The American Chronicle - Hollywood Part 20

Blaise was grimly amused. "At least Lloyd George understands the nature of tyranny in his own country."

Francis did not hear-or did not choose to acknowledge-this heresy: the winners were all democracies; thus insuring safety for themselves and everyone else from despots and levellers. "Anyway, we'll be out of Archangel by summer."

"But what about Siberia? I'm told that we have eighty-five hundred troops there."

Francis grinned. "Another War Department error. We told the j.a.panese that we'd send in seven thousand. So the War Department went and added another thousand, which gave the j.a.panese an opportunity to break the agreement, and send in tens of thousands of troops to keep us from annexing Siberia."

"Are we?"

"Going to annex? I don't see how. We're too far away and the j.a.panese are too close, and Admiral Kolchak is still fighting the Bolsheviks, and if he wins, Russia splits in two. It's a terrible mess for everybody."

Blaise presented himself at the door to Wilson's cabin just as the number of bells that meant three o'clock at sea were struck. Admiral Grayson ushered Blaise into a sizeable office with a large mahogany desk on which were placed two telephones connected, Blaise wondered, to what?

The President was dressed as if he were about to go golfing. The sea air had brought color to his face; the pince-nez shone in the light from the overhead lamp. "Mr. Sanford. How good of you to come." It was part of Wilson's charm to act as if each of his visitors had made an extraordinary personal sacrifice to call upon him, no doubt a necessary charm when dealing with wealthy Princeton alumni or difficult parents.

Blaise took the indicated chair at Wilson's right. Through the porthole opposite, he could see Marine guards patrolling; could hear their boots strike, rhythmically, the deck. Wilson noticed Blaise's glance.

"Mrs. Wilson can't bear the sound or the thought of those boys marching back and forth all day. But I find it soothing." The ship suddenly pitched; a telephone began to slide along the desk. The President steadied it.

"Is that your line to the Vice President?"

"The Vice President?" Wilson looked puzzled; then he laughed. "Yes, the Vice President. Well, we do have a wireless link to the War Department and they connect with the White House. So I suppose the Vice President is somewhere-out there-on the other end. Anyway, thanks to the wireless, I'm as much in touch with public affairs here as I was in Paris or even Washington." Wilson sounded defensive. Many of his own supporters were appalled that a president should leave the country for even a day, much less two months.

"You'll come back, then?"

"May I speak off the record?"

"By all means, Mr. President." Over the years, Wilson had come to trust Blaise if only because the Tribune was generally favorable to his Administration while the Post was unreliable, and the Times, now manipulated by Hearst through Brisbane, hostile. Also, Blaise had never betrayed a confidence on those rare occasions when he had been in receipt of one.

"I don't see how I can abandon the Peace Conference. Colonel House is superb, but he's not well. The French ..." Even off the record, Wilson could not trust himself. "Clemenceau ..." he began; and let it go at that. "So much can be undone if I'm not there."

"But you have your covenant ..."

"Right here," said Wilson and opened his coat so that Blaise could see the famous doc.u.ment folded in his pocket.

"Over my heart. Though Edith maintains it's my spleen. But I shall not be splenetic, no matter how keen the fight in the Senate."

"Why should there be any fight at all?"

"They will have it. So I must have it." The underslung jaw set.

"But they ... the Republicans ... invented the idea, if anyone can be said to have thought of it first."

"And they would rather kill it than see us get the credit for this astonishing charter. Oh, there'll be a fight all right. But then I've never found that one could get anything worthwhile without a struggle." Thus spoke the Scottish clansman on the eve of a border war.

"Surely all western civilization is built on compromise." Blaise expected to get a rise from the President; and did.

Wilson looked at him sharply, even inquisitorially. "You've been talking to Colonel House."

Blaise nodded. "I was quoting his exact words."

"... when he quoted Burke to me. Yes. We disagreed. My wife calls me the most obstinate man in America." The smile was faint and hardly proud. "But I know what I am up against. Lodge will do anything to destroy the League or, indeed, anything else that I propose."

"If there were a vote now in this particular Senate, you'd win."

"A two-thirds vote? Which is what I need for a treaty?"

