Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements Part 3

None of these proposals except the eight-hour day, the center of the whole dispute, met the approval of the brotherhoods, and none of them except the eight-hour day and the commission of investigation was adopted. But, with A. B. Garreston, of the Brotherhood of Conductors, holding a stopwatch in the gallery, Congress hastily pa.s.sed these laws and the strike was called off.

The eight-hour issue was the last item on the record on which President Wilson came up for re-election in the Fall of 1916. Despite the single-term plank in the Democratic platform of 1912, it had been evident long before the end of Mr. Wilson's first term that he was the only possible candidate. In March, 1913, he had seemed almost like an outside expert called in for temporary service in readjusting some of the problems of public life; he was by no means the leader of the party. But long before Bryan resigned in alarm at the tendencies of a foreign policy over which the Secretary of State had no control the President had become the leader of the party, and by 1916 he was almost the only leader of prominence.

In the record on which the electorate was to express its judgment only a minor place was taken by the issues which had seemed of such importance in 1913. The Federal Reserve Act had already proved its value so well that it was being taken as a matter of course, and people were forgetting that they had ever had to depend on a currency which ran for cover in every crisis and on a banking system where each bank was a source of weakness to its neighbors instead of strength. What effect the Underwood-Simmons Tariff and other measures of the first year might have had on American business no man could say, for conditions created by the war had left America the only great producer in a world of impatient consumers whose wants had to be met at any price.

Mexico, which had provided the most pressing problem in foreign affairs during the Taft Administration, was still an unsolved problem in 1916, and more disturbing than ever. The President had indeed avoided war with Mexico, but had become involved in two invasions of the country and in an expensive mobilization. During the 1916 election the nation had in Mexico most of the drawbacks of war without any of the possible benefits. In forcing out Huerta the President had indeed won a notable diplomatic triumph, but he had not succeeded either in winning greater security for American life and property or in getting a Mexican Government more disposed to good relations with the United States; and the Republicans maintained that war had been avoided only at the sacrifice of both American prestige and American interests.

_Personal Messages to Congress_

I am very glad, indeed, to have this opportunity to address the two Houses directly and to verify for myself the impression that the President of the United States is a person, not a mere department of the Government hailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power, sending messages, not speaking naturally and with his own voice--that he is a human being trying to cooperate with other human beings in a common service. After this pleasant experience I shall feel quite normal in all our dealings with one another.--_From the President's First Address to Congress, April 8, 1913_

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Harris & Ewing_ April 8, 1913: Mr. Wilson reading his first message to Congress]

But Mexico, despite the emphasis placed upon it by the Republicans, was a secondary issue in the campaign of 1916. The great issue was the conduct of American relations with Germany, and the ultimate Republican failure in the election may be laid primarily to the inability of the Republican Party to decide just where it stood on the main issue.

The President had in this field also won a diplomatic victory. Like his victory over Huerta, it was more apparent than real, for the submarines were still active, and even during the campaign several incidents occurred which looked very much like violations of the German promise made in May. The most serious incident, that of the Lusitania, was still unsettled and the opponents of the President charged him with having bought peace with Germany, like peace with Mexico, at the cost of national interest and honor. Still the technical victory in the submarine negotiations had remained with the President, and he had succeeded in winning at least a nominal recognition of American rights without going into a war which, as every one realized, would be a much more serious enterprise than an invasion of Mexico. German propaganda and terrorist outrages, which had been so serious in 1915, fell off materially in 1916 largely on account of the energetic work of the Department of Justice, which had sent some of the most prominent conspirators to jail and driven others out of the country. But a considerable section of the population had made up its mind that Germany was already an enemy and was dissatisfied with the President's continual efforts to preserve impartiality of thought as well as of action.

The President was renominated at the Democratic Convention in St.

Louis, and the platform expressed a blanket endors.e.m.e.nt of the achievements of his Administration. But the chief incident of that convention was the keynote speech of Martin H. Glynn, which was based on the text, "He kept us out of war." His recital of the long list of past occasions in American history when foreign violations of American rights and injuries to American interests had not led to war was received with uproarious enthusiasm by the convention and completely overturned the plans which had been made by the Administration managers to emphasize the firmness of the President in defense of American rights.

