Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him Part 38

CHAPTER XLIV

WILSON--THE HUMAN BEING

There is no one who wishes to feel the camaraderie of life, "the familiar touch," more than Woodrow Wilson; but it seems that it cannot be so, and the knowledge that it could not saddened him from the outset of his public career.

I remember a meeting between us at the Governor's Cottage at Sea Girt, New Jersey, a few hours after the news of his nomination for the Presidency had reached us from Baltimore in 1912. In this little talk he endeavoured in an intimate way to a.n.a.lyze himself for my benefit. "You know, Tumulty,"

he said, "there are two natures combined in me that every day fight for supremacy and control. On the one side, there is the Irish in me, quick, generous, impulsive, pa.s.sionate, anxious always to help and to sympathize with those in distress." As he continued his description of himself, his voice took on an Irish brogue, "And like the Irishman at the Donnybrook Fair, always willin' to raise me s.h.i.+llalah and to hit any head which stands firninst me. Then, on the other side," he said, "there is the Scotch--canny, tenacious, cold, and perhaps a little exclusive. I tell you, my dear friend, that when these two fellows get to quarrelling among themselves, it is hard to act as umpire between them."

For every day of my eleven years' a.s.sociation with Woodrow Wilson I have seen some part of these two natures giving expression to itself. I have witnessed the full play of the Irish pa.s.sion for justice and sympathy for the under-dog, the man whom he was pleased to call the "average man,"

whose name never emerges to the public view. I have seen the full tide of Irish pa.s.sion and human sympathies in him flow at some story of injustice which I had called to his attention; that Irish sympathy in him expressed itself not dramatically, but in some simple, modest way; an impulse to lift someone, to help an unfortunate person in distress. That sympathy might be expressed in the presence of some father, seeking pardon at the hands of the President in behalf of a wayward son, or some mother pleading for the release of a loved one, or it would show itself in full sway, as it often did, when I called his attention to some peculiar case that had evoked my sympathy and pity. And again I saw the Scotch in him--strict, upstanding, intractable, and unrelenting. I saw the Scotch rise in him when an attempt would be made by personal friends to influence his action where it was evident to him there was at the base of it some hint of personal privilege, of favouritism on grounds of friends.h.i.+p. I saw the full sweep of that Scotch tenacity during the war, in the very midst of that b.l.o.o.d.y thing, at a time when bitter ridicule and jeers were his portion. Throughout it he was calm, imperturbable, undisturbed by the frenzied pa.s.sions of the moment.

I saw him express the Irish sense of grat.i.tude in a striking way in the White House, in my presence, as the result of a conference, in which the partic.i.p.ants were the President and Senators Stone and Reed, both of Missouri.

The incident arose out of Senator Reed's failure to get the President to agree to appoint an intimate friend of Reed's postmaster of St. Louis.

Charges, many of them unfounded, had been made to the Postmaster General's office against the Reed candidate and, although Reed had made many appeals to Postmaster General Burleson to send the appointment of his friend to the President for his approval, Burleson refused to do so, and Reed thereupon brought his case to the President. I remember how generous and courteous the President was in his treatment of Reed and Stone on this occasion. Senator Stone, in his usual kindly way, walked over to the President and putting his hand on his shoulder, said: "Now, Mr. President, I want you to do this favour for my friend, Jim Reed. Jim is a d.a.m.ned good fellow." The President laughingly replied, "Why, Senator, you just know that there is nothing personal in my att.i.tude in this matter. I have no desire to injure or humiliate Senator Reed, but the Postmaster General has refused to recommend the appointment of the Senator's friend for the St.

Louis postmasters.h.i.+p." The President then turned to Senator Reed and said, "Senator, I will tell you what I will do for you. I will allow you to name any other man, outside of the one whose name you have already suggested, and I will appoint him at once without making any inquiry or investigation whatever as to his qualifications. This I will do in order to convince you that I have no personal feeling whatever toward you in this matter." But Senator Reed continued to argue for the appointment of his friend. The President was adamant. Senator Stone and Senator Reed then turned away from the President and made their way to my office which was adjoining that of the President. It was plain that the two Senators were deeply disappointed and highly displeased with the President. As the President opened the door for the Senators to make their entrance into my room Senator Reed turned to the President again and in the most emphatic way, said, "Mr. President, Senator Stone told me before I came to see you that you were not a cold man and that you were a good fellow. It was upon that hypothesis that I took the liberty of appealing to you personally in behalf of my friend." Senator Reed then continued, and in the most eloquent short speech I have ever heard, said, "They tell me that before you became governor of New Jersey you had a fight at Princeton with the Trustees of that University. You better than any one else in this country know what it is to have a pack of enemies at your heels. This is what is happening in my friend's case. My enemies in Missouri have conspired to destroy this man because he has been my friend and has fought my battles for me. This man whom I have asked you to appoint has been my campaign manager. He has visited my home; we have been life-long friends, and I will stake my life upon his reputation and upon his standing. But because he has been my friend he is now to be punished and now by your action you will complete the conspiracy that is afoot to defeat and destroy him."

