January, 1929

In the nearly seven years that have elapsed since my last entry in this diary, hardly a month passed that I did not, at home or abroad, have the privilege of discussing the world situation with Colonel House, my old chief. But generally we talked of the exciting present, or of the disturbing future, rarely of the past, although it was far from dead. But when his Intimate Papers, edited in such a scholarly manner by Professor Seymour, were published a few weeks ago, and the Colonel sent me a copy with a flattering inscription and a far-too-generous acknowledgment of the small part I had played in his mission, I ventured to question him as to several incidents upon which I needed enlightenment. Again I called his attention to the entries in my diary, and asked him to help me, if possible, to harmonize the contradictions, the rather flat contradictions that resulted from them.

“I must compliment you on your diary; both statements as to my feelings and my attitude are correct. I did not want the President to come to Paris and I told him so; I wanted him to stay ‘behind the curtain’ in Washington. True, at that moment my position was an awkward one, because there were some who whispered that my course was inspired by the thought that in the absence of the President I would become the No. 1 American delegate. There was, of course, absolutely nothing but malicious gossip in this. I had all the responsibility I wanted or cared to shoulder in the secondary place that had been allotted me. But in December and in January, as I came in contact with the discordant delegates as they assembled, I reached the conclusion that without Wilson’s prestige the negotiations would never have been started. In March, however, the President should never have returned from Washington; but it is only fair to say that he did not come this time on his own volition, or as a free agent. Here the responsibility that rests on the Senate is very great. Senators, friendly as well as unfriendly, had advised him that without the Monroe Doctrine reservation and the provision permitting withdrawal from the League upon two years’ notice, which they demanded, there was little chance that the Treaty could be ratified. It was extremely difficult to put through these amendments with all the driving force which Wilson’s presence in Paris exerted. If he had not been there, I do not know what would have happened, so I shall not indulge in pure guessing.” you (November 1, 1919) in regard to your expected appearance before the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate, and also my memorandum as to my talks with Lodge on this subject, but you omit all reference to the two interviews which I had with the Senator in the days that followed. You may recall that when I advised you that in my opinion Lodge was in a mood to accept the Covenant with reservations considerably less drastic than those which under his name were before the Senate, you immediately telephoned me to follow up this lead without delay.”

“That, I recall it, is putting it mildly; it came like a rainbow in a lowering sky.”

“Following your instructions, three days later I sent you a letter describing the interviews and a memorandum detailing the concessions which Lodge was prepared to make and which he thought, although he admitted he could not guarantee it, would bring the Treaty into the haven of ratification.”

“I sent your letter and the memorandum on to the President, giving it my warmest support. That letter was never acknowledged. And now I will tell you why I make no reference to it, and why I omitted the incident entirely when I published my Intimate Papers. I didn’t know at the time, and I do not know now, that the President ever saw the letter or that the memorandum enclosed, so tragically important in my judgment, ever came to his notice, or, if it did, that he was in a condition physically and mentally to appreciate it. Now if I had included that memorandum which, you might say, apparently indicated that Lodge, at least privately, was making concessions from his public stand, the criticism of the President’s unbending attitude, already strong, even from his close adherents, would have increased in violence. I could not bring myself to be responsible for that. And I had another thought: was this really the President’s affair? It seemed to me that he was in the position of a soldier who falls desperately wounded in leading an attack. Should he alone be the arbiter of how the forces that had failed should execute an orderly retreat, reform, and fight another day under more favorable circumstances? It seemed to me that this duty should have devolved upon other shoulders. And so the question presents itself, in whose hands was the executive power of the United States Government in November and December 1919? I do not know—nobody knows. That is a mystery which Congress never solved, so far as I know, never tried to.

“And there was another consideration: If I had published the concessions that, apparently, Lodge was willing to make, it would have meant that I accepted what might be called his proposal, and that I believed in his good faith. Frankly, I could not do that. In my judgment, from the very beginning the good faith of Lodge was questionable. What was the motive that induced him to take this, apparently, conciliatory step? I did not know then and I cannot say that I know now. Did Lodge, and those who went along with him, wish to defeat the Covenant which Wilson had drafted, and signed, absolutely and irretrievably, or did they wish only to weaken some of the obligations that were incurred under it? Did Lodge merely want to assert the Senate’s right to advice and consultation, which, as he publicly claimed, Wilson had sought to ignore? Again, was he seeking a partisan victory, or did he merely desire to make of the Covenant a bi-partisan document?

“Perhaps by voicing these surmises I am doing less than justice to Senator Lodge. I should dislike to do that, but not half as much as I would hate to do an injustice to the stricken President; to make him responsible for ignoring an opportunity which perhaps was never presented to him. No, I would not add by a feather’s weight to the burden which the President would have to bear, if he had knowingly ignored the offer, which, if made in good faith, might have led to a nearly complete victory.

