Part 27 (1/2)
As we conferred together for the last titon for the other side, I had never seen him look more weary or careworn It was plain to me who had watched him from day to day since the Armistice, that he felt most keenly the heavy responsibility that now lay upon hi permanent peace to the world He was not unmindful of the criticism that had been heaped upon hihout the country The only thing that distressed hi that a portion of the A the trip to Paris there lay back of it a desire for self-exploitation, or, perhaps, the idea of garnering certain political advantages to hienerous opinion could only have coht of our final talk and could understand the handsome, unselfish purpose that really lay behind his mission to France and could know personally how he dreaded the whole business, he would quickly free hi the object of the trip with me in his usually intimate way, he said: ”Well, Tureatest success or the supreedy in all history; but I believe in a Divine Providence If I did not have faith, I should go crazy If I thought that the direction of the affairs of this disordered world depended upon our finite intelligence, I should not kno to reason my way to sanity; but it is my faith that no body of men however they concert their power or their influence can defeat this great world enterprise, which after all is the enterprise of Divine ood will”
As he spoke these fateful words, he clearly foresaw the difficulties and dangers and possible tragedy of reaction and intrigue that would soon exert themselves in Paris, perhaps to outwit him and if possible to prevent the consummation of the idea that lay so close to his heart: that of setting up a concert of powers that would make for ever ih Indeed, he was ready to risk everything--his own health, his own political fortunes, his place in history, and his very life itself--for the great enterprise of peace
”This intolerable thing ain,” he said
No one edy of disappointht eventually follow out of his efforts for peace, but he illing to make any sacrifice to attain the end he had so close to his heart
He realized better than any one the great expectations of the A these expectations with Mr Creel, as to accompany him, he said: ”It is to America that the whole world turns to-day, not only with its wrongs but with its hopes and grievances The hungry expect us to feed them, the homeless look to us for shelter, the sick of heart and body depend upon us for cure All of these expectations have in theency There must be no delay It has been so always People will endure their tyrants for years, but they tear their deliverers to pieces if a millennium is not created is, these present unhappinesses, are not to be remedied in a day or with a wave of the hand What I seeedy of disappointment”
The President and I had often discussed the personnel of the Peace Commission before its announce to the President the name of ex-Secretary of State Elihu Root
The President appeared to be delighted with this suggestion and asked ard to the estion, much to my surprise,said that he and the President were atte to induce some members of the Supreme Court--I think it was either Mr Justice Day or Chief Justice White--to make the trip to Paris as one of the Commission; but that they were informed that Chief Justice White was opposed to the selection of a Supree to participate in any conference not connected with the usual judicial work of the Supreme Court
After this conference I left for New York, there to remain with my father who lay seriously ill, and when I returned to the White House the President infor had had a further conference with reference to the Root suggestion and that it was about concluded that it would be inadvisable to make Mr Root a member of the Commission The President felt that it would be unwise to take Mr Root, fearing that the reputation which Mr Root had gained of being rather conservative, if not reactionary, would work a prejudice toward the Peace Commission at the outset
Mr Taft's name was considered, but it was finally decided not to include hi the commissions to accompany the President
The personnel of the Commission, as finally constituted, has been much criticized, but the President had ere for hih opinion of Col E M House's ability to judge clearly and dispassionatelyas Secretary of State was a natural choice; Mr Henry White, a Republican une and honourable experience in diplomacy; General Tasker Bliss was eminently qualified to advise in military matters, and was quite divorced from the politics of either party The President believed that these gentlemen would cooperate with him loyally in a difficult task
I quote from Mr Creel:
The truly important body--and this the President realized fro with the Commission, the pick of the country's most famous specialists in finance, history, econo, ethnic distinctions, and all those other matters that were to come up at the Peace Conference They constituted the President's arsenal of facts, and even on board the _George Washi+ngton_, in the very first conference, he made clear his dependence upon them ”You are in truth, my advisers,” he said, ”for when I ask you for infor it up, and ed with claily presented It will be your task to establish the truth or falsity of these claies, so that ently”
It was this expert advice that he depended upon and it was a well of information that never failed him At the head of the financiers and economists were such men as Bernard Baruch, Herbert Hoover, Norman Davis, and Vance McCormick As head of the War Industries Board, in anizations called into being by the war, Mr Baruch had won the respect and confidence of Ae, honesty, and rare ability At his side were such , chairer of the International Harvester Coer of the Fertilizer and Chemical departments of Armour & Co--both men familiar with business conditions and customs in every country in the world; Leland Suineer and an expert in , chemicals, and steel; James C Pennie, the international patent lawyer; Frederick Neilson and Chandler Anderson, authorities on international law; and various others of equal calibre
Mr Hoover was aided and advised by the hout the war, and Mr McCorathered about him in Paris all of the men who had handled trade matters for him in the various countries of the world
Mr Davis, representing the Treasury Department, had as his associates Mr Thomas W Lament, Mr Albert Strauss, and Jeremiah Smith of Boston
Dr Sidney E Mezes, president of the College of the City of New York, ith the President at the head of a brilliant group of specialists, all of who for a year and more on the proble the more important may be mentioned: Prof Charles H Haskins, dean of the Graduate School of Harvard University, specialist on Alsace-Lorraine and Belgiuraphical Society, general territorial specialist; Prof Allyn A Young, head of the Departe Louis Beer, formerly of Columbia, and an authority on colonial possessions; Prof W L
Westermann, head of the History Department of the University of Wisconsin and specialist on Turkey; R H Lord, professor of History at Harvard, specialist on Russia and Poland; Roland B Dixon, professor of Ethnography at Harvard; Prof Clive Day, head of the Department of Economics at Yale, specialist on the Balkans; W E
Lunt, professor of History at Haverford College, specialist on northern Italy; Charles Seyary; Mark Jefferson, professor of Geography at Michigan State Normal, and Prof Jaroups were the President's real counsellors and advisers and there was not a day throughout the Peace Conference that he did not call upon them and depend upon the job than the President, when he ee to the other side
The adverse verdict rendered against the President in the Congressional elections wasbitterness and hostility of the Republican leaders, and the hatred of the Gerhout the country, addedsituation A to weaken hith should have been behind hiain I quote from Mr Creel:
On November 27th, five days before the President's departure, Mr
Roosevelt had cried this e to Europe, plain intimation that the Republican majority in the Senate would support the Allies in any repudiation of the League of Nations and the Fourteen Points:
”Our allies and our enemies and Mr Wilson himself should all understand that Mr Wilson has no authority whatever to speak for the American people at this time His leadershi+p has just been eress coht to speak the purposes of the American people at this moment Mr Wilson and his Fourteen Points and his four supplementary points and his five complementary points and all his utterances every which way have ceased to have any shadow of right to be accepted as expressive of the will of the American people
”He is President of the United States He is a part of the treaty- ood faith to the American people, he will not claim on the other side of the water any representative capacity in himself to speak for the American people
He will say frankly that his personal leadershi+p has been repudiated and that he now has merely the divided official leadershi+p which he shares with the Senate”
What Mr Roosevelt did, in words as plain as his pen could marshal, was to inforard the President, the League of Nations, and the Fourteen Points, and that the Republican party would stand as a unit for as hard a peace as Foch chose to dictate
As the President left his office on the night of his departure for New York, preparatory to sailing for the other side, he turned to estions before I leave?” ”None, my dear Governor,” I replied, ”except to bid you Godspeed on the great journey”