XI
The broken man who left the White House in 1921 spent the next three years in a comfortable brick and limestone house on tree-lined suburban-like S Street in Washington, D.C., brooding over his defeat. Wilson never admitted making any mistakes in Paris or anywhere else. His mood oscillated between self-pity and consuming bitterness, mixed with occasional delusions of power.
“What else could I have done?” he cried, defending his conduct in Paris during an interview with historian William E. Dodd.“I had to negotiate with my back to the wall. Men thought I had all the power. Would to God I had had such power.” worst of all, he added, was the way the “great people at home” criticized him.22
Around the same time, a devoted admirer, Edward Bok, the influential editor of the Ladies Home Journal, called on the Wilsons. Bok began a sympathetic discussion of the defeat of the treaty and the league. Wilson erupted in a near frenzy, damning Lloyd George and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge in sulfurous language that shocked the highly proper Bok. In the midst of the tirade, the former president slumped in his wheelchair in the throes of a cerebral spasm. For fifty minutes there was serious concern that he might die.23
Wilson clung fiercely to shreds of his presidential power, insisting that he was still the leader of the Democratic Party. When old Senate enemies such as James Reed of Missouri ran for reelection, Wilson called them vicious names and recommended their defeat. He tried to exercise a veto power over the Democratic nominee for president in 1924, publicly rebuking Tumulty for implying he supported James A. Cox.24
In 1921 the former president persuaded no less a ghost writer than Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis to help him draw up “The Document,” a statement of principles for the Democratic Party, binding it inextricably to the League of Nations. It gradually became apparent that Wilson planned to use the statement to launch himself as the candidate for the nomination in 1924. He still believed triumph and ultimate vindication were within his grasp.
When Wilson’s associates from the Paris Peace Conference visited the United States, they included a stop at S Street in their itineraries. Lloyd George, dismissed as prime minister by the ruling conservatives, called in 1923 and told the press, with his usual indifference to the truth, that he was amazed by Wilson’s alert mind and intense interest in European affairs. In private, the former prime minister deplored Wilson’s vituperative comments on the French and the Italians. Wilson had called French president Raymond Poincaré “a cheat and a liar,” repeating the phrase “with fierce emphasis.” For good measure, Wilson had thrown in a denunciation of Calvin Coolidge, who had just become president after Warren Harding’s sudden death, calling him a nobody. Lloyd George concluded that illness had not changed Wilson much.“Here was the old Wilson with his personal hatreds unquenched right to the end of his journey.”25
Nor did Edith Galt Wilson’s animosities subside. When her husband died on February 3, 1924, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge was chosen by the Senate to head a delegation to the funeral. Edith wrote the senator a letter, telling him not to come because his presence would be “embarrassing to you and unwelcome to me.” also barred by Edith’s order was the man who had done so much to create Woodrow Wilson the world-reforming politician, Colonel Edward Mandell House. Another victim of her pettiness, the ever-faithful Tumulty, was admitted only at the insistence of William Gibbs McAdoo, via a last-minute telephone call.
XII
Beyond and beneath weighty questions of foreign policy and Woodrow Wilson’s hard fate lie the battles the men and women of 1917–1918 fought in France. Whether one considers the war foolish or wise, they dignified it, even sanctified it, with their courage. As a historian I felt obligated to visit the places where so many died—Cantigny, Soissons, Belleau Wood, Saint-Mihiel—and, above all, the Argonne. I spent five days traversing the great valley, imagining it with German shells raining down from three sides.
I labored to the summit of Montfaucon, where a statue of a woman symbolizing liberty stands on a lofty pillar, surveying the rugged rolling terrain, dotted with woods and slashed by ravines, over which the Germans and the Americans fought for seven savage weeks. On another day, I prowled the shallow still-visible trenches in the dim heart of the Argonne forest, where Charles Whittlesey and his Lost Battalion fought so stubbornly. On yet another day, I stood on a road with the forest looming in the distance and pondered a metal pylon engraved with hundreds of names of the First Division’s dead. More than once I remembered Shirley Millard’s description of the cocky doughboys in their tilted helmets going to their first battle calling, Hey, listen, where is all this trouble anyway?
