Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements Part 6

Convinced that the people were behind him against the Senate, or would be behind him if they understood the issue, the President left Was.h.i.+ngton on September 3 for another appeal to the country. Declaring that if America rejected the League it would "break the great heart of the world," he went to the Pacific Coast on a long and arduous speaking tour, another request, in effect, for a vote of confidence for his work as Premier. The effort was too much; he broke down at Wichita, Kan., on September 26, and was hurried back to the White House, where for weeks he lay disabled by an illness whose nature and seriousness were carefully concealed at the time, and even yet but imperfectly understood. Meanwhile the treaty had been reported out of committee, and the offering of a mult.i.tude of amendments, all of which were defeated, led eventually to the drawing up of the "Lodge reservations,"

finally adopted on November 16.

n.o.body knew how sick the President was, but Senator Hitchc.o.c.k, who had led the fight for the treaty in the Senate, saw him on November 18 and was told that in the President's opinion the Lodge reservations amounted to nullification of the treaty. So the Democrats voted against the treaty. Lodge's refusal to accept Wilson's treaty was as unshakable as Wilson's refusal to accept Lodge's treaty. When the special session ended and the regular session began the President eventually yielded a little and consented to interpretative reservations proposed by Senator Hitchc.o.c.k. But this would not satisfy the Republicans; and on March 20 the rejected treaty was finally sent back to the White House.

_The Closing Year, 1920-1921_

The President's recovery was slow, and the first incidents of his return to the management of public affairs were rather startling, in view of the abrupt manner with which he resumed the direction of executive policy. During his illness the Cabinet had met from time to time and in a fas.h.i.+on had carried on the routine work of the executive department. Had it not done so, had the gravity of the President's illness been generally known, the demand which was heard for an explanation of the const.i.tutional reference to the "disability of the President" and an understanding of the circ.u.mstances under which the Vice-President might a.s.sume the office would have been much stronger.

There was a good deal of apprehension, therefore, when Secretary of State Lansing resigned, and the published correspondence showed that the President had regarded his action in calling Cabinet meetings as a usurpation of Presidential authority. It was evident from the correspondence that another and perhaps stronger reason for the President's disapproval had been the action of the Secretary in conducting a Mexican Policy on his own initiative, during the President's illness, which showed considerable divergence from the President's own. Nevertheless, the manner of the action caused some uneasiness and there was much surprise when Mr. Lansing was replaced by Bainbridge Colby, a comparatively recent proselyte from the Progressive Party.

There was still further uncertainty as to the condition of the President when he re-entered with a series of rather sharp notes into the Adriatic controversy, which England, France and Italy had been trying to settle, without consulting the Jugoslavs, during his illness; and a letter to Senator Hitchc.o.c.k on March 8, a.s.serting that the militarist party was at that time in control of France, aroused grave misgivings on both sides of the Atlantic. These, however, were unjustified; the President's improvement, though gradual, continued.

But the work of the Executive during 1920 was far less important than in previous years, for the interest of the country was concentrated on the Presidential election.

On January 8 a letter from the President had been read at the Jackson Day dinner in Was.h.i.+ngton, in which he refused to accept the Senate's decision on the treaty as the decision of the nation. "If there is any doubt as to what the people of the country think about the matter," he added, "the clear and single way out is ... to give the next election the form of a great and solemn referendum." Once more, as in 1918, the President had asked for a verdict on his leaders.h.i.+p. There was some perturbation among the Democratic leaders, for into a Presidential election so many issues enter that it would be difficult to regard it as a referendum on any particular issue. It might have been so accepted if the President himself had come forward as a candidate for a third term, but there was no sign from the White House as to his att.i.tude on this issue, and there was no spontaneous demand for him outside. The leading candidate during the pre-convention campaign was William G.

McAdoo, the President's son-in-law, who had resigned as Secretary of the Treasury and Director General of Railroads after making a successful record during the war, and before the criticism of the Wilson Administration as a whole had become acute. McAdoo had the powerful support of organized labor and most of the Federal office-holders, but whether or not he had the support of the White House no man knew. The Republicans a.s.sumed it for their own purposes, and Senator Lodge's keynote speech at the Chicago Convention was full of denunciations of the "Wilson dynasty"; but if McAdoo were Wilson's candidate the President showed no sign of knowing it.

