Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  The threatened strike posed only one part of the railroad problem. Management, business groups, and conservatives were demanding an end to wartime control of the lines, while railroad unions, organized labor in general, and progressives were demanding continued government control under the Plumb plan, named after the rail unions’ lawyer, Glenn Plumb. The night after his speech to Congress, Wilson read aloud a summary of the Plumb plan to Edith and Stockton Axson, who was visiting. “There is nothing radical in this,” Axson recalled him saying. “It is a proposition for serious consideration.” Another evening, while sitting on the rear portico of the White House, Wilson said he did not want to run for a third term, and as possible successors he mentioned Newton Baker, David Houston, and McAdoo. He did not think Baker and Houston were abler than McAdoo, but they were “both reflective men—and I am not sure Mac is a reflective man.” He linked having a “reflective” successor to his openness to the Plumb plan. He believed that a measure of socialism was necessary to ensure opportunity for individuals: “I am perfectly sure that the state has got to control everything that everybody needs and uses,” and the next president must therefore be “a man who reflects long and deeply on these complicated relationships of our time.”12 Wilson might have said he did not want a third term, but he sounded as if he was leaving the door open to the possibility.

  Ironically, he had first expressed those views about the need for a greater government role in the economy at the same time that his administration was cracking down on socialists and other radicals for opposing the war. Now he was expressing these views again, after he had proposed releasing those dissidents from prison with the signing of the peace treaty. This issue had not faded away since his return home. During the summer of 1919, such prominent figures as the novelist Upton Sinclair and the attorney Clarence Darrow wrote to urge the president to pardon Eugene Debs, but no supplicant on behalf of imprisoned dissenters carried greater weight with the president than John Nevin Sayre, the Episcopal clergyman who had performed the wedding ceremony in the White House between his brother Frank and Jessie Wilson. At the beginning of August, Sayre wrote on behalf of the National Civil Liberties Board to ask for release of all persons convicted under the Espionage Act as a gesture of healing and reconciliation. Forwarding Sayre’s letter to Attorney General Palmer, Wilson said he knew and trusted Sayre, and he affirmed, “I am anxious to act at an early date.” Palmer had already recommended against releasing Debs and others until the peace treaty was ratified, and he never responded directly to the president—possibly because he was already hatching his plans for an anti-radical crusade. Failure to move now toward freeing Debs and other dissenters was a fateful missed opportunity.13

  Another missed opportunity was the failure to deal with reservations to the peace treaty. The Republican senators who came to the White House all told Wilson that reservations were essential to Senate approval. Likewise, Taft impulsively—and, in the view of some, unwisely—broke the LEP’s united front in favor of outright ratification of the treaty and proposed some fairly mild reservations. Hughes also put forward some of his own, which were more stringent than Taft’s but less stringent than the ones Root had earlier proposed.14 Tumulty, McAdoo, and Lamont recommended that Wilson regain the initiative by speaking out about acceptable reservations to the Monroe Doctrine, Shantung, and Article X. At mid-July, Sir William Wiseman reported to the Foreign Office that the president admitted he might have to agree to some reservations. Yet Wilson waited until the beginning of August, when he fretted for a week about what to say in a public statement, and finally let Tumulty draft most of it for him. Such fretting, like his difficulty in writing speeches, was out of character for him and also probably stemmed from his deteriorating health. Where Wilson had joked in the past about his “single-track mind” while easily attending to multiple tasks, he now seemed to have real problems dealing with domestic and foreign policy at the same time.

  At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the Senate appeared to be in no hurry to deal with the peace treaty. In July, the only notable speech on the floor came from Norris, who spent three days denouncing the settlement as infected with “the germs of wickedness and injustice” and heaping special scorn on the Shantung cession and Japan’s treatment of Korea. The Foreign Relations Committee took its time too. In his capacity as Republican leader, Lodge had packed the committee at the beginning of this Congress with other critics and opponents of the League, who now included Borah, Brandegee, Albert Fall of New Mexico, Hiram Johnson, and Knox. In his capacity as chairman, Lodge ruled that the treaty must be read aloud to the committee, which consumed several days, and then he got a majority to request all confidential documents from the negotiations and to block appointments to the Reparations Commission set up under the treaty.15

  Lodge did not begin to hold hearings in the committee’s ornate room in the Capitol until August. The first witnesses were members of the delegation to the peace conference, including Lansing, who laconically and unemotionally underwent five hours of mostly hostile interrogation. It was a “disagreeable experience,” Lansing noted, but mainly because “I felt I could not tell the truth as to the negotiations”—meaning his disagreements with Wilson, especially about the League, which he disliked. Hiram Johnson told his sons that the secretary’s performance was “the picture of indifference, vacillation, hesitation and downright ignorance.” Lodge found Lansing’s performance pathetic and told his daughter, “One of the Democratic Senators turned around to me and said, ‘What do you suppose Lansing did while he was in Paris?’” The person the committee most wanted to hear from was the president, and Lansing’s uninformative testimony only whetted their appetite to grill him.16