Blaise nodded. Burden had explained it all; even with the new Republican majority, made not so secure by the independent Senator La Follette's unreliable support, there were enough Republicans and loyal Democrats to give the President his treaty. Blaise then gave the President Burden's detailed anatomy of the chamber and how the votes would go. To his surprise, Wilson had done no research at all into the Senate's mood. Burden's estimate of how this one and that one might vote appeared strange to him. "Well, everything you tell me is comforting, in theory," he said at last. "But one can never underestimate Lodge's ingenuity. You know, all during the conference, he was seeing to it that the press and the delegates were constantly reminded that I do not have the support of the American people, that I have lost the Congress, that I represent no one but myself. You can't think what an effect this makes, and how difficult it is to dispel their doubts, particularly when dealing with those who want me-us-to fail."

Wilson sat back in his chair, face suddenly white and strained. "I put all this on the head of one man alone, Theodore Roosevelt." The name on Wilson's lips was a curse. "Sick in the hospital, about to die, he was plotting with Lodge and Root to destroy this mission. All three wanted the League long before I'd ever appeared on the scene. But out of Roosevelt's private rage and malice and, yes, malignant evil, he could not bear that anyone else might ever get credit for benefitting the world. He was without the slightest human compa.s.sion. He cared only for himself and his ludicrous career. Frankly, I regard his death as a true blessing and I pray that no such monster ever again appears upon the scene, preaching mindless war."

Blaise was shocked at the intensity of Wilson's hatred; but hardly surprised. In life, Roosevelt had indeed done everything possible to destroy Wilson, and now, in death, thanks to Lodge, the mischief continued. But Blaise also was certain that the President, trailing glory, would prevail as he had in Paris against far more worldly opponents than mere gentlemen from Idaho and Missouri and even Ma.s.sachusetts.

The telephone rang. "Little girl," Wilson murmured, suddenly transformed from Old Testament prophet to uxorious mate. "Yes. Of course we'll go to the show tonight. Yes." Wilson hung up. "They were afraid that I was displeased with last night's program."

A sailor, dressed as a prost.i.tute, had done a somewhat lascivious dance, and then chucked the President under the chin. The sailors had roared; the presidential courtiers had gasped; and the President himself had turned to stone. "They were a bit high-spirited ..." Blaise began.

"I was ..." Wilson stopped and frowned. "Well, not pleased, no. For the sake of the office such things ought not to happen. But, personally, I'm relieved that people find me not entirely forbidding. In my life I've had very little to do with individuals, except to teach them, by no means a ... friendly activity, or discharge the office of an executive, hardly an endearing activity."

Wilson sat back in his chair, and sighed. "You know, I could've done well in vaudeville." Suddenly, he let his face go loose and Blaise was reminded of the scene at the Capitol before the declaration of war. Slowly, Wilson shook his head. The face, totally slack, was cretinous and comical. The body drooped, complementing the face. "I'm Dopey Dan," he sang, "and I'm married to Midnight Mary." With that, he did an expert scarecrow sort of dance across the deck, whistling all the while. When he finished, he bowed.

Blaise applauded loudly. "Do that when you address the Congress, Mr. President, and you'll sweep the nation."

"Do that, and they'll put me away." Wilson laughed. "Or send me out on the Keith circuit with Midnight Mary, by no means the worst of fates." Blaise was more than ever confident that the President could easily handle Congress, not to mention the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt.

SEVEN.

1.

THE SENATE CLOAKROOM WAS NOW DIVIDED by an invisible wall across its narrow middle. On one side the Republicans exchanged whispers with their leader Lodge, and on the other the Democrats brooded under the benign if not particularly able leadership of Gilbert M. Hitchc.o.c.k, Claude Swanson and Burden himself, by no means, in his view, the ablest managers to see the treaty through the Senate.

Outside the cloakroom the sergeant-at-arms had thoughtfully a.s.sembled a number of army cots and blankets in case the senators filibustered today as they had the previous day, March 2, when La Follette of Wisconsin took the lead in exploiting the right of any senator to speak as long as he liked. Ostensibly, the bill to be talked to death concerned the leasing of public coal and oil reserves by suspect private interests. But as the Sixty-fifth Congress was obliged to expire March 4 and as a seven-billion-dollar Victory Bond bill had not yet pa.s.sed, La Follette and his liberal friends were threatening, in effect, to leave the government without funds until the Sixty-sixth Congress a.s.sembled in December.

Since Wilson had no intention of calling Congress back between March and December, there was considerable urgency on the part of the Democratic minority to see that the appropriate bills were safely pa.s.sed and the Congress sent home. If Congress were to come back in an emergency session, Lodge and his allies would then be able, in leisurely fashion, to dismember Wilson's covenant while the President was still in Paris at work on the final peace treaty.