“Had the President called me into consultation, and, as you see by my diary, that is what I expected, the moment your memorandum had been studied, I do not know what I would have advised, but I am sure I would have given this new phase of the controversy very careful consideration. It seemed to me a ‘lead’ that should have been followed up very carefully but of course with great caution. Our handicap in the whole matter was, of course, our want of faith in Lodge—it all goes back to that. This I can best describe in the words of one of my Texan friends, who said: ‘To have followed the trail of Lodge in that Treaty batde would have broken the back of the most supple rattlesnake.’ ”

House was deeply moved as he recalled the incidents of those tragic days. After a short pause I made this comment:

“I see one danger in the course you pursued. At some future time someone rummaging in the Senator’s papers may come across a record of the concessions which, ostensibly at least, Lodge was willing to make. What then?”

“I have thought of that,” said House, “but no, I have no fear of such a development. When on November 3d Lodge, as you reported, was apparently willing to make concessions, even if they were merely of a face-saving character, he was not confident that he could defeat the Treaty, but in a very few days he grew more confident and bolder. On November 19th, by a vote of 55 to 39, he defeated ratification of the Treaty in the form that Wilson had presented it and which he insisted upon. And, unfortunately, every day the slogan of ‘Away from Europe’ was making converts throughout the country. Encouraged by these developments, the Senator from Massachusetts now determined to defeat the Treaty in any form, to smash Wilson, and damn the consequences! So I think we can rely on Lodge’s discretion; after November 19th he would have destroyed any record of a move he would have regarded as having been made in a moment of weakness two weeks before. You should not forget that at this juncture Lodge was under the impression he would be the standard-bearer of his party in 1920. To him and to some others he seemed more worthy of this honor than the unfortunate Harding later chosen. Lodge was drawing up a platform for his presidential campaign. We can rely on him, I think, to eliminate from his record any signs of wavering in the Treaty battle in which he scored such a tragic victory.

“You will remember,” continued House, “that the President stated publicly on several occasions that he regarded Article X as the ‘heart of the Covenant’; also, you will recall that Lodge stated to you that he and those who stood with him would not accept responsibility for any action under this provision (Article X) unless the Senate had previously given its approval. This was, as you know, the rock upon which the project of ratification was wrecked; the President maintained that he would be dishonored in the eyes of those who had worked with him in drafting the Covenant if he compromised on this point. He stood firm, and our plan, our dream, if you will, came to nothing.

“I did not regard the addition which Lodge insisted upon as disastrous to our plan. I think you were right when you pointed out to the Senator that nothing could be done under the Covenant without congressional approval. Where would the funds have come from, if not from Congress, to meet the obligations which acceptance of Article X carried with it? You were quite right in maintaining that all this went without saying, but when Lodge insisted upon putting it down in black and white, I saw no great harm and sent on his proposal to the President with my endorsement.

“Now let us see what has happened to Article X; by the common consent of all who signed it, it has become a dead letter, with the result that we remained outside the League, although it has adopted the limited responsibilities urged by our isolationists, the very concession we were willing to acquiesce in. Perhaps at Paris we made a mistake in asking too much from war-distracted people. I sometimes think that you and those who thought with you, that the wisest course would have been to arrange for quarterly or even more frequent meetings of delegates from those we regarded as the ‘righteous Nations’ to review the state of the world and to pass such judgment as might be necessary upon the conduct of States, members of the League, and the others, were on the right track. These automatic meetings at stated intervals, unrelated to the passions of the moment, would have offered many advantages. You recall how Grey failed when in July 1914 he sent out a call for a conference of the powers. His call was regarded as an unfriendly intervention in a political crisis by some, and it went unheeded.

“With the wisdom of hindsight, I now think we saddled the Covenant with too many rules that are not flexible enough to meet developments that are, and always must be, unpredictable. Perhaps we should have preserved our freedom of action unhampered by rules and obligations which might have been more applicable to a different situation and another problem. Meeting automatically and at intervals fixed in advance of the emergency, we would have been swayed not by rules and regulations but by the public opinion of the world in an international congress assembled; it would then have been for public opinion to decide whether the natural processes of growth and decay in nations are to be decided by orderly processes or by wars which have never settled anything, since the day when Cain slew Abel.

“This, I think, is what the future has in store for us; true, it is not a reassuring prospect; the forces of public opinion are undoubtedly slow in crystallizing and at times they do go astray, but if they fail us, at least we can say that the world is being shaped as the majority of peoples wish it to be; that is democratic doctrine, and of that I shall never despair. I wish we could have blazed a straighter trail and reached a stronger and more reassuring position. But, after a careful consideration of all the criticisms that have been made, I do not see how we could have done better at the time. We were not dealing with angels, but with men who had come not unscathed through the most terrible period of world history and who were concerned in doing everything they could to avoid a repetition of it.

