John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

Here was a bunch of army officers poking fun at the Democratic Party’s Philippine policy, insulting the Filipinos with slanderous ditties and holding Secretary Bryan’s grape juice suppers up to ridicule. Wilson went after them like a college president cracking down on student pranksters. It was all Daniels and Garrison could do to argue him out of hauling the general officers involved up before a courtmartial. They compromised on a reprimand.

The President administered the chastisement personally in a letter which, to the embarrassment of all concerned, he gave to the press. “What are we to think of officers of the Army and Navy of the United States who think it fun to bring their official superiors into ridicule and the policies of the government … into contempt? If they do not hold their loyalty above all silly effervescences of childish wit, what about their profession do they hold sacred?”

Wilson had stuck to his desk for nine solid months with only a few short breathers in the country. His nerves were taut to the breaking point. During the summer he poured out his feelings in a letter to Mrs. Reid, another of the sympathetic matrons he liked to tell his troubles to:

“The days go hard with me just now. I am alone. My dear ones went away almost at my command. I could not have been easy about them had they not gone; and we have found a nest for them in New Hampshire … where they have just the right airs, a beautiful country around them, and most interesting neighbors … These are stern days, and this all but empty house fits well with them. My secretary [Tumulty] is living with me and the young naval doctor who is of my staff [Grayson] … I work hard of course (the amount of work a President is supposed to do is preposterous) but it is not that that tells on a fellow. It’s the anxiety of handling such ‘things’ as that scoundrel Huerta … I play golf every afternoon — [this was part of Dr. Grayson’s regime of ‘preventive medicine’] — because while you are playing golf you cannot worry and be preoccupied with affairs … I have myself well in hand. I find that I am often cooler in my mind than some of those about me. And of course I find a real zest in it all … So far things go very well and my leadership is most loyally and graciously accepted even by men of whom I did not expect it. I hope that this is in part because they perceive that I am pursuing no private and selfish purposes of my own. How could a man do that with such responsibilities resting on him!”

Two days before Christmas the President had his reward. He triumphantly signed the Federal Reserve Act in the presence of the ladies of the family in their billowing frocks and of the Speaker of the House and members of the congressional committees and his cabinet officers, with tall giraffenecked McAdoo towering above them grinning in his tight stiff collar. There was the usual distribution of gold pens to the deserving. Wilson spoke modestly of his satisfaction “… that I played a part in completing a work which I think will be of lasting benefit.”

This was statebuilding as he had dreamed of it. The New York Times reporter spoke of the look of radiant happiness on Mrs. Wilson’s face. She had reason to feel exultant. The establishment of the Federal Reserve system was possibly the most lasting achievement of her husband’s career.

Immediately after the ceremony the Wilson family embarked on a private car for a much needed holiday at Pass Christian on the Gulf of Mexico. They had hardly time to enjoy their Christmas tree and to wish each other a Happy New Year before the President became thoroughly preoccupied with new complications in his campaign to oust “that scoundrel Huerta” from the presidency of Mexico. His disinterestedness was not appreciated south of the Rio Grande. The Mexican politicians were not accepting his leadership as “loyally and graciously” as did the Democratic politicians on Capitol Hill.

On January 2, 1914, the cruiser Chester , after dashing at full steam across the Gulf from Vera Cruz, dropped anchor off Gulfport, Mississippi. Under conditions of considerable secrecy the President went out on a launch to confer for some hours with a large blond civilian on board the warship. This gentleman was the Honorable John Lind, Swedishborn retired governor of Minnesota, Bryan supporter and deserving Democrat, who had been chosen for no reason that anyone could imagine, unless his ignorance of Spanish and his lack of any Mexican experience qualified him as unprejudiced, to be the President’s personal representative in Mexico. At that conference Mr. Lind and Mr. Wilson decided to back the northern Mexican revolutionaries against Huerta. For a pacifist John Lind had remarkable faith in the efficacy of arms.

Ever since the inauguration the President had been carrying out a policy described as of “watchful waiting” towards the revolutions and counterrevolutions in Mexico. To implement that policy he had been using every possible means to bypass the Embassy in Mexico City. Wilson was even more suspicious of professional diplomats than of professional military men.

In this case there was some justification for his suspicions. When the unfortunate Madero called on General Huerta, who had grown up as a career man in Díaz’s army, to suppress a cuartelazo engineered by members of the old regime, Huerta joined with Díaz’s nephew Felix, to suppress Madero instead. This act of treachery was carried out with the blessing of Taft’s ambassador, Henry Lane Wilson. In fact the written agreement between the two counterrevolutionaries was known as “the pact of the Embassy.”

Neither Wilson nor Bryan had personal experience with any but Englishspeaking people. Their Mexican policy consisted of trying to find Americanstyle reformers in the Democratic tradition among the warring bands which Madero’s assassination and Huerta’s assumption of power had launched on the warpath.

There was Zapata pillaging the haciendas of the sugar barons in the south under the banner of “land and schools for the peons.”

In Chihuahua, Francisco Villa, recent convert from professional banditry to revolutionary idealism, was showing a genius for guerrilla fighting and building himself a small empire out of the ruined holdings of the cientificos.

In Coahuila, Venustiano Carranza, maderista governor, whose long white beard added respectability to his cause, proclaimed himself First Chief of the constitutionalist forces pledged to reestablish law and order and to continue Madero’s program of rational reform. After talking to Lind, Wilson decided that Carranza was his man.

“That scoundrel Huerta,” idolized as chief by the regular army, held the capital and central Mexico and the railroads to Vera Cruz and to the oil port of Tampico. He had the support of most of the foreign powers, and the sympathy of Mexican and American business interests. Seventeen nations had recognized his government. Particularly the British looked to Huerta to protect their investments and keep order as old Díaz had for forty years.

The British had reason to be anxious about Tampico. His Majesty’s fleet had recently switched from coal to oil and Mexico was its main source of supply. With such support Huerta remained unmoved by admonitions from Washington to retire and hold free elections.

When Huerta did announce elections he got ready for them by dissolving the largely maderista congress and arresting a hundred and ten of its members. For Wilson this was the last straw. Forcing out Huerta became an obsession.

The Foreign Office was amazed; but Sir Edward Grey was willing to make sacrifices to keep the good will of the new administration in Washington. The British began to intimate in their sly unspoken way that they might reconsider their support of Huerta in exchange for the President’s help in doing away with the exemption of American shipping from paying tolls in the Panama Canal which, in spite of landslides in the Culebra cut, was well on its way to completion.