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Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him
Chapter XLII - The Western Trip
by Tumulty, Joseph P.
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Tentative plans for a Western trip began to be formed in the White House
because of the urgent insistence from Democratic friends on the Hill that
nothing could win the fight for the League of Nations except a direct
appeal to the country by the President in person.
Admiral Grayson, the President's physician and consistent friend, who knew
his condition and the various physical crises through which he had passed
here and on the other side, from some of which he had not yet recovered,
stood firm in his resolve that the President should not go West, even
intimating to me that the President's life might pay the forfeit if his
advice were disregarded. Indeed, it needed not the trained eye of a
physician to see that the man whom the senators were now advising to make
a "swing around the circle" was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. More
than once since his return from the Peace Conference I had urged him to
take a needed rest; to get away from the turmoil of Washington and
recuperate; but he spurned this advice and resolved to go through to the
end.
No argument of ours could draw him away from his duties, which now
involved not only the fight for the ratification of the Treaty, but the
threatened railway strike, with its attendant evils to the country, and
added administrative burdens growing out of the partisanship fight which
was being waged in Congress for the ostensible purpose of reducing the
high cost of living.
One day, after Democratic senators had been urging the Western trip, I
took leave to say to the President that, in his condition, disastrous
consequences might result if he should follow their advice. But he
dismissed my solicitude, saying in a weary way: "I know that I am at the
end of my tether, but my friends on the Hill say that the trip is
necessary to save the Treaty, and I am willing to make whatever personal
sacrifice is required, for if the Treaty should be defeated, God only
knows what would happen to the world as a result of it. In the presence of
the great tragedy which now faces the world, no decent man can count his
own personal fortunes in the reckoning. Even though, in my condition, it
might mean the giving up of my life, I will gladly make the sacrifice to
save the Treaty."
He spoke like a soldier who was ready to make the supreme sacrifice to
save the cause that lay closest to his heart.
As I looked at the President while he was talking, in my imagination I
made a comparison between the man, Woodrow Wilson, who now stood before me
and the man I had met many years before in New Jersey. In those days he
was a vigorous, agile, slender man, active and alert, his hair but
slightly streaked with gray. Now, as he stood before me discussing the
necessity for the Western trip, he was an old man, grown grayer and
grayer, but grimmer and grimmer in his determination, like an old warrior,
to fight to the end.
There was another whose heroism was no less than his, Mrs. Wilson. She has
since referred to the Western trip as "one long nightmare," though in the
smiling face which she turned upon the crowds from Columbus to San Diego
and back to Pueblo none could have detected a trace of the anxiety that
was haunting her. She met the shouting throngs with the same reposeful
dignity and radiant, friendly smile with which she had captivated the
people of England, France, Italy, and Belgium.
At home and abroad she has always had a peculiar power to attract the
populace, though she herself has never craved the spotlight. Like her
husband, she finds home more congenial, and, like him, she prefers not to
be written about.
In her husband's career she has played a notable rôle, the more noble
because self-effacing. She has consistently disavowed intention to
participate actively in public affairs, and yet in many a crisis she, out
of her strong intelligence and sagacity, has been able to offer timely,
wise suggestion. No public man ever had a more devoted helpmeet, and no
wife a husband more dependent upon her sympathetic understanding of his
problems. The devotion between these two has not been strengthened, for
that would be impossible, but deepened by the President's long illness.
Mrs. Wilson's strong physical constitution, combined with strength of
character and purpose, has sustained her under a strain which must have
wrecked most women. When the strong man broke, she nursed him as tenderly
as a mother nurses a child.
Mrs. Wilson must have left the White House for that ill-omened journey
with a sinking heart, for she knew, none better, that her husband was
suffering from accumulated fatigue, and that he should be starting on a
long vacation instead of a fighting tour that would tax the strength of an
athlete in the pink of condition. For seven practically vacationless years
he had borne burdens too great for any constitution; he had conducted his
country through the greatest of all wars; he had contended, at times
single-handed, in Paris with the world's most adroit politicians; he had
there been prostrated with influenza, that treacherous disease which
usually maims for a time those whom it does not kill, and he had not given
himself a chance to recuperate; he had returned to America to engage in
the most desperate conflict of his career with the leaders of the
opposition party; and now, when it was clear even to his men friends, and
much clearer to the intuition of a devoted wife, that nature was crying
out for rest, he was setting out on one of the most arduous programmes of
public speaking known even in our country, which is familiar with these
strenuous undertakings. Mrs. Wilson's anxieties must have increased with
each successive day of the journey, but not even to we of the immediate
party did she betray her fears. Her resolution was as great as his.
