and Wilson had to go back home to explain to the politicians who’d been ganging up on him meanwhile in the Senate and House and to sober public opinion and to his father’s God how he’d let himself be trimmed and how far he’d made the world safe
for democracy and the New Freedom.
From the day he landed in Hoboken he had his back to the wall of the White House, talking to save his faith in words, talking to save his faith in the League of Nations, talking to save his faith in himself, in his father’s God.
He strained every nerve of his body and brain, every agency of the government he had under his control; (if anybody disagreed he was a crook or a red; no pardon for Debs).
In Seattle the wobblies whose leaders were in jail, in Seattle the wobblies whose leaders had been lynched, who’d been shot down like dogs, in Seattle the wobblies lined four blocks as Wilson passed, stood silent with their arms folded staring at the great liberal as he was hurried past in his car, huddled in his overcoat, haggard with fatigue, one side of his face twitching. The men in overalls, the workingstiffs let him pass in silence after all the other blocks of handclapping and patriotic cheers.
In Pueblo, Colorado, he was a grey man hardly able to stand, one side of his face twitching:
Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I believe that men will see the Truth, eye for eye and face to face. There is one thing the American People always rise to and extend their hand to, that is, the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth and we are going to be led by it, and it is going to lead us, and through us the world, out into pastures of quietness and peace such as the world never dreamed of before.
That was his last speech;
on the train to Wichita he had a stroke. He gave up the speaking tour that was to sweep the country for the League of Nations. After that he was a ruined paralysed man barely able to speak;
the day he gave up the presidency to Harding the joint committee of the Senate and House appointed Henry Cabot Lodge, his lifelong enemy, to make the formal call at the executive office in the Capitol and ask the formal question whether the president had any message for the congress assembled in joint session;
Wilson managed to get to his feet, lifting himself painfully by the two arms of the chair. “Senator Lodge, I have no further communication to make, thank you… Good morning,” he said.
In 1924 on February 3rd he died.
Newsreel XXX
MONSTER GUNS REMOVED?
Longhaired preachers come out every night
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right
But when asked about something to eat
They will answer in accents so sweet
PRESIDENT HAS SLIGHT COLD AT SEA
Special Chef and Staff of Waiters and Kitchen Helpers Drafted from the Biltmore
Every Comfort Provided
Orchestra to Play During Meals and Navy Yard Band to Play for Deck Music
You will eat bye and bye
In that glorious land above the sky
the city presents a picture of the wildest destruction especially around the General Post Office which had been totally destroyed by fire, nothing but ruins remaining
Work and pray
Live on hay
Three truckloads of Records Gathered Here
eleven men were killed and twentythree injured, some of them seriously as the result of an explosion of fulminate of mercury in the priming unit of one of the cap works of the E. I. duPont de Nemours Powder Company; in the evening Mrs. Wilson released carrier pigeons… and through it all how fine the spirit of the nation was, what unity of purpose what untiring zeal what elevation of purpose ran through all its splendid display of strength, its untiring accomplishment. I have said that those of us who stayed at home to do the work oforganization and supply would always wish we had been with the men we sustained by our labor, but we can never be ashamed… in the dining room music was furnished by a quartet of sailors
You’ll get pie
In the sky
When you die
GORGAS WOULD PUT SOLDIERS IN HUTS
800 FIGHTING MEN CHEER BOLSHEVIKI
All the arrangements were well ordered but the crowd was kept at a distance. The people gathered on the hills near the pier raised a great shout when the president’s launch steamed up. A detour was made from the Champs Elysees to cross the Seine over the Alexander III bridge which recalled another historic pageant when Paris outdid herself to honor an absolute ruler in the person of the czar.
ADDRESSED 1400 MAYORS FORM PALACE BALCONY
BRITISH NAVY TO BE SUPREME
DECLARES CHURCHILL
The Camera Eye (37)
alphabetically according to rank tapped out with two cold index fingers on the company Corona Allots Class A & B Ins prem C & D
Atten — SHUN snap to the hooks and eyes at my throat constricting the adamsapple bringing together the US and the Caduceus
At Ease
outside they’re drilling in the purple drizzle of a winter afternoon in Ferrières en Gatinais, Abbaye founded by Clovis over the skeletons of three disciples of nôtre seigneur Jésus-Christ 3rd Lib Loan Sec of Treas Altian Politian and Hermatian 4th Lib Loan Sec of Treas must be on CL E or other form Q.M.C. 38 now it’s raining hard and the gutters gurgle there’s tinkling from all the little glassgreen streams Alcuin was prior once and millwheels grind behind the mossed stone walls and Clodhilde and Clodomir were buried here
promotions only marked under gains drowsily clacked out on the rusteaten Corona in the cantonment of O’Reilly’s Travelling Circus alone except for the undertaker soldiering in his bunk and the dry hack of the guy that has TB that the MO was never sober enough to examine
Iodine will make you happy
Iodine will make you well
fourthirty the pass comes alive among the CC pills in my pocket
the acting QM Sarge and the Topkicker go out through the gate of USAAS base camp in their slickers in the lamplit rain and make their way without a cent in their OD to the Cheval Blanc where by chevrons and parleyvooing they bum drinks and omelettes avec pommes frites and kid applecheeked Madeleine may wee
in the dark hallway to the back room the boys are lined up waiting to get in to the girl in black from out of town to drop ten francs and hurry to the propho station sol viol sk not L D viol Go 41/14 rd sent S C M
outside it’s raining on the cobbled town inside we drink vin rouge parlezvous froglegs may wee couchez avec and the old territorial at the next table drinks illegal pernod and remarks Toute est bien fait dans la nature à la votre aux Americains
Après la guerre finee
Back to the States for me
Dans la mort il n’y a rien de terrible Quant on va mourir on pense à tout mais vite
the first day in the year dismissed after rollcall I went walking with a fellow from Philadelphia along the purple wintryrutted roads under the purple embroidery of the pleached trees full of rooks cackling overhead over the ruddier hills to a village we’re going to walk a long way get good wine full of Merovingian names millwheels glassgreen streams where the water gurgles out of old stone gargoyles Madeleine’s red apples the smell of beech leaves we’re going to drink wine the boy from Philadelphia’s got beaucoup jack wintry purpler wine the sun breaks out through the clouds on the first day in the year