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Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him
Chapter XXXIII - Wilson, The Warrior
by Tumulty, Joseph P.
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The President had but one object: to throw all the nation's energy into
the scale for the defeat of Germany. Because he did not bluster and voice
daily hymns of hate against Germany, he was singularly misunderstood by
some of his fellow-citizens, who, in their own boiling anger against the
enemy, would sometimes peevishly inquire: "Does he really hate Germany?"
The President was too much occupied with deeds to waste time in word-
vapouring. By every honourable means he had sought to avoid the issue, but
a truculent and fatuous foe had made war necessary, and into that war the
peace-loving President went with the grim resolution of an iron warrior.
In his attitude before and during the war his motto might have been the
familiar words of Polonius:
Beware of entrance to a quarrel; but being in,
Bear't, that the opposed may beware of thee.
Occasionally, as at Baltimore, on April 6, 1918, the public heard from him
brief, ringing speeches of warlike resolution:
Germany has once more said that force and force alone shall decide
whether Justice and Peace shall reign in the affairs of men, whether
Right as America conceives it or Dominion as she conceives it shall
determine the destinies of mankind. There is therefore but one
response possible from us. Force, Force to the utmost, Force without
stint or limit, the righteous and triumphant Force which shall make
Right the law of the world, and cast every selfish Dominion down in
the dust.
Months after hostilities had ended, there appeared from time to time in
the newspapers, without his or my knowledge of proposed publication,
utterances of his to military men during the conflict which showed his
warrior heart and his extraordinary ability to grasp a technical military
problem such as his dispatch to Admiral Sims, his address to the officers
of the Atlantic Fleet, and his interview with Marshal Joffre in the White
House. Perhaps it is not generally known that Mr. Wilson, who has
constantly read and loved the philosophic poetry of Wordsworth, has also
been an intense admirer of Shakespeare's warrior-hero, Henry the Fifth,
and has frequently read aloud to friends, with exclamations of admiration,
the stirring speeches of Henry in the Shakespearean play.
The cable message to Admiral Sims is as follows:
FROM THE PRESIDENT FOR ADMIRAL SIMS,
American Embassy, London, July 5, 1917.
Strictly confidential.
From the beginning of the war, I have been greatly surprised at the
failure of the British Admiralty to use Great Britain's great naval
superiority in an effective way. In the presence of the present
submarine emergency they are helpless to the point of panic. Every
plan we suggest they reject for some reason of prudence. In my view,
this is not a time for prudence but for boldness even at the cost of
great losses. In most of your dispatches you have quite properly
advised us of the sort of aid and cooperation desired from us by the
Admiralty. The trouble is that their plans and methods do not seem to
us efficacious. I would be very much obliged to you if you would
report to me, confidentially, of course, exactly what the Admiralty
has been doing, and what they have accomplished, and add to the report
your own comments and suggestions, based upon independent thought of
the whole situation, without regard to the judgments of any one on
that side of the water. The Admiralty was very slow to adopt the
protection or convoy and it is not now, I judge [protecting] convoys
on adequate scale within the danger zone, seeming to keep small craft
with the grand fleet. The absence of craft for convoy is even more
apparent on the French coast than on the English coast and in the
Channel. I do not see how the necessary military supplies and supplies
of food and fuel oil are to be delivered at British ports in any other
way within the next few months than under adequate convoy. There will
presently not be ships or tankers enough and our shipbuilding plans
may not begin to yield important results in less than eighteen months.
I believe that you will keep these instructions absolutely and
entirely to yourself, and that you will give me such advice as you
would give if you were handling and if you were running a navy of your
own.
(Signed) WOODROW WILSON.
