The Illusion of Victory (4 page)

The president proceeded to describe the program on which the United States would now embark. They would offer “the most liberal financial credits” to the governments now at war with Germany. They would share America’s material resources, immediately equip the navy to deal with enemy submarines, and expand the army by at least 500,000 men,“who should, in my opinion, be chosen upon the principle of universal liability to service.”

These words were an uplifting way of saying conscription, a draft. Along with this hard choice would be “equitable” taxation to finance the U.S. government’s war program and to protect people against the inflation produced by “vast war loans.”

More important than these “deeply momentous things” was the necessity to make America’s motives clear “to all the world.” The goal of the war would be to “vindicate the principles of peace and justice against “selfish and autocratic power.” It was “autocratic governments backed by organized force” that made neutrality impossible.

Wilson insisted that he did not blame the German people for this international malaise. “We have no quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was not upon their impulse that their government acted in entering this war.” The war had been provoked and waged in the interests of “dynasties or of little groups of ambitious men.”

In a voice vibrant with emotion, the president launched into a paean to democracy. “Self-governed nations do not fill their neighbor states with spies” or launch “cunningly contrived plans of deception or aggression . . . from generation to generation.” Such things can only be done “within the privacy of [royal] courts or behind the carefully guarded confidences of a narrow and privileged class.” they were “happily impossible” where public opinion insisted that a government give the people “full information” about the nation’s affairs.

At this point Wilson asked the audience if they did not share his enthusiasm for the “wonderful and heartening things that have been happening within the last few weeks in Russia.” That nation, he maintained, had always “been democratic at heart.” the autocracy that ran the country was an aberration, not even Russian in origin. Now Russia had become a fit partner for a “League of Honor.”

Returning to Germany, the president launched a scathing denunciation of the spies and saboteurs that the “Prussian autocracy” had sent to the United States to disturb the peace and disrupt U.S. industries. Even worse was the attempt to “stir up enemies against us at our very doors” by offering Mexico an alliance. This underhanded policy had made it clear that the German government had no “real friendship” for Americans and intended to “act against our peace and security” at its convenience. It was time to “accept the gauge of battle” with this “natural foe to liberty,” to fight for “the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included; for the right of nations, great and small . . . the world must be made safe for democracy.”

At first, Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi was the only person in the chamber to react to these last words. He began clapping. The harsh sound of his beating hands seemed to take everyone by surprise. A moment later, the entire audience was imitating him.
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Wilson reiterated America’s disinterested motives. “We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. . . . We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind.” He also restated America’s lack of enmity toward the German people. He declared that Americans would prove this friendship by their actions toward the millions of German Americans in their midst. In fact, they would prove their friendship for all the immigrants and their descendants who were “loyal to the government and to their neighbors in the hour of test.”

Finally, came a soaring peroration:

The last line, a paraphrase of Martin Luther’s famous defense of his Protestant faith, guaranteed that this time, there was no need for cheerleading by Chief Justice White or Senator Williams. Almost every person in the chamber was standing up, clapping, shouting, waving flags, in some cases sobbing with the emotion Wilson had ignited. Only a few people noticed that one man made a point of doing none of these things. A small, sardonic smile on his wide, creased face, Senator Robert La Follette of Wisconsin, one of the stellar voices of liberalism in America, folded his arms across his broad chest and stood there in silent disagreement.
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Wilson left the House chamber immediately. Only a few people were able to shake his hand. One was Senator Lodge, who told him that he had “expressed in the loftiest manner the sentiments of the American people.” These were the first kind words Lodge had directed toward Wilson in a long time. The secretary of agriculture, David F. Houston, who had been arguing for war against Germany within Wilson’s cabinet as passionately as Lodge had been calling for it publicly, also shook the president’s hand and congratulated him. Wilson returned to the White House with Joe Tumulty and Cary Grayson where he found his wife and daughter and Colonel House waiting for him in his study on the second floor.

House told Wilson he had “taken a position as to policies that no other statesman had yet assumed.” Perhaps revealing a certain weariness with House’s sycophantic style, Wilson disagreed. He said Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln and the president’s favorite politician, Britain’s William Evart Gladstone, had relied on the same principles. House diplomatically disagreed.“It seemed to me,” House told his diary,“he did not have a true conception of the path he was blazing.” was the colonel telling himself he understood the history they were making far better than Philip Dru?
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Later, according to Joe Tumulty, he and Wilson adjourned to the Cabinet Room, where the president broke down.“My message today was a message of death for our young men,” he said.“How strange it seems to applaud that.” The president supposedly launched into a self-pitying monologue, defending his long struggle to keep the United States neutral. He spoke bitterly of how he had been maligned in the newspapers by men such as Theodore Roosevelt and Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilson read Tumulty a letter from a friend who understood what he was trying to do. Finally, Tumulty said,“he wiped away great tears [and] laying his head on the table, sobbed as if he was a child.”

