11

The Ammunition of Lasting Animosity

Among the many major American happenings of 1918, one that did not garner headlines or political debate was one that transpired in the U.S. Senate, when New Hampshire’s Jacob Gallinger died. Gallinger had been the leader of the Republican caucus for almost six years or ever since the retirement of Illinois’ Shelby Cullom, who had inherited that same status from Rhode Island’s legendary Nelson Aldrich, truly the leader of the Republican Old Guard at the end of the 1900s and start of the 20th century. Based on seniority, the new chairman of the Republican Caucus in 1918 was to be Henry Cabot Lodge and “he gloried in his new title,” according to Richard Baker and Neil MacNeil in their combined history, The American Senate. Writing to his good friend TR at the time, Lodge would proclaim: “I am to be at the center to which everyone must come.”¹

Lodge was 68 years old when the First World War ended, and the Senate Republicans regained a majority in the midterm elections that same November. Not that being the Senate majority leader before that became an officially used title in 1925 came without sometimes mutinous caucus members, as Lodge would learn from a group within his party that came to be known as the “Irreconcilables.” Led by outspoken William Borah of Idaho, they verged on being a separate party within the party, but they were still part of the bare bones Republican majority the midterms had fashioned and Lodge was anxious to make that majority work for the American people, who had made their feelings about President Woodrow Wilson’s ­peace-making agenda obvious in the recent elections.²

It was made obvious by the fact the President had actually pressed for the election of Democrats in 1918 to help ensure his own peace prerogatives would be adopted in the coming year. In stressing his need for a Democratic support system while at the same time urging national unity in the war’s final weeks, Wilson made what many considered a tactical error when he made the following appeal directly to the American people:

If you approve of my leadership and wish me to continue to be your unembarrassed spokesman in affairs at home and abroad, I earnestly beg that you express yourself immediately to that effect by returning a Democratic majority to both the Senate and the House of Representatives. I am your servant and will accept your judgment without cavil, but my power to administer the great trust assigned to me by the Constitution would be seriously impaired should your judgment be adverse, and I must frankly tell you so because so many critical issues depend upon your verdict. The return of a Republican majority to either House of Congress would, moreover, certainly be interpreted on the other side of the water as a repudiation of my leadership. In ordinary times I would not feel at liberty to make such a public appeal, but these are not ordinary times.³

Given what had been, for the most part, Republican adherence to the interests of national unity in a time of war, this statement injected politics into the coming peace process and provided a new source of ammunition to further fuel the animosity of the administration’s chief Republican critics—critics like Roosevelt and Lodge. As biographers would note, “criticism and ridicule” were immediately hurled at Wilson for “lowering himself” to politicize the ongoing war effort, while also providing the opportunity for Lodge to sarcastically respond: “The President has thrown off the mask. [His] only test of loyalty is loyalty to one man no matter what he does.”⁴

That was, however, but the first round of ammunition Wilson would load into Republican guns aimed at his leadership as the war played out and peace came into focus. Another would be the previously mentioned illogical makeup of the U.S. peace commission he selected. Behind the scenes, the Senate Republican leader was seething over the President ignoring consideration of any Senate Republican and particularly any Republican member of his Senate Foreign Relations Committee for the American team. After all, that would be the committee that any peace treaty would need to pass muster with. Nothing against Henry White, who was a Republican in good standing in addition to having been an ambassador to both Italy and France, but Lodge would have preferred a member of his own Senate committee and the fact no committee members were even consulted about the President’s choice, much less considered, was for the senator from Massachusetts, “unforgivably insulting” in the words of one of his biographers. “The President has anointed himself with the appointment of Henry White,” Lodge reportedly “snorted” upon seeing a list of the ­so-named “American Peace Commission.” That same biographer, Kurt Schriftgiesser, also speculated as to how Wilson might have changed the fate of his League if only, he had made the effort to include one of Lodge’s Republican Caucus colleagues in the peace process. Would that approach and inclusion on the front end have assuaged any of the majority leader’s animosity on the back end of Senate consideration for the Treaty of Versailles? Possibly but highly unlikely, it would seem, given the disdain Lodge and Wilson already felt for each other. At the same time, a little diplomatic honey in the midst of political vinegar wouldn’t have hurt, as the succeeding months would clearly indicate.⁵