When the great illness came she had to stand between him and the peril of
exhaustion from official cares, yet she could not, like the more
fortunately obscure, withdraw her husband from business altogether and
take him away to some quiet place for restoration. As head of the nation
he must be kept in touch with affairs, and during the early months of his
illness she was the chief agent in keeping him informed of public
business. Her high intelligence and her extraordinary memory enabled her
to report to him daily, in lucid detail, weighty matters of state brought
to her by officials for transmission to him. At the proper time, when he
was least in pain and least exhausted, she would present a clear, oral
resume of each case and lay the documents before him in orderly
arrangement.
As woman and wife, the first thought of her mind and the first care of her
heart must be for his health. Once at an acute period of his illness
certain officials insisted that they must see him because they carried
information which it was "absolutely necessary that the President of the
United States should have," and she quietly replied: "I am not interested
in the President of the United States. I am interested in my husband and
his health."
With loving courage she met her difficult dilemma of shielding him as much
as possible and at the same time keeping him acquainted with things he
must know. When it became possible for him to see people she, in counsel
with Admiral Grayson, would arrange for conferences and carefully watch
her husband to see that they who talked with him did not trespass too long
upon his limited energy.
When it became evident that the tide of public opinion was setting against
the League, the President finally decided upon the Western trip as the
only means of bringing home to the people the unparalleled world
situation.
At the Executive offices we at once set in motion preparations for the
Western trip. One itinerary after another was prepared, but upon examining
it the President would find that it was not extensive enough and would
suspect that it was made by those of us--like Grayson and myself--who were
solicitious for his health, and he would cast them aside. All the
itineraries provided for a week of rest in the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado, but when a brief vacation was intimated to him, he was obdurate
in his refusal to include even a day of relaxation, saying to me, that
"the people would never forgive me if I took a rest on a trip such as the
one I contemplate taking. This is a business trip, pure and simple, and
the itinerary must not include rest of any kind." He insisted that there
be no suggestion of a pleasure trip attaching to a journey which he
regarded as a mission.
As I now look back upon this journey and its disastrous effects upon the
President's health, I believe that if he had only consented to include a
rest period in our arrangements, he might not have broken down at Pueblo.
Never have I seen the President look so weary as on the night we left
Washington for our swing into the West. When we were about to board our
special train, the President turned to me and said: "I am in a nice fix. I
am scheduled between now and the 28th of September to make in the
neighbourhood of a hundred speeches to various bodies, stretching all the
way from Ohio to the coast, and yet the pressure of other affairs upon me
at the White House has been so great that I have not had a single minute
to prepare my speeches. I do not know how I shall get the time, for during
the past few weeks I have been suffering from daily headaches; but perhaps
to-night's rest will make me fit for the work of tomorrow."
No weariness or brain-fag, however, was apparent in the speech at
Columbus, Ohio. To those of us who sat on the platform, including the
newspaper group who accompanied the President, this speech with its
beautiful phrasing and its effective delivery seemed to have been
carefully prepared.
Day after day, for nearly a month, there were speeches of a similar kind,
growing more intense in their emotion with each day. Shortly after we left
Tacoma, Washington, the fatigue of the trip began to write itself in the
President's face. He suffered from violent headaches each day, but his
speeches never betrayed his illness.
In those troublous days and until the very end of our Western trip the
President would not permit the slightest variation from our daily
programme. Nor did he ever permit the constant headaches, which would have
put an ordinary man out of sorts, to work unkindly upon the members of his
immediate party, which included Mrs. Wilson, Doctor Grayson, and myself.