For sheer audacity, there is not much that can be compared with his
address to the officers of the Atlantic Fleet on August 11, 1917:
Now, the point that is constantly in my mind, gentlemen, is this: This
is an unprecedented war and, therefore, it is a war in one sense for
amateurs. Nobody ever before conducted a war like this and therefore
nobody can pretend to be a professional in a war like this. Here are
two great navies, not to speak of the others associated with us, our
own and the British, outnumbering by a very great margin the navy to
which we are opposed and yet casting about for a war in which to use
our superiority and our strength, because of the novelty of the
instruments used, because of the unprecedented character of the war,
because, as I said just now, nobody ever before fought a war like
this, in the way that this is being fought at sea, or on land either,
for that matter. The experienced soldier--experienced in previous
wars--is a back number so far as his experience is concerned; not so
far as his intelligence is concerned. His experience does not count,
because he never fought a war as this is being fought, and therefore
he is an amateur along with the rest of us. Now, somebody has got to
think this war out. Somebody has got to think out the way not only to
fight the submarine, but to do something different from what we are
doing.
We are hunting hornets all over the farm and letting the nest alone.
None of us know how to go to the nest and crush it; and yet I despair
of hunting for hornets all over the sea when I know where the nest is
and know that the nest is breeding hornets as fast as I can find them.
I am willing for my part, and I know you are willing because I know
the stuff you are made of--I am willing to sacrifice half the navy
Great Britain and we together have to crush out that nest, because if
we crush it the war is won. I have come here to say that I do not care
where it comes from, I do not care whether it comes from the youngest
officer or the oldest, but I want the officers of this navy to have
the distinction of saying how this war is going to be won. The
Secretary of the Navy and I have just been talking over plans for
putting the planning machinery of the Navy at the disposal of the
brains of the Navy and not stopping to ask what rank those brains
have, because, as I have said before and want to repeat, so far as
experience in this kind of war is concerned we are all of the same
rank. I am not saying that I do not expect the admirals to tell us
what to do, but I am saying that I want the youngest and most modest
youngster in the service to tell us what we ought to do if he knows
what it is. Now I am willing to make any sacrifice for that. I mean
any sacrifice of time or anything else. I am ready to put myself at
the disposal of any officer in the Navy who thinks he knows how to run
this war. I will not undertake to tell you whether he does or not,
because I know that I do not, but I will undertake to put him in
communication with those who can find out whether his idea will work
or not. I have the authority to do that and I will do it with the
greatest pleasure.
* * * * *
We have got to throw tradition to the wind. Now, as I have said,
gentlemen, I take it for granted that nothing that I say here will be
repeated and therefore I am going to say this: Every time we have
suggested anything to the British Admiralty the reply has come back
that virtually amounted to this, that it had never been done that way,
and I felt like saying: "Well, nothing was ever done so systematically
as nothing is being done now." Therefore I should like to see
something unusual happen, something that was never done before; and
inasmuch as the things that are being done to you were never done
before, don't you think it is worth while to try something that was
never done before against those who are doing them to you. There is no
other way to win, and the whole principle of this war is the kind of
thing that ought to hearten and stimulate America. America has always
boasted that she could find men to do anything. She is the prize
amateur nation of the world. Germany is the prize professional nation
of the world. Now when it comes to doing new things and doing them
well, I will back the amateur against the professional every time,
because the professional does it out of the book and the amateur does
it with his eyes open upon a new world and with a new set of
circumstances. He knows so little about it that he is fool enough to
try to do the right thing. The men that do not know the danger are the
rashest men, and I have several times ventured to make this suggestion
to the men about me in both arms of the service. Please leave out of
your vocabulary altogether the word "prudent." Do not stop to think
about what is prudent for a moment. Do the thing that is audacious to
the utmost point of risk and daring, because that is exactly the thing
that the other side does not understand, and you will win by the
audacity of method when you cannot win by circumspection and prudence.
I think that there are willing ears to hear this in the American Navy
and the American Army because that is the kind of folk we are. We get
tired of the old ways and covet the new ones.
So, gentlemen, besides coming down here to give you my personal
greeting and to say how absolutely I rely on you and believe in you, I
have come down here to say also that I depend on you, depend on you
for brains as well as training and courage and discipline.