But the Republicans presently gave that issue back to them. The party pa.s.sed over Colonel Roosevelt; the memory of 1912 was still too bitter to permit the old-line leaders to accept him. On the other hand, the Colonel and his following had to be conciliated, so the Republican Convention nominated Charles E. Hughes, who had viewed the party conflict of 1912 from the neutrality of the Supreme Court bench. The Progressive Party duly had its convention and nominated Roosevelt; and when Roosevelt announced that Hughes's views on the preservation of American interests were satisfactory and that the main duty was to beat Wilson, a good many Progressives followed the Colonel back into camp. A rump convention, however, nominated a Vice Presidential candidate, and virtually went over to Wilson.

Justice Hughes's views on public issues were not known before he was nominated, and on the great issue of the campaign they were never very clearly known until after the election, when it was too late. He had strong opinions on Democratic misgovernment and maladministration and outspoken opinions on Mexico, but whenever he tried to say anything about the war in Europe he used up most of his energy clearing his throat. A large element in the American people, which was influential out of proportion to its numbers because it included most of the intelligent cla.s.ses and most of the organs of public opinion, felt that the President had been too weak in the face of German provocation. To this element, chiefly in the East, Colonel Roosevelt appealed with his denunciation of German aggression and of the President's temporizing with Germany; but Colonel Roosevelt was not running for President.

There was another minority, considerably smaller and far less reputable, which consisted of bitter partisans of the German cause.

This minority was fiercely against the President because he had dared to challenge Germany at all; and though Mr. Hughes gave it no particular encouragement, it supported him because there was n.o.body else to support.

So, in the Eastern States, where anti-German sentiment was strongest, the Democrats advocated the re-election of Wilson as the defender of American rights against foreign aggression, while in the West he was praised as the man who had endured innumerable provocations and "kept us out of war." When Hughes swept everything in the East, it was confidently a.s.sumed on election night that Wilson had been repudiated by the country; but later reports showed that the East was no longer symptomatic of the country's sentiment. For three days the election was in doubt. It was finally decided by California, where the Republican Senator whom Hughes had snubbed was re-elected by 300,000 majority, while the Democratic electoral ticket won by a narrow margin. Wilson had carried almost everything in the West. Those parts of the country which lay further away from Europe and European interests had re-elected him because he had "kept us out of War."

_Mediation Efforts, 1916-1917_

It has been stated by Count von Bernstorff that, if Hughes had been elected, President Wilson would immediately have resigned, along with the Vice President, after appointing Hughes as Secretary of State, in order to give the President-elect an opportunity to come into office at once and meet the urgent problems already pressing on the Executive.

Whether the President actually entertained any such intention or not, it would have been a logical development of his theory of the Chief Executive as Premier. But the President-Premier had received a vote of confidence, and was free to deal with the new situation created by the various peace proposals of the Winter of 1916-1917. The negotiations which followed during December and January were obscure at the time and are by no means clear even yet. The fullest account of them is that of Bernstorff, whose personal interest in vindicating himself would make him a somewhat unreliable witness even if there were nothing else against him. And at the time, when the President's motives were unknown to a public which had not his advantage of information as to what was going to happen in Europe, almost every step which he took was misconstrued, and his occasional infelicities of language aroused suspicions which later events have shown to be entirely unjustified.

Reports of American diplomats in the Fall of 1916 indicated that the party in Germany which favored unrestricted submarine war without consideration for neutrals was growing in strength. It was opposed by most of the civilian officials of the Government, including the Chancellor, Bethmann Hollweg; Jagow and Zimmermann, the successive Foreign Secretaries, and Bernstorff, the Amba.s.sador in Washington. But the Admirals who supported it were gradually winning over the all-powerful Generals Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and it appeared only a question of time until the promise to America of May, 1916, should be broken. And, as Bernstorff has expressed it, the President realized after the Suss.e.x note there could be no more notes; any future German aggression would have to be met by action or endured with meekness.