No, such was the passionate dislike of the President by both Lodge and his best friend, Theodore Roosevelt, that no outreach or olive branch by Wilson would have probably made a difference. Frank Cobb, an ­administration-friendly columnist of the time for the New York World, once stated that Lodge hated Wilson “as only a ­small-minded man can hate a great man,” while Schriftgiesser even applied “Ovid’s description of envy” to the Senator’s demeanor at the mere mention of the President’s name: “His face is livid; gaunt his whole body; his breast is green with gall; his tongue drips poison….”⁶

As overly dramatic as that example might seem, there was no denying that Lodge was plotting, scheming, and anxious for the moment he might deal America’s suddenly idolized chief executive a decisive blow once he returned from his European sojourn. Just as anxious for the Presbyterian minister son’s comeuppance, Roosevelt was a ­bed-ridden man by the time the World War I armistice was signed that fall, but even in the final months of his life (TR would die in early January 1919 at only 60 years of age), the former president still hated Woodrow Wilson. Despite the recent blow of his youngest son being killed in the war, TR along with Lodge determined to use their combined influence with Ambassador White to infiltrate and possibly even subvert the President’s commission before it embarked. “Peace,” they jointly emphasized to White, “must be determined by the United States and its allies. And it must be imposed upon Germany, who must be forced to accept terms, however harsh.” That’s the way Schriftgiesser explained their message to the only Republican on the commission. In much the same way, John Garraty made mention of the fact White’s position would be difficult, especially as Republican pressure was brought to bear, including a memorandum about acceptable peace terms that should leave Germany “impotent” and include the postponement of any League of Nations discussion. At the same time, Lodge avoided the idea of America adopting an “isolationist attitude toward the rest of the world” even though much of the Republican rank and file would have supported such a concept. Their joint intervention with Ambassador White would prove to be their last shared political purpose, as TR died shortly thereafter, “of course, a hard blow for Lodge,” who eulogized his great friend of 35 years with a formal tribute in the Senate.⁷

Regardless of their intercession with White, however, the majority of the peace process went about the way Wilson would have wanted it—or at least the way he and his ­co-lead negotiators from France and Britain would have it. For Wilson, it was mostly about his dream of a new world order or League, while for France’s Georges Clemenceau and Britain’s David Lloyd George it was always about German acceptance of responsibility and payment of reparations to their battered nations given their immense wartime losses in money and men. Leaving Germany prostrate was the Allied European goal, but Wilson did not wish to condone or oversee a devastated German economy because of what he perceived as its financial importance to the whole continent.⁸

An armistice on November 11, 1918, brought a stop to the First World War, but a peace treaty still had to be drawn up and signed to officially end hostilities and recognize the surrender of Germany. This was done during a conference involving hundreds of diplomats from all over the world at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, France (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-DIG-ppmsca-50568).

All toll, Wilson was in France four separate times to work on the treaty, December 13–25, 1918; January 7–February 14, 1919; March 14–18, 1919; and the last time, June 20–28, 1919. The Treaty of Versailles was officially signed (amidst great solemnity rather than pomp) on June 28, 1919, and on July 8, Wilson arrived back in the United States for the final time to what Berg termed “the largest crowd that had ever greeted him on the sidewalks of Manhattan.”⁹

Despite torrential rain in Washington two days later, July 10, 1919, the President travelled the short distance down Pennsylvania Avenue to present the final draft of the treaty in person to the Senate. A welcoming committee that included Lodge, the nation’s most senior senator, met him on the second floor of the Capitol and escorted him to the Senate Chamber. Upon seeing the 20 by 14 by ­six-inch document under his arm, Lodge is reputed to have asked, “Mr. President, can I carry the treaty for you?” to which Wilson supposedly responded, “Not on your life.” He was about to become the first American president to hand deliver a treaty to the Senate and his entrance onto the Senate Floor received a standing ovation from many of those in attendance. The Republicans, however, “withheld their applause,” according to Berg, foreshadowing events to come. Later, one GOP senator would also dismiss the President’s speech that day as “soap bubbles of oratory and soufflé of praises,” but through it all and despite the lukewarm Republican reception, Wilson was by then counting on American popular sentiment to ensure his League.¹⁰

