Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements Part 4

Moreover, the President was still desperately striving to keep in good understanding with the German Government, and in pursuance of this policy James W. Gerard, the Amba.s.sador to Germany, had declared at a dinner in Berlin on Jan. 6 that the relations between America and Germany had never been better than they were at that moment. This, also, the public in the United States found it hard to understand. If Lansing's reference to the danger of war had meant anything, what did this mean?

So the President's address to the Senate on Jan. 22 did not and could not have the reception that he hoped. He set forth his idea of the necessity of a League of Nations, he declared that the peace must be based on democratic principles and on the doctrine that was to become famous before long under the name of self-determination. There must be no more forcible conquests, no more bartering of unwilling populations.

The peace that ended this war, he said, must be guaranteed by a League of Nations--of all nations; and if America was to enter that League she must be a.s.sured that the peace was a peace worth guaranteeing.

So far every one might have followed him, in America at least; but the President called such a peace a "peace without victory," and to the supporters of the Allies in America, rendered suspicious by a course whose motives they could not see, that meant a peace without allied victory and consequently an unjust peace. Few of the President's public addresses have been more unfavorably received.

Wilson had stated his peace terms--of course, only in general principles; the Allies had stated theirs in detail. Except for an article in a New York evening newspaper, inspired by Bernstorff but bearing no mark of authority, the German terms had not even been suggested. On the day following his Senate speech, according to Bernstorff, the President volunteered to issue a call for an immediate peace conference if only the Germans would state their terms. But they did not state them until the 29th, when a note for the President's private information detailed a program which was as obviously unacceptable to the allied powers as the Allies' terms were to the Germans. In any case this program had only an academic interest, for along with it came a formal notice that unrestricted submarine war would begin on Feb. 1.

The German Government had deliberately broken its promises of Sept. 1, 1915, and May 5, 1916. Moreover, that Government, which for months past had been sending the President private a.s.surances of its hearty approval of his efforts toward peace, had by its intrusion and its refusal to deal openly wrecked those efforts when at last he had brought them to a head. There was only one thing to do, and the President did it. On Feb. 3 he announced to Congress the rupture of diplomatic relations with Germany.

But breaking of relations did not mean war. The President told Congress that if the threat against American lives and property conveyed by the resumption of submarine war were followed by overt acts of actual injury to Americans he would come before Congress once more and ask for authority to take the necessary steps to protect American interests.

But for the moment he seems to have felt that only a warning was necessary; that the Germans, if convinced that America meant business, would reconsider their decision. And he added, "I take it for granted that all neutral Governments will take the same course." Logically they should have done so, since the proclamation of submarine war was virtually a declaration of war on all neutrals; but the European neutrals did not dare to run the risk even if they had been so minded.

The submarines set to work and more ships were sunk, some of them ships with American pa.s.sengers. The nation began to demand war to end an impossible situation. For the moment the President's aspirations were more moderate, and he asked Congress in the closing days of his first term for authority to arm American merchant ships for defense against submarines. The bill readily pa.s.sed the House and commanded the support of seven-eighths of the Senate; but a dozen pacifists, pro-Germans and professional obstructionists, whom the President denounced as "a little group of willful men," filibustered it to death in the Senate in the last hours of the session. Almost the first act of the President after his inauguration, however, was the preparation to arm the ships by Executive authority.

_Rural Credits_

The farmers, it seems to me, have occupied hitherto a singular position of disadvantage. They have not had the same freedom to get credit on their real a.s.sets that others have had who were in manufacturing and commercial enterprises, and while they sustained our life, they did not in the same degree with some others share in the benefits of that life.--_From President Wilson's remarks on signing the Rural Credits Bill, July 17, 1916._

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Paul Thompson_ 1918: The President acknowledging greetings at a military review]

Meanwhile secret agents had discovered an attempt by the German Foreign Office to enlist Mexican and j.a.panese support in the prospective war against America by promising annexations in the Southwest and on the Pacific Coast. Publication of this on March 1 converted a good many Americans of the interior who had hitherto been slow to recognize the seriousness of the German danger; and as the submarine campaign continued and no European neutrals followed the American example, the sentiment in favor of declaration of war grew every day.

But for the President this involved considerable logical difficulty.

From the first he had striven to maintain "impartiality of thought," or at least of speech. He had said that the war was no concern of America's; it would be the task of long historical research to a.s.sign the responsibility for its outbreak; that "with its causes and objects we are not concerned. The obscure foundations from which its tremendous flood has burst forth we are not interested to search for and explore."

It was a war which should be ended by a peace without a victory.

Whatever meaning the President attached to these statements when he made them, the meaning attached to them by the public was a serious obstacle to the man who was going to have to lead the nation into war.