The President then said, "But, Senator, I have tried to convince you that there is nothing personal in my att.i.tude and that I will appoint any other man you may name." Whereupon Senator Reed said, "If G.o.d Almighty himself asked me to surrender in this fight for my friend, I would not do it. I think I know you well enough to know that in the fight you had for your ideals and your friends at Princeton, you would not have surrendered to anybody. I am fighting now for the reputation and the character of my friend, and you ought not to ask me to surrender him to his executioners."

The President was standing with his arms folded while the Senator was addressing him and was evidently deeply touched by Reed's appeal. As Reed concluded his eloquent speech in behalf of his friend quickly the President reached out his hand to Reed and said, "Senator, don't surrender your friend; stick by him to the end and I will appoint him." Whereupon he turned from the Senators, walked over to the telephone which stood on my desk, called up the Postmaster General and directed him to send over to the White House at once the appointment of Senator Reed's friend for the postmasters.h.i.+p at St. Louis. The Postmaster General protested but was overruled by the President. As the two Senators left my room, Senator Stone said to Senator Reed, "By G.o.d, Jim, I told you so. There is a great man and a true friend. I told you he was a regular fellow."

It has been said by the enemies of Woodrow Wilson that he was ungrateful, that he never appreciated the efforts of his friends in his behalf, and that when it came to the question of appointments he was unmindful of big obligations to them.

The following letter is so characteristic of the man that I beg leave to introduce it:

The White House, Was.h.i.+ngton D. C.

April 14, 1916.

MY DEAR DAVIES:

Thank you for having let me read this letter again.

There is one thing that distresses me. The implication of Mr. Alward's letter is (or would seem to one who did not know the circ.u.mstance to be) that I had not shown my grat.i.tude for all the generous things he did in promoting my candidacy. Surely he does not feel that. Is it not true that I appointed him to the office he now holds? that I did so with the greatest pleasure as gratifying his own personal wish, and that the office itself has afforded him an opportunity of showing his real quality and mettle to the people of his state in the performance of duties for which he is eminently qualified? And have I not tried, my dear Davies, in every possible way to show my warm and sincere appreciation and my loyal friends.h.i.+p both to you and to him? It distresses me to find any other implication even latent between the lines, and the inference left to be drawn is that if I should not appoint him to the Federal Bench, it would be virtually an act of ingrat.i.tude on my part. I am sure he cannot soberly mean that, for it is so far from just.

It seems to me my clear duty to do in this case as in all others, the thing which commends itself to my judgment after the most careful consideration as the wisest and best thing, both for the interests of the Bench and the interests of the party.

Always, with real affection,

Faithfully yours, WOODROW WILSON.

Hon. Joseph E. Davies, Federal Trade Commission.

On one of the most critical days of the war, when Lloyd George was crying out in stentorian tones from across the sea that the war was now a race between Von Hindenburg and Wilson, a fine old Southern gentleman appeared at my office at the White House, dressed in an old frock coat and wearing a frayed but tolerably respectable high hat. He was the essence of refinement and culture and seemed to bring with him to the White House a breath of the old Southland from which he had come. In the most courteous way he addressed me, saying, "Mr. Secretary, I am an old friend of the President's father, Doctor Wilson, and I want to see Woodrow. I have not seen the boy since the old days in Georgia, and I have come all the way up here to shake him by the hand."

So many requests of a similar nature came to my desk during the critical days of the war and at a time when the President was heavily burdened with weighty responsibilities that I was reluctant to grant the old man's request and was about to turn him away with the usual excuse as to the crowded condition of the President's calendar, etc., when the old man said, "I know Woodrow will see me for his father and I were old friends."

He then told me a story that the President had often repeated to me about his father. It seems that the old gentleman who was addressing me was on a hot summer's day many years ago sitting in front of a store in the business street of Augusta, Georgia, where the President's father was pastor of the Presbyterian Church, when he sighted the parson, in an old alpaca coat, seated in his buggy driving a well-groomed gray mare, and called out to him, "Doctor, your horse looks better groomed than yourself." "Yes," replied Doctor Wilson dryly as he drove on, "I take care of my horse; my congregation takes care of me."