Unfortunately, having been away from the U.S. so much with his concentration constantly on the treaty negotiations, the President did not fully comprehend the changes that had been taking place in the country since the war’s end. For instance, prices in America had doubled between 1913 and 1919, and in just months had spiked by four percent. The U.S. media for the first time began to use the acronym HCL for “high cost of living.” Strikes were threatened nationwide as the wartime economy changed over to peacetime, requiring adaptation by the labor force. Race riots erupted over ­bi-racial competition for jobs for the first time, especially with all the returning American Doughboys, Black and White. A ­post-war recession was all but inevitable.¹¹

Wilson biographer John Milton Cooper, Jr., confirmed “public opinion had hardened” since the President’s next to last trip to France and an organization named the League for the Preservation of American Independence (or simply “Independence League”) was already trying to mobilize anti–League sentiment using a variety of oratorical stars to make its points heard in an era before television or even radio (which did not proliferate in the U.S. until the 1920s), including senators like the previously mentioned “Bill” Borah and the equally high profile Hiram Johnson of California, both staunch isolationists and more opposed to any kind of international governing body than Lodge. At the same time, Lodge and Elihu Root, another close colleague and confidant of the deceased TR, had also adopted a strategy of attacking individual parts of the treaty, hoping to limit American commitment and participation in the League as a prerequisite for ratification.¹²

The President faced the choice of either staying in Washington, trying to deal with the recalcitrant Republican senators, or taking his arguments for the League directly to the American people, an ­outside-the-box strategy that would require him to make a speaking tour of the whole country to better educate the public on the need for U.S. leadership and treaty ­buy-in, including commitment to his League of Nations. Initially he tried the former, remaining in Washington during the hot summer months and somewhat still removed from the domestic violence underway over race, unemployment, strikes, and the ­conflict-causing inflation that was occurring all over the country. Concerns over his health began to creep into the public psyche, but that did not deter him from staging numerous ­one-on-one meetings with senators of both parties (but the vast majority Republicans), as he sought to change enough minds about the League concept to ensure its passage along with the rest of the treaty. That, however, would prove totally unsuccessful as time after time Republican senators expressed appreciation in the press for the President’s “cordial” invitations, but also how their minds had not been changed and why reservations on the league had to be addressed (or incorporated) before ratification could (or would) take place.¹³

By August Wilson had all but given up on his ­man-to-man approach, partly because other domestic issues were demanding his time, but also because no ­bi-partisan headway had been made. The HCL that needed addressing on the domestic front was a lot less difficult than the H.C.L. (as in Henry Cabot Lodge) he was confronted with over the League. There were other parts of the treaty that a few, individual Republicans objected to, but nothing like their nearly unanimous objection to Article X—the proposition that called for each League member to “undertake to respect and preserve against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League.” As a result, Lodge had the votes needed to stop passage without the proposed reservations and Wilson knew it. Nonetheless, the President remained in a stern, uncompromising mood, which Lodge obviously heard about from all the previous White House meetings. In early August, Lodge also began to hold Senate hearings, calling on other members of the President’s delegation to the peace conference to testify, including Secretary of State Robert Lansing, who underwent five hours of what Cooper termed “mostly hostile interrogation.” Lodge, Johnson, and other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee were all disappointed with Lansing’s testimony (with Lodge going so far as to call it “pathetic”) as he sought to negotiate around or avoid entirely any personal disagreements he may have had with Wilson on the treaty’s final form, obviously doing his best not to arouse potential conflict with his boss, the President.¹⁴

Once the Treaty of Versailles with its League of Nations was signed by the Allied Powers and Germany, officially ending World War I and attempting to police the world’s nation states in the future, the treaty went to the United States Senate for ratification. There it received rough treatment from Republican leader Henry Cabot Lodge and his Foreign Relations Committee, as depicted in this cartoon (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-8828).