“There is one other charge which I think I should comment upon. It is said that ‘by conferring with Lodge, his archenemy, I broke the President’s heart.’¹ How unfair this is you know. You cannot fail to recall that through Henry White, acting as his intermediary, the President was himself, indirectly at least, conferring with Lodge throughout the Paris negotiations, and that upon his first return to Washington he invited him to the White House for an exchange of views. It happens, however, that I never saw Lodge while the Treaty was before the Senate, or indeed later, and that I never wrote him about the milder reservations, which he placed in your hands. I felt I was not at liberty to do so until I heard from the President. I was packed up and awaiting the summons to go to Washington, but, as you know, the summons never came.

“But if I had conferred with Lodge, I do not see the harm; I would have been merely following in the President’s footsteps. And about the contacts which the President maintained with the Senator from Massachusetts, who was also, unfortunately, the most influential member of the Foreign Relations Committee, you are better informed perhaps than anyone else because you discussed with me certain memoranda and then, at my request, carried them to Henry White to be sent on to the Senator. You may recall that morning early in February 1919, on which White, honorable gentleman that he was, came into my office greatly disturbed. He said he had passed a sleepless night and had come to make a personal explanation. He went on to say:

“ ‘Last evening, it occurred to me that I had been doing something that I should not have done now that Lodge has come out openly against the proposed Treaty, as he understands it. This is how it happened, and I hope these circumstances may be accepted as extenuating my indiscretion. From the very beginning of my diplomatic career, I have kept in touch with Lodge, the friend of my youth. When in Washington, I saw him nearly every day, and when I was abroad, we exchanged frequent letters. When I was sent to Italy as Ambassador and later to France and, above all, when I represented the United States at the Algeciras Conference, as he was a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I kept him informed and often asked for and received his advice. Following this practice, ever since the Armistice, I have been writing him almost weekly, describing the situation as I see it and expressing to him my hopes—and my fears. I hope you will make a clean breast of what I have confessed to the President and tell him I am sorry and that from now on this correspondence shall be discontinued.’

“I told White that his scruples did him honor, but I asked him to do nothing in the matter until I had consulted the President, and this I did that very afternoon. At first, as always when Lodge’s name was mentioned, the President bristled and was evidently not a little displeased with White, but he listened as I explained to him how I thought this correspondence might prove valuable, and finally he agreed with me. The result was, as you know, I drew up from time to time memoranda, many of which the President read, and all of which he approved, which you carried to White to be sent on, in his own language, to Lodge, and in his own name, if he agreed. And this he did—invariably, I think.

“These are the only contacts, direct or indirect, that I had with Lodge during the negotiations in Paris or in Washington. They were carried on, it is true, at my suggestion, but with the President’s express approval. In these circumstances I do not see how I can be charged with having broken the President’s heart in so doing; although apparently the charge is made on high authority, that of the second Mrs. Wilson.

“I have no patience,” the Colonel went on after a long pause, “with those who speak of the President’s venture in altruism, although many say it with kindness in their hearts, as ‘a magnificent failure.’ Much was accomplished, and though, as we all know now, Wilson left the world far from safe for Democracy, he liberated in Europe many millions of people and gave hope and courage to many millions more who, as yet, are not ‘redeemed.’ Wilson died a martyr to the noble cause that will ever be associated with his name. It may be a trite saying, but it is a true one, ‘The blood of the martyrs refreshes the tree of liberty as it also invigorates the Church.’

“If you look the scene over, not through the glasses of the shortsighted isolationists, however, you cannot fail to realize that our failure was far from complete. As I look at the wild world with which we are confronted today, I still find comfort and encouragement in some words of Carlyle which you may recall. I recall them every day: Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die; but is all still here, and, recognized or not, lives and works through endless changes.’

“The President, the American people, and forward-looking men and women everywhere, lost the great battle, but it was not a total defeat. Those who in the future shall lead civilization to ultimate victory, and on that score I have no misgivings, may advance along a somewhat different route, but they will find extremely helpful the signposts and the steppingstones which Wilson placed on his way. Perhaps if we had been as familiar with Bunyan’s masterpiece as our fathers were, we would have been better prepared for the dangers of the wilderness we had to cross. We might have visualized more clearly the castles of the robber barons and have avoided the quagmires and the pitfalls into which so many well-meaning but unwary delegates at the Conference fell. The path of the pilgrims leads through many dark glens, along many a precipice, and up many steep hills; but someday they will reach the Shining Gate and enter into the City of Peace.”² With this glance in retrospect I end my chronicle of words spoken and of things seen during the tragic year of 1919—and after. Should what I have written ever pass out of my personal files into the public domain, it may serve as a footnote to history and prove of some slight assistance to those who will share responsibility when the next Assizes are called to save the world from the plight in which it flounders today. As a last word I would recall the saying of General Smuts that should never be forgotten:

“Not Wilson, but humanity failed at Paris.”

That places responsibility where it belongs.