I also visited cemeteries in the Argonne and Champagne, where mute rows of white Carrara marble crosses testify to a soldier’s ideals, courage and brotherhood. Each cross was a wound torn in the lives of wives, sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, sisters or brothers. Did these grieving survivors think it was worth the sacrifice of these beloved dead to procure Woodrow Wilson a seat at the Paris peace table? Somehow, I doubted it. On the contrary, it would not be surprising if many of them thought it was only right that the president too was called upon to pay a heavy price.
General John J. Pershing’s last public statement in France was on Memorial Day, 1919, at the Argonne Cemetery, where 14,200 Americans still lie. It was the best speech this laconic soldier ever gave. The closing words evoked echoes of another orator on a battlefield in Pennsylvania, trying to make sense out of an earlier war. But this was a soldier’s view of a citizen’s responsibilities.
It is not for us to proclaim what they did, their silence speaks more eloquently than words, but it is for us to uphold the conception of duty, honor and country for which they fought and for which they died. It is for the living to carry forward their purpose and make fruitful their sacrifice.
And now, Dear Comrades, Farewell. Here, under the clear skies, on the green hillsides and amid the flowering fields of France, in the quiet hush of peace, we leave you forever in God’s keeping.26
XIII
Sobering and saddening as the cemeteries were, the most heartbreaking moment of my historical journey to France was my visit to Chamery, the little village in Champagne where Quentin Roosevelt spun into the earth with German bullets in his brain. Arriving on a gray January day, I spent almost an hour searching for the winding road, barely wide enough for a single car, that led to the cluster of stone houses. Around the village spread rolling farm country, almost as treeless and desolate as Kansas in winter.
Quentin no longer lies in the solitary grave outside the village, although the site is marked by a stone. After World War II, his family moved his body to the Normandy Cemetery to lie beside his brother Ted, who died shortly after he led a brigade of the Fourth Division ashore on D Day in 1944. There is a memorial fountain to Quentin in the center of Chamery. Above the spout, which is a bronze head of a lion, is an inscription in French stating Quentin’s age and the date he was shot down. Beneath the lion’s head is a line from an article Theodore Roosevelt wrote after Quentin’s death:“Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.”
It was bitterly cold on the day of my visit. The village was deserted. The only sound was the water gushing from the lion’s mouth into the fountain’s trough. Nearby were bales of hay and a tractor and part of a plow. Across the road a big black dog sat on a barrel, studying the American intruder. It was all very ordinary—until Flora Payne Whitney whispered, Oh Quentin, why does it all have to be? It isn’t possible that it can be for any ultimate good that all the best people in the world have to be killed.
I could only shake my head and hope the men and women who guide America’s covenant with power in the world of the twenty-first century have the courage and the wisdom to manage our country’s often perplexing blend of idealism and realism. God helping us, we now can do no other.
NOTES
Chapter 1: War Week
1. Arthur S. Link,Woodrow Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace (Princeton, 1965), 423.
2. Barbara W. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (New York, 1966), 6–7, 183.
3. Cass W. Gilbert, New York Tribune, April 2, 1917.
4. James Kerney, The Political Education of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1926), 12. Kerney was editor of the Trenton Evening Times.
5. Henry Wilkinson Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years (Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 328–329. James Kerney said Grover Cleveland predicted Wilson would go far in politics, but when he had finished, there would be very little left of the Democratic Party.
6. Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George,Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York, 1964), 51; and Robert Alex Bober, Young Woodrow Wilson and the Search for Immortality, Ph. D. dissertation (Case Western Reserve University, 1980), iv, 202.
7. Link, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 394; and Washington Evening Post, April 2, 1917.
8. Link, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 420–421.
9. Phyllis Lee Levin, Edith and Woodrow: The Wilson White House (New York, 2001), 177.
10. John S. Heaton, Cobb of the World (New York, 1924), 268–270.
11. Arthur S. Link,“That Cobb Interview,” Journal of American History 72 (June 1985): 7–17.
12. Jerold S. Auerbach, “Woodrow Wilson’s ‘Prediction’ to Frank Cobb: Words Historians Should Doubt Ever Got Spoken,” Journal of American History 54 (December 1967): 608–617.
