The great outstanding figure of the war, Mr. Wilson remains the great outstanding figure of the peace. Broken in health and shattered in body, Mr. Wilson is leaving the White House, but his spirit still dominates the scene. It pervades every chancellery in Europe. It hovers over every capital. Because Woodrow Wilson was President of the United States during the most critical period of modern history international relations have undergone their first far-reaching moral revolution.
Mr. Harding is a.s.suming the duties of the Presidency, but the main interest in Mr. Harding is still a reflected interest, which is concerned chiefly with the efforts that his Administration may make to adjust itself to the forces that Mr. Wilson has set in motion. Stripped of all the paraphernalia of his office, Mr. Wilson, by virtue of his achievements, remains the most potent single influence in the modern world; yet after this eight years in the White House it may be doubted if even the American people themselves know him better or understand him better than they did the day he was first inaugurated.
Neither Mr. Wilson"s friends nor his enemies have ever succeeded in interpreting him or in explaining him, nor can any interpretation or explanation be satisfactory which fails at the outset to recognize in him the simplest and at the same time the most complex character in the greatest drama ever played on the stage of human history. Even his closest a.s.sociates have never found it easy to reconcile a fervent political democracy with an unbending intellectual aristocracy, or to determine which of those characteristics was dominant in his day-to-day decisions.
No man ever sat in the President"s chair who was more genuinely a democrat or held more tenaciously to his faith in democracy than Woodrow Wilson, but no other man ever sat in the President"s chair who was so contemptuous of all intellect that was inferior to his own or so impatient with its laggard processes.
_A President Who Dealt in Ideas_
Mr. Wilson was a President who dealt almost exclusively in ideas. He cared little or nothing about political organization and rarely consulted the managing politicians of his party. When they conferred with him it was usually at their request and not at his request.
Patronage hardly entered into his calculations as an agency of government. He disliked to be troubled about appointments, and when he had filled an office he was likely to be indifferent as to the manner in which that office was subsequently administered, unless his own measures were antagonized or his policies obstructed.
No man was ever more impersonal in his att.i.tude toward government, and that very impersonality was the characteristic which most baffled the American people. Mr. Wilson had a genius for the advocacy of great principles, but he had no talent whatever for advocating himself, and to a country that is accustomed to think in headlines about political questions his subtlety of mind and his careful, precise style of expression were quite as likely to be an obstacle to the communication of thought as a medium for the communication of thought. That is how such phrases as "too proud to fight" and "peace without victory" were successfully wrested from their context by his critics and twisted into a fantastic distortion of their true meaning.
Mr. Wilson was likewise totally deficient in the art of advertising, and advertising is the very breath of American politics. He held himself aloof from all these points of public contact. _The World"s_ relations with him have certainly been as close and intimate as those of any other newspaper; yet during the eight years in which Mr. Wilson has been in the White House he never sought a favor from _The World_, he never asked for support either for himself or any of his policies, he never complained when he was criticised, he never offered to explain himself or his att.i.tude on any issue of government. In the troublesome days of his Administration he often expressed his grat.i.tude for services that _The World_ had rendered in the interpretation of his policies, but he never solicited such interpretation or took measures to facilitate it. He was an eloquent pleader for the principles in which he believed, but he had no faculty whatever for projecting himself into the picture.
_The Experience of History_
Mr. Wilson"s enemies are fond of calling him a theorist, but there is little of the theorist about him, otherwise he could never have made more constructive history than any other man of his generation. What are commonly called theories in his case were the practical application of the experience of history to the immediate problems of government, and in the experience of history Mr. Wilson is an expert. With the exception of James Madison, who was called "the Father of the Const.i.tution," Mr. Wilson is the most profound student of government among all the Presidents, and he had what Madison conspicuously lacked, which was the faculty to translate his knowledge of government into the administration of government.
When Mr. Wilson was elected President he had reached the conclusion which most unprejudiced students of American government eventually arrive at--that the system of checks and balances is unworkable in practice and that the legislative and executive branches cannot be in fact coordinate, independent departments. Other Presidents have acted on that hypothesis without daring to admit it, and endeavored to control Congress by patronage and by threats. Mr. Wilson without any formality established himself as the leader of his party in Congress, Premier as well as President, and the originator of the party"s program of legislation.
Senators and Representatives denounced him as an autocrat and a dictator. Congress was described as the President"s rubber stamp, but Mr. Wilson established something that more nearly resembled responsible government than anything that had gone before, and Congress under his direct leadership made a record for constructive legislation for which there is no parallel. It was due to this kind of leadership that such measures as the Federal Reserve Banking Law were enacted, which later proved to be the one bulwark between the American people and a financial panic of tragic proportions.