He would appear regularly at each meal, partaking of it only slightly,
always gracious, always good-natured and smiling, responding to every call
from the outside for speeches--calls that came from early morning until
late at night--from the plain people grouped about every station and
watering place through which we passed. Even under the most adverse
physical conditions he was always kind, gentle, and considerate to those
about him.
I have often wished, as the criticisms of the Pullman smoking car, the
cloak room, and the counting house were carried to me, picturing the
President's coldness, his aloofness and exclusiveness, that the critics
could for a moment have seen the heart and great good-nature of the man
giving expression to themselves on this critical journey. If they could
have peeped through the curtain of our dining room, at one of the evening
meals, for instance, they would have been ashamed of their
misrepresentations of this kind, patient, considerate, human-hearted man.
When he was "half fit," an expression he often used, he was the best
fellow in the little group on our train--good-natured, smiling, full of
anecdotes and repartee, and always thinking of the comforts and pleasure
of the men gathered about him. The illness of a newspaper man, or of one
of the messengers or conductors, or attachés of the train was a call to
service to him, and one could find the President in one of the little
compartments of the train, seated at the bed of a newspaper man or some
attaché who had been taken ill on the trip. There is in the President a
sincere human sympathy, which is better than the cheap good-fellowship
which many public men carefully cultivate.
It was on the Western trip, about September 12th, while the President,
with every ounce of his energy, was attempting to put across the League of
Nations, that Mr. William C. Bullitt was disclosing to the Committee on
Foreign Relations at a public hearing the facts of a conference between
Secretary Lansing and himself, in which Mr. Bullitt declared that Mr.
Lansing had severely criticized the League of Nations.
The press representatives aboard the train called Mr. Bullitt's testimony
to the President's attention. He made no comment, but it was plain from
his attitude that he was incensed and distressed beyond measure. Here he
was in the heart of the West, advancing the cause so dear to his heart,
steadily making gains against what appeared to be insurmountable odds, and
now his intimate associate, Mr. Lansing, was engaged in sniping and
attacking him from behind.
On September 16th, Mr. Lansing telegraphed the following message to the
President:
On May 17th, Bullitt resigned by letter giving his reasons with which
you are familiar. I replied by letter on the 18th without any comment
on his reasons. Bullitt on the 19th asked to see me to say good-bye
and I saw him. He elaborated on the reasons for his resignation and
said that he could not conscientiously give countenance to a treaty
which was based on injustice. I told him that I would say nothing
against his resigning since he put it on conscientious grounds, and
that I recognized that certain features of the Treaty were bad, as I
presumed most everyone did, but that was probably unavoidable in view
of conflicting claims and that nothing ought to be done to prevent the
speedy restoration of peace by signing the Treaty. Bullitt then
discussed the numerous European commissions provided for by the Treaty
on which the United States was to be represented. I told him that I
was disturbed by this fact because I was afraid the Senate and
possibly the people, if they understood this, would refuse
ratification, and that anything which was an obstacle to ratification
was unfortunate because we ought to have peace as soon as possible.
When the President received this explanation from Mr. Lansing, he sent for
me to visit with him in his compartment. At the time I arrived he was
seated in his little study, engaged in preparing his speech for the
night's meeting. Turning to me, with a deep show of feeling, he said:
"Read that, and tell me what you think of a man who was my associate on
the other side and who confidentially expressed himself to an outsider in
such a fashion? Were I in Washington I would at once demand his
resignation! That kind of disloyalty must not be permitted to go
unchallenged for a single minute. The testimony of Bullitt is a
confirmation of the suspicions I have had with reference to this
individual. I found the same attitude of mind on the part of Lansing on
the other side. I could find his trail everywhere I went, but they were
only suspicions and it would not be fair for me to act upon them. But here
in his own statement is a verification at last of everything I have
suspected. Think of it! This from a man whom I raised from the level of a
subordinate to the great office of Secretary of State of the United
States. My God! I did not think it was possible for Lansing to act in this
way. When we were in Paris I found that Lansing and others were constantly
giving out statements that did not agree with my viewpoint. When I had
arranged a settlement, there would appear from some source I could not
locate unofficial statements telling the correspondents not to take things
too seriously; that a compromise would be made, and this news, or rather
news of this kind, was harmful to the settlement I had already obtained
and quite naturally gave the Conference the impression that Lansing and
his kind were speaking for me, and then the French would say that I was
bluffing."