That McAdoo was not nominated, however, can be ascribed very largely to his relations.h.i.+p to the President and the suspicion that he was the President's candidate. The Democratic Convention at San Francisco adopted a platform praising and indorsing the President's record in all details. The convention had to do that; the President's record was the party's record. Homer c.u.mmings as Temporary Chairman kept the convention cheered up by a keynote speech of eulogy of that record, which moved the a.s.sembled Democrats to such enthusiasm that Secretary of State Colby, who had not been a Democrat long enough to know much about the behavior of the species, declared that at any movement that day the rules could have been suspended and the President renominated by acclamation. But when the convention came down to the work of nomination the President was not considered, and the delegates devoted themselves to finding the most available man who had not had any connection with the Administration. James M. c.o.x was finally nominated on Woodrow Wilson's record and sent out to the great and solemn referendum.

Aside from a formal proclamation of unity of ideals and intentions with the candidate, the White House took practically no part in the campaign. Not until October, when a delegation of pro-League Republicans called at the White House, was it known that the President's health had temporarily taken a turn for the worse and that active partic.i.p.ation would have been impossible. It could hardly have affected the result very much in either direction.

Whether or not the President had intended to turn over the Government to Hughes in November, 1916, he did nothing so unkind to Harding in November, 1920. The President-elect was allowed plenty of time to try to choose his Cabinet and his policies, but the Administration had gradually withdrawn from all connection with European affairs, and it was made known soon after Congress met in December that nothing would be done which might embarra.s.s the new Administration in its handling of foreign relations and interrelated problems.

The history of Woodrow Wilson's Administration virtually ends with the rejection of the treaty; but the business of government had to be carried on through the final year. During 1920 old issues that had long been hidden behind the war clouds came out into the open again. Obregon overthrew Carranza and entered into power in Mexico, but the Wilson Administration maintained neutrality during the brief struggle.

Amba.s.sador Fletcher had resigned, but Henry Morgenthau, appointed to succeed him, did not obtain the confirmation of the Senate, and the new Administration had not been formally recognized at the end of President Wilson's term. A controversy over the status of American oil rights was one of the chief impediments to recognition, though Obregon's general att.i.tude was far more friendly to America than that of Carranza.

The President in November announced the boundaries of Armenia, which he had drawn at the request of the European Allies. But these boundaries were of no particular interest by that time, since the Turks and the Bolsheviki were already part.i.tioning Armenia; and the mediation between the Turks and Armenians which the Allies requested the President to undertake was forestalled by the Bolshevist conquest of the remnant of the country. The Adriatic dispute, in which the President had taken such a prominent part in 1919, was finally settled without him by direct negotiation between Italy and Jugoslavia. In one other international problem, however, that of Russia, the United States Government still exerted some influence. The President during 1918 had showed more willingness to believe in the possibility of some good coming out of Bolshevist Russia than most of the European Governments, and the American Expeditionary Forces in Siberia took no active part in the fighting there. At the Peace Conference the President had been willing to call the various Russian parties to the Prinkipo conference, but nothing came of this; and America eventually took up a middle ground toward Russia. While the British seemed ready to make friends with the Bolsheviki and the French remained irreconcilably hostile, the American Government--whose policy was fully set forth in a note of August 10, 1920--refused to attack them, but also to have any dealings with them. This policy was much criticised as being purely negative, but toward the end of Mr. Wilson's Administration both England and France were tending to follow it through the force of circ.u.mstances, England's effort to find a basis of trade relations with Bolshevist Russian being as futile as France's support of anti-Bolshevist revolutionary movements.