When Marshal Joffre visited the President in the spring of 1917, he was
surprised, as he afterward said to Secretary Daniels, "to find that
President Wilson had such a perfect mastery of the military situation. He
had expected to meet a scholar, a statesman, and an idealist; he had not
expected to meet a practical strategist fully conversant with all the
military movements.
"In answer to my question as to whether it would be feasible to send in
advance of his army the general who was to command American troops in
France, the President said at once that it could be arranged."
The President and Marshal Joffre considered together a number of technical
military problems. General Joffre gave the President his expert opinion as
to what should be done in every instance and was surprised at the
promptness with which in each case the President said: "It shall be done."
A little incident at the White House at the luncheon given by the
President to the members of the Democratic National Committee throws light
upon the fighting qualities of the man. He asked Mr. Angus W. McLean, a
warm and devoted friend from North Carolina, who was seated near him at
the table, what the Scots down in North Carolina were saying about the
war. Mr. McLean replied he could best answer the question by repeating
what a friend of the President's father and an ardent admirer of the
President had said about the President's attitude a few days previous. "I
am afraid our President is not a true Scot, he doesn't show the fighting
spirit characteristic of the Scots." The President promptly replied: "You
tell our Scotch friend, McLean, that he does not accurately interpret the
real Scottish character. If he did, he would understand my attitude. The
Scotsman is slow to begin to fight but when once he begins he never knows
when to quit."
Two capital policies which contributed enormously to the winning of the
war received their impulse from Woodrow Wilson--the unification of command
of the Allied armies on the western front and the attack of submarines at
their base in the North Sea. On November 18, 1918, Colonel House let it be
known in London that he had received a cable from President Wilson stating
emphatically that the United States Government considered unity of plan
and control between the Allies and the United States to be essential in
order to win the war and achieve a just and lasting peace.
It was Woodrow Wilson, a civilian, who advised, urged, and insisted that a
mine barrage be laid across the North Sea to check German submarine
activities at their source. Naval experts pronounced the plan impossible:
it would take too long to lay the barrage, and, when laid, it would not
hold. A great storm would sweep it away. But the President insisted that
the thing could be done, and that nothing else could check the submarine
devastation amounting by July, 1917, to 600,000 tons a month of destroyed
shipping. The President's audacity and persistence prevailed, and it is
not too much to say that his plan ended the submarine menace.
It will be recalled that European newspapers carried a story of a farewell
reception to Mr. Bonar Law, in which he paid his compliments to his chief,
Mr. Lloyd George, saying, in substance, that he had seen Lloyd George
discouraged only once. It was on the morning when the news came of the
great German offensive in March, 1918. Mr. Lloyd George told Mr. Bonar Law
that morning that only a vast increase in American reinforcements could
save the Allies. A cable was immediately framed, asking Mr. Wilson to send
the number of reinforcements necessary. Mr. Bonar Law stated in his speech
that an affirmative answer was received from Mr. Wilson the same day.
A prominent Englishman, discussing the President's work in connection with
the war, while criticizing what he characterized as the President's
ignorance of European conditions, said: "I feel ashamed to be criticizing
President Wilson for anything when I remember his practical services in
prosecuting the war. No other man in any country gave such firm and
instant support to every measure for making operations effective. His
decisions were fearless and prompt and he stood by them like a rock. In
sending troops promptly and in sending plenty of them, in cooperating in
the naval effort, in insisting on the unity of command under Foch, in
backing the high command in the field, and in every other practical detail
Mr. Wilson had big, clear conceptions and the courage to carry them out."
Those who were critical of the President's conduct of the war forget the
ringing statement that came from Lloyd George when the great offensive was
on, when he said: "The race is now between Von Hindenburg and Wilson." And
Wilson won.
The most important speech made by the President during the war was
delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, on September 27,
1918, opening the campaign for the Fourth Liberty Loan.