I am convinced that only the President's illness a few days later
prevented an immediate demand on his part for the resignation of Mr.
Lansing.
That there was no real devotion on the part of Mr. Lansing for the
President is shown by the following incident.
A few days after the President returned from the West and lay seriously
ill at the White House, with physicians and nurses gathered about his bed,
Mr. Lansing sought a private audience with me in the Cabinet Room. He
informed me that he had called diplomatically to suggest that in view of
the incapacity of the President we should arrange to call in the Vice-
President to act in his stead as soon as possible, reading to me from a
book which he had brought from the State Department, which I afterward
learned was "Jefferson's Manual," the following clause of the United
States Constitution:
In case of the removal of the President from office, or his death,
resignation, or inability to discharge the powers and duties of the
said office, the same shall devolve upon the Vice-President.
Upon reading this, I coldly turned to Mr. Lansing and said: "Mr. Lansing,
the Constitution is not a dead letter with the White House. I have read
the Constitution and do not find myself in need of any tutoring at your
hands of the provision you have just read." When I asked Mr. Lansing the
question as to who should certify to the disability of the President, he
intimated that that would be a job for either Doctor Grayson or myself. I
immediately grasped the full significance of what he intimated and said:
"You may rest assured that while Woodrow Wilson is lying in the White
House on the broad of his back I will not be a party to ousting him. He
has been too kind, too loyal, and too wonderful to me to receive such
treatment at my hands." Just as I uttered this statement Doctor Grayson
appeared in the Cabinet Room and I turned to him and said: "And I am sure
that Doctor Grayson will never certify to his disability. Will you,
Grayson?" Doctor Grayson left no doubt in Mr. Lansing's mind that he would
not do as Mr. Lansing suggested. I then notified Mr. Lansing that if
anybody outside of the White House circle attempted to certify to the
President's disability, that Grayson and I would stand together and
repudiate it. I added that if the President were in a condition to know of
this episode he would, in my opinion, take decisive measures. That ended
the interview.
It is unnecessary to say that no further attempt was made by Mr. Lansing
to institute ouster proceedings against his chief.
I never attempted to ascertain what finally influenced the action of the
President peremptorily to demand the resignation of Mr. Lansing. My own
judgment is that the demand came as the culmination of repeated acts of
what the President considered disloyalty on Mr. Lansing's part while in
Paris, and that the situation was aggravated by Mr. Lansing's notes to
Mexico during the President's illness.
When I received from the President's stenographer the letter to Mr.
Lansing, intimating that his resignation would not be a disagreeable thing
to the President, I conferred with the President at once and argued with
him that in the present state of public opinion it was the wrong time to
do the right thing. At the time the President was seated in his invalid
chair on the White House portico.
Although physically weak, he was mentally active and alert. Quickly he
took hold of my phrase and said, with a show of the old fire that I had
seen on so many occasions: "Tumulty, it is never the wrong time to spike
disloyalty. When Lansing sought to oust me, I was upon my back. I am on my
feet now and I will not have disloyalty about me."
When the announcement of Lansing's resignation was made, the flood-gates
of fury broke about the President; but he was serene throughout it all.
When I called at the White House on the following Sunday, I found him
calmly seated in his bathroom with his coloured valet engaged in the not
arduous task of cutting his hair. Looking at me with a smile in his eye,
he said: "Well, Tumulty, have I any friends left?" "Very few, Governor," I
said. Whereupon he replied: "Of course, it will be another two days'
wonder. But in a few days what the country considers an indiscretion on my
part in getting rid of Lansing will be forgotten, but when the sober,
second thought of the country begins to assert itself, what will stand out
will be the disloyalty of Lansing to me. Just think of it! Raised and
exalted to the office of Secretary of State, made a member of the Peace
Commission, participating in all the conferences and affixing his
signature to a solemn treaty, and then hurrying to America and appearing
before the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate to repudiate the very
thing to which he had given his assent."