I knew that if I repeated this story to the President it would be the open sesame for the old man. I excused myself and quickly made my way to the Cabinet Room where the President was holding a conference with the Cabinet members. After making my excuses to the Cabinet for my interruption, I whispered into the President's ear that there was an old man in my office who knew his father very well in the old days in Georgia and that he wanted an opportunity to shake hands with him. I then said to the President, "He told me the old horse story, the one that you have often told me. I am sure that he is an old friend of your father's." This struck the President's most tender spot, for many times during the years of our a.s.sociation the President had regaled me with delightful stories of his father and of the tender, solicitous way in which his father had cared for him. One of the pa.s.sions of President Wilson's life was his love for and recollection of that old father, himself a man of remarkable force of character and intellect. Turning to the members of the Cabinet, the President said, "Gentlemen, will you please excuse me for a few minutes?"

When I told the fine old chap that the President would see him at once he almost collapsed. Then, fixing himself up, rearranging his old frock coat, taking his high hat in hand, striking a statesmanlike posture, he walked into the President's office. No words pa.s.sed between the two men for a few seconds. The old man looked silently at the President, with pride and admiration plainly visible in his eyes, and then walked slowly toward the President and took both his hands. Releasing them, he put one of his arms around the President's shoulder and looking straight into the President's eyes, he said, "Woodrow, my boy, your old father was a great friend of mine and he was mighty proud of you. He often told me that some day you would be a great man and that you might even become President." While the old man was addressing him the President stood like a big bashful schoolboy, and I could see that the old man touched the mystic chord of memories that were very sweet and dear to the President. Removing his arm from about the President's shoulder, the old man said, "Well, well, Woodrow, what shall I say to you?" Then, answering his own question, he said, "I shall say to you what your dear old father would have said were he here: 'Be a good boy, my son, and may G.o.d bless you and take care of you!'"

The President said nothing, but I could see that his lips were quivering.

For a moment he stood still, in his eyes the expression of one who remembers things of long ago and sacred. Then he seemed, as with an effort, to summon himself, and his thoughts back to the present, and I saw him walk slowly toward the door of the Cabinet Room, place one hand on the k.n.o.b, with the other brush his handkerchief across his eyes. I saw him throw back his shoulders and grow erect again as he opened the door, and I heard him say in quiet, steady tones, "I hope you will pardon the interruption, gentlemen."

The popular cry of the unthinking against Woodrow Wilson in the early days of his administration was that he was a pacifist and unwilling to fight.

The gentlemen who uttered these unkind criticisms were evidently unmindful of the moral courage he manifested in the various fights in which he had partic.i.p.ated in his career, both at Princeton University, where he served as president, and as governor of New Jersey, in challenging the "old guard" of both parties to mortal combat for the measures of reform which he finally brought to enactment. They also forgot the moral courage which he displayed in fighting the tariff barons and ha procuring the enactment of the Underwood tariff, and of the fine courage he manifested in decentralizing the financial control of the country and bringing about the Federal Reserve Act, which now has the whole-hearted approval of the business world in America and elsewhere, but which was resisted in the making by powerful interests.

I do not wish to make an invidious comparison between Woodrow Wilson and his predecessors in the White House, but if one will examine the political history of this country, he will find that very few Presidents had ever succeeded, because of the powerful interests they were compelled to attack, in finally putting upon the statute books any legislation that could control the moneyed interests of the country. The reform of the tariff and the currency had been the rocks upon which many administrations had met disaster.

Nearly every adviser about Woodrow Wilson, even those who had had experience in the capital of the nation, warned him that he might, after a long fight, succeed in reforming the tariff, but that his efforts would fail if he attempted to pa.s.s a bill that would establish currency reform.

But the President allowed nothing to stand in the way of the establishment of the Federal Reserve system without which the financing of the greatest war in the history of the world would have been impossible. It was his courage and his persistency that provided the first uniform and harmonious system of banking which the United States has ever had.

If Woodrow Wilson had accomplished nothing more than the pa.s.sage of this Federal Reserve Act, he would have been ent.i.tled to the grat.i.tude of the nation. This Act supplied the country with an elastic currency controlled by the American people. Panics--the recurring phenomena of disaster which the Republican party could neither control nor explain--are now but a memory. Under the Republican system there was an average of one bank failure every twenty-one days for a period of nearly forty years. After the pa.s.sage of the Federal Reserve system there were, in 1915, four bank failures; in 1916 and 1917, three bank failures; in 1918, one bank failure; and in 1919, no bank failures at all.

