John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

The President became entangled in his own contradictions. There was a general outcry against going to war over a mere matter of prestige. Andrew Carnegie’s was one of thousands of messages of protest. He reminded Wilson of Gulliver’s adventures in Lilliput: this was like “the fabled war of two kings to decide which end of the egg should first be broken.”

The incident ended with the flight of Americans from Mexico, and a cordon of troops spread along the Mexican border. The Administration renewed the embargo on arms to the constitutionalists. Except for Villa, who tried to curry favor in Washington by pretending to be delighted, the constitutionalists were protesting even more vigorously than their enemy Huerta against the Yankee invasion.

An initiative, which had the bland encouragement of Colonel House, from three Latin-American ambassadors, Naon of Argentina, de Gama of Brazil and Suarez Mújica of Chile, gave the Administration a chance to retire from an impossible position. The three ambassadors offered to mediate between the various Mexican factions and between the Mexicans and Washington.

The Mexican problem was taken behind closed doors at one of the resort hotels at Niagara Falls. The mediation of the “A.B.C.” powers, if it did not do much to alleviate the anarchic situation in Mexico, at least did something to convince the rest of Latin America that the United States was not planning an invasion. United States citizens could once more venture out on the streets in Latin-American towns without having stones thrown at them.

On May 11, 1914, three days after his daughter Eleanor’s marriage to Secretary McAdoo, President Wilson rode in the New York funeral procession of seventeen of the navy men killed at Vera Cruz. Enormous crowds packed Broadway under the halfmast flags. In front of the Marine Barracks at the Brooklyn Navy Yard the President delivered an address to serve as their funeral oration.

It would have been disgraceful to die in a war of aggression, he said, but “to die in a war of service is glorious.” In landing at Vera Cruz Americans had been performing a service for the Mexican people. “I never was under fire but I fancy it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you … The cheers of the moment are not what a man ought to think about but the verdict of his conscience and the conscience of mankind.”

It was a very hot day. The sun beat down on the ranks of bluejackets and marines at parade rest. A crowd of ten thousand people broke through the police lines and milled around on the Navy Yard. Nineteen women fainted and several small children narrowly escaped being trampled. Members of the official party noticed that the President’s face showed deep emotion when he looked down on the seventeen guncarriages and the flagcovered coffins: it was by his orders that these young men had gone to their deaths.

That evening the President and Dr. Grayson dined in the seclusion of Colonel House’s apartment at 135 East Thirtyfifth Street. Wilson was in a relaxed frame of mind. Public speaking always made him feel better. After supper Wilson read some of his favorite poems out of Wordsworth and Matthew Arnold and Keats aloud to the small company. Grayson tactfully took his leave. “When he finished reading,” noted the colonel, “I took up my budget.”

Though there was class war in Colorado between miners and mine-owners to talk about, and Mexico still seethed south of the border, most of the colonel’s budget dealt with Europe.

Colonel House was preparing to sail on the first of his missions as the President’s personal representative. Woodrow Wilson was about to take a hand in European affairs. He was about to try, as Theodore Roosevelt had tried, to talk, quietly behind the scenes, some sense into the heads of the great powers. Behind his poker face and deferential manner the colonel felt the excitement of a schoolboy who’s just been elected captain of the football team. In the privacy of his diary he wrote of the coming trip as The Great Adventure.

He went first to Germany. The Germans put themselves out for him. Since the days of T.R. American prestige had been high with the Kaiser. House found a worse state of affairs than he possibly could have imagined. After a talk with Admiral Von Tirpitz he reported to the President by diplomatic pouch: “It is militarism run stark mad. Unless someone acting for you can bring about a different understanding, there is some day to be an awful cataclysm. No one in Europe can do it. There is too much hatred, too many jealousies … It is an absorbing problem … I wish it might be solved, and to the everlasting glory of your Administration and our American civilization.”

The colonel had learned that, like Oscar Wilde, President Wilson liked his flattery to be gross.

The literalminded Germans couldn’t get it into their heads that President Wilson’s representative was only an ersatz colonel. They gave him the military whirl. At the aviation field they let him see “all sorts of dangerous and curious manoeuvres,” such as looping the loop performed in a new style airplane by a young Hollander in the German service named Fokker. “I was glad when he came down, for I was afraid his enthusiasm to please might result in his death.”

On June 1, Colonel House and Ambassador Gerard were entertained at Potsdam by the Kaiser at a very special military festival called the Schrippenfest. The colonel was placed among the generals right across the table from the Kaiser. The meal was served in a famous hall with walls made entirely of seashells which Gerard described as probably the ugliest room in the world. House noted that the food was delicious and, approvingly, “the meal not long, perhaps fifty minutes.”

After lunch His Majesty took House out on a terrace and talked to him, tête à tête, while Ambassador Gerard and Herr Zimmermann, the acting Secretary for Foreign Affairs, waited deferentially out of earshot. “I found he had all the versatility of Roosevelt with something more of charm, something less of force … He declared he wanted peace because it seemed to Germany’s interest. Germany had been poor, she was now growing rich and a few more years of peace would make her so … I asked the Kaiser why Germany refused to sign the ‘Bryan treaty’ providing for arbitration and a cooling off period … He replied Germany would never sign such a treaty. ‘Our strength lies in being always prepared for war at a second’s notice. We will not resign that advantage and give our enemies time to prepare.’

“I told him that the President and I thought an American might be able to … compose the difficulties here and bring about an understanding … He agreed … I talked to the Kaiser on the terrace for thirty minutes and quite alone … Gerard told me afterwards that all Berlin was talking of the episode and wondering what the devil we had to say to each other for so long and in such an animated way.”

Colonel House left for Paris the same day. He couldn’t get anywhere with the French. President Poincaré was preparing for his state visit to St. Petersburg which was to put a public seal on the Russian alliance. The cabinet was in crisis. The wife of one of the ministers had brought a long political feud to a head by shooting Gaston Calmette, the editor of Le Figaro , who had been calling her husband a traitor. The papers were full of the trial and acquittal of Mme. Caillaux. Among the politicians there was nobody home but the concièrge.

When House called at the Embassy he found Ambassador Myron T. Herrick in a whirl over T.R.’s carryingson at dinner the night before. T.R., fresh from his explorations of the Amazon basin which had nearly been the end of him, was rearing to get back into politics. Herrick predicted he would give the Democrats an unhappy time when he got home.