During the illness of the President his political enemies sought to convey
the impression that he was incapacitated for the duties of his office. As
one who came in daily contact with him I knew how baseless were these
insinuations. As a matter of fact, there was not a whole week during his
entire illness that he was not in touch with every matter upon which he
was called to act and upon which he was asked to render judgment. The
White House files contain numerous memoranda showing his interest in all
matters to which department heads felt it incumbent to call his attention
during his illness. One of the most critical things upon which he passed
was the question of the miners' strike, which resulted in the beginning
from an injunction suit by the Attorney General, Mr. Palmer, to restrain
the miners from carrying out their purpose to strike. This was one of the
most critical situations that arose during his illness and with which he
daily kept in touch.
Uncomplainingly the President applied himself to the difficult tasks of
the Western trip. While the first meeting at Columbus was a disappointment
as to attendance, as we approached the West the crowds grew in numbers and
the enthusiasm became boundless. The idea of the League spread and spread
as we neared the coast. Contrary to the impression in the East, the
President's trip West was a veritable triumph for him and was so
successful that we had planned, upon the completion of the Western trip,
to invade the enemy's country, Senator Lodge's own territory, the New
England States, and particularly Massachusetts. This was our plan, fully
developed and arranged, when about four o'clock in the morning of
September 26, 1919, Doctor Grayson knocked at the door of my sleeping
compartment and told me to dress quickly, that the President was seriously
ill. As we walked toward the President's car, the Doctor told me in a few
words of the President's trouble and said that he greatly feared it might
end fatally if we should attempt to continue the trip and that it was his
duty to inform the President that by all means the trip must be cancelled;
but that he did not feel free to suggest it to the President without
having my cooperation and support. When we arrived at the President's
drawing room I found him fully dressed and seated in his chair. With great
difficulty he was able to articulate. His face was pale and wan. One side
of it had fallen, and his condition was indeed pitiful to behold. Quickly
I reached the same conclusion as that of Doctor Grayson, as to the
necessity for the immediate cancellation of the trip, for to continue it,
in my opinion, meant death to the President. Looking at me, with great
tears running down his face, he said: "My dear boy, this has never
happened to me before. I felt it coming on yesterday. I do not know what
to do." He then pleaded with us not to cut short the trip. Turning to both
of us, he said: "Don't you see that if you cancel this trip, Senator Lodge
and his friends will say that I am a quitter and that the Western trip was
a failure, and the Treaty will be lost." Reaching over to him, I took both
of his hands and said: "What difference, my dear Governor, does it make
what they say? Nobody in the world believes you are a quitter, but it is
your life that we must now consider. We must cancel the trip, and I am
sure that when the people learn of your condition there will be no
misunderstanding." He then tried to move over nearer to me to continue his
argument against the cancellation of the trip; but he found he was unable
to do so. His left arm and leg refused to function.
I then realized that the President's whole left side was paralyzed.
Looking at me he said: "I want to show them that I can still fight and
that I am not afraid. Just postpone the trip for twenty-four hours and I
will be all right."
But Doctor Grayson and I resolved not to take any risk, and an immediate
statement was made to the inquiring newspaper men that the Western trip
was off.
Never was the President more gentle or tender than on that morning.
Suffering the greatest pain, paralyzed on his left side, he was still
fighting desperately for the thing that was so close to his heart--a
vindication of the things for which he had so gallantly fought on the
other side. Grim old warrior that he was, he was ready to fight to the
death for the League of Nations.
In the dispatches carried to the country, prepared by the fine newspaper
men who accompanied us on the trip, it was stated that evidences of a
breakdown on the part of the President were plainly visible in the speech
he delivered at Pueblo.
I had talked to him only a few minutes before the delivery of that speech,
and the only apparent evidence that he was approaching a breakdown was in
his remark to me that he had a splitting headache, and that he would have
to cut his speech short. As a matter of fact, this last speech he made, at
Pueblo, on September 25, 1919, was one of the longest speeches delivered
on the Western trip and, if I may say so, was one of the best and most
passionate appeals he made for the League of Nations.
