President Wilson in War
Woodrow Wilson, Life and Letters. By Ray Stannard Baker. Vol. VIII. (Heinemann. 2 Is.)
THE eighth and last volume of Mr. Ray Stannard Baker's voluminous work (he dealt with Wilson at the Peace Con- ference in two volumes sixteen years ago) is in many ways the most important. It depicts Mr. Wilson at the height of his power and influence ; the United States had been fighting under his leadership and inspiration for nearly a year at the date at which the volume opens, and it closes with the conclusion of the Armistice, which the Germans had nego- tiated through him and signed in reliance on the principles he had formulated. While America was pouring division after division into France and financing Allied States which had long since reached the end of their own resources, the President of the United States, by virtue of his office, wielded an influence which the personality of Woodrow Wilson, as evidenced in a series of memorable speeches from January to November, 1918, substantially enhanced.
Both Houses of Congress were with him ; the country was solid at his back ; he was in complete harmony with his representatives in Europe. In January, 1918, the Fourteen Points had been laid down ; in March the great German offensive brought appeal after appeal from London and Paris for an acceleration of the dispatch of American reinforce-. ments ; in August the tide definitzly turned, and from that time constructive minds on both sides of the Atlantic were increasingly concerned with the terms of the ultimate settle- ., ment. By October Wilson was looked to as the supreme arbiter regarding that, for his Fourteen Points had been accepted both by the Germans and the Allies (with one specific reservation and one definition) as the basis of the coming peace terms ; and if there was any difference of opinion upon what any of the Points meant their author was the natural interpreter of them. In that connexion Mr. Baker's record of Wilson's own ruling on one contentious thesis—that embodied in the first of the Fourteen—is worth quoting. " Certainly," wrote the President to Mr. Lansing in March, 1918, " when I pronounced for open diplomacy I meant, not that there should be no private discussions of delicate matters, but that no secret agreements of any sort should be entered into, and that all international relations, when fixed, should be open, above-board and explicit." That is a common-sense explanation of a phrase, " open covenants openly arrived at," that has given rise to a quite excessive amount of tortuous argument.
So far as public events go, the main aspects of President Wilson's activity on which this volume throws new light are the prosecution of the War—in regard to which the President stands revealed as a particularly sane and competent adminis- trator, very rarely in doubt about his own mind—the evolu- tion of the League of Nations idea, and the fatal appeal in October, 1918, for the return of a Democratic Congress in the elections of the coming month. In the matter of the League Wilson displayed, at this stage at any rate, nothing of the dogmatism with which his critics credited him. So far from wanting to dictate a League Covenant, he was anxious above all things that nothing more specific than his Fourteenth Point provided—" a general association of nations . . . for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independ- ence and territorial integrity to great and small States alike "- should be worked out till the Peace Conference met. He insists that " these League to Enforce Peace butters-in " shall not start discussing (in March, 1918) a constitution for the League ; a day or two later, writing to Colonel House, he urges, with emphatic italics, that the administrative constitu- tion of the League must grow and not be made "; and in the following month he elaborates that view in a letter to St. Loe Strachey, then Editor of The Spectator, the kernel of which is contained in the paragraph : " I have all along been of the opinion that it would be impossible to effect an elaborate and active organisation. To attempt a ` curl_ stitution ' for a league of peace would raise all the points of jealousy and put them so in the front as to obscure the essential objects of the league itself, and perhaps prevent their achievement. I have thought of the plan in a very elementary and simple form. I have thought only of the mutual guarantee of political independence and territorial integrity, and also, as you suggest, of the binding and sacred force of treaty agreements."
The arrival from London of the Phillimore report on a League of Nations compelled the President to consider a League constitution after all, but the result of his attitude was that as things turned out the basis of the League Covenant was laid in Britain rather than in America.
Wilson's party appeal before the Congressional elections of 1918 is commonly regarded as the turning-point of his career. The appeal failed ; a Republican Senate and a Republican House were returned ; the President could no longer speak for a united nation ; and in the event a hostile Senate took plea- sure in refusing to ratify the treaty he had signed. Was Wilson wrong in appealing as he did? Nearly all his friends thought so at the time, and nothing that has happened since has caused their judgement to be questioned. Yet his action seemed natural. Even though he was President, Mr. Wilson was a party leader ; that is the American system. And his opponents certainly had no thought of abandoning party politics ; early in September the chairman of the Republican National Congressional Committee was emphasising the im- portance of " Republican control of the next Congress "; six weeks earlier ex-President Taft had urged that " we need a Republican Congress." Wilson's own appeal for a Democratic Congress to support a Democratic President was temperate and unprovocative. Nevertheless Mrs. Wilson, when he read it to her, said at once, " I would not send it out ; it is not a dignified thing to do." " That is what I thought at first," he replied, " but it is too late now. I have told them I would do it." A tragically historic sentence, for with that act Wilson lost command of his own people—which meant that he lost the Treaty and the Covenant, and the world through the critical post-War years lost America, and became what it is today.
Mr. Baker's selection from the mass of documents, pub- lished and unpublished, at his disposal constitutes an impres- sive picture of Wilson the President and an attractive picture of Wilson the man. Neither pedantry nor vanity—both quali- ties ascribed to the President by his critics—find any place in
his character as revealed here, least of all the latter. The President declines to approve the formation of a society to be called " The Wilsonians of America "; he discourages the pre-
paration of " an authorised biography " of himself ; he hopes the movement to call the Muscle Shoals Dam after him will be checked, " because I frankly dislike to have things named after me "; he " respectfully suggests " that a proposed Wilson Democratic Club should find some other title. That may seem inconsistent with the ingenuous cable to Colonel House that " I assume I shall be invited to preside " over the Peace Con- ference ; but in fact it is not, for the assumption then was that the Conference would be held in a neutral country, and Wilson was the only head of a State among the representatives of the Great Powers.
This final volume is a monumental testimony to Mr. Baker's industry. His inclusions are so comprehensive that omis- sions of matter of importance must be negligible.
WILSON HARRIS.
Previous page