But Mr. Wilson"s domestic policies in spite of their magnitude have been obscured by his foreign policies. Had there been no war, these policies in themselves would have given to the Wilson Administration a place in American history higher than that of any other since the Civil War. What some of his predecessors talked about doing he did, and he accomplished it by the process of making himself the responsible leader of his party in Congress--a process that is simple enough but capable of fulfillment only in the hands of a man with an extraordinary capacity for imposing his will on his a.s.sociates. Mr. Wilson"s control over Congress for six years was once described as the most impressive triumph of mind over matter known to American politics.
_Mr. Wilson"s Foreign Policies_
When we begin the consideration of Mr. Wilson"s foreign policies we are entering one of the most remarkable chapters in all history, and one which will require the perspective of history for a true judgment.
The first step in the development of these foreign policies came in Mr.
Wilson"s refusal to recognize Huerta, who had partic.i.p.ated in the plot to murder President Madero and made himself the dictator of Mexico by reason of this a.s.sa.s.sination. The crime was committed during Mr. Taft"s Administration. When Mr. Wilson came into office he served notice that there would be no recognition of Huerta and no recognition of any Mexican Government which was not established by due process of law.
What was plainly in Mr. Wilson"s mind was a determination to end political a.s.sa.s.sination in Latin America as a profitable industry, and compel recognition, to some extent at least, of democratic principles and const.i.tutional forms. On this issue he had to face the intense opposition of all the financial interests in the United States which had Mexican holdings, and a consolidated European opposition as well.
Every dollar of foreign money invested in Mexico was confident that what Mexico needed most was such a dictatorship as that of Huerta or American intervention. Mr. Wilson"s problem was to get rid of Huerta without involving the United States in war, and then by steady pressure bring about the establishment of a responsible government that rested on something at least resembling the consent of the governed. Only a statesman of high ideals would ever have attempted it, and only a statesman of almost infinite patience would have been able to adhere to the task that Mr. Wilson set for himself.
Mexico is not yet a closed incident, but Mr. Wilson"s policy has been vindicated in principle. For the first time since Mr. Roosevelt shocked the moral sense and aroused the political resentment of all the Latin-American states by the rape of Panama, faith in the integrity and friendship of the United States has been restored among the other nations of the Western Hemisphere.
Of equal or even greater ethical importance was Mr. Wilson"s insistence on the repeal of the Panama Ca.n.a.l Tolls Act, which discriminated in favor of American ships in spite of the plain provisions of the Hay-Pauncefote treaty. This was the more creditable on Mr. Wilson"s part because he himself had been tricked during the campaign into giving his support to this measure. When he began to perceive the diplomatic consequences of this treaty violation Mr. Wilson reversed himself and demanded that Congress reverse itself. Had he done otherwise, the American people would have had scant opportunity to protest against the German perfidy which turned a treaty into "a sc.r.a.p of paper."
When Germany, at the beginning of August, 1914, declared war successively on Russia, France and Belgium, thereby bringing Great Britain into the most stupendous conflict of all the centuries, Mr.
Wilson did what every President has done when other nations have gone to war. He issued a proclamation of neutrality. He then went further, however, than any of his predecessors had done and urged the American people to be not only neutral in deed but "impartial in thought." Mr.
Wilson has been severely criticised for this appeal. The more violent pro-Germans and the more violent pro-French and pro-British regarded it as a personal insult and an attempt on the part of the President to stifle what they were pleased to regard as their conscience.
Mr. Wilson asked the American people to be impartial in thought because he knew as a historian the danger that threatened if the country were to be divided into two hostile camps, the one blindly and unreasoningly applauding every act of the Germans and the other blindly and unreasoningly applauding every act of the Allies. In the early years of his life the Republic was all but wrecked by the emotional and political excesses of the pro-French Americans and the pro-British Americans in the war that followed the French Revolution. The warning against a pa.s.sionate attachment to the interests of other nations which is embodied in Washington"s Farewell Address was the first President"s solemn admonition against the evils of a divided allegiance. Mr. Wilson had no desire to see the country drift into a similar situation in which American rights, American interests and American prestige would all be sacrificed to gratify the American adherents of the various European belligerents. Moreover, he understood far better than his critics that issues would soon arise between the belligerents and the United States which would require on the part of the American people that impartiality of thought that is demanded of the just and upright judge. He knew that the American people might ultimately become the final arbiters of the issues of the conflict.
The United States was the only great nation outside the sphere of conflict. It was the only great nation that had no secret diplomatic understandings with either set of belligerents. It was the only great nation that was in a position to uphold the processes of international law and to use its good offices as a mediator when the opportunity arose.
For two years Mr. Wilson genuinely believed that it would be possible for the United States to fulfill this mission, and he never fully lost hope until that day in January, 1917, when the German Government wantonly wrecked all the informal peace negotiations that were then in progress and decided to stake the fate of the empire on a single throw of the U-boat dice.