There were fleeting moments when bipartisan cooperation seemed possible, but by August, Wilson effectively killed any compromise hopes when Lansing reported the President “would have none of it” in response to just one accommodation with a few of the “milder reservationists.” In that moment, someone recalled, “His face took on that stubborn, pugnacious expression which comes whenever anyone tells him a fact which interferes with his plans,” and shortly thereafter, according to Cooper, Wilson authorized the ranking Democrat on Chairman Lodge’s Foreign Relations Committee to share with the press that “the President did not believe any compromise should be discussed or negotiated at that time.”¹⁵

Eventually, Lodge felt he had waited long enough on potential compromise by the administration and, still seething over Wilson’s arrogance in excluding anyone from his U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the peace commission, he elected to initiate discussion himself. On August 12 he rose in the Senate to specifically address the treaty’s ­well-publicized Article X. His speech that day, which would last two hours, included the following:

I object in the strongest possible way to have the United States agree, directly or indirectly, to be controlled by a league, which may at any time and perfectly lawfully with the terms of [this] covenant, be drawn in to deal with internal conflicts in other countries no matter what those conflicts may be. In Article X, the United States is bound on the appeal of any member of the [proposed] league not only to respect but to preserve its independence and its boundaries, and that pledge we give must be fulfilled. I, for one, hope the day will never come when the United States [cannot] keep its promises [and as a result] without reservations, this treaty should not be acted upon in its current form.¹⁶

Again according to Wilson biographer A. Scott Berg, in a posthumously published account of the League dispute, Lodge would later go to “great lengths to insist he never harbored any ‘personal hostility to Mr. Wilson,’ but after years of disagreement with the President on practically every major issue, the majority leader’s hostility towards him had steadily increased”—and everyone in attendance in the Senate that day knew it. And with that and “each remaining step in the process,” Lodge would introduce a myriad of “stalling tactics” when it came to Senate consideration of the Treaty of Versailles. Over the next several days in mid–September, 50 amendments to the treaty were considered by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Different reports were presented, with the majority report not surprisingly in support of the reservations to Article X while “caustically” answering charges of delay ­by then emanating from the White House. On the other hand, the Democratic report opposed reservations and urged immediate ratification. Traditional backers of the President like the New York Times also began to print criticism of the Senate procrastination like the following:

If the President’s interpretation of the treaty and his straight forward replies to the Senators’ questions have not removed from their minds all reasonable doubts and misgivings, then evidently nothing can and the country will be forced to the conclusion that their objections do not lie in the treaty or in the League covenant, but somewhere outside of both. If that be true, then the people must deal with this senatorial obstruction, for the President has exhausted the resources of reasoning and exposition.¹⁷

Another reason Lodge was stalling was because it had become obvious Republican objections to the League covenant did not necessarily mean opposition to the peace treaty, but everything had been written so that there was no way to separate the two for separate votes. Only with their reservations on Article X would the Republican majority condone ratification. In 45 days, Lodge’s committee had considered what the Versailles peace commissioners had taken six months to accomplish. It challenged what it labeled Wilson’s “autocratic methods” before ending up with multiple amendments and the four critical reservations for the administration to review, but it was already becoming obvious the President would never accept any of those or any other compromise.¹⁸