I recall a talk the President had with me on the way to New York on the
afternoon of the delivery of this speech when he requested me to read the
manuscript. As he gave it to me he said: "They [meaning the Allies] will
not like this speech, for there are many things in it which will displease
the Imperialists of Great Britain, France, and Italy. The world must be
convinced that we are playing no favourites and that America has her own
plan for a world settlement, a plan which does not contain the germs of
another war. What I greatly fear, now that the end seems inevitable, is
that we shall go back to the old days of alliances and competing armaments
and land grabbing. We must see to it, therefore, that there is not another
Alsace-Lorraine, and that when peace finally comes, it shall be a
permanent and a lasting peace. We must now serve notice on everybody that
our aims and purposes are not selfish. In order to do this and to make the
right impressions, we must be brutally frank with friends and foes alike."
As we discussed the subject matter of this momentous speech, I gathered
from the President's statements to me that he clearly foresaw the end of
the war and of the possible proposal for a settlement that might be made
by the Allies. Therefore, he felt it incumbent upon him frankly to discuss
America's view of what a just and lasting settlement should be. As one
examines this speech to-day, away from the excitement of that critical
hour in which it was delivered, he can easily find in it statements and
utterances that must have caused sharp irritation in certain chancelleries
of Europe. In nearly every line of it there was a challenge to European
Imperialism to come out in the open and avow its purposes as to peace.
Many of the Allied leaders had been addressing their people on the matter
of peace; now they were being challenged by an American president to place
their cards face up on the table. An examination of the speech, in the
light of subsequent events, reėmphasizes the President's pre-vision:
At every turn of the war we gain a fresh consciousness of what we mean
to accomplish by it. When our hope and expectation are most excited we
think more definitely than before of the issues that hang upon it and
of the purposes which must be realized by means of it. For it has
positive and well-defined purposes which we did not determine and
which we cannot alter. No statesman or assembly created them; no
statesman or assembly can alter them. They have arisen out of the very
nature and circumstances of the war. The most that statesmen or
assemblies can do is to carry them out or be false to them. They were
perhaps not clear at the outset; but they are clear now. The war has
lasted more than four years and the whole world has been drawn into
it. The common will of mankind has been substituted for the particular
purposes of individual states. Individual statesmen may have started
the conflict, but neither they nor their opponents can stop it as they
please. It has become a peoples' war, and peoples of all sorts and
races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved
in its sweeping processes of change and settlement. We came into it
when its character had become fully defined and it was plain that no
nation could stand apart or be indifferent to its outcome. Its
challenge drove to the heart of everything we cared for and lived for.
The voice of the war had become clear and gripped our hearts. Our
brothers from many lands, as well as our own murdered dead under the
sea, were calling to us, and we responded, fiercely and of course.
The air was clear about us. We saw things in their full, convincing
proportions as they were; and we have seen them with steady eyes and
unchanging comprehension ever since. We accepted the issues of the war
as facts, not as any group of men either here or elsewhere had defined
them, and we can accept no outcome which does not squarely meet and
settle them. Those issues are these:
Shall the military power of any nation or group of nations be suffered
to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to
rule except the right of force?
Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and make them
subject to their purpose and interest?
Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own internal
affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force or by their own will and
choice?
Shall there be a common standard of right and privilege for all
peoples and nations or shall the strong do as they will and the weak
suffer without redress?
Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual alliance or
shall there be a common concert to oblige the observance of common
rights?
No man, no group of men, chose these to be the issues of the struggle.
They are issues of it; and they must be settled--by no arrangement
or compromise or adjustment of interests, but definitely and once for
all and with a full and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that
the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the
strongest.
That is what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace, if we speak
sincerely, intelligently, and with a real knowledge and comprehension
of the matter we deal with.
