Washington, October 30th

Three days after my return from Germany, at Brest, I was squeezed on board the Siboney, a narrow, slim-waisted vessel, on which I had often sailed the summer seas of the Caribbean. She was now masquerading as a troop ship; as a talking point to the tourist trade the Siboney boasted windows instead of narrow portholes. She was certainly not the craft I would have chosen on which to buck the autumnal gales of the Western Ocean. She rolled and she pitched and she wallowed in a gray world of fog and mist and drizzling rain and for twenty-four hours we lay hove to, but I gave little thought to my damp surroundings; after all, I was better off than the doughboys crowded on board and most certainly less deserving; indeed, with the prospect that with every turn of the screw I was nearing the glorious pageant of the red oaks and the scarlet maples at my home in northern Westchester, rather than put up with further delay, I would most willingly have pushed off from the shores of France on a raft. . . .

The joy of my homecoming was marred by bad news of the physical condition of my chief. On the 12th (October) he had been carried from the transport on a stretcher; again the persistent gallstones were harassing him. Now the repentant Colonel was ready for the operation, but the doctors would not undertake it. His general condition would not permit him to stand the shock, and their decision was that he must wait—and suffer. When he was stronger they would do what he should have permitted them to do six months before.

“The medicine men always have the last word,” admitted the Colonel ruefully.

From another quarter the Colonel was also being harassed. The fight on the Treaty had reached an acute stage. From the White House there came no word of guidance; in fact, no word at all. Some said the President was dead; others, and at least one of these was a Senator, said the President had lost his mind! A few of the correspondents, even those who were generally regarded as conservative, were wiring from Washington sensational conjectures, and their wild yarns were being printed under scareheads. They seemed to be in agreement that Lodge, Johnson, and Brandegee, the most truculent of the opposition Senators, were sharpening their knives. “They mean to learn from the Colonel what really happened in Paris—or else.”

A week before my arrival, the naval medico in charge, as in duty bound, had called on the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and explained the condition of the witness they yearned to examine. He had been civil, the medico reported, and agreed to wait— but not for long!

“While you have come a little late,” said the Colonel, “I regard you as a messenger from Heaven. You know these men, and they will believe you. They are probably suspicious of doctors’ certificates. Of course I do not want to escape the cross-examination which they plan, but I do not want to be grilled until I can sit up and defend myself. And naturally I want to confer with the President first as to the strategy, and, above all, as to the tactics of his campaign, of which at present I am wholly ignorant. Kohlsaat telephoned me yesterday that the President is absolutely incommunicado. No one is admitted except Mrs. Wilson and now and again a tight-lipped doctor. You know Lodge, and while you like him personally, politically you abhor him and all his deviltry, as I do. But dissemble, tackle him with asbestos gloves, and secure for me a respite, ‘a cooling-off’ period.”

With but twenty-four hours’ delay, which I spent enjoying the autumnal glories of Whitefields, I went to Washington to do what I could. Through my old schoolmate, “Gus” Gardner, his son-in-law, now dead, in an army training camp, I had been on pleasant social terms with Lodge. Outside the field of politics, to me he was the most interesting man in the Senate. It would be a joy to me if I could avail myself of these terms of intimacy, though not of friendship, to help the Colonel in his hour of need.

Conceding to them the very best of intentions, a charitable attitude not shared by many, House thought it most unwise of those in charge of the situation to shroud in deepest mystery the President s illness. One notable result was that many alarming rumors were current, and some believed (and these were not exclusively the President’s political enemies) that Mr. Wilson had suffered a mental as well as a physical collapse.

“At a moment when energetic action is imperative, I am bedridden,” moaned the Colonel, “and all we fought for is in grave danger.”

Though physically run down, admittedly not up to his fighting weight, the Colonel was not a prey to imaginative fears. Lodge and his colleagues had made no secret of their determination to subject House to the most severe cross-examination, and they were very active in extracting “information” from a number of people (the Colonel called them “coyotes”) who had been on the fringe of the Paris Conference and were most eager for the flashlight of publicity.

“As soon as you can,” pleaded the Colonel, “go to Washington and see the Senator. You know him well, and I trust from you he will accept a frank statement. Assure him that the moment I am able to travel I shall be most eager to appear before his committee. We have nothing to conceal, indeed quite the contrary.”

I went to Washington on the 28th (of October) and saw Lodge the same day, and he authorized me to send House a reassuring letter. “We shall be glad to see the Colonel when he can travel with safety, but assure him there is no particular hurry. We flatter ourselves we know what happened in Paris, all the wild talk of the rumor mongers notwithstanding. We are fully informed as to the past, but we do think that House’s presence will be most useful later on, when Congress has to face the situation created in Paris.”

Lodge was extremely courteous, even, it seemed to me, considerate, and in the course of the conversation that followed what might be termed our business talk, I got the impression that he was not as confident, as some of his ardent adherents claimed to be, that he could defeat the Treaty and so alter the Covenant as to “hamstring” it, the expression used by both Wilsonians and anti-Wilsonians with, of course, very different purpose and meaning. Indeed, I came to the conclusion that the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee was in the mood to compromise, but with whom? I telephoned my impression to House and he urged me to stay with Lodge and to secure from him, if possible, a statement of his minimum demands.

We had two talks, and I sent on the result to House, and he was delighted. “The situation is brighter, much brighter,” was his comment. I trust he is right—he generally is—but after all the President is still silent and darkness enshrouds the White House. The vote on ratification in the Senate cannot be much longer delayed, everything favorable as well as everything unfavorable to the Treaty has been said scores of times, and the world needs, and indeed demands, action.