But he solved the dilemma by a change of base which affected the whole political complexion of the war thereafter, which introduced a new and overriding issue--an issue which, addressing Congress on April 2, he introduced to the world in his most famous phrase and the most effective of his speeches. America, he said, had no quarrel with the German people; that people had not made the war. But the Germans were ruled by an autocratic Government which had made neutrality impossible, which had shown itself "the natural foe of liberty." That Government had forced America to take up the sword for the freedom of peoples--of all peoples, even of the German people. America must fight "to make the world safe for democracy." On April 6, 1917, Congress declared war.

_America at War, 1917-1918_

Once committed to war, the President found behind him a nation more thoroughly united than could ever have been hoped in the dark days of 1915. Again, as in the week after the sinking of the Lusitania, he was the universally trusted leader of the people; and to a considerable extent the unity of the nation at the entrance into war could be traced back to the very policies of delay which had been so sharply criticised. The people who had been on the side of the Allies from the first and who had seen through German pretenses long before were now solidly behind the President, for he had at last come over to their views. But other and important elements which might have been hostile two years before were now convinced of the necessity for fighting the Germans.

And the President's call to a crusade for democracy won the support, permanent or temporary, of many of those liberals who otherwise, in America and the allied countries, were inclined during the whole war to see in the Kaiser and Ludendorff the natural allies of liberalism.

There was a feeling of great ideas stirring the world in the Spring of 1917. The Russian revolution had just overthrown the most reactionary and apparently the most firmly established of autocratic Governments, and no one in Western Europe or America doubted that Russia would jump in six months as far as England, France and America had painfully toiled in two centuries, and become and remain a free democracy. If Russia had had a revolution, might not Germany have a revolution, too?

Would not the German people, whose injuries at the hands of their own rulers the President had so well pointed out, rise up and overthrow those rulers and bring about a just and lasting peace? Many people in the Spring of 1917 expected exactly that; the millennium was just around the corner.

Moreover, it seemed that perhaps the Allies would win the war in the field before America could get into it. A British offensive in Artois had important initial successes, and Nivelle's b.l.o.o.d.y failure on the Aisne was for a long time represented to the world as a brilliant victory. War, for America, might involve a little expenditure of money, but hardly any serious effort, according to the view widely current among the population in the Spring of 1917; it was more than anything else an opportunity for the display of commendable moral sentiments, and for enthusiastic acclamations to the famous allied leaders who presently began to come to the United States on special missions. It is hardly too much to say that most of the American people went into this war in the triumphant mood usually reserved for the celebration of victory.

It may some day be regarded as one of the chief merits of the Wilson Administration that it was not affected by this popular delusion. While a large part of the people seemed to expect a cheap and speedy victory by some sort of white magic, the Administration was getting ready to work for victory. And thanks largely to the unity which had been bought by the President's caution in the two previous years, Congress and the people a.s.sented to measures of exertion and self-denial such as no man could have expected America to undertake until compelled by bitter experience.

The first step was the dispatch of American naval forces to aid the Allies in the fight against the submarines, which for a few months were to come dangerously near justifying the confidence that had been placed in them. The process of naval reinforcement was slow, and not till 1918 did the American Navy become a really important factor in the anti-submarine campaign; but every destroyer added to the allied forces was of immediate value. The American Treasury was opened for vast credits to the Allies, who by their enormous purchases of war materials in the United States had created the abounding prosperity of 1916, and had pretty nearly exhausted their own finances in doing so. More than that, the Administration began at once to prepare for the organization of a vast army; and faced with this most important duty of the conduct of the war, the President took the advice of the men who knew. The army officers knew that if America were to take a serious part in the war the regular army and the National Guard would not be enough, nor even Garrison's Continental Army which had been rejected in 1916. A big army would be needed, and the right way to raise it was by conscription.

So the Selective Service act was introduced in Congress and pa.s.sed in May, without very serious opposition. At the very start the American people had accepted a principle which had been adopted in the crisis of the Civil War only after two years of disaster and humiliation. It was the estimate of experts that this army would need a year of training before it would be fit for the front line, and a huge system of cantonments was hastily constructed to house the troops, while the nucleus of men trained in the Plattsburg camps was increased by the extension of the Plattsburg system all over the country.

For the leadership of this army General Pershing was selected, not without considerable criticism from those who thought General Wood deserved the position. The reasons which led to the selection of Pershing are not yet officially known to the public, but Pershing's record was to be a sufficient justification of the appointment.

But military and naval measures were only a part of the work needed to win this war. Allied shipping was being sunk by the submarines at an alarming rate, and new ships had to be provided. An enormous American program was laid out, and General Goethals, in whom there was universal confidence, was made head of the Emergency Fleet Corporation charged with its execution. But Goethals could not get along with William Denman, head of the Shipping Board, and changes of personnel were constant through the year until in 1918 Charles M. Schwab was finally put in chief control of the shipbuilding program.

