John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

McAdoo’s resignation was the signal for a stampede of “dollar a year” men out of Washington. Business executives and industrial leaders who had been working themselves sick for no pay on the control and procurement agencies of the Washington leviathan, while out of the corner of an eye they could see their less patriotic and often less able colleagues getting rich on war profits, returned to private life in droves. Even Bernard Baruch, the President’s dear Dr. Facts, announced he was leaving the Industrial War Board at the end of the year. The President wrote him immediately that he had further work in mind for him.

Though Wilson never had any idea of taking McAdoo to Europe, the resignation of his Secretary of the Treasury did force him to make a change in his list of delegates. With Mac gone, he would have to leave Secretary Baker, the only other cabinet member on whom he really relied, in Washington to keep the wheels of government moving during his absence. By mid November the story was in the headlines. The President was indeed planning to lead his delegation to the Peace Conference in person.

The news was received with dismay. At the State Department Lansing was quietly conducting his own canvass on the desirability of the President’s going to Europe. From Cardinal Gibbons in Baltimore to obscure Democratic precinct leaders in upper New York State the answer was negative. Old friends wrote begging Lansing to talk the President out of the notion. Many referred approvingly to the tradition that no President should leave the territory of the United States.

When Lansing respectfully presented his arguments the President intimated that he hadn’t yet quite made up his mind. Baruch was reported to be against the President’s going. Baker was against it. Secretary of Agriculture Houston, who was passionately loyal, suggested at a cabinet meeting, that though it might be fitting for the President to open the conference in person, he should then come home and leave the details to his delegates. As his way was, Wilson listened politely to all this advice and kept his own counsel; then one night he appeared without warning at Lansing’s house in the middle of a dinner party and brusquely announced to his Secretary of State that he’d made up his mind, he was going.

Echoes of these discussions and misgivings had been leaking into the nation’s press through the Washington newspapermen, who, now that the fighting had stopped, were short of sensations to report. Even the New York World , the President’s faithfulest supporter among bigcity newspapers, frowned on the idea. When the New York Times published a summary of editorials throughout the nation it was discovered that opinion was two to one against it.

From the moment House reached Paris on October 26 and set up his offices in a gray old mansion on the rue de l’Université on the Left Bank, the President and his confidential colonel exchanged incessant cables in their private code. Immediately House took his old chair on the Supreme War Council as the President’s personal representative.

Clemenceau greeted him like a longlost brother. “He received me with open arms. We passed all sorts of compliments. He seems genuinely fond of me,” noted House in his diary. “He thinks in the terms of the Second Empire,” he added a little later. “He doesn’t know what this new thought is about.” In spite of the illtempered old Tiger’s personal partiality, the colonel found the British more nearly in sympathy with the President’s plans. Lord Milner and Marshal Haig feared bolshevism more than they feared a German revival, and were in favor of moderate treatment of the defeated nations. Lloyd George talked first one way, then the other. He gave the impression of being more than usually flighty and irresponsible. His mind was on the coming general election back home.

While the Supreme War Council sat at Versailles, working out, amid the stiff formalities of military protocol, ever more Carthaginian armistice terms for the defeated nations, the Allied civilian leaders took refuge from the exigencies of their generals at the Quai d’Orsay. The handsome offices of Monsieur Stéphane Pichon, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, were among the few state apartments in Paris where the chauffage centrale really worked. There the prime ministers, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando, with House sitting in for President Wilson, could lounge in front of a fireplace around a large carved flattopped desk and carry on their debates in a more unbuttoned atmosphere.

House was shocked by the first meeting he attended: “Lloyd George and Clemenceau wrangled for an entire afternoon as to whether the British or the French should receive the Turks’ surrender. They bandied words like fishwives, at least Lloyd George did … It would have been humorous if it hadn’t been a tragic waste of time.”

House’s first task was to get the Fourteen Points firmly imbedded in the agenda of the peace talks which would follow. “If this is done the basis for peace will already have been made. Germany began negotiation on the basis of these terms, and the Allies have already tentatively accepted them … but it is becoming daily more apparent,” he wrote, after he’d been two days in Paris, “that they desire to get from under the obligation these terms will impose upon them in the making of the peace. If we do not use care we shall place ourselves in some such dishonorable position as Germany did when she violated her treaty obligations as to Belgium.”

There were two great sticking points. Lloyd George was skittish about freedom of the seas, and Orlando insisted upon assurances that Italy’s Adriatic aspirations would be respected. After four days of argument House reached a compromise.

He promised that before the meaning of each debatable point was finally set down in definite and practical terms both the British and the Italians would be given the chance to argue out their exceptions in direct negotiations with the United States. Furthermore, with the President’s full knowledge and consent, the colonel furnished the Allied leaders with a private and confidential document, drawn up under House’s supervision, explaining away most of the features which the European statesmen found most objectionable in the Fourteen Points. The content was subject to negotiation, the ingratiating colonel assured them, if only they accepted the slogans in their outward form.

Just as House had reached this gratifying accord with the prime ministers, at a meeting this time in House’s large parlor on the rue de l’Université, news was brought them that Austria had accepted the armistice terms. “There was great excitement,” he noted, “and clasping of hands and embracing. I said to Orlando ‘Bravo Italy’ which brought him near to tears.”

“This has been a red letter day,” House cabled the President.

Sir William Wiseman was among the first to congratulate him. Wiseman, a slender active little man, hid a great deal of intrigue behind a frank and open countenance. Heading the British secret services in Washington during the better part of the war he had seen to it that he should become a familiar of the confidential colonel’s. His usefulness as bosom friend to the President’s chief adviser can hardly have been lost on his superiors at Whitehall. In Paris his function again was that of private British liaison man with Colonel House.

“Wiseman and my other friends,” noted House exuberantly under the date of November 4, “have been trying to make me believe that I have won one of the greatest diplomatic triumphs in history. That is as it may be. The facts are I came to Europe for the purpose of getting the Entente to subscribe to the President’s peace terms. I left a hostile and influential group in the United States frankly saying they did not approve the President’s terms … On this side I found the Entente governments as distinctly hostile to the Fourteen Points as the people at home. The plain people generally are with the President … it is not with the plain people we have to deal … I have had to persuade, I have had to threaten.” House’s threat was that Wilson would ask Congress to make a separate peace—“but the result is worth all my endeavors … I am glad the exceptions were made, for it emphasizes the acceptance of the Fourteen Points.”