Woodrow Wilson is not a showy fighter, but he is a tenacious and a courageous one.

A little story came to me at the White House, ill.u.s.trating alike the calmness and the fighting quality of Woodrow Wilson. The incident happened while he was a student at the University of Virginia. It appears that some of the University boys went to a circus and had got into a fight with the circus men and been sadly worsted. They called a meeting at "wash hall,"

as they termed it. Many of the boys made ringing speeches, denouncing the brutality and unfairness of the circus people and there was much excitement. It was then moved that all the boys present should proceed to the circus and give proper battle, to vindicate the honour of the college.

Just before the motion was put a slim, black-haired, solemn youth arose from his seat in the rear of the hall, and walking up the aisle, requested a hearing. He stated that perhaps he was being forward, because he was a "first-year" man, in asking to be heard; that he felt that the action of the circus men deserved the severest condemnation; that it was a natural impulse to want to punish cowardly acts and to "clean up" the show; but that it was lawlessness they were about to engage in; that it would bring disgrace on the college, as well as on the state and the Southland; more than this, many of the showmen would be armed with clubs, knives, and pistols, and if the boys did go, some of them might not come back alive and others might be maimed or crippled for life. He then paused, but resuming, said, "However, if my views do not meet with your approval; if you decide to go as a body, or if a single man wants to go to fight, I shall ask to go with him."

Was not his att.i.tude in this incident characteristic of his dealing with Germany? He was patient with Germany and stood unmoved under the bitterest criticism and ridicule; but when he found that patience was no longer a virtue, he went into the war in the most ruthless way and punished Germany for her attempt to control the high seas.

I recall my own antagonism to him in New Jersey when I was engaged, as now certain of his enemies are engaged, in attacking him, and I recall how my opposition abated and altogether disappeared by the recital by one of his friends to me one day of the controversy among the Princeton Trustees that arose over the now-famous Proctor gift. I was discussing the Princeton professor with this old friend one day and I said to him that I suspected that Wall Street interests were back of his candidacy for the governors.h.i.+p. My friend said, "Tumulty, you are wrong. There is no unwholesome interest or influence back of Wilson. I tell you he is a fine fellow and if he is elected governor, he will be a free man." He then cited the instance of the Princeton fight over the Proctor gift. It will be recalled that Mr. Proctor bequeathed to Princeton University a large sum of money, but attached certain conditions to the gift that had to do with the policy or internal control of the University. The gift was made at a time when Princeton was in sore need of funds. President Wilson, in a prolonged fight, bitterly waged by some who had been his close personal friends, persuaded the Board of Trustees to vote, by a narrow margin, for rejection of the gift on the grounds that a great educational inst.i.tution could not afford to have its internal policies dictated by purchase on the part of a rich man. By his position he alienated from his leaders.h.i.+p many of the wealthy, influential Princeton alumni, especially in the larger Eastern cities, but he stood like a rock on the principle that the educational policy of a college must be made by those authorized to make it and not changed at the bidding of wealthy benefactors. This was a convincing answer to my attack upon the Princeton professor.

This same moral courage was given free play on many an occasion during our intimacy. It was made manifest in the famous Panama Tolls fight, at a time when he was warned that a fight made to rectify mistakes in the matter of Panama tolls would destroy his political future.

He was always a fair fighter and a gentleman throughout every contest he engaged in. Many unkind and untrue things were said about Woodrow Wilson from the time he entered politics, but there is one charge that has never been made against him and that is the charge of untruthfulness or "hitting below the belt." No one in the country during his eight years at the White House ever charged him with making an untrue statement. No politician or statesman ever said that Wilson had broken a promise, though many have complained that he would not make promises.

In the matter of promises I never met a man who was so reluctant to give a promise, especially in the matter of bestowing office upon willing candidates. I have known him on many occasions to make up his mind for months in advance to appoint a certain man and yet he would not say so to his most intimate friends who urged it. Speaking to me one day about the matter of promises, he said, "The thing to do is to keep your mind open until you are bound to act. Then you have freedom of action to change your mind without being charged with bad faith."