For this and the development of the industrial program necessary for military efficiency the support of labor was essential. Mr. Wilson now reaped once more the benefit of a policy which had previously brought him much criticism. His retreat before the railroad brotherhoods in August of 1916, as well as the general policy of his Administration, had won him the invaluable support of the American Federation of Labor, and this good understanding, together with the unprecedented wage scales which came into operation in most industries with the war emergency, gave to the United States Government much more firm support from organized labor than most of the allied countries had been able to obtain.

But this war touched every department of human affairs. The Allies were short of food, and one of the first achievements of the American Government was the inst.i.tution of a limited food control in the United States, under the directorship of Herbert Hoover. Saving of food by voluntary effort was popularized, and increased production and reduced consumption prevented the appearance of any serious food crisis in the allied countries. Later a fuel control was inst.i.tuted under Dr. Harry A. Garfield, and the principle of voluntary self-denial established by the Food Administration was carried on into the field of news, where the newspapers submitted to voluntary restriction of the publication of news that might unfavorably affect military and naval movements. The Committee on Public Information, headed by George Creel, was in general supervision of this work, and, though it was, on the whole, unpopular and accomplished no very useful purpose at home, it developed during 1918 a service of European propaganda which was of immense value in heartening the Allies, informing the neutrals and discouraging the enemy.

For all this money was needed, and in May and June the first Liberty Loan of $2,000,000,000 was put before the public in an intensive campaign of publicity. Mr. McAdoo proved himself an extremely able advertiser of the public finances, and with the vigorous cooperation of banks and business men the loan was more than 50 per cent oversubscribed. There were other and larger loans later, but after the success of the first one there was no doubt that they would be taken; the first great accomplishment in national financing was almost as much of a surprise to the public as the ready acceptance of the draft.

Early in April the railroads were put in charge of a committee of five railroad Presidents, who were given great powers in the combination of facilities for better service. But the system did not work well, and on Dec. 26, 1917, the President announced the a.s.sumption by the Government of control of the railroads for the war emergency, with Mr. McAdoo as Director General.

Nineteen hundred and seventeen, then, saw the Wilson Administration undertaking far heavier burdens than any previous Administration had attempted, and meeting with a measure of success which was beyond all prediction. The most powerful nation in the world was getting ready for war on an enormous scale, getting ready slowly, to be sure, but with a surprising ease and a surprising harmony. The nation which had re-elected the President in November because he had kept it out of war was whole-heartedly behind him from April on as he led it into war.

But great as was the President's moral authority at home, it was still greater abroad. The principles proclaimed in his address of April 2, and repeated and elaborated later in the year, became the creed of almost every political element in Europe except the German military party. The Russian revolution was still a liberalizing influence, in the early part of the year, and self-determination began to be proclaimed over all Europe as the central principle of any satisfactory peace settlement. In the allied countries, where Mr. Wilson's forbearance toward Germany had been heaped with ridicule for the last two years, he became over night the interpreter of the ideals for which the democratic peoples were fighting. Hereafter in any negotiations with Germany the President by general consent acted as the spokesman of all the allied Governments, and the peoples of the allied countries accepted his declarations as a sort of codification of the principles of the war. It must be left for the historian of the future to decide how much of this deference was due to appreciation of the President's service in clarifying the allied ideals, and how much to his position as head of the most powerful nation in the world, whose intervention was expected to bring victory to the Allies.

But in other countries as well, Wilson's ideals had become a dogma to which everybody professed allegiance no matter what his views. The President's principles, as publicly expressed in his speeches, had been in effect a declaration of worthy ends, such as all right thinking persons desired. He had been less concerned with the means to those ends, and consequently all who agreed with his principles were inclined to a.s.sert that the President's ideals were exemplified by their own practices. In 1917 the President enjoyed the unusual experience of seeing American liberals, British Laborites, three or four kinds of Russian Socialists, neutral Socialists, neutral clericals, neutral pacifists and even certain groups in the enemy countries all proclaiming their adherence to the ideals of President Wilson.

For a time, indeed, it seemed that the war might be decided by moral force. Beginning to take alarm at the activity of America, and not yet certain of the effect of the Russian revolution (which was having grave consequences in Austria-Hungary) the Germans inclined during the Summer of 1917 to a new peace offensive. Bethmann Hollweg was dropped on July 14, and five days later a majority of the Reichstag voted for a peace virtually on the basis of the status quo ante. In August the Vatican issued a peace proposal suggesting a settlement on that general principle, with territorial and racial disputes to be left for later adjustment; and the Socialists of Europe were preparing to meet at Stockholm for a peace conference of their own influenced by the same ideas.