13. See Chapter 3, pp. 86–89, 98–100.
14. Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, vol. 6, Facing War, 1915–1917 (New York, 1937), 505–507. Arthur S. Link was the first to note Cobb’s absence from the White House logs on April 1. But he assigned the interview to mid-March, and subsequent biographers have followed him. Baker cited two other Wilson associates who recollected similar prophecies by the president. These recollections were also long after the fact and suspect for some of the reasons outlined in the text. In his history of the decision for war, Patrick Devlin, Too Proud to Fight: Woodrow Wilson’s Neutrality (New York, 1975), 681, was inclined to think Wilson expressed sentiments of regret but conceded that Cobb’s version of the interview was almost certainly “touched up.”
15. W.A. Swanberg, Pulitzer (New York, 1967), 254–255.
16. Walter Millis, Road to War: America 1914–1917 (New York, 1935), 432–433; and New York Times, March 22, 1917.
17. Charles Seymour, ed., Intimate Papers of Colonel House (New York, 1926), 2:467–468; and Link, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 422.
18. Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York, 1980), 108, quotes Lippmann’s assessment of the House-Wilson relationship:“He was able to serve Wilson because he was in almost every respect the complement of Wilson.” Lippmann saw House constantly in 1916–1917 and met and corresponded with Wilson.
19. Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Academic Years, 263. Also see George and George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, which explores the House-Wilson relationship in depth.
20. Lester D. Langley, The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century (Athens, Ga., 1982), 76–77, 80–83, 85–88, 92.
21. Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era (New York, 1954), 122–124; and Nancy Mitchell, The Danger of Dreams: Weltpolitik Versus Protective Imperialism, Ph. D. dissertation (Johns Hopkins University, 1993), 295.
22. John S.D. Eisenhower, Intervention! The United States and the Mexican Revolution, 1913–17 (New York, 1993), 165–241.
23. Seward W. Livermore, Politics Is Adjourned: Woodrow Wilson and the War Congress, 1916–18 (Middletown, Conn., 1966), 10, 14.
24. Baker,Woodrow Wilson, vol. 6, Facing War, 508.
25. Seymour, Intimate Papers of Colonel House, 2:468–470; and Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton, 1981), 164–167. Wilson suffered less serious episodes in 1896 and 1904, which temporarily deprived him of the use of his right hand (Weinstein, Medical and Psychological Biography, 141–142, 158). Weinstein and others called these traumas strokes. But other physicians, mostly notably Michael F. Marmor, an ophthalmologist at the Stanford University Medical School, have disagreed (Robert H. Ferrell,Woodrow Wilson and World War I [New York, 1985], 273–274).
26. Ernest R. Dupuy, Five Days to War: April 2–6, 1917 (Harrisburg, Pa., 1967), 57–58.
27. Millis, Road to War, 433.
28. Ibid., 434.
29. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 67.
30. William A. DeGregorio, The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents (New York, 1989), 419.
31. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 67–68.
32. John Tebbel and Sarah Miles Watts, The Press and the Presidency (New York, 1985), 379.
33. New York Times, April 3, 1917.
34. Ibid.; and Millis, The Road to War, 438.
35. Millis, The Road to War, 439–440.
36. Arthur S. Link et al., eds., The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 vols. (Princeton, 1966–1994), 41:519–527 (hereafter cited as PWW).
37. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 71–72.
38. Edward Mandell House Diary, April 2, 1917, Edward M. House Papers, Yale University Library.
39. Joseph P. Tumulty,Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him (Garden City, N. Y., 1921), 256, 259. Link, Campaigns for Progessivism and Peace, 427, called the scene preposterous.