The President, in fact, had already begun a long and laborious ­cross-country tour, taking his treaty and his League directly to the people. Believing that the vast majority of Americans favored an immediate and lasting international peace—one without the threat of another world war—Wilson hoped to force the people’s representatives in the Senate to back down in their opposition and vote to ratify the Treaty of Versailles in its entirety. To his stubborn way of thinking, changes were unnecessary and dangerous, with the rest of the world waiting on America to assume leadership of what it had already put in place. Oh, he had offered a few concessions before leaving on his whirlwind national tour in early September, including one asserting that action by the League was “to be regarded only as advice and leaves each Member State free to exercise its own judgment as to whether it is wise or practicable to act upon that advice or not,” but still without mention of Congress. On the surface, this appeared a significant concession, but it was merely Wilson “trying to retain presidential flexibility” as well as his notion of “a moral obligation” to the other nations the U.S. had led in Paris, according to Cooper. Clearly, it was not going to move the ­bipartisan needle or else a visibly fatigued and, some would say, ­ill-looking president would not have boarded his presidential railcar, the Mayflower, for the planned ­month-long journey that would resemble the most ambitious presidential election campaigns of the era. Under gray skies the next day, Wilson’s tour opened in Columbus, Ohio, to a capacity crowd of 4,000 at that city’s Memorial Hall (an additional 2,000 people had to be turned away). That became common at each stop, as big crowds gathered in city auditoriums and smaller but equally interested turnouts occurred at small town railroad stations, where he would speak and shake hands from the train’s rear platform. Typical of his message at each stop was the one reprinted by Berg that he delivered in Richmond, Indiana, where he said:

The chief thing to notice about the treaty is that it is the first treaty ever made by great powers that was not made in their own favor. It is made for the protection of the weak peoples of the world and the aggrandizement of the strong. The extraordinary achievement of this treaty is that it gives a free choice to people who never could have won it for themselves. It is for the first time in the history of international transactions an act of systematic justice and not an act of grabbing and seizing.

Berg also asserted that at each stop along the way he would plaintively ask: “My fellow citizens, what difference does a political party label make when [all] mankind is involved?”¹⁹

The first week took him through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Nebraska. Cooper confirmed, “Never before had a president made so many personal appearances in so short an amount of time.” He also made specific appeals and comparisons whenever he thought appropriate. To downtown St. Louis, Missouri, businessmen, he “extolled the benefits to be reaped by restoring international trade”; in Omaha, Nebraska, where his audience presumably included a lot of farmers, he said the international system minus Article X would be like a community where everyone had to defend their own land without law enforcement; in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, he “singled out mothers who had lost their sons” in what was already termed “The Great War”; and in Kansas City, Missouri, he maintained he was “fighting for something ‘as great as the cause of mankind’ itself.” All the while, he was actually aiming his speeches to go beyond the people who came out to hear him. Through the press he aimed for a constant, daily barrage to the nation as a whole, as well as any senators back in Washington who might be influenced or at least swayed.²⁰

Meanwhile, sharing the nation’s front pages as Wilson’s tour got underway were the four reservations to the League that Lodge’s Foreign Relations Committee had decided upon, three of which asserted “the absolute right of any country to withdraw from the covenant and exempt domestic questions as well as America’s longstanding Monroe Doctrine [opposing all European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere] from its jurisdiction.” The fourth, according to Berg, “declined ‘any obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country,’ including joining economic boycotts, employing American armed forces, or accepting any mandate except by act of Congress.” An even bigger publicity coup for Lodge came in the middle of the President’s tour, when his committee heard testimony from William Bullitt, a young U.S. diplomat who had resigned in protest during the Versailles Peace Conference and who produced a memorandum of conversation in which Secretary of State Lansing had condemned a sizeable portion of the treaty, including the League. In it, Lansing had apparently stated, “I consider that the League of Nations at present is entirely useless.”²¹

Needless to say, as Cooper acknowledged, “Wilson was furious,” and remained so even after Lansing telegraphed his own account, calling Bullitt’s conduct and testimony “most despicable and outrageous.” If not for being on the road, Wilson would have probably fired his secretary of state on the spot and after his return Lansing offered a letter of resignation. The damage, however, had already been done and events would soon make either of those outcomes irrelevant.²²

In addition, to the League reservations sought by Lodge’s committee, six amendments to the treaty overall were retained, most of which were intended to reflect flaws in the moralist posture of the President and his American negotiating team while in France. These amendments, however, were all voted down, with a number of Republicans joining most of the Democrats in the Senate to render any other considerations moot. Then it became time to debate the committee’s recommended reservations. To the original four, more were added. Of the reservations, Garraty wrote: “Though some were unnecessary and others plainly motivated by political considerations, the chief purpose of most of them was to define the League obligations of the United States more specifically and to make it clear the right of Congress to control American performance of these duties.” The final form of the one dealing with the ­by then controversial Article X read:

The United States of America assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any country or to interfere in controversies between nations under the provisions of Article X unless in any particular case the Congress, which under the United States Constitution has the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces of the United States of America, shall by act or joint resolution so provide.²³

By mid–September, Wilson’s tour had reached the West Coast, where the Seattle ­Post-Intelligencer reported on the President’s speech as suggesting, “a man very much fatigued” in his delivery. In a humorous interlude at the Portland Auditorium in Oregon, he read an old newspaper quote from 1915 that “peace can only be maintained by putting behind it the force of united nations determined to uphold it and prevent wars” before revealing the speaker had been none other than the distinguished Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Obviously enjoying this journalistic revelation from a few years before, the President quite naturally concurred before adding the punch line that he would look forward to the Senate leader’s assistance in bringing about just such a result as soon as he got back to Washington—earning both laughter and applause from his amused audience. Afterwards, as he turned south to California, support for Wilson and the treaty was growing. Berg attested to as much by reporting a turnout of 12,000 to hear him at the Oakland Municipal Auditorium, 10,000 at Cal State Berkley’s outdoor Greek Theater, and 30,000 at the San Diego Stadium, “where he experimented with a new electrical device called a ‘voice phone.’” And then in Los Angeles—population 503,812 in those days—more than 200,000 people “greeted Wilson on the streets” for one of the city’s most enthusiastic demonstrations up to that time. Even Los Angeles Times publisher Harry Chandler, a normally loyal Republican, was compelled to admit that Southern California was pro–League as much as six to one.²⁴

Turning for home through the center of the country, stops included the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake, Utah, where between 13,000 and 15,000 people packed the unventilated Temple Square hall, but where applause at news of the Senate’s acceptance of the reservations led the President to react angrily and lash out at the largely conservative crowd with the comment: “Wait until you understand the meaning of it and if you have a knife in your hand with which you intend to cut out the heart of the covenant, then applaud,” before arguing the reservations would undermine the moral obligation of the peace treaty. In Cheyenne, Wyoming, the next day, he maintained that Article X “cuts at the taproot of war” while urging all senators to realize that the reservations would “leave other nations to guess [at] what they felt obligated to do in each [future] instance. And in Denver, Colorado, early on September 25, 1919, the President of the United States ‘painted’” what Cooper termed, “a picture of the next war [with] the last war’s weapons being merely toys when compared to what would be unleashed the next time”—a war that “would be the destruction of mankind” and one for which he was for insurance against.²⁵

Later that same day, 112 miles further south, the President’s incredibly ambitious speaking tour would come to an abrupt end in Pueblo, Colorado, where he once again offered a picture of a thoroughly militarized America out of necessity should the United States not enter the League of Nations as specified in the Treaty of Versailles. His closing words were “We have accepted the truth and we are going to be led by it, and through us the world will come into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world has never dreamed of before.”²⁶

Defiant in his resolve for a treaty and a League of Nations that would usher in a new era of worldwide peace and international tranquility, those would be the last words he would ever offer in a presidential speech. As Cooper and Berg had both revealed earlier in their biographies, Wilson had become increasingly subject to mood swings for over a decade and had long been dealing with dormant arteriosclerosis—hardening of the arteries—first diagnosed when he was president at Princeton in 1906. As a result, under the prolonged pressure of the war, the peace conference to end all wars, and finally his defense of the League of Nations he had worked so hard to sell on the world stage, only to see it attacked by his own government, it was not all that surprising that he was not a healthy man by the time he rose to speak at the Colorado State Fairgrounds in Pueblo. So, it was also not surprising when the pace of world events, painstaking negotiations, and finally political rejection caught up with the stubborn idealist, whose second term international goals, unlike his first term domestic agenda, would not come true and effectively crash down upon him that day with the beginnings of what would ultimately be a stroke. Later that evening, back on the train with an “unbearable” headache that prevented sleep, the rest of his tour was canceled, and it was decided the President should be returned to Washington ASAP.²⁷