* * * * *
As I have said, neither I nor any other man in governmental authority
created or gave form to the issues of this war. I have simply
responded to them with such vision as I could command. But I have
responded gladly and with a resolution that has grown warmer and more
confident as the issues have grown clearer and clearer. It is now
plain that they are issues which no man can pervert unless it be
wilfully. I am bound to fight for them, and happy to fight for them as
time and circumstance have revealed them to me as to all the world.
Our enthusiasm for them grows more and more irresistible as they stand
out in more and more vivid and unmistakable outline.
And the forces that fight for them draw into closer and closer array,
organize their millions into more and more unconquerable might, as
they become more and more distinct to the thought and purposes of the
peoples engaged. It is the peculiarity of this great war that while
statesmen have seemed to cast about for definitions of their purpose
and have sometimes seemed to shift their ground and their point of
view, the thought of the mass of men, whom statesmen are supposed to
instruct and lead, has grown more and more unclouded, more and more
certain of what it is that they are fighting for. National purposes
have fallen more and more into the background and the common purpose
of enlightened mankind has taken their place. The counsels of plain
men have become on all hands more simple and straightforward and more
unified than the counsels of sophisticated men of affairs, who still
retain the impression that they are playing a game of power and
playing for high stakes. That is why I have said that this is a
peoples' war, not a statesmen's. Statesmen must follow the clarified
common thought or be broken.
I take that to be the significance of the fact that assemblies and
associations of many kinds made up of plain workaday people have
demanded, almost every time they came together, and are still
demanding, that the leaders of their governments declare to them
plainly what it is, exactly what it is, that they were seeking in this
war, and what they think the items of the final settlement should be.
They are not yet satisfied with what they have been told. They still
seem to fear that they are getting what they ask for only in
statesmen's terms--only in the terms of territorial arrangements and
divisions of power, and not in terms of broad-visioned justice and
mercy and peace and the satisfaction of those deep-seated longings of
oppressed and distracted men and women and enslaved peoples that seem
to them the only things worth fighting a war for that engulfs the
world. Perhaps statesmen have not always recognized this changed
aspect of the whole world of policy and action. Perhaps they have not
always spoken in direct reply to the questions asked because they did
not know how searching those questions were and what sort of answers
they demanded.
But I, for one, am glad to attempt the answer again and again, in the
hope that I may make it clearer and clearer that my one thought is to
satisfy those who struggle in the ranks and are, perhaps above all
others, entitled to a reply whose meaning no one can have any excuse
for misunderstanding, if he understands the language in which it is
spoken or can get someone to translate it correctly into his own. And
I believe that the leaders of the governments with which we are
associated will speak, as they have occasion, as plainly as I have
tried to speak. I hope that they will feel free to say whether they
think I am in any degree mistaken in my interpretation of the issues
involved or in my purpose with regard to the means by which a
satisfactory settlement of those issues may be obtained. Unity of
purpose and of counsel are as imperatively necessary as was unity of
command in the battlefield, and with perfect unity of purpose and
counsel will come assurance of complete victory. It can be had in no
other way. "Peace drives" can be effectively neutralized and silenced
only by showing that every victory of the nations associated against
Germany brings the nations nearer the sort of peace which will bring
security and reassurance to all peoples and make the recurrence of
another such struggle of pitiless force and bloodshed for ever
impossible, and that nothing else can. Germany is constantly
intimating the "terms" she will accept; and always finds that the
world does not want terms. It wishes the final triumph of justice and
fair dealing.
When I had read the speech, I turned to the President and said: "This
speech will bring Germany to terms and will convince her that we play no
favourites and will compel the Allies openly to avow the terms upon which
they will expect a war settlement to be reached. In my opinion, it means
the end of the war." The President was surprised at the emphasis I laid
upon the speech, but he was more surprised when I ventured the opinion
that he would be in Paris within six months discussing the terms of the
treaty. The Washington Post, a critic of the President, characterized
this speech, in an editorial on September 29, 1918, as "a marvellous
intellectual performance, and a still more marvellous exhibition of moral
courage."
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