  On his side, Wilson was wrestling with how to deal not only with the Foreign Relations Committee but also, apparently more promisingly, with a group of nine Republican senators known as mild reservationists, who supported the League but wanted some safeguards and needed political cover for siding with a Democratic president. Two LEP representatives, A. Lawrence Lowell and Oscar Straus, who had served as secretary of commerce and labor under Roosevelt, met with Wilson on August 6 and found him willing to get in touch with the milder reservationists but unsure about the best way to go about it. McAdoo later recalled suggesting compromise on reservations to his father-in-law at this time and getting the answer, “Mac, I am willing to compromise on anything but the Ten Commandments.” But Wilson also feared that willingness to accept mild reservations might open the door to stronger and more objectionable ones.17

  On Capitol Hill, prospects for bipartisan cooperation briefly looked bright. Some mild reservationists were reaching across party lines, although the New York World reported that “a get-together movement” between them and Democrats was “still in the conference stage.” Key Pittman of Nevada, a Democrat, later recalled that he felt confident about reaching an agreement. That confidence was excessive. The mild reservationists were divided among themselves; a few blew hot and cold about how far to go in accommodating the Democrats, and some of them supported reservations that were not so mild. At the middle of August, Lodge enlisted Root’s help in trying to bring two of them, LeBaron Colt of Rhode Island and Frank Kellogg of Minnesota, back into line behind “a real reservation” on Article X—one that would limit American commitments to enforce collective security actions by the League Council. In the end, those two senators and all but one of the mild reservationists—McCumber of North Dakota—would support Lodge’s position on Article X and the whole treaty.18

  Wilson dashed these hopes for bipartisan cooperation. On August 11, when Lansing also suggested an accommodation with the mild reservationists, the president “would have none of it, and his face took on that stubborn and pugnacious expression which comes whenever anyone tells him a fact which interferes with his plans.”19 Four days later, Wilson authorized the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, Gilbert Hitchcock, to tell the press that the president did not believe any compromise shoul
d be discussed or negotiated yet, although one might be eventually. Wilson’s reasons for this intransigent turn evidently sprang from the fear he expressed to McAdoo about opening the door to more stringent reservations. He was making a serious mistake: an accommodation with the mild reservationists could have strengthened his hand with the Senate and put pressure on other Republicans. This was another significant missed opportunity, and the likeliest explanation lay once again in the effects of fatigue and nervous strain. Also, these overtures came just when Wilson had to turn from dealing with the Senate over the treaty to address domestic problems. His mind did appear to be having trouble shifting gears.

  Curiously, no howl of protest greeted Wilson’s rejection of reservations. The silence in the Capitol seems to have stemmed from distraction by the anticipation of an encounter that dominated almost everyone’s attention: Wilson’s upcoming meeting with the Foreign Relations Committee, which the president had authorized Hitchcock to announce. Previously, he had planned to release his statement on reservations as a public letter to Lodge. Instead, showing a flash of his old boldness, he decided to read the statement to the committee and submit to questioning by its members. This was a historic break with precedent and with the constitutional separation of powers. The only comparable encounter between a president and a congressional committee had been his inviting the Foreign Affairs and Foreign Relations committees to the White House in February to discuss the Draft Covenant. That meeting, however, had been an informal gathering, with no stenographer present, and it had not involved any business before Congress. Wilson had never liked the separation of powers, although he did assert executive privilege in refusing the Foreign Relations Committee’s request to turn over the documents from the peace negotiations. In this case, he again observed constitutional niceties by inviting the committee to the White House rather than going to the Capitol himself.20

  At ten o’clock in the morning on August 19, the senators gathered with the president around a large table in the East Room. Wilson sat at one corner, between Lodge and John Sharp Williams of Mississippi, opposite Borah and Brandegee. Two stenographers and the head usher of the White House were the only others present during the three-and-a-half-hour meeting, which was followed by lunch. The president opened the discussion by reading his statement on reservations. He asserted that the only barrier to ratification of the peace treaty lay in “certain doubts with regard to the meaning and implication of certain articles of the covenant of the league of nations,” which he found groundless. Article X imposed “a moral, not a legal obligation” and left Congress to interpret what actions to take. He did not object to reservations so long as they were not “part of the instrument of ratification”—incorporating them into that instrument would require the agreement of other nations and would create ambiguity about America’s obligations.21

  Though largely drafted by Tumulty, the statement captured Wilson’s thought and language, and the distinction between a legal and a moral obligation under Article X could have offered an opening to a compromise between his insistence on international commitment and Lodge and other Republicans’ insistence on freedom of action. Yet the statement was not adequate to the occasion. Agreeing to reservations that were not part of the instrument of ratification was a meager sop that did not satisfy even the mild reservationists. If Wilson had been willing to work with them earlier, he might have been able to unveil an agreement on a specific set of reservations. That would have been a stupendous coup and would have sent his critics and opponents reeling. Instead, he was adding to the pile of missed opportunities.