But the President had changed his opinion that America had no concern with the causes and the objects of the war; he had had to search for and explore the obscure foundations from which the tremendous flood had burst forth. His Flag Day speech on June 14 showed that he was now thinking of the political and economic aspects of the German drive for world supremacy; and when the allied powers intrusted him with the task of answering the Pope's peace suggestion in the name of all of them, he declared that "we cannot take the word of the present rulers of Germany as a guarantee for anything that is to endure." The German Government could not be trusted with a peace without victory.

That peace offensive died out in early Fall. The Germans had lost interest, for they seemed likely to reach their objective in other ways. Things were going badly for the Allies. The offensives in the west had broken down and France's striking power seemed exhausted.

Italy suffered a terrific defeat in October. America was preparing, but had not yet arrived, and the chief result of the Russian revolution had been the collapse of the eastern front. When in November the Bolsheviki overthrew Kerensky and prepared to make peace at any price, it was evident that the German armies in France would soon be enormously reinforced. So the Winter of 1917-18 saw a new peace offensive, but this time most of the work was done by the Allies, and the object was to detach Austria-Hungary from Germany.

The item of princ.i.p.al interest in the long-range bombardment of speeches on war aims by which the statesmen of the various powers conducted this exchange of views was the proclamation of the famous Fourteen Points, in which the President for the first time put his ideas as to the conditions of a just peace into somewhat specific form.

The origin of this program, which was eventually to become the basis of the peace treaty, is still a matter of conjecture. Lloyd George on Jan.

5, 1918, had stated war aims in some respects identical with those which the President embodied in the Fourteen Points three days later. A good deal of the program had been included in the allied statement of Jan. 11, 1917, but the Fourteen Points were somewhat more moderate.

They seemed to be, indeed, a rather hasty recension of old programs in the effort to modify allied aspirations so that Austria would accept them; for while the Fourteen Points professed to contain the scheme of a just peace, they were set forth as a step in the endeavor to persuade Austria to desert her ally. As it happened, Austria could not have deserted Germany even if she had desired; and, in any event, the effort to compromise was quite impracticable. The section referring to Austrian internal problems, for instance, proposed a solution which the Austrian Government had rejected only a few weeks before, and which the Austrian subject nationalities would no longer have been willing to accept

Whatever the origin of the Fourteen Points, their immediate effect was slight. The Austrians, and to a lesser extent the Germans, professed interest, but it was soon apparent that the Germans at least were not ready to approach the allied point of view. And the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, forced upon Russia on March 3, was in such stark contrast with the benevolent professions of German statesmen that the President realized that nothing could be gained by debate and compromise. On April 6, in a speech at Baltimore, he declared that only one argument was now of use against the Germans--"force to the utmost, force without stint or limit." The process of conversion from the viewpoint of January, 1917, was complete.

As a matter of fact, however, the application of force had already begun. On March 21 Ludendorff had opened his great offensive in France which was to bring the war to a German victory, and for the next few months Foch, and not Wilson, was the dominant personality among the Allies. And for a time it seemed that however much America had contributed to the moral struggle between the alliances, she would be able to furnish comparatively little force. The winter of 1917-18 had been full of humiliations. The railroad disorganization which had led to the proclamation of Government control at the end of December was being cleared up only slowly. The Fuel Administration was in an even worse tangle, and in January business and industry had to shut down for several days throughout the whole Eastern part of the country in order to find coal to move food trains to the ports. Great sums of money and enormous volumes of boasting had been expended on airplane construction without getting any airplanes. Hundreds of millions had been poured into shipyards and ships were only beginning to come from the ways. The richest nation in the world allowed hundreds of its soldiers to die in cantonment hospitals because of insufficient attention and inadequate supplies. Artillery regiments were being trained with wooden guns and only 150,000 Americans, many of them technical troops, were in France.

The Secretary of War, called before a Congressional committee to answer questions on these shortcomings, had created the impression that he either did not know that anything was wrong or did not care. On Jan. 19 Senator Chamberlain, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs, declared that "the military establishment of the United States has broken down; it has almost stopped functioning," and that there was "inefficiency in every bureau and department of the Government." The next day he introduced bills for a War Cabinet and a Director of Munitions, which would practically have taken the military and industrial conduct of the war out of the President's hands.

The President met the challenge boldly with the declaration that Senator Chamberlain's statement was "an astonishing and unjustifiable distortion of the truth," and must have been due to disloyalty to the Administration. Chamberlain's reply, while admitting that he might have overstated his case, was a proclamation of loyalty to his Commander-in-Chief and an appeal for getting down to the business of winning the war.

_The Fourteen Points_

_President Wilson's program for the world's peace was outlined in the Fourteen Points, which const.i.tuted part of an address delivered before Congress January 8, 1918, as follows:_

_No Private Understandings_

1 OPEN COVENANTS of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

_Freedom of the Seas_