Once back at the White House, Wilson went into seclusion. “Unquestionably,” according to Berg, the speaking tour to save his League had wrought a tremendous personal toll and was probably never worth the effort he had put into it. Lodge and the Republicans were waiting when he returned. By this time, Lodge wanted the treaty and League destroyed. But although at least one of his biographers framed this objective in just such a ­no-nonsense manner, he also pointed out that Lodge was coy enough to proceed with caution. But as October 1919 dawned and then expired with still no signs of compromise, it became increasingly apparent to the Democratic minority, who without any new signals or guidance from a suddenly silent White House were hunkered down to vote for the treaty and League as originally planned, that their equally determined Republican counterparts considered the time for talking past.²⁸

President Woodrow Wilson’s hope for a League of Nations to end the prospect of future wars and ensure world peace was met with contention in the United States Senate, as depicted in this political cartoon from that era. In it, the President is pictured realizing he cannot make his League work within the parameters and oversight of the U.S. Constitution, as a disapproving Uncle Sam looks on (Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division—Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-30948).

Finally, on November 19, the Democrats received a hand delivered letter from the President advising them to refuse support for the Foreign Relations Committee (or Lodge) reservations. That same day, the Senate voted on the treaty with the Lodge reservations included and the Dems joining with the ­Borah-led Republican Irreconcilables, who opposed ratification in any form, to easily defeat that option 53 to 38. Upon that vote being taken, Lodge turned to a nearby colleague and reputedly said, “The door is closed.” Nationwide reaction to that news was, according to Schriftgiesser, “consternation and regret.” There followed a demand for compromise in the Senate Chamber, as Democrats believed public opinion demanded further consideration and even Lodge agreed to the effort.²⁹

At the start of a new congressional session after Thanksgiving, Lodge contended that the President should withdraw entirely from the process, putting reconsideration back in committee, but the scheme was blocked, causing the majority leader to stand pat on the reservations, a clear sign he was in no compromising mood. A bipartisan committee of 10 senators was then proposed with Lodge clearly in opposition to the idea until the Republican “­middle-grounders,” as Schriftgiesser described them, reputedly warned him they would ignore his leadership unless he at least attempted a compromise. That’s how things stood until after the holidays and when the Democrats ­re-gathered for their caucus on January 8, 1920, another letter from the President was waiting on them. Schriftgiesser also provided the following excerpts from that Wilson message: “‘Personally, I do not accept the action of the Senate as the decision of the nation. We cannot rewrite this treaty. We must take it without changes, which would alter its meaning, or leave it and face the unthinkable task of making another, separate kind of treaty with Germany.’ Otherwise, ‘the clear and single way out’ would be to ‘submit the question to the voters of the nation in the next election [1920], making it a great and solemn referendum.’” For the Democrats, Wilson’s political solution seemed less than ideal as they continued to press for compromise, but Lodge accepted the President’s electoral challenge and made the case that it was the nation’s chief executive, who was unyielding, “not himself.”³⁰

Threatened by the 16 Irreconcilables in his own party, however, Lodge was in no position to compromise either and rumors of him surrendering to pressure from across the aisle, the administration, or even the general public were greatly exaggerated. Ultimately, neither side, Democrats or Republicans, were willing, in Schriftgiesser’s words, “to run the risk of giving the other side any chance to claim victory.” On January 30, 1920, Lodge announced, “There can be no compromise on principle.” Another month of oratory followed, with Wilson labeling the reservationists with a dirty word from the past—“nullifiers”—and another hopeless Senate vote ended with the treaty failing again—this time forever.³¹

“The fact the treaty could not command a simple majority” either way, “with or without the Lodge reservations [was] a tribute only to the stubbornness of both sides,” Garraty concluded in his biography of the Senate leader. Blame was placed on both sides by both sides, while “less partisan observers were inclined to spread the blame.” But in the more intimate circles of Republican politics, the Lodge family, and even among the Roosevelts, the victory, as Schriftgiesser implied, would always be to the senator he chronicled as the Gentleman from Massachusetts. With Corinne Roosevelt Robinson, TR’s younger sister, present at the Lodge home the day of the final vote, in fact, the mood was somber, without the trappings of victory or celebration, but Lodge’s daughter probably summed up her father’s feelings best, when she said:

My father hated and feared the Wilson League, and his heart was really with the Irreconcilables of his party. At the same time, it was uncertain whether this League could be beaten straight out, his way, so the object of his reservations was to emasculate the Wilson League and ensure that [even] if it did pass, it would be valueless and United States [sovereignty] would be honorably safeguarded. My father never wanted the Wilson League and when it was finally defeated, he was like a man from whom a great burden was lifted.³²

The fact was as recently as 1915 Lodge had endorsed the entreaty of his good friend TR … the call Roosevelt had issued in his Nobel ­Prize-winning speech of 1910 for a “League of Peace,” a convergence and agreement of the major international powers to police and enforce global conflicts among the nations of the world, including themselves. Funny how when the similarly visionary aspirations of a political rival were within mankind’s reach, the gentleman from Massachusetts was suddenly opposed, or at least constrained by reservations. The difference, after all, was no coincidence. “When it [finally] came, it was the gift of a Democratic president, the gift of a man whom his closest friend [had] deeply hated and for whom he, himself, had built up a hatred equally intense. For that reason and because he wanted to bring back his party into power, he fought to the bitter end.”³³ That was one biographer’s final reasoning of one senator’s victory in what would prove a less than beneficial Washington war. Ironically, the visionary goal that one Democratic president sought to achieve would have to wait for another Democratic president with the last name Roosevelt to be ­re-conceived and enacted in similar form a quarter century later, but not before another cataclysmic world war. Rather than the League of Nations, it would then be called the United Nations.³⁴

1. H.W. Brands, American Colossus, 544; Richard A. Baker and Neil MacNeil, The American Senate, 182–183.

2. Richard A. Baker and Neil MacNeil, The American Senate, 183.

3. A. Scott Berg, Wilson, 504.

4. John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 342.

5. Karl Schriftgiesser, The Gentleman from Massachusetts, 299–300.

6. Ibid.

7. John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 348–349.

8. Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919, 93–97, 162, 175–176, 180–192, 202, 475.

9. Andrew Glass, “President Wilson Lands in France,” Politico, December 13, 1918; A Scott Berg, Wilson, 599–601, 604.

10. A. Scott Berg, Wilson, 605–606, 608.

11. Ibid., 609–611; Chad Williams, “African American Veterans Hoped Their Service in WWI Would Secure Rights at Home. It Didn’t,” Time, February 25, 2019.

12. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 506; James Stewart, “Timeline: The Rise of Radio,” vpr.org, December 30, 2019.

13. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 507, 510.

14. Ibid., 511, 512, 513; David Pietrusza, 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents, 39.

15. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 514.

16. Karl Schriftgiesser, The Gentleman from Massachusetts, 337–338; Henry Cabot Lodge, “Objection to Article X of the Treaty of Versailles,” wwwphs.sharpschool.com, August 12, 1919.

17. Karl Schriftgiesser, The Gentleman from Massachusetts, 340–342.

18. Ibid., 341, 342.

19. A. Scott Berg, Wilson, 621; John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 520–521.

20. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 522–523.

21. Ibid., 524.

22. Ibid., 524–525.

23. John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 373–374, 375, 376–377.

24. A Scott Berg, Wilson, 628–630.

25. John Milton Cooper, Jr., Woodrow Wilson, 528–529.

26. Ibid., 529.

27. Ibid., 530.

28. Ibid., 531, 532; Karl Schriftgiesser, The Gentleman from Massachusetts, 343–344.

29. Karl Schriftgiesser, The Gentleman from Massachusetts, 345–346.

30. Ibid., 348.

31. Ibid.

32. Ibid., 350–351; John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 378–379.

33. Theodore Roosevelt, “International Peace,” nobelprize.org, May 5, 1910; Karl Schriftgiesser, The Gentleman from Massachusetts, 351.

34. James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt, The Soldier of Freedom: 1940–1945, 427–429, 515, 533, 559, 582–583.