In full health Burden enjoyed this sort of maneuvering, but nowadays he was in half-health at best. In the flu's aftermath, he was permanently, mortally tired, with an alarming tendency to fall into a sudden sound sleep no matter where he was. Kitty had begged him to stay away from the Capitol. But the President had begged him to stay at his post. So now he sat with Hitchc.o.c.k at the Democratic end of the cloakroom, his feet resting on an army cot.

Thus far, everything that Burden and Hitchc.o.c.k had tried to arrange kept coming undone. La Follette and his friends had given up their filibuster at six-forty on the morning of March 2, at the request of the Republican caucus, which did not want the party blamed for the failure of the Victory Bond issue to pa.s.s. There had been a trade-off. La Follette took seriously the stealing of the people's wealth. Lodge took seriously the destruction of Wilson's treaty. As party leader, Lodge had promised to aid La Follette later if he would end the filibuster now. La Follette obliged; the bond issue had been pa.s.sed. But the financing of the government through a general-deficiency bill of $840 million was still pending. The Senate had then adjourned until ten in the morning, March 3, which meant that there would be only twenty-six hours in which to appropriate money to pay the federal government's debts. If the money was not forthcoming, Lodge would get his wish and Congress would be obliged to come back in the spring.

Burden looked at his watch. It was now eleven thirty-five. In twelve hours, at noon, March 4, the President would come to the Capitol to sign whatever bills Congress had prepared for him.

"Marshall's ready to recognize us." Hitchc.o.c.k stared through the cigar smoke at Lodge, who was holding court from a black leather sofa. Surrounded by Republican senators, he looked most grandly the philosopher-king. "But they don't quit. When one finishes he signals to another one to spell him, and the Vice President can't do a thing."

From back of the swinging doors to the chamber, Burden could hear the slightly hoa.r.s.e voice of-Francis of Maryland? Yes: the phrase "King Woodrow" was being repeated over and over again, to the gallery's delight. All Washington had converged on the Capitol to enjoy the fun. Frederika and Caroline were sitting together in the gallery, and Burden felt not unlike a superior rooster gazing upward at his very own hens, side by side, and easily the two most distinguished ladies in the gallery now that Evalyn McLean had dropped off to sleep in the diplomatic section. "At ten to midnight I'll make my try. I've told Marshall that when he recognizes me, I'll ask for a vote."

"Let's hope there's still a quorum. They could make a run for the depot."

"We'll send the sergeant-at-arms after them."

"We're not the majority." Hitchc.o.c.k was sour.

La Follette entered the cloakroom. He seemed not at all tired after Sat.u.r.day's filibuster. A large-headed, stocky man, most able in debate and fierce in his representation of the people against the interests. Burden had always a.s.sumed that like most instinctive populists, La Follette had pacifist leanings and so would support the League. But in this he was more Roosevelt-progressive than true people's man. Finally, he was more La Follette, the histrionic lonely warrior, than anything else. Lodge had cleverly used La Follette's genuine objection to the leasing bill in order to postpone altogether the vote on the appropriation bill. La Follette had obliged. Now Burden wondered what price he had demanded for his cooperation.

"Will we hear your magnificent voice this evening, Senator?" Hitchc.o.c.k was orotund.

La Follette shrugged; and mumbled, "I've got a lozenge in my mouth."

"We'll hear you then," said Hitchc.o.c.k.

"Will you speak all night?" asked Burden.

"If sufficiently inspired by my theme." La Follette went onto the floor. Burden noticed that Lodge had been watching La Follette closely-anxiously? No one knew what their common strategy was, other than to keep the Senate from coming to a vote before adjournment.

Burden went to the swinging doors and looked into the chamber. Electric light emphasized more than daylight the prevailing greens. The effect was rather like looking into an aquarium where senators, like large fish, floated and the pages, like so many minnows, followed first one then another. The weary Vice President was in the chair, a study in bad temper.

A Democrat now took the floor, Martin of Virginia. The former majority leader warned his colleagues of the financial panic that would ensue if the finance bill was not pa.s.sed before adjournment. He was eloquent. The Republican Lenroot of Wisconsin rose to ask if the bill was not pa.s.sed, would the President call the Congress back before he had returned from France?

Martin was emphatic. "In two conversations, in the plainest possible English, he said that he had made up his mind, and it was final, that no extra session of Congress will be called under any circ.u.mstances until his return from France."

Burden caught the Vice President's eye. Marshall nodded. As agreed, Burden would be recognized just before midnight; and he would call for a vote. Burden went on to the floor and sat for a moment at his desk. Frederika smiled down at him; her hair had started to grow back, not blond but white beneath her temporary wig. Caroline gave him a sisterly smile.