Many things in connection with the Pueblo meeting impressed themselves
upon me. In the peroration of the speech he drew a picture of his visit on
Decoration Day, 1919, to what he called a beautiful hillside near Paris,
where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery given over to the
burial of the American dead. As he spoke of the purposes for which those
departed American soldiers had given their lives, a great wave of emotion,
such as I have never witnessed at a public meeting, swept through the
whole amphitheatre. As he continued his speech, I looked at Mrs. Wilson
and saw tears in her eyes. I then turned to see the effect upon some of
the "hard-boiled" newspaper men, to whom great speeches were ordinary
things, and they were alike deeply moved. Down in the amphitheatre I saw
men sneak their handkerchiefs out of their pockets and wipe the tears from
their eyes. The President was like a great organist playing upon the heart
emotions of the thousands of people who were held spell-bound by what he
said.
It is possible, I pray God it may not be so, that the speech at Pueblo was
the last public speech that Woodrow Wilson will ever make, and I,
therefore, take the liberty of introducing into this story the concluding
words of it:
What of our pledges to the men that lie dead in France? We said that
they went over there not to prove the prowess of America or her
readiness for another war but to see to it that there never was such a
war again. It always seems to make it difficult for me to say
anything, my fellow citizens, when I think of my clients in this case.
My clients are the children; my clients are the next generation. They
do not know what promises and bonds I undertook when I ordered the
armies of the United States to the soil of France, but I know, and I
intend to redeem my pledges to the children; they shall not be sent
upon a similar errand.
Again, and again, my fellow citizens, mothers who lost their sons in
France have come to me and, taking my hand, have shed tears upon it
not only, but they have added: "God bless you, Mr. President!" Why, my
fellow citizens, should they pray God to bless me? I advised the
Congress of the United States to create the situation that led to the
death of their sons. I ordered their sons overseas. I consented to
their sons being put in the most difficult parts of the battle line,
where death was certain, as in the impenetrable difficulties of the
forest of Argonne. Why should they weep upon my hand and call down the
blessings of God upon me? Because they believe that their boys died
for something that vastly transcends any of the immediate and palpable
objects of the war. They believe, and they rightly believe, that their
sons saved the liberty of the world. They believe that wrapped up with
the liberty of the world is the continuous protection of that liberty
by the concerted powers of all the civilized world. They believe that
this sacrifice was made in order that other sons should not be called
upon for a similar gift--the gift of life, the gift of all that died--
and if we did not see this thing through, if we fulfilled the dearest
present wish of Germany and now dissociated ourselves from those
alongside whom we fought in the war, would not something of the halo
go away from the gun over the mantelpiece, or the sword? Would not the
old uniform lose something if its significance? These men were
crusaders. They were going forth to prove the might of justice and
right, and all the world accepted them as crusaders, and their
transcendent achievement has made all the world believe in America as
it believes in no other nation organized in the modern world. There
seems to me to stand between us and the rejection or qualification of
this treaty the serried ranks of those boys in khaki, not only those
boys who came home, but those dear ghosts that still deploy upon the
fields of France.
My friends, on last Decoration Day I went to a beautiful hillside near
Paris, where was located the cemetery of Suresnes, a cemetery given
over to the burial of the American dead. Behind me on the slopes was
rank upon rank of living American soldiers, and lying before me on the
levels of the plain was rank upon rank of departed American soldiers.
Right by the side of the stand where I spoke there was a little group
of French women who had adopted those graves, had made themselves
mothers of those dear ghosts by putting flowers every day upon those
graves, taking them as their own sons, their own beloved, because they
had died in the same cause--France was free and the world was free
because America had come! I wish some men in public life who are now
opposing the settlement for which these men died could visit such a
spot as that. I wish that the thought that comes out of those graves
could penetrate their consciousness. I wish that they could feel the
moral obligation that rests upon us not to go back on those boys, but
to see the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good
their redemption of the world. For nothing less depends upon this
decision, nothing less than the liberation and salvation of the world.
Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I believe
that men will see the trust, eye to eye and face to face. There is one
thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand
to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We
have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is
going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of
quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.
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