In these circ.u.mstances the President was driven to seek opportunity for the mediation which he had been ready to offer, if asked, from the very beginning of the war. But to offer mediation, so long as the war was undecided, was a matter of extreme delicacy. The majority of intelligent Americans were strong partisans of the allied cause and firmly believed that that cause was bound to win in the long run. There was a minority which had equal sympathy for Germany and equal confidence in her ultimate success. To offer mediation while the war was still undecided would have been to offend both of these elements, as well as the warring nations themselves, all of which were still confident of victory. Specifically, to offer mediation during the course of the Presidential election would have been to drive over to Hughes all the pro-Ally elements in America, which in the state of mind of 1916 would have seen in such a proposal only a helping hand extended to a Germany whose cause was otherwise hopeless.

So, though during 1916 the President would have welcomed a request for mediation, he did not dare suggest it on his own account. And neither side dared to propose it, for such a request would have been taken as an admission of defeat. Nineteen hundred and sixteen was an indecisive year, but the fortune of war gave now one side and now the other the conviction that a few months more would bring it to complete victory.

In such circ.u.mstances the losers dared not make a proposal which would hearten their enemies and the victors would not suggest the stopping of the war when they hoped that a few months more would see them in a much more favorable position.

_A Sympathetic Tribute_

_Hamilton Holt, head of a delegation that visited the White House on October 27, 1920, in connection with the campaign advocating our entry into the League of Nations, said in the course of his address to President Wilson:_

_"It was you who first focused the heterogeneous and often diverse aims of the war on the one ideal of pure Americanism, which is democracy. It was you who suggested the basis on which peace was negotiated. It was you, more than any man, who translated into practical statesmanship the age-old dream of the poets, the prophets and the philosophers by setting up a league of nations to the end that cooperation could be subst.i.tuted for compet.i.tion in international affairs._

_"These acts of statesmanship were undoubtedly the chief factors which brought about that victorious peace which has shorn Germany of her power to subdue her neighbors, has compelled her to make rest.i.tution for her crimes, has freed oppressed peoples, has restored ravaged territories, has created new democracies in the likeness of the United States, and above all has set up the League of Nations."_

But by December Germany's situation was more fortunate than at any time since the early Summer. Rumania, which had come into the war three months before, had been defeated and overrun in a spectacular campaign which had brought new prestige to the German armies. The triumph was of more value in appearance than in reality, for no decision had been reached on the main fronts and none of the chief belligerents was willing to give up. Germany was under a terrible strain, and the civilian Government concluded that the end of 1916 offered an opportunity to make a peace proposal, without loss of prestige, which might lead to a settlement of the war that would leave Germany substantially the victor. For it was known that unless some such decisive result were soon attained the military party would unloose the submarines in the effort to win a complete victory, and thereby bring about complications too serious for the civilian officials to contemplate with any sense of security.

So on Dec. 12 Bethmann Hollweg proposed a peace conference. He mentioned no terms which Germany would consider; he spoke in the arrogant tones of a victor; and the total effect of his speech was to convince the world that he was trying to influence the pacifist elements in the allied countries rather than to bring about an end of the war. But his step caused profound uneasiness in Washington, for he had antic.i.p.ated the action which the President had long been considering. If Mr. Wilson could not have offered mediation before the election, he might have tried it in November had not the German deportation of Belgian workingmen just then aroused such a storm of anti-German feeling in America that it would have been unsafe to take a step which public opinion would have generally regarded as favorable to Germany. Now that Bethmann Hollweg had antic.i.p.ated him, it was evident that any proposal which the President might make would be regarded as a sort of second to the German motion.