  Lodge opened for the committee by stating that he and his fellow senators had “no thought of entering into an argument as to interpretations” but sought only information. He asked specific questions about other treaties besides the one with Germany and about the drafting of the Covenant. Wilson answered him crisply and knowledgeably. Other senators quickly got into interpretations of the Covenant. Borah asked who besides the United States, in the event of American withdrawal from the League, would judge whether the United States had fulfilled its obligations; Wilson answered, “Nobody.” Several senators probed him about Article X, and he reiterated his distinction between a legal and moral obligation—“Only we can interpret a moral obligation”—and he maintained that a reservation attached to the instrument of ratification would make it “necessary for others to act upon it.” Lodge disagreed, saying that only an amendment to the treaty required such action; a reservation did not—and Knox concurred. Warren Harding of Ohio reportedly tried the president’s patience by going on at length about obligations under Article X. “Now a moral obligation is of course superior to a legal obligation,” Wilson snapped, “and, if I may say so, has a greater binding force.”22

  Questioning by Borah then led him to stumble. Asked about the French security treaty, he maintained incorrectly that it also imposed only a moral obligation: “In international law, ‘legal’ does not mean the same thing as in national law, and the word hardly applied.” Asked when he first learned about the Allies’ wartime secret treaties, he answered that he had not known about them until the peace conference. Some critics would call that answer a lie, but Hiram Johnson, who had learned from Walter Lippmann that the president had known about the treaties in 1917, told his sons only that Wilson’s “memory played him false.” When Johnson and Brandegee asked about Shantung, he first denied and then admitted that he had agreed to the cession because Japan threatened not to sign the treaty. Brandegee and Harding further badgered him about Article X, but Wilson stuck by its moral obligation, which “steadies the whole world by its promise that it will stand with other nations of similar judgment and maintain the right in the world.” By all accounts, the tensest time in the meeting came when Brandegee relentlessly, and at times insolently, needled the president about Article X, but Wilson maintained his poise and good humor. When the senator pushed the idea of separating the treaty from the Covenant, the president called that an “unworkable peace, because the league is necessary to the working of it.” Brandegee countered that the United States could opt out of any obligations under the treaty, and Wilson replied, “We could, sir, but I hope the people of the United States would never consent to it.” Brandegee shot back, “There is no way by which the people can vote on it.”23

  The meeting had now gone on for more than three hours, and Lodge broke up this confrontation by inquiring about the resumption of trade with Germany. Other Republicans asked about eastern Europe and mandates over former German colonies. In response, Wilson stated erroneously that America was not involved in those matters. Harry New of Indiana, a Republican, asked how the Covenant might have affected the United States during the War of 1812 and the Spanish-American War, to which Wilson responded, “I have tried to be a historical student, but I could not quite get the league back to those days clearly enough in my mind to form a judgment.” Lodge then interjected, “Mr. President, I do not wish to interfere in any way, the conference has now lasted about three hours and a half, and it is half an hour after the lunch hour.” Wilson replied, “Will not you gentlemen take luncheon with me? It will be very delightful.” All but two of the senators accompanied the president into the State Dining Room, where, according to newspaper reports, the president genially played host and told his guests stories from the peace conference; this time, although no alcohol was served, no senator complained about the meal.24

  Memory lapses and mistakes aside, Wilson had stood up well under a barrage of hostile questions. Democrats on the committee took next to no part, although an occasional friendly question came from Pittman, as well as from the mild reservationist McCumber, a Republican. Lodge privately told friends that Wilson’s performance “amounted to nothing” and that he “displayed ignorance and disingenuousness in his slippery evasions.” By contrast, a League opponent, Fall, publicly praised Wilson for his frankness and manliness. Johnson said privately, “I rather think the day was his.” That praise was strictly backhanded:
Johnson thought Lodge and their colleagues should have seen through Wilson’s “foxy and cunning manner.” He found the president’s expression “quite wicked” and his face “hard, and cold, and cruel. … His ponderous lower jaw gives a very vague appearance of a vicious horse.”25

  The delayed outcry in the Senate at Wilson’s rejection of reservations exploded the day after his meeting with the Foreign Relations Committee. Pittman introduced a resolution stating four propositions as the basis for interpretation of the treaty; they covered withdrawal, domestic questions, the Monroe Doctrine, and Article X, which imposed a moral obligation subject to voluntary construction and compliance. The mild reservationists immediately repudiated Pittman’s scheme; with the exception of McCumber, they demanded that any reservations be part of the instrument of ratification. The White House likewise pulled the rug out from under Pittman, authorizing Hitchcock to tell reporters, “The President had no knowledge of the resolution or its introduction.” It was a case of a good intention gone awry.26