Wilson, Woodrow 4 in United States

Wilson, Woodrow 4

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• Wilson, Woodrow
• Wilson, Woodrow 2
• Wilson, Woodrow 3

In his annual message of December 1918, Wilson announced that he would go in person to Paris to aid in the negotiation of a world peace. The leaders of the Senate warned him against this course and many of the greatest papers in the North took the view that it was inexpedient if not improper and unconstitutional for the President to attend the peace conference in person. A former senator and a former attorney-general of the United States gave it as their matured opinions that Wilson would cease to be President the moment his ship passed beyond the boundary of the country. Nevertheless Wilson sailed for Europe on 4 December, and arrived in Paris on the 14th. He received an ovation that surpassed anything witnessed in France since the days of Napoleon I. In London a similar demonstration was made when he arrived there just after Christmas. Early in January he visited Rome where he was counted as a sort of messiah, come to save Europe from the terrors of future wars. These visits were made at the request of the governments concerned and during the delays incident to the gathering of the peace conference. Still, he was not unaware of the risks of his position. He had remarked to a friend in September preceding that he almost dreaded to think of the end of the war, for then every nation of Europe and every group of interests in the United States would begin to think of selfish ends.

When the peace conference opened, it was promptly discovered that the first of the Fourteen Points, open covenants openly arrived at, could not be realized. Men simply would not discuss in public the graver issues involved, lest the very ends they sought should be jeopardized. The conference decided to sit behind closed doors. Then it was found that the conference was too large for rapid work and a council of five, including Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Orlando of Italy and Makino of Japan took its place. This was later changed to a council of four, the Japanese representative simply absenting himself. Wilson labored a month to induce his colleagues to accept the Fourteen Points, including the proposed league of nations, the most important of all. The other representatives endeavored for a month to arrange the preliminaries of a peace without applying the Wilson principles and without accepting the league idea. But unable to agree, the whole conference met on the 14th of February and accepted the idea of a league as a part of the treaty. Wilson returned to America and in public addresses warned his opponents that the covenant of the League of Nations would be so interwoven with the Treaty of Peace that the rejection of the former would involve the rejection of the latter. How little this statement availed its author was revealed in the months that followed.

Returning to Paris about the middle of March 1919, Wilson found the conference had abandoned the League of Nations idea and had set about a peace of indemnities, annexations and reprisals. For a month Wilson fought almost single-handed for a peace which he could call democratic. He won to the extent that France abandoned her demand for a Rhine frontier and agreed to self-determination in Poland and other European submerged nationalities; and the League of Nations was made a part of the treaty. But the concessions greatly weakened the President, while the opposition to him on substantially imperialistic grounds gained constantly in the United States. Wilson returned with the Treaty and, calling Congress together, laid it before the Senate on 10 July 1919. Immediately the bitterest opposition was manifest. Wilson fought for his work at Paris. He recognized that the essentials of his whole career in the White House were under attack. He made a tour of the country on behalf of the adoption of the Treaty and the League of Nations. He spoke at Columbus, Ohio, at Saint Louis, at many other points in the Middle West and on the Pacific Coast. Everywhere he urged acceptance of the Treaty and at many places received extraordinary ovations. But he was taken ill at Wichita, Kans., and was hurried home to Washington, where he was kept in bed for several months. The judgment of history upon his contribution to the progress of “all men everywhere,” as the American ideal runs, cannot now be made up, although none may doubt that he will be counted among the greatest of American Presidents.

The sources of information about Wilson are many. Woodrow Wilson, ‘Congressional Government’ (1885), ‘The New Freedom’ (1913), and the volumes of his ‘Addresses and Messages,’ published from time to time by Harper’s, form the chief sources for his ideas and recommendations. The “Congressional Record” and the newspapers of the day from 1913 to 1920 give his addresses to Congress and show how much of his work has passed into law. Consult also Hale, William Bayard, ‘Woodrow Wilson: His Story’ (1912); Harris, H. W., ‘Life of Woodrow Wilson’ (1917); Low, A. Maurice, ‘Woodrow Wilson: An Interpretation’ (1918); Robinson and West, ‘The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson’ (1917).

Main Source: The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)