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Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him
Chapter XLIII - Reservations
by Tumulty, Joseph P.
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On June 25, 1919, I received from President Wilson the following cabled
message:
My clear conviction is that the adoption of the treaty by the Senate
with reservations will put the United States as clearly out of the
concert of nations as a rejection. We ought either to go in or stay
out. To stay out would be fatal to the influence and even to the
commercial prospects of the United States, and to go in would give her
a leading place in the affairs of the world. Reservations would either
mean nothing or postpone the conclusion of peace, so far as America is
concerned, until every other principal nation concerned in the treaty
had found out by negotiation what the reservations practically meant
and whether they could associate themselves with the United States on
the terms of the reservations or not.
WOODROW WILSON.
The President consistently held to the principle involved in this
statement. To his mind the reservations offered by Senator Lodge
constituted a virtual nullification on the part of the United States of a
treaty which was a contract, and which should be amended through free
discussion among all the contracting parties. He did not argue or assume
that the Covenant was a perfected document, but he believed that, like our
American Constitution, it should be adopted and subsequently submitted to
necessary amendment through the constitutional processes of debate. He was
unalterably opposed to having the United States put in the position of
seeking exemptions and special privileges under an agreement which he
believed was in the interest of the entire world, including our own
country. Furthermore, he believed that the advocacy for reservations in
the Senate proceeded from partisan motives and that in so far as there was
a strong popular opinion in the country in favour of reservations it
proceeded from the same sources from which had come the pro-German
propaganda. Before the war pro-German agitation had sought to keep us out
of the conflict, and after the war it sought to separate us in interest
and purpose from other governments with which we were associated.
By his opposition to reservations the President was seeking to prevent
Germany from taking through diplomacy what she had been unable to get by
her armies.
The President was so confident of the essential rightness of the League
and the Covenant and of the inherent right-mindedness of the American
people, that he could not believe that the people would sanction either
rejection or emasculation of the Treaty if they could be made to see the
issue in all the sincerity of its motives and purposes, if partisan attack
could be met with plain truth-speaking. It was to present the case of the
people in what he considered its true light that he undertook the Western
tour, and it was while thus engaged that his health broke. Had he kept
well and been able to lead in person the struggle for ratification, he
might have won, as he had previously by his determination and conviction
broken down stubborn opposition to the Federal Reserve system.
So strong was his faith in his cause and the people that even after he
fell ill he could not believe that ratification would fail. What his
enemies called stubbornness was his firm faith in the righteousness of the
treaty and in the reasonableness of the proposition that the time to make
amendments was not prior to the adoption of the Treaty and by one nation,
but after all the nations had agreed and had met together for sober,
unpartisan consideration of alterations in the interest of all the
contracting parties and the peace and welfare of the world.
Even when he lay seriously ill, he insisted upon being taken in his
invalid chair along the White House portico to the window of my outer
office each day during the controversy in the Senate over the Treaty.
There day after day in the coldest possible weather I conferred with him
and discussed every phase of the fight on the Hill. He would sit in his
chair, wrapped in blankets, and though hardly able, because of his
physical condition, to discuss these matters with me, he evidenced in
every way a tremendous interest in everything that was happening in the
Capitol that had to do with the Treaty. Although I was warned
by Doctor Grayson and Mrs. Wilson not to alarm him unduly by bringing
pessimistic reports, I sought, in the most delicate and tactful way I
could, to bring the atmosphere of the Hill to him. Whenever there was an
indication of the slightest rise in the tide for the League of Nations a
smile would pass over the President's face, and weak and broken though he
was, he evidenced his great pleasure at the news. Time and time again
during the critical days of the Treaty fight the President would appear
outside my office, seated in the old wheel chair, and make inquiry
regarding the progress of the Treaty fight on Capitol Hill.
One of the peculiar things about the illness from which the President
suffered was the deep emotion which would stir him when word was brought
to him that this senator or that senator on the Hill had said some kind
thing about him or had gone to his defense when some political enemy was
engaged in bitterly assailing his attitude in the Treaty fight. Never
would there come from him any censure or bitter criticism of those who
were opposing him in the fight. For Senator Borah, the leader of the
opposition, he had high respect, and felt that he was actuated only by
sincere motives.
I recall how deeply depressed he was when word was carried to him that the
defeat of the Treaty was inevitable. On this day he was looking more weary
than at any time during his illness. After I had read to him a memorandum
that I had prepared, containing a report on the situation in the Senate, I
drew away from his wheel chair and said to him: "Governor, you are looking
very well to-day." He shook his head in a pathetic way and said: "I am
very well for a man who awaits disaster," and bowing his head he gave way
to the deep emotion he felt.
A few days later I called to notify him of the defeat of the Treaty. His
only comment was, "They have shamed us in the eyes of the world."
Endeavouring to keep my good-nature steady in the midst of a trying
situation, I smiled and said: "But, Governor, only the Senate has defeated
you. The People will vindicate your course. You may rely upon that." "Ah,
but our enemies have poisoned the wells of public opinion," he said. "They
have made the people believe that the League of Nations is a great
Juggernaut, the object of which is to bring war and not peace to the
world. If I only could have remained well long enough to have convinced
the people that the League of Nations was their real hope, their last
chance, perhaps, to save civilization!"
I said, by way of trying to strengthen and encourage him at this, one of
the critical moments of his life--a moment that I knew was one of despair
for him--"Governor, I want to read a chapter from the third volume of
your 'History of the American People,' if it will not tire you." He
graciously gave his assent and I took from under my arm the volume
containing an account of the famous John Jay treaty, in the defense of
which Alexander Hamilton was stoned while he stood defending it on the
steps of the New York City Hall. There was, indeed, a remarkable
similarity between the fight over the John Jay treaty and the Versailles
Treaty. I read an entire chapter of Woodrow Wilson's "History of the
American People," including the passage:
Slowly the storm blew off. The country had obviously gained more than
it had conceded, and tardily saw the debt it owed Mr. Jay and to the
administration, whose firmness and prudence had made his mission
possible. But in the meantime things had been said which could not be
forgotten. Washington had been assailed with unbridled license, as an
enemy and a traitor to the country; had even been charged with
embezzling public moneys during the Revolution; was madly threatened
with impeachment, and even with assassination; and had cried amidst
the bitterness of it all that "he would rather be in his grave than in
the presidency."
The country knew its real mind about him once again when the end of
his term came and it was about to lose him. He refused to stand for
another election. His farewell address, with its unmistakable tone of
majesty and its solemn force of affection and admonition, seemed an
epitome of the man's character and achievements, and every man's heart
smote him to think that Washington was actually gone from the nation's
counsels.
When I concluded reading this chapter, the President's comment was, "It is
mighty generous of you to compare my disappointment over the Treaty with
that of Washington's. You have placed me in mighty good company."
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