One reason for the charge made against him of coldness and "political ingrat.i.tude" was that he steadfastly refused to barter public offices for political support. He is by instinct, as well as by conviction, utterly opposed to the "spoils system." He considers government the people's business to be conducted as such and not as a matter of personal exchange of political favours. Nor can those who failed to get from him what they fancied their political services earned, complain truthfully that they were deceived by him into supposing that he shared their own opinion of their deserts. Frequently they had explicit warning to the contrary. There was the case of Jim Smith and the New Jersey machine, for instance. When those gentlemen paid the president of Princeton University an unsolicited call to suggest that he be candidate for the Democratic nomination for the governors.h.i.+p of New Jersey, Mr. Wilson, after thanking them for the compliment, with disconcerting directness asked, "Gentlemen, why do you want me as the candidate?" They replied, because they believed he could be elected and they wanted a Democratic governor. He asked why they believed he could be elected, he who had never held any public office. They answered that the people of New Jersey would have confidence in him.

"Precisely," said Mr. Wilson; "they will have confidence in me because they will believe that I am free of the political entanglements which have brought distress to New Jersey, because they are tired of political bargain and sale, because they want their government delivered back into their hands. They want a government pledged to n.o.body but themselves. Now, don't you see, gentlemen, that if I should consider your flattering suggestion, I must be what the people think I am. I must be free to consider nothing but their interests. There must be no strings tied to your proposal. I cannot consider it an obligation of returned personal favours to any individual. We must clearly understand that we are acting in the interest of the people of New Jersey and in the interest of n.o.body else." If the self-const.i.tuted committee thought this merely handsome talk without specific meaning, they had only themselves to thank for their subsequent predicament. They found he meant exactly what he said.

There has never been a public man in America with a profounder faith in popular government, or a stronger conviction that the bane of free government is secret bargaining among those ambitious to trade public office for private benefits. Mr. Wilson could no more pay for political support from public offices than he could pay for it from the public treasury. He abhors all forms of political favoritism including nepotism.

He not only would not appoint kinsmen to office; he would discountenance their appointment by others. He resisted the efforts of well-meaning friends to have his brother, Mr. Joseph R. Wilson, Jr., who had rendered a substantial service to the 1912 campaign by his effective work as a trained journalist, elected secretary of the United States Senate, saying that his brother in this position would inevitably be misunderstood, would be thought a spy on the Senate to report matters to the President. His son-in-law, Mr. Francis B. Sayre, is by profession a student of international law, a professor of the subject in Harvard University, and as such was employed by Colonel House on the research committee preparatory to the Paris Conference. Mr. Sayre a.s.sumed he was to go to Paris, but the President set his personal veto on this, saying that it would not do for the President's son-in-law to be on a list of those who were going abroad at the public expense. When Mr. Sayre asked if he could not go and pay his own expenses, the President replied, "No, because it would not be believed that you had really paid your own expenses." Mr.

Sayre, respecting the President's views, did not press the claim.

If it has appeared that the President has sometimes "leaned backward" in these matters, it is because of his strong conviction that politicians have leaned too far forward in using public office for private rewards, a bad system toward which the President's att.i.tude may be stated in Hamlet's impatient injunction to the players, "Oh, reform it altogether!"

My experiences with him, where one could witness the full play of the Scotch and Irish strains in him, came particularly in the matter of the numerous pardon cases and the applications for Executive Orders, placing this man or that woman under the cla.s.sified civil service. The latter were only issued in rare instances and always over the protest of the Civil Service Commission. In many of these applications there was a great heartache or family tragedy back of them and to every one of them he gave the most sympathetic consideration.

I remember his remark to me one day when I was urging him to sign an Executive Order in behalf of a poor woman, the widow of an old soldier.

After I had argued with him for a time he turned to me and said, "Every unfortunate person in distress seems to come to me for relief, but I must not let my sympathies get the best of me, it would not be right to do these things upon any basis of sympathy." Although I stood rebuked, the order was signed. It was a thing urged against him in the last campaign, that he held the record for the number of Executive Orders issued by him.

His Scotch nature would also a.s.sert itself on many occasions. While I was living with the President at the White House one summer, on a night after dinner we engaged in the discussion of an article which appeared that month in one of the popular magazines of the country. In this article Woodrow Wilson was portrayed as a great intellectual machine. Turning to me, he said, "Tumulty, have you read that article? What do you think of it?" I said that I thought in many respects it was admirable. "I don't agree with you at all," he said. "It is no compliment to me to have it said that I am only a highly developed intellectual machine. Good G.o.d, there is more in me than that!" He then said, rather sadly, "Well, I want people to love me, but I suppose they never will." He then asked me this question, "Do you think I am cold and unfeeling?" I replied, "No, my dear Governor, I think you are one of the warmest hearted men I ever met."