candidate that could be artfully guided, if not controlled, in a campaign that caught the same mood. Theodore Roosevelt’s death had left a void in the Republicans’ leadership. Lodge and Root were too old to seek the presidency. None of the leading candidates, Senator Hiram Johnson, Governor Leonard Wood or Illinois Governor Frank Lowden, commanded a majority of the party. After ten deadlocked ballots, George Harvey, still at his favorite sport of president-making in spite of his disappointment with Woodrow Wilson, called bosses and congressional leaders to his hotel suite. Together they decided that Senator Warren Harding of Ohio was the perfect compromise. He had nothing negative on his record, because he had no record worth mentioning. He had no enemies, because he had no st
rong opinions on the issues.
In 1920, most people saw Harding as another William McKinley, a kindly, earnest spokesman from the American heartland. The chief motivation for choosing him was a reaction against Wilson’s presidential style. Lodge and other leading Republicans thought the American people were tired of being lectured, exhorted and summoned to save the world. “Harding will not try to be an autocrat but will do his best to carry on the government in the old and accepted Constitutional ways,” Lodge told Owen Wister, the novelist and close friend of the late Theodore Roosevelt. By “the old and accepted ways,” Lodge meant a president who was inclined to listen to the accumulated wisdom of Congress.39
For vice president, the Republicans chose Governor Calvin Coolidge of Massachusetts, the man who broke the Boston police walkout with his blunt denunciation of striking against the public safety. He too represented a reaction against the turmoil the war had created in the United States—in his case against the backwash of the Bolshevik revolution and its rhetoric about power to the people. The Democrats, traditional friends of the working class, could only wince at the way labor issues had become a weapon in the GOP’s hands.
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