A postwar recession accompanied the postwar disillusionment, and the Dow Jones industrial average instilled fears of continued stagnation at best—closing at the end of the year a little over 100, barely five points higher than when the decade began. But through the third and fourth quarters of 1919, the economy remained healthy enough for Wilson to focus almost exclusively on what he considered his legacy—the passage of the Treaty, complete with its Covenant. Unfortunately, that meant his having to face his most formidable enemy, an “HCL” of another sort.
Henry Cabot Lodge was the only son of a Bostonian widow whose ancestors had arrived in Massachusetts in 1700. Subsequent generations of Cabots amassed a fortune, mostly in shipping. “Boston incarnate,” wrote Henry Adams, referring not only to Lodge’s pedigree but also to his education, which revolved completely around Harvard College. He earned a bachelor’s degree, a law degree, and the school’s first doctorate in political science before teaching there for several years. As patronizing as he was patrician, Lodge suffered from what Adams called “Bostonitis,” symptoms of which included “chronic irritability” and the quality of “thinking too much of himself.” At the same time, Adams described his Harvard protégé as an “excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory.” About to launch his political career in the state legislature in 1879, Lodge also served as a junior editor of a New England journal called the International Review. In that capacity, he had accepted and published that first major literary effort of Princeton senior Thomas W. Wilson, six years his junior.
Barely in his twenties, Wilson had been strangely prescient. His treatise had challenged the very structure of American government, questioning a President’s ability to lead in a system in which the legislature outweighed the executive branch and conducted most of its business in closed-door committee rooms. While young Wilson had not recommended demolishing the Congress in favor of a Parliament, in which its leader spoke for the majority; he had boldly recommended a cabinet that could sit among the representatives as a link between the two branches. Over the years, especially during TR’s administration, Wilson saw how a vibrant personality could galvanize a Presidency. But the basic system still troubled him, as it fostered antagonism between the branches, especially if different parties controlled them. Strong personalities on either side all but guaranteed hostile stalemates.
Lodge, the Republican leader in the Congress, considered Woodrow Wilson able, ambitious, and “by no means a commonplace man.” He went so far as to praise him as a “master of the rhetorical use of idealism.” In his posthumously published account of the League, he went to great lengths to insist that he never harbored any “personal hostility to Mr. Wilson”—a point he made five times on page 23 alone. But after six years of disagreeing with the President on practically every major position—and perhaps because Wilson had dethroned him as the nation’s “scholar in politics”—Lodge’s enmity toward Wilson had steadily escalated.
This petty academic rivalry in Lodge’s mind should not be underestimated. His account of the League fight reminded his readers that, despite what newspapers said about Woodrow Wilson, “he was not a scholar in the true sense at all.” Even his vaunted speeches, Lodge added, were practically devoid of classical allusion or literary quotation; and for all his education, Lodge said, he was “not a widely-read man.” One Senator commented, “If only President Wilson had not been a college prof and didn’t know how to write so well this issue would come out all right.” Wilson tacitly bore his own grudge, one reminiscent of the fight over the graduate school at Princeton, when he battled the privileged, who had been handed everything for which he had to work. Before the end of the President’s first term, Lodge had imparted to his dearest friend, TR, “I never expected to hate anyone in politics with the hatred I feel toward Wilson.”
Seldom has the American body politic been so fractious as it was in 1919. Despite two victories at the polls, the President had not won either of his elections with a majority; and his strong, unyielding views further polarized his constituents. The Republicans held a majority in both houses, though only narrowly in the Senate. Each of the parties was further fractured by strong opposing factions within, especially when it came to the Treaty. Wilson was counting on all forty-six Democratic Senators, though two had already expressed their disapproval of the Treaty.