The Republicans and their Irish supporters in the 1920 campaign revived the old demand for the exemption of American s.h.i.+pping from the Panama Ca.n.a.l tolls, but this and various other differences with England which arose toward the end of Mr. Wilson's Administration were left over for settlement by the new President. More urgent, however, was another ancient issue now revived--the California land question. In 1917, when America was just entering the war and could not afford any dangerous entanglements on the Pacific, the Lansing-Is.h.i.+ agreement was negotiated with j.a.pan. By this the United States recognized j.a.pan's "special interests" in China, particularly in "the parts to which her territory is contiguous," while both powers professed agreement on the principles of Chinese independence and territorial integrity, and the open door. However necessary this concession in order to protect an exposed flank in time of war, it was regarded with much alarm by friends of China, whose wrath was later aroused by the action of the President at the Peace Conference in agreeing to the cession of Shantung to j.a.pan. There was a renewed antagonism between American and j.a.panese interests in certain quarters, and the American Army in Siberia, if it did nothing else, at least kept the j.a.panese from seizing Vladivostok until the Americans had left.

With this background, the situation created by the revival of anti-j.a.panese agitation in California seemed more or less disquieting, but when a more stringent land law was enacted by the Californians in November negotiations between the two Governments began at once and are still going on at the close of the Administration with good prospect of agreement.

The President's unpopularity had been so violently expressed by the election of November 2 that it was bound to be mitigated soon after, and this natural reaction was aided by the failure of the Republican Congress to accomplish anything in the short session and by President-elect Harding's slowness in deciding among candidates offered for the Cabinet and policies put forward for his attention. As President Wilson prepared to turn over the executive duties to his successor there was already evidence that the American public was returning to a greater appreciation of his services. As a token of the estimation in which he was still held by the more intelligent circles abroad, the n.o.bel Peace Prize was awarded to him in December, 1920; and European statesmen who had opposed him at the Peace Conference were already expressing surprise at learning that Mr. Harding believed that the League of Nations was dead.

_Copyright_ New York _Times_.

_Published through the courtesy of the New York Times._

In Flanders Fields

By Lieut. Col. John McCrea

In Flanders fields the poppies grow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky The larks still bravely singing, fly, Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe!

To you from failing hands we throw The torch. Be yours to lift it high!

If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, tho poppies blow In Flanders fields.

America's Answer

By R. W. Lillard

Rest ye in peace, ye Flanders dead!

The fight that ye so bravely led We've taken up! And we will keep True faith with you who lie asleep, With each a cross to mark his bed, And poppies blowing overhead Where once his own life blood ran red!

So let your rest be sweet and deep In Flanders fields!

Fear not that ye have died for naught, The torch ye threw to us we caught!

Ten million hands will hold it high, And Freedom's light shall never die!

We've learned the lesson that ye taught In Flanders fields!

Recessional

By Richard Linthic.u.m

I

The tide is at the ebb, as if to mark Our turning backward from the guiding light; Grotesque, uncertain shapes infest the dark And wings of bats are heard in aimless flight; Discordant voices cry and serpents hiss, No friendly star, no beacon's beckoning ray; We follow, all forsworn, with steps amiss, Envy and Malice on an unknown way.

But he who bore the light in night of war, Swiftly and surely and without surcease, Where other light was not, save one red star, Treads now, as then, the certain path to peace; Wounded, denied, but radiant of soul, Steadfast in honor, marches toward the goal.

II

The spirit that was Peace seems but a wraith, The glory that was ours seems but a name, And like a rotten reed our broken faith, Our boasted virtue turned to scarlet shame By the low, envious l.u.s.t of party power; While he upon the heights whence he had led, Deserted and betrayed in victory's hour, Still wears a victor's wreath on unbowed head.

The Nation gropes--his rule is at an end, Immortal man of the transcendent mind, Light-bearer of the world, the loving friend Of little peoples, servant of mankind!

O land of mine! how long till you atone?

How long to stand dishonored and alone?

_To Woodrow Wilson, March 4, 1921._

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FOUNDERS OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS BALDRIDGE IN _Stars and Stripes_

Make firm, O G.o.d, the peace our dead have won, For folly shakes the tinsel on her head And points us back to darkness and to h.e.l.l, Cackling, "Beware of Visions," while our dead Still cry, "It was for visions that we fell."

--Alfred Noyes]