John Passos - Mr. Wilson's War

Lansing set forth his arguments for an immediate break. As usual the President listened attentively. He would call a meeting of the cabinet. It was Lansing’s impression that Wilson was waiting for some overt act.

The Secretary went home to bed in a frustrated state of mind. “Has the blood of patriotism ceased to throb in American veins?… Have we forgotten that our heritage of liberty was sealed with the lives of Americans and that it is a sacred trust which we must hold unimpaired for the generations to come?” he had written in his private diary after the Lusitania sinking. The President’s temporizing brought on a new storm of resentful thought. Robert Lansing’s sleep was fitful that night.

On February 1 the German note drove everything else off the front pages. Atlantic shipping was paralyzed. House’s friend Dudley Field Malone took it upon himself to close the port of New York. Reports came in of glutted dockside warehouses and of goods piling up at the railheads. The stockmarket slumped. While Allied partisans stormed in the east coast newspapers, pacifist groups held meetings urging the President not to submit to provocation. Editorials were full of uneasy conjecture on what the German-American societies might do in case of war. Would the United States face a situation akin to the Easter rebellion?

Colonel House was reported to have escaped a throng of reporters waiting for him in the Pennsylvania Station by having himself smuggled by a back stairway into his stateroom on the night train to Washington.

The confidential colonel found President Wilson “sad and depressed … The President said he felt as if the world had suddenly reversed itself; that after going from east to west, it had begun to go from west to east, and that he could not get his balance … The question we discussed longest was whether it was better to give Bernstorff his passports immediately or wait till the Germans committed some overt act. When Lansing came this discussion was renewed, and we all agreed that it was best to give him his passports at once.”

The argument his advisers used to convince the President was that breaking off relations might bring the Germans to their senses. Lansing was sent back to his office to write out an explanatory note.

Even then the President was insisting to House that he would not allow the break to lead to war. He spoke of Germany as “a madman to be curbed.” House asked if it was fair to the Allies to let them do all the curbing. “He noticeably winced at this,” said House when he dictated his private notes to the indispensable Miss Denton.

The colonel described the events of the next day with some gusto in his diary: “We sat listlessly during the morning until Lansing arrived … The President nervously arranged his books and walked up and down the floor. Mrs. Wilson spoke of golf and asked whether I thought it would look badly if the President went out on the links. I thought the American people would feel that he should not do anything so trivial at such a time.

“In great governmental crises of this sort the public have no conception of what is happening on the stage behind the curtain … When the decision has been made nothing further can be done until it is time for the curtain to rise … Meanwhile we were listlessly killing time … The President at last suggested that we play a game of pool.” House used to tell his friends afterwards what poor poolplayers both he and the President were. Towards the end of the second game, Lansing was announced.

“The President, Lansing and I then returned to the study. Lansing was so nearly of our mind that there was little discussion. He read what he had written and we accepted it …”

In the cabinet meeting that afternoon the President went into all the arguments pro and con once more. The cabinet members were edgy. Houston and McAdoo wanted action. Jolly Franklin K. Lane wrote a friend: “He comes out right but he’s slower than a glacier and things are mighty disagreeable whenever anything has to be done.”

Lansing sat quiet. Since his talk with the President and Colonel House that morning he was convinced that the President had made up his mind. “I slept soundly that night,” he noted in his diary, “feeling sure that the President would act vigorously.”

Next day the President addressed the two houses of Congress to explain why he had to give von Bernstorff his passports. He was applauded. Only the Progressives were mum.

The President’s relations with Congress had been deteriorating all through the winter. Though the Senate was still safely Democratic, the House was split 213 to 213. Even his most loyal supporters were losing the unity of purpose of the happy days of the New Freedom. The Republican regulars were grouped in a bitter phalanx around Senator Lodge of Massachusetts. The Progressives, formerly so cooperative, were balky.

In mid-January after months of White House pressure, which Tumulty was adept in masking under a velvet glove, President and Mrs. Wilson learned with relief that the appointment of their dear Dr. Grayson as Rear Admiral was finally approved by the Senate. His promotion jumped him over a list of a hundred and one names. The fight went on for months. Satisfying this presidential whim caused Wilson’s legislative managers many a sleepless night. The Grayson appointment left bitter feelings in the Senate.

Wilson seized on Lansing’s suggestion of arming merchantships and letting them fight their way across the sealanes as a way of emulating the “armed neutrality” policies of the Scandinavian countries during the Napoleonic wars. The President believed he already had the authority as Commander in Chief of the armed forces but he wanted congressional endorsement of his plan. The Armed Ship Bill was introduced.

Though it passed the House, the Armed Ship Bill became entangled in the political strategy of the Republicans, panting for a return to power in 1920. The Republican leadership had no intention of giving the Democratic administration a free hand after the President’s second inauguration. They wanted to force a special session. The Progressives in the Senate, who had stood by the President in the long fight for public ownership of emergency shipping, opposed the plan to arm merchantships as the first step towards war against Germany in the interests of British trade and the New York banks. It was putting the dollar sign on the American flag said Norris of Nebraska.

La Follette of Wisconsin seized on the arming of merchantships as the dramatic issue in the struggle for peace. As usual, once he had made up his mind, black was black and white was white. When it became obvious that the bill had enough votes to pass, his passionate denunciation turned into a filibuster. Twelve men, in spite of the crescendo of vituperation raised up against them by the war spirit now sweeping the country, decided to hold out until the Sixtyfourth Congress expired on Inauguration Day.

The filibuster produced vast bitterness. According to Capitol gossip, Ollie James of Kentucky at one moment advanced threateningly toward La Follette across the Senate floor, with his hand on his gunpocket. The filibustering senators were excoriated in the press as “flirting with treason,” as “knaves who betrayed the nation,” or as “La Follette and his little group of perverts.” La Follette was hung in effigy by the students at Massachusetts Tech. He was denounced by professors at Columbia. Even at home in Wisconsin old supporters turned against him.

Public indignation was exacerbated by the publication of the Zimmermann telegram. On February 25 a translation was handed to Page in London. He promptly cabled it to Washington where Polk and Lansing originated a search for the original cypher message in the telegraph company’s files. The versions matched. Lansing hurried to the White House to show the President the telegram.