Back of Caroline, Alice Longworth sat with her cousin Eleanor and Senator Borah. Alice, as usual, was doing all the talking, and Eleanor looked pained. Eleanor was as much for Wilson as her cousin was against him. Burden wondered how the friendship or, specifically, relationship was going to survive so much political pa.s.sion. Senator Harding suddenly sat in the desk next to Burden. The handsome face was flushed; he enjoyed his drink. "I can't for the life of me see the point of all this." He shook his head mournfully. "It'd be so easy to just sit down and work out what's possible and what isn't with the treaty, and compromise."

"I don't think it's that easy, Mr. Harding. The President gave his word to the Allies that this was what we'd been fighting the war about, this treaty, this League of Nations, and so they gave in to him, which is why he can't go and change it now." Burden glanced at his watch: five minutes to go. The Vice President was also looking at his watch. Lenroot was speaking.

"Well, I'm not convinced it's the best thing in the world the way it is, and I still don't know why we fought that stupid war. This is between you and I." Harding smiled. "Naturally, in public I'm for democracy for everybody everywhere every minute of the day. But I think a lot of this Bolshevism that's going on in Europe and starting up here at home, too, is Mr. Wilson's doing."

Burden was suddenly aware of Lodge's presence in the chamber. The gallery applauded as Lenroot yielded the floor to Lodge, who addressed the Senate, doc.u.ment in hand. This was not according to Burden's plan.

Lodge's splendid Boston voice was high with tension. "Mr. President, I desire to take only a moment of the time of the Senate. I wish to offer the resolution which I hold in my hand, a very brief one." Then he read from the paper. "That it is the sense of the Senate that while it is their sincere desire that the nations of the world should unite to promote peace and general disarmament, the const.i.tution of the League of Nations in the form now proposed by the Peace Conference should not be accepted by the United States ..." There was a gasp from the Wilsonians in the galleries; and applause from the rest.

Burden was on his feet waving to the chair for recognition. Lodge persevered, as Marshall gavelled for order. "... immediately be directed to utmost expedition of the urgent business of negotiating peace terms with Germany ..."

Burden had caught Marshall's attention, too late.

"... and that the proposal for a League of Nations to insure the permanent peace of the world should be then taken up for careful consideration."

Burden was certain that there were not enough senators present to pa.s.s this or any other measure with the hope of surviving a later full vote; also, many of the senators present had been defeated in November while those who had been elected in their place had not yet been sworn in. As Lodge knew that his motion would carry no weight until the convening of the Sixty-sixth Congress, what was his motive? Lodge said, "I ask unanimous consent for the present consideration of this resolution."

Burden recognized a parliamentary trap when he saw one. There was no possibility of unanimous consent now or ever. Burden turned to Harding, but Harding had vanished. Burden started down the aisle, ready to object to the propriety of the measure. But Claude Swanson of Virginia had got the Vice President's attention. Swanson said, "I object to the introduction of the resolution." Swanson had taken the bait.

Lodge remained standing during this, the venerable white head inclined to one side, like a listening bird; then he nodded his head judiciously as if some important point that had been too difficult for him to grasp had been at last cleared up. Swanson sat down.

With as much an appearance of humility as that bearded Roman head could permit, Lodge bowed gracefully to Swanson. "Objection being made, of course, I recognize the objection. I merely wish to add, by way of explanation, the following." Burden felt a chill: the trap had sprung. With relish, Lodge recited the names of those Republican senators who would have voted for his resolution if they were present and a vote had taken place. Lodge read off the names of thirty-seven senators, more than the one-third needed to defeat the League of Nations. As the gallery began to understand what was happening, applause broke out; then boos. The Vice President called for order.

Lodge left the floor, and the La Follette filibuster began again, with Sherman of Illinois first to speak. They would speak straight through the night until adjournment at noon. There would be no finance bill. There would be an extra session while Wilson was out of the country. There would be no League of Nations if Lodge could hold on to his thirty-seven senators, which Burden doubted. Even Lodge himself favored a league. The problem was as simple as it was insoluble. Wilson's league, as approved in Paris by the Allies, would not be accepted, while Lodge's league was so deliberately vague that even the most extreme isolationist might be able to support it at the proper time.

In the cloakroom, Lodge now held gracious court. As Burden went to his locker, where he kept whisky and soda water, he found Brandegee doing the same thing. "That was my idea," he said winningly. "The Round Robin."

"The what?" Burden was feeling not only tired but stupid.