The Republicans were more divided. Lodge counted fifteen Republican Senators completely unwilling to vote for the Treaty under any circumstances. They became known as the “Irreconcilables.” Thirty-four of his party members were “Reservationists,” torn between insisting upon major revisions or “mild” ones. The latter group could be swayed to the Wilson camp should he offer some concessions. Lodge had also identified three Democratic Irreconcilables, whose votes meant the most to him, for their small margin could allow him to maintain that Wilson’s own party defeated the Treaty. In seeking the necessary two-thirds majority, the President and Lodge would vie for the independent thinkers within the Senate: Wilson hoped to build momentum through the weight of his office and the force of his oratory; Lodge intended to throw into his path every legislative obstacle at his disposal, if not defeating the Treaty altogether then at least transforming it into something Republican. A painstaking probe of the Treaty, he figured, would only expose its flaws.
At the start of this contest, momentum seemed to be in the President’s favor. “I don’t see how we are ever going to defeat this proposition,” said freshman Republican Senator James Watson of Indiana to Lodge. The Senate elder sighed. “Ah, my dear James,” he said placatingly, “I do not propose to try to beat it by direct frontal attack, but by the indirect method of reservations.” Watson would accept the strategy for a while, but in a later encounter he said, “Suppose the President accepts the treaty with your reservations. Then we are in the League.” Lodge offered a paternal grin and a personal insight, explaining how much Wilson hated him. “Never under any set of circumstances in this world,” he said calmly, “could he be induced to accept a treaty with Lodge reservations appended to it.” Unconvinced, Watson said that was a “slender thread on which to hang so great a cause.”
“A slender thread!” Lodge scoffed. “Why, it is as strong as any cable with its strands wired and twisted together.”
No sooner had President Wilson delivered the Treaty than was Senator Lodge on his feet moving that it be sent to the Foreign Relations Committee, which he chaired and had packed with Irreconcilables. Thus, the document was now under his jurisdiction, and on his schedule. Within minutes it was dispatched to the Public Printer; and five hours later, The New York Times reported, it had been set in type, ready for distribution. But strangely, as Lodge himself noted in his memoirs, three days passed before his committee members received the text. And then, Lodge announced that he would conduct extensive public hearings—for at least a month, if not longer.
Not home even a week, Wilson already looked weary and his writing hand had stiffened yet again. He still considered touring the country to explain the Treaty to the people. More immediately, he announced visiting hours, during which Senators might appear at the White House unannounced. When his own party leaders informed him that it would be impossible to pass the Treaty without some reservations, Wilson realized the need to develop a more aggressive strategy. In the sudden absence of Democratic leader Thomas S. Martin of Virginia, who had become terminally ill, Wilson turned to Gilbert Hitchcock of Nebraska. Although the Senator had quarreled with the President over the Federal Reserve Board, Hitchcock had become a trusty proponent of the League. He was Wilson’s strongest advocate in the Senate and a worthy Minority Leader, though a somewhat dubious challenger to his Republican counterpart.
Henry Cabot Lodge closely monitored each of his committee’s members as the President reminded them that this was not a partisan issue—that it was “their duty to vote for the treaty just as he had presented
it to the Senate.” With each step forward, Lodge introduced a new set of stalling tactics. He issued one request after another for information and documentation. And then he decided that he owed it to the country to read the entire Treaty aloud, all 264 pages, word by word, in a committee room—insisting a charter of such importance demanded as much. Committee members sometimes wandered in and out for the recitation; more often, Lodge found himself speaking to four marble walls and a scribe. His performance would kill two weeks.
At first, Wilson’s private sessions proved effective—as he advanced a positive message while providing explanations for each of the Treaty’s stipulations. On Friday, July 18, British liaison Sir William Wiseman found the President confident that he was winning over his opposition—including a number of those Senators who had pledged themselves to defeat the League even before they had read the Covenant. Wilson regretted that Taft was knuckling under party pressure and now leaned toward reservations. Confiding to Wiseman that he was considering some cosmetic concessions in the Treaty’s language, he said yet again that he would embark on a nationwide tour only upon finding insufficient Republican support. That pleased Edith, who worried that her husband could not withstand such an ordeal, especially during the torrid summer.
