The Illusion of Victory (56 page)

Joe Tumulty had arranged this meeting after hours of intercession with the hostile president. On February 22, 1919, a new organization, the Friends of Irish Freedom, had convened a gigantic “Irish Race Convention” in Philadelphia. With a unanimity unmatched for decades, the organizers had persuaded swarms of professional politicians, thirty bishops, three archbishops and James Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore, the leader of the American Catholic Church, to join 6,000 delegates who demanded independence for Ireland. On the platform with Gibbons was Norman Thomas, who would soon become a leader of the Socialist Party; a prominent Philadelphia rabbi; and leaders of many other ethnic groups. The delegates had pledged $1 million to a “freedom fund” to finance a huge public-relations campaign.
⁷⁷

The distinguished New York judge, John W. Goff, opened the conversation with Wilson by telling him that the Irish Race Convention wanted him to plead Ireland’s case for independence before the peace conference. Wilson curtly refused to do any such thing. Frank Walsh urged the president to at least use “his great influence” to win the delegates from the provisional Irish republic a chance to appear before the conference. With unconcealed irritation, Wilson snapped,“You do not expect me to give an answer to this request now?” walsh said he was merely asking the president to consider it. Wilson ended the discussion on that sour note.

The president did not express a word of sympathy for Ireland’s cause. Later he said he had been sorely tempted to tell the Irish-Americans “to go to hell.” he obviously did not much care what they thought of him. He had defeated their attempt to block him from joining the war on England’s side with his attack on hyphenates, and by accusing them of being pro-German.

The president who bragged about being in touch with the tides of public feeling was making one of his biggest mistakes. Except for Cohalan, the committee was composed of Irish-Americans who had supported Wilson and the war. As a political issue in the United States, imperial Germany was dead. British policy in Ireland had become more and more brutal since 1916, when they had executed the Easter uprising leaders. Hundreds of leaders of the self-proclaimed Irish republic were in jail. London was ruling by raw terror.

The committee reported the president’s snub of Judge Cohalan to the newspapers. A huge commotion erupted. To the distress of Irish moderates such as Frank Walsh, Cohalan became an overnight martyr-hero. Numerous letters from prominent Irish-Americans urged Wilson to “make amends” for insulting Cohalan.

Earlier this same day, by a vote of 216 to 45, the House of Representatives had passed a resolution, calling on the Paris peace conference to “consider the claims of Ireland to the right of self determination.” Before the end of March, the Democratic Party’s Executive Committee had endorsed the Irish Race Convention’s resolutions. So had several state legislatures. Five prominent Democratic senators wrote to the president warning him: “The Irish question has become a very serious matter.”
⁷⁸

On April 2, 1917, Woodrow Wilson asked Congress to declare war on Imperial Germany. Five months earlier, he had been reelected to a second term on the slogan, “He Kept Us Out of War. ” Fifty members of the House of Representatives, including the Democratic majority leader, voted no.
C
OURTESY OF THE
L
IBRARY OF
C
ONGRESS

Colonel Edward Mandell House was Woodrow Wilson’s alter ego as well as his confidential advisor on foreign policy. House did not realize he had a secret enemy: Edith Galt Wilson, the president’s formidable second wife.
B
ETTMANN
/©CORBIS

Joseph Tumulty helped elect Wilson governor of New Jersey, his first step to the White House. As the president’s secretary, the genial Irish-American dealt shrewdly with the press and Congress on the president’s behalf.
C
OURTESY OF
F
RANKLIN
D.
R
OOSEVELT
L
IBRARY

William Jennings Bryan was Wilson’s first secretary of state. Intensely anti-war, he objected to America’s arms trade with England and France. Bryan resigned when Wilson took a belligerent stance toward Germany after the sinking of the British liner, Lusitania.
C
OURTESY OF THE
L
IBRARY OF
C
ONGRESS

In Russia, radical Bolsheviks seized power with German backing and negotiated a separate peace. Here, three of their top leaders, Leon Trotsky, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Lev Kamenev, confer. Woodrow Wilson called them “fatuous dreamers.”
T
ROTSKY
I
NTERNET
A
RCHIVES

Woman suffrage was one of Wilson’s major political headaches during World War I. Suffragettes picketed the White House and were often arrested for acts of civil disobedience. Here they march up Fifth Avenue in New York.
G
EORGE
G
RANTHAM
B
AIN
C
OLLECTION
L
IBRARY OF
C
ONGRESS

Former president William Howard Taft’s support for a League To Enforce Peace made him Woodrow Wilson’s ally for a while. But he found grave fault with Wilson’s confrontation with Congress and became a critic.
C
OURTESY OF THE
L
IBRARY OF
C
ONGRESS

Former president Theodore Roosevelt played a key role in defeating Woodrow Wilson’s plea to elect a Democratic congress in 1918. TR was virtually guaranteed the Republican presidential nomination in 1920. But he died in his sleep in early 1919.
T
HEODORE
R
OOSEVELT
C
OLLECTION
H
ARVARD
C
OLLEGE
L
IBRARY

Quentin Roosevelt, Theodore Rooseve l t ’ s youngest son, fell in love with Flora Payne Whitney, heiress to a $100,000,000 fortune, while he was at Harvard. At first, both sets of parents disapproved of the match.