"The thirty-seven signatures." Brandegee helped himself to his own dark restorative while Burden drank directly from the bottle; and promptly felt less tired but no less stupid. "Do tell the President. I don't want Cabot hogging all the credit."

"Credit? For putting the covenant at risk?" Burden sounded more righteous than he intended. Actually, he quite liked this deeply conservative and even more deeply cynical political gamesman who explained to him how, Sunday morning, he had found some acc.u.mulated mail at his house, including a letter from a stranger who implored the Senate Republicans to pa.s.s some sort of resolution declaring the League as presented unacceptable; otherwise, Wilson would go back to Paris and say that the Senate and the nation were behind him. "After I read the letter, I went straight to Ma.s.sachusetts Avenue and explained it all to Cabot, and told him I could get more than a third of the Senate, enough to defeat the treaty, to sign and then he could present it at the last minute of March third for a vote ..."

"He could never have got a vote." La Follette had entered the cloakroom from the hall, where, presumably, he had been in the washroom, emptying himself for the coming filibuster. He and his friends would speak all night and all the next morning until the adjournment of the session at noon.

"We knew we couldn't get a vote. We also knew that one of you would make the mistake of objecting, which Brother Swanson did, and then Cabot would meekly accept the objection and say that, naturally, as the full Senate wasn't here he quite understood, but that if they were present, the following senators had said that they'd vote to reject Brother Woodrow's League as it stands, and that's how we got the Round Robin into the record and now we'll be able to mail it all over the country to our many friends and fellow patriots."

"Beautiful work," said Burden without irony.

"I thought you'd appreciate it. I revere Brother Cabot, but I don't want him to be entirely credited for my last-minute rescue of this republic from the hands of a would-be world tyrant and his decadent allies in old Europe, so unlike our sunny land, where ne'er a shadow falls."

"Unless it's shot down by ... Brother Frank Brandegee." Brandegee bowed low; then he joined Lodge and the rejoicing Republicans at the far end of the smoky cloakroom.

Hitchc.o.c.k and Swanson were in a deep glum conversation with the Vice President. "I'm sorry," Burden said, "but before I could call for a vote, Lodge had the floor."

"Doesn't matter." Hitchc.o.c.k rubbed his face. "They would've got that d.a.m.ned thing in the record one way or another."

"If I hadn't objected," Swanson began, but the Vice President stopped him. "You did. You had to. I'm going home. I'm turning the chair over to fellows who know there's going to be no vote tonight or tomorrow morning."

"What do we say to the President?" asked Hitchc.o.c.k.

"You say, 'Good morning,' " said the silver-haired, silver-moustached Vice President, who, like most of his predecessors, felt that the accident of fate that had made him forever second was a cruel one. There goes Vice President Marshall, someone had recently said, with nothing on his mind except the President's health.

Burden agreed to spend the night captaining the Democratic minority from a cot in the hall. If anything happened, he would be wakened instantly. But nothing happened; and he awoke with a start to find a fresh-faced page staring down at him. "It's morning, Senator," said the boy. Burden inclined his head gravely, as if he had been meditating not sleeping. Why, he wondered, did everyone hate to be caught asleep?

In the great washroom with its high marble urinals and outsized basins, he shaved himself, as other weary senators came and went. Cold water on the face was the preferred restorative. The filibuster was still underway. La Follette had spoken for many hours on many subjects. As Burden stepped in the corridor, he could hear the hoa.r.s.e rasping voice from the chamber. He hurried on to the President's room.

The Capitol was crowded with journalists, diplomats, citizens, all eager to enjoy the great filibuster, and Woodrow Wilson's discomfiture.

The President sat beneath a crystal chandelier at a desk on which last-minute bills would be placed, ready for his signature. "Senator Day." The smile was warm. Wilson was not about to give any Republican the joy of seeing him distressed. Hitchc.o.c.k was beside him. Admiral Grayson was behind him. Burden wondered, yet again, at the political wisdom of being always seen with one's doctor.

"I'm afraid we couldn't get the government paid for this time around."

"Well, I'm sure Mr. Gla.s.s," he nodded to the small imp-like replacement to Mr. McAdoo, "will be able to borrow enough between now and December to pay the light bill at the White House."

"I can also change stones into loaves and fishes." The Virginia drawl was acid.

Wilson got to his feet and motioned for Burden to join him at a distance from the others. "Tell me," he said in a low voice, "did Lodge make any reference to the League involving us with-what does he call it-'international socialism and anarchy'?"

"Not last night, no. He's very vague. He has to be, since he favors the League, which he opposes."