Dr. Grayson shared Edith’s concerns. He took to encouraging any recreation for the President whenever possible. Despite storm warnings and Wilson’s experiencing an apparent case of indigestion, Grayson even endorsed a weekend cruise to Chesapeake Bay on the Mayflower, just to keep him from working. Unfortunately, electrical storms struck, and so too did Wilson’s gastric disorder, turning into what Grayson diagnosed as acute dysentery. At least that was what he told the press. The intense heat and strain since his return from Europe logically explained his condition; but subsequent reconsideration of the prior days’ symptoms—the headaches, pallor, cramped hand, and difficulty reading and speaking—suggest a minor stroke. Whatever the case, this “transient incapacity” was likely related to some progressive cerebrovascular condition.
Back in the White House, Wilson took to his bed and canceled the next day’s schedule. That did not stop Senator Lodge, who tightened the reins on his team and encouraged any disruptions to Wilson’s plans. Opposition leaders leaked to the press that they were prepared to provide the President with a list of the thirty-five Senators pledged to reject the Treaty in its present form—two more than were required. Their reasons ranged from the general burdens of collective security to a specific distrust of the Japanese ever to make good on their promise to yield Shantung. Some radical Republicans simply avowed to kill the entire Treaty if their demands were not met. By Tuesday the twenty-second, the President had resumed meeting with Senators, while Lodge compiled a list of witnesses for his hearings, encouraged discussion of every sort of amendment to the Treaty, and maintained his steady demand for more documents.
Edith Wilson watched her husband achieve diminishing returns as he lobbied Senators—arguing that neither he nor they had “the moral right further to modify any Article unless every other country should be granted the same privilege.” To do so would negate a half year of work and emasculate the pact. On July 28, Lodge completed his word-by-word reading of the Treaty.
After letting another three days pass, he called the first of sixty witnesses. Lodge’s account of the diligence with which he and his committee had studied the Treaty masked the fact that their primary task was less to understand it than to undermine it. His goal was to ensure the Senate’s dissent. The early witnesses included members of the Administration, such as Secretary of Labor William B. Wilson, who were friendly to the President but had little to offer by way of enlightenment. In thirteen days of actual testimony—stretched across the next six weeks—many of the witnesses who paraded before the panel in Room 310 of the Senate Office Building shared one common trait—an ability to embarrass the President. The committee properly called Secretary of State Lansing to testify, and the questions targeted his dissatisfaction with the Treaty and his descriptions of having been marginalized during the Peace Conference. His circumspect hesitations spoke louder than any criticisms he could have directed toward his boss. Irish American witnesses bemoaned their cause being ignored in the Treaty. And then, allowing a plea for racial equality, the committee invited a Negro delegation, its spokesman none other than William Monroe Trotter, the only man Wilson had ever banished from the White House. Halfway through the hearings, Lodge decided his committee could make its best case by cross-examining the defendant himself. The President welcomed the opportunity, though he should have been more careful what he wished for.
Wilson was, in fact, experiencing a mental decline, which was discernible to others. On several occasions in late July and early August, he responded to queries about the Treaty with incorrect information—instances of recent actions and events that he could not recall. His once photographic memory began to blur. On August 8, 1919, he delivered to a joint session of Congress a dull address full of run-on sentences about the high cost of living.
The rest of his activities that month further reflected scattered thought and divided attention. The issues of race riots, soaring food prices, and impending railroad strikes would have challenged any President in the best of health. In his current condition, the sixty-two-year-old Wilson could only offer short shrift to every situation but the Treaty, thus salving problems without solving them. Recognizing its historical significance, Wilson performed one incidental duty to notable effect, when Secretary Newton Baker informed him that any number of official documents and communications required a name for the war they had just won. The Navy had informally adopted “the War Against Teutonic Aggression,” while the commanders of the Allied armies called it “the Great War for Civilization.” Great Britain chose “the War of 1914–1918.” From a sampler Baker sent, Wilson selected “the World War.”