40. Eleanor Wilson McAdoo, in collaboration with Margaret Gaffey, The Woodrow Wilsons (New York, 1937), 139.
41. John Morton Blum, Joe Tumulty and the Wilson Era (Boston, 1951), 120–122.
42. Levin, Edith and Woodrow, 75.
43. Ibid., 156.
44. Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War (New York, 1970), 31.
45. Scott Meredith, George S. Kaufman and His Friends (New York, 1974), 402.
46. Millis, Road to War, 442; and Dupuy, Five Days to War, 75–77.
47. Richard O’Connor, The German-Americans (New York, 1986), 406.
48. Link, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 428.
49. Steel,Walter Lippmann, 112–113.
50. David McCullough, Truman (New York, 1992), 104.
51. Link, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 362; Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., Senate, April 13, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 342; and H.C. Peterson, Propaganda for War (Port Washington, N.Y., 1939), 22.
52. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 85–89.
53. Nancy C. Unger, Fighting Bob La Follette, the Righteous Reformer (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), 243–244.
54. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 100.
55. D. Clayton James, The Years of MacArthur, vol. 1, 1880–1941 (New York, 1970), 132.
56. Kenneth S. Davis, FDR:The Beckoning of Destiny, 1882–1928 (New York, 1971), 446.
57. Geoffrey C. Ward, A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt (New York, 1989), 339.
58. Ibid., 347.
59. New York Tribune, April 4, 1917.
60. Millis, Road to War, 445–446; and San Francisco Chronicle, April 15, 1917.
61. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 111.
62. Belle Case and Fola La Follette, Robert M. La Follette, 2 vols. (New York, 1953), 620.
63. Ibid., 650.
64. Millis, Road to War, 447.
65. Ibid., 448.
66. Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., Senate, April 4, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 208–209.
67. Ibid., 210.
68. Ibid., 213–214.
69. Case and La Follette, Robert M. La Follette, 655.
70. Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., Senate, April 4, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 220.
71. Ibid., 225–226; and Case and La Follette, Robert M. La Follette, 658–659.
72. Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., Senate, April 4, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 229.
73. Ibid., 234.
74. Unger, Fighting Bob La Follette, 249.
75. Millis, Road to War, 452; Unger, Fighting Bob La Follette, 249; and Dupuy, Five Days to War, 125.
76. Case and La Follet
te, Robert M. La Follette, 666.
77. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 132.
78. Ibid., 129, 131.
79. Millis, Road to War, 453–454.
80. Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., House, April 5, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 327.
81. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 137.
82. Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., House, April 5, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 332.
83. Ibid.
84. Dupuy, Five Days to War, 137.
85. Ibid., 138.
86. Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., House, April 5, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 341–343.
87. Millis, Road to War, 454–456.
88. Ibid., 458–459.
Chapter 2: Big Lies, Greed and Other Hoary Animals
1. Link, Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 429n, cites hundreds of letters in the Claude Kitchin Papers at the University of North Carolina revealing an “overwhelming sentiment” against the war. Along with the thousands of letters La Follette and other senators and members of Congress received, these letters constitute evidence that opposition to the war was still “very wide and deep” after Wilson’s speech. For more recent scholarship on this relatively uninvestigated subject, see Jeannette Keith, “The Politics of Southern Draft Resistance, 1917–18: Class, Race and Conscription in the Rural South,” Journal of American History 87, no. 4 (March 2001): 1335–1361. Keith concludes: “The concept of overwhelming public support for the war becomes less and less tenable.”
2. Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram, 10–11.
3. Stewart Halsey Ross, Propaganda for War: How the United States Was Conditioned to Fight the Great War of 1914–1918 (Jefferson, N. C., 1996), 27–28.
4. Congressional Record, 65th Congr., 1st sess., House, April 5, 1917, 55, pt. 1, 342.
5. Ross, Propaganda for War, 30, 38; Cate Haste, Keep the Home Fires Burning: Propaganda in the Great War (London, 1977), 25; and Peter T. Scott, “The Secrets of Wellington House: British Covert Propaganda, 1914–18,” Antiquarian Book Monthly, August-September 1996, 12–15, and October–September 1996, 14–19.
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