Repeated in dozens of history books and Wilson biographies, this touching scene almost certainly never happened. Tumulty wrote it in 1920, when the illusion of victory had been shattered by cruel realities. Like Frank Cobb’s imaginary interview, it represents something that Tumulty wished Wilson had said and done. By 1920, Tumulty was one of the few men in U.S. politics who remained loyal to Wilson, in spite of the shameful way the president and his wife had treated him.
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Without Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson might never have become president. The shrewd, genial Irish-American from Jersey City had shepherded Wilson through the wilderness of New Jersey machine politics when he ran for governor in 1910. Tumulty had stayed loyal when Wilson did what almost every Irish-American politician in the United States considered unforgivable. He broke his promise that he would not attack James Smith, the powerful Democratic Party boss whom George Harvey had persuaded to offer Wilson the gubernatorial nomination. Instead, to prove his liberal bona fides, Wilson made Smith one of his principal targets. In sticking with Wilson, a man whom fellow Irish-Americans called a liar and an ingrate, Tumulty destroyed his once bright future in the New Jersey Democratic Party.
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In Washington, Tumulty had been equally valuable in dealing with Congress and the press during Wilson’s first term. He combined abundant charm with shrewd judgment and tact. Nevertheless, after Wilson’s reelection in 1916, the president had fired Tumulty. Why? Because Edith Galt Wilson and Colonel House had advised him against having an Irish Catholic in his White House. Edith considered Tumulty “common.” House foolishly joined the First Lady in this effort to dispose of a rival for Wilson’s attention, never dreaming that he was next on her hit list.

Tumulty had been the target of attacks by anti-Catholics and politicians jealous of his influence—often one and the same. Too many Irish Americans assumed he could get them favored treatment on everything from government jobs to freeing Ireland from Britain’s grip. In dealing with these problems, Tumulty did nothing to impugn his loyalty or impair his usefulness to the president.

Tumulty wrote Wilson a sad letter, in which he said his dismissal “wounds me more deeply than I can tell you.” Although he was “heartsick,” he would depart “grateful for having been associated so closely with so great a man.” Newspaperman David Lawrence, a former student of Wilson’s at Princeton and an admirer of Tumulty, persuaded the president to change his mind. But the old, confident friendship between Tumulty and Wilson was gone beyond recall. The secretary was always aware that Edith Wilson’s critical eye was fixed on him—and her opinion often meant more to the president than his advice.
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Edith Galt Wilson was by no means the first presidential wife to wield political power behind the scenes. Abigail Adams was known as a “compleat politician,” whose counsel her harassed husband, John, frequently sought. Dolley Madison’s political skills were crucial to the survival of James Madison’s troubled presidency. Sarah Polk was James Polk’s constant confidante and adviser on everything from patronage to fighting the Mexican war.

But these First Ladies had been married to their politician husbands for decades before they reached the White House and had acquired graduate degrees in political sophistication over the years. Edith Galt Wilson’s interest in politics was so minimal that she did not even know who was running in the presidential election of 1912, when her future husband won the White House. Even more minimal was her education—only two years of formal schooling. Her adult life had been largely involved with business. Her late husband had owned a jewelry store known as “the Tiffany’s of Washington. ” After his death, she managed the business with the help of a hardworking brother.

Nevertheless, the recently widowed Wilson, in his passionate pursuit of Mrs. Galt, undertook to convert her into a partner in the most confidential aspects of his presidency. He conferred with her about his letters to the German government and his problems with Haiti, Mexico and the Republican opposition. Soon she was telling him,“Much as I love your delicious love-letters . . . I believe I enjoy even more the ones in which you tell me . . . of what you are working on . . . for then I feel I am . . . being taken in to partnership as it were.”
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After their marriage on December 18, 1915, this partnership became even more explicit. Each morning, Edith joined the president in inspecting “the Drawer,” the place in his Oval Office desk where aides placed reports from the State Department or other parts of the government requiring the president’s immediate attention. Edith regularly converted into code Wilson’s letters to ambassadors or to House when the colonel was conferring with political leaders in London and Paris, and decoded letters from them. She frequently remained in the Oval Office while Wilson dictated answers to urgent letters. When Colonel House returned from Europe, he was amazed when Wilson invited Edith to join them to hear about his supersecret negotiations with the British and French.
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This crash course in power politics made Edith Galt Wilson presume a political wisdom she did not possess. The illusion would have a deleterious impact not only on Joe Tumulty and Colonel House, but also on Woodrow Wilson’s presidency and the history of the world.

Elsewhere in the country, the news that the United States had gone to war landed with a dull thud. No one danced or demonstrated in the streets. In New York, newsboys sold extras to the usual crowds in Times Square. But there was no visible response. About a hundred people read the bulletin boards in Herald Square, where the latest news flashes were posted, without the slightest sign of excitement. The contrast between the way the war had begun in Europe, with tens of thousands of Germans, French, and Russians cheering the news, was stark.
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There was some mild interest in a
New York Times
story about a hearing before the New York State Senate in Albany to resolve a dispute between Mayor John Purroy Mitchel of New York City and State Senator Robert F. Wagner. The senator had demanded the hearing to clear his name when the mayor accused him of being an agent of the German government. The
Times
reported that the senate gave Wagner a clean bill of patriotic health.

Another story reported that the pro-war president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, had expelled one Morris Ryskind of the School of Journalism for writing an article in the college magazine,
The Jester
, calling him a warmonger. Ryskind had also lampooned the pompous president in a poem. The
Times
claimed that the entire university supported the decision to give Ryskind the boot. The opinionated young man went on to Broadway and Hollywood fame as the writer of Marx Brothers comedies and hit plays in collaboration with George S. Kaufman.
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