As it joined the ranks of the American Revolution, the Mexican War, the Civil War, and the Spanish-American War, Upton Sinclair and Clarence Darrow urged Woodrow Wilson to consider that the World War was over and that he ought to reconsider the motives of men—most particularly Eugene Debs—who had spoken their consciences and whose imprisonment for disagreeing was no longer “self-defense but a punishment undeserved.” Wilson took the case to heart and wrote Socialist John Spargo that he would “deal with the matter as early and in as liberal a spirit as possible.” But matters of the peace process kept intervening amid bouts of forgetfulness and fits of temper.
Senators argued the Treaty all summer—mostly Republicans expressing their distaste while Democrats proposed the least amount of compromise to make it palatable. The only fresh thought that season came from Henry Cabot Lodge himself, who reminded people that the Treaty’s adherents did not have a monopoly on idealism. He tried to rival Wilson in eloquence, but he could make his case with little more than platitudes and a negation of Wilson’s plan. So tired had the Treaty “debate” become, the press curtailed its coverage.
That was not the case, however, on Tuesday, August 19, 1919, when the Administration set another precedent by inviting the Foreign Relations Committee to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Although the separation of powers kept the legislative branch from requiring a Chief Executive to appear before it, Woodrow Wilson embraced this opportunity. At ten o’clock, all but one of the seventeen Senators arrived and found a ring of chairs in the East Room. Wilson sat in the farthest corner, with Senator Lodge on his right and Virginia’s Senator Claude A. Swanson on his left. The rest of the Senators completed the circle, which was broken by a few tables for stenographers Charles Swem from the White House pool and five others from the Senate. Neither photographers nor journalists were admitted, though much of the basement floor of the White House had been converted into a makeshift pressroom. Reporters and typists filled its main corridor and oval room, which had been rigged with tables and typewriters so the stenographers could run with the news as it broke.
After the Pr
esident read a long statement expressing the need to expedite consideration of the Treaty, the Senators grilled him for the next three hours. Although not always accurate, Wilson parried any opposition, even the incisive questions from Irreconcilables Hiram Johnson and William Borah, whom Walter Lippmann had prepared with insider information. Only once did Wilson seem agitated—when first-term Ohio Senator Warren G. Harding raised a series of questions about America’s moral obligations as opposed to the legal, which suggested he had not listened to the answer Wilson had just provided. He struck the President as having “a disturbingly dull mind, and . . . it seemed impossible to get any explanation to lodge in it.” Close to 1:30, Senator Lodge—who had let others speak for him—brought the proceedings to a close. The President asked his guests to remain for luncheon—a spread of melon, spring lamb, cold Virginia ham, salad, vegetables, and ices that awaited in the State Dining Room. “It will be very delightful,” the courtly Wilson told his adversaries. And for the next hour, everybody tucked into what one Senator told the press was surely a five-dollar-a-plate meal. The conversation was apolitical and pleasant.
“He was nervous, but he certainly handled himself magnificently,” Dr. Grayson said, calling the day “a triumph” for the President. Given that Wilson had recently suffered a cerebral incident, that was true. But objective observers judged the day a failure. The semipublic display had been more about presentation than information, and it changed nobody’s heart or mind. “To those of us who just looked on and listened,” noted Ike Hoover, “the President was not at his best. . . . In fact, all through this period he manifested an over-anxiety toward his guests.” The transcript of the proceedings revealed as much. Talk of “national good conscience” and moral responsibilities overshadowed the specifics of the Treaty. Worst of all, perusal of the record exposed more than a dozen errors in the President’s testimony—incorrect dates, erroneous assertions regarding the uncertainty of the Treaty’s fate, and forgotten elements of the pact and its evolution, especially when it came to the secret treaties. As they were all apparent mental lapses, the President emerged that day as a man as compromised—physically and mentally—as his treaty.
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