_A United Country First_
Mr. Wilson perceived quite as quickly and quite as early as anybody the possibility that the United States would be drawn into the war, but he perceived also what most of his critics failed to perceive, that the immediate danger of the country was not war but a divided people. While he was engaging in framing the first Lusitania note he discussed the situation with one of his callers at the White House in words that have since proved prophetic:
I do not know whether the German Government intends to keep faith with the United States or not. It is my personal opinion that Germany has no such intention, but I am less concerned about the ultimate intentions of Germany than about the att.i.tude of the American people, who are already divided into three groups: those who are strongly pro-German, those who are strongly pro-Ally, and the vast majority who expect me to find a way to keep the United States out of war. I do not want war, yet I do not know that I can keep the country out of the war. That depends on Germany, and I have no control over Germany. _But I intend to handle this situation in such a manner that every American citizen will know that the United States Government has done everything it could to prevent war. Then if war comes we shall have a united country, and with a united country there need be no fear about the result._
Mr. Wilson"s policy from that day to April 2, 1917, must be read in the light of those words. He plunged forthwith into that extraordinary debate with the German Government over the submarine issue--the most momentous debate ever held--but he was only incidentally addressing himself to the rulers of Germany. He was talking to the conscience of the civilized world, but primarily to the conscience of the United States, explaining, clarifying, elucidating the issue. His reluctance to countenance any extensive measures of preparedness was the product of a definite resolution not to give Germany and her American supporters an opportunity to declare that the United States, while these issues were pending, was arming for war against the Imperial Government.
When Mr. Wilson began this debate he knew something which his critics did not know and which for reasons of state he did not choose to tell them. Weeks before the destruction of the Lusitania two-thirds of the German General Staff were in favor of war with the United States as a military measure in the interest of Germany. They were under the spell of Tirpitz. They believed that the submarine could do all that the Grand Admiral said it could do. They argued that inasmuch as the Allies were borrowing money in the United States, obtaining food from the United States and purchasing great quant.i.ties of munitions in the United States Germany, by restricting submarine warfare in answer to American protests, was paying an excessive price for what was in effect a fict.i.tious neutrality. In their opinion the United States as a neutral was already doing more for the Allies than it could do as an active belligerent if free scope were given to the U-boats. The American Navy, they said, could be safely disregarded, because with Germany already blockaded by the British Navy, and the German Grand Fleet penned in, the addition of the American Navy, or a dozen navies for that matter, would make little difference in respect to the actual facts of sea power. On the other hand there was not enough shipping available to feed the Allies and enable the United States to send an army to Europe. If the United States tried to provide troops, the British would starve. If the United States could not send troops, Germany would be just as well off with the United States in the war as out of the war, and would have the priceless additional advantage of being able to employ her submarines as she saw fit, regardless of the technicalities of international law.
In the fall of 1916 Mr. Wilson decided definitely that the relations between the United States and Germany were approaching a climax. If the war continued much longer the United States would inevitably be drawn in. There was no prospect of a decision. The belligerent armies were deadlocked. Unwilling to wait longer for events, Mr. Wilson made up his mind that he would demand from each side a statement of its aims and objects and compel each side to plead its own cause before the court of the public opinion of the world. This was done on December 18, 1916, in a joint note which was so cold and dispa.s.sionate in its terms that its import was hardly understood.
_With Clean Hands_
The President said that the aims and objects of the war on both sides "as stated in general terms to their own people and the world" seemed to be "virtually the same," and he asked for a bill of particulars.
Instantly there was wild turmoil and recrimination on the part of the Allies and their friends in the United States.
The President had declared, they said, that the Germans and the Allies were fighting for the same thing. Mr. Wilson had expressed no opinion of his own one way or the other and the obvious discovery was soon made in London and Paris that the President had given to the Allies the opportunity which they needed of officially differentiating their war aims from those of the Germans. The German Government missed its opportunity completely, and by their own answer to the President"s note the Allies succeeded in consolidating their moral positions, which was something they had never previously been able to do in spite of all their propaganda.
Informal peace negotiations were still in progress, although conducted in secret and carefully screened from the knowledge of all peoples involved in the conflict. On January 22, 1917, Mr. Wilson made his last attempt at mediation in the "peace without victory" address to the Senate in which he defined what he regarded as the fundamental conditions of a permanent peace. Most of the basic principles of this address were afterward incorporated into the Fourteen Points. Here again Mr. Wilson was the victim of his own precision of language and of the settled policy of his critics of reading into his public utterances almost everything except what he actually said. He himself has insisted on giving his own interpretation of "peace without victory," and this interpretation was instantly rejected by the super-patriots who regarded themselves as the sole custodians of all the issues of the war.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Underwood & Underwood_ 1919: On the bridge of the _George Washington_ on the return from the Peace Conference]
_The President and the Treaty_
_President Wilson sails for Europe, December 4, 1918._
_Visits to England, France and Italy, December-January, 1918-19._
_Peace Conference opened, January 18, 1919._
_League Covenant adopted, February 14, 1919._
_President Wilson"s trip home, February 24-March 5, 1919._
_The treaty signed, June 28, 1919._
_Submission to the Senate, July 10, 1919._
_The President"s speaking tour, September 3-26, 1919._