Nevertheless, the situation was urgent, and the President seems to have felt that his interposition could perhaps accomplish something which the German initiative could not. Colonel House in the last two years had made a number of trips to Europe as a sort of super-Amba.s.sador to all the powers in the endeavor to find out what their Governments regarded as suitable terms of peace. Mr. Wilson's own interest lay first of all in the establishment of conditions that would reduce--or, as men would have said in 1916, prevent--the possibility of future wars. On May 27, 1916, he had delivered a speech before the League to Enforce Peace in which he favored the formation of an international a.s.sociation for the delay or prevention of wars and the preservation of the freedom of the seas. Later speeches contained doctrines most of which were eventually written into the League covenant, and were based on the central theory that all nations must act together to prevent the next war, as otherwise they would all be drawn into it. On Oct. 26 he had declared that "this is the last war the United States can ever keep out of."

_The United States in the War_

_Declaration of war, April 6, 1917._

_American warships in European waters, May 4, 1917._

_First Liberty Loan offered, May 14, 1917._

_Selective Service act operative, May 18, 1917._

_First American troops in France, July 1, 1917._

_Fourteen Points speech, January 8, 1918._

_"Force to the utmost" speech, April 6, 1918._

_Americans in action at Cantigny, May 28, 1918._

_Chateau-Thierry, June 1-5, 1918._

_Marne-Aisne offensive, July 15-August, 1918._

_St. Mihiel offensive, September 12, 1918._

_Meuse-Argonne offensive, September 26-November 11, 1918._

_Austrian peace proposal, September 15, 1918._

_First German peace note, October 4, 1918._

_Armistice ending the war, November 11, 1918._

Yet the President also had ideas on the nature of the peace terms by which the war then going on should be concluded, though he felt that no good could be obtained by the proposal of such terms from a neutral. On Dec. 18, accordingly, he addressed the belligerent Governments with an invitation to state the specific conditions which each of them regarded as essential to a just peace, in the hope that they would find they were nearer agreement than they knew. Unfortunately, the President made the observation that the objects of the two alliances, "as stated in general terms to their own people and the world," were "virtually the same." That was true; each side had said that it was fighting in self-defense in order to preserve international justice, the rights of nationalities, and a number of other worthy interests. But the public, both in America and in the allied countries, saw in this renewed effort at "impartiality of thought as well as of action" an indication that the President saw no moral difference between the two sides. From that moment any good result of the President's suggestion, in America or in the allied countries, was out of the question; and if any hope had remained, the Germans presently destroyed it. They wanted a peace conference with no terms stated beforehand, where they could play on the divergent interests of the allied countries; nor did they want the President to have anything to do with the making of peace, lest, as Bethmann Hollweg expressed it to Bernstorff, the Germans should be "robbed of their gains by neutral pressure." So the German reply on Dec. 26 politely observed that a direct conference between the belligerents would seem most appropriate, which conference the German Government proposed. For the general idea of a League of Nations the Germans expressed their approval, but they wanted peace of their own kind first.

The allied reply was delayed until Jan. 11, but at least it met the President's request for details. It laid down the specifications of what the allied powers would regard as a just peace, and the bulk of that program was eventually to be written into the Treaty of Versailles. But at the time, of course, it was evident that the belligerents were further from agreement than they thought, or at any rate than the President thought. Of such terms Germany would hear nothing; nor would her Government give to the President, even in confidence, its own idea of the specifications of a just peace.

So the President, determined to carry out his program in spite of all obstacles, finally went before the Senate on Jan. 22, 1917, and laid down some general considerations of what he thought a just peace should be like. It was the logical next step in his effort to stop the war before America should become involved, but it was taken under conditions which made success impossible. As a matter of fact, the Germans had already decided to resume the unrestricted submarine war; the decision had been taken on Jan. 9, but was not to be announced till Jan. 31. Moreover, in America and the allied countries public sentiment was unprepared for anything like the speech of Jan. 22. Few people in the United States realized the danger. Mr. Lansing had followed upon the December note with a statement to correspondents that if the war were not soon stopped America might be drawn into it. That was the fact, but it depended on information unknown to the public; and though the most natural inference was that a new crisis with Germany was at hand no one knew exactly how to take it--particularly as Lansing, on orders from the White House, hastened to explain that he had been misunderstood.