The President was quite put out. He felt that Lloyd George had taken the wind out of his sails. It did not suit his idea of keeping the center of gravity of the war in Washington merely to parrot the views of the British Prime Minister. His first impulse was to pitch his whole speech in the wastebasket. It took all House’s tactful persuasion to convince him that Lloyd George by “clearing the air” had prepared the way for Woodrow Wilson’s more authoritative statement of war aims.
Sunday afternoon House was back in the President’s study. The President read him the first draft of his speech. The colonel was delighted: “I felt it was the most important document he had ever penned.”
House wanted immediate notice to be given in the press that an important declaration was coming, but Wilson insisted that to give advance notice would start a rash of editorials. “The President’s argument was that … the newspapers invariably commented and speculated as to what he would say and that these forecasts were often taken for what was really said.”
The President and the colonel lunched together Monday. Both men were anxious for fear the speech would be illreceived in the American press. House feared this sudden entrance into European affairs would stir up isolationist sentiment. “… The other points we were fearful of were Alsace Lorraine, the freedom of the seas, and the levelling of commercial barriers. However … there was not the slightest hesitation on his part in saying them … The President shows extraordinary courage in such things. The more I see of him, the more firmly I am convinced there is not a statesman in the world who is his equal.”
That afternoon the meticulous Lansing was called in to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. For fear the Secretary of State might be offended by the scanty part he’d been allowed to play in drafting the document an occasional expression was changed to meet his approval.
After House and Lansing retired Creel came charging into the President’s office with what he claimed was “cheering news from Petrograd.” Edgar Sisson, his representative there, had managed to arrange the showing, at a large theatre on the Nevski Prospect, of a propaganda film extolling the American way of life entitled All for Peace.
At the very moment when President Wilson and his human megaphone were discussing their hopes for talking the Russians around to fighting a war for democracy, the Bolsheviks, wherever their armed men were in control, were seizing the banks and forcing the wealthy at the point of a gun to open up their safedeposit boxes. The result, if not the Wilsonian type of New Freedom, was a very substantial fund in gold rubles. To further their kind of peace the Council of People’s commissars put two millions at Trotsky’s disposal to spread the international revolutionary movement.
On the point of leaving Petrograd to take charge of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk, Trotsky, while Wilson and his advisers were putting the final touches on the Fourteen Points speech, delivered himself of a blast at the Allied governments for not responding to his invitation to join in the peace conference. The sessions, so he put it, had been adjourned to give the Allied governments a chance to participate. Brest-Litovsk was their last chance: “Russia does not bind herself in these negotiations to the consent of the Allied governments. If they continue to sabotage the cause of general peace, the Russian delegation in any case will continue the negotiations … We at the same time promise our complete support to the laboring classes of any country which will rise against their national imperialists.”
Among other “cheering news,” Creel laid on the President’s desk a report from Colonel W. B. Thompson of the American Red Cross, one of the many unofficial observers at large in Russia that winter, counselling friendly contact with the Bolsheviks who were not “the wildeyed rabble most of us consider them.” Another item was the cabled rumor of a mutiny at the German Naval Base at Kiel. Perhaps the policy of the wedge was already beginning to take effect.
Creel gave place to a committee of the American Red Cross come to ask Wilson’s assistance in their drive for contributions. When Tumulty got them out of the office the text of the President’s message was hurried over to the Government Printing Office to be printed. The President dropped affairs of state for his usual family dinner. He retired early to be in form for his address to Congress on the morrow.
January 8 turned out to be a fine cold winter’s day. After breakfast the Wilsons went out to the country club to play a few holes of golf. It wasn’t till his return to the White House at eleven thirty that morning that the President had Tumulty notify Vice President Marshall and Speaker Champ Clark that he would be arriving on Capitol Hill in half an hour to address a joint session of Congress. Since he had addressed Congress only the Friday before, asking for broader powers to deal with the breakdown in railroad transportation, this notification of a fresh message caught the leaders of both houses unprepared. There was a hubbub in the lobbies and a scramble to round up sufficient senators and representatives to fill the House.
Several cabinet members were not notified. The only ambassador seen in the diplomatic gallery was Sir Cecil Spring Rice who the week before had taken his leave of the President with the announcement that he was being replaced by Lloyd George’s closest collaborator Lord Reading. A Serbian delegation waiting to be received by Congress had to be shunted off at the last moment.
Attendance was small in the visitors’ galleries. Mrs. Wilson arrived at noon accompanied by her mother and sister and by two of the President’s daughters. The ladies were discreetly joined by Colonel House. When the President was ushered into the speaker’s stand the applause that greeted him was thinner than usual.
Woodrow Wilson spoke in low measured tones. He began by reminding his hearers of the breaking off of the negotiations at Brest-Litovsk and of the perfidy of the German proposals there. He spoke of the Bolsheviks with sympathy; the Russian representatives were sincere and in earnest: “They cannot entertain such proposals of conquest and domination … The Russian representatives have insisted, very justly, very wisely and in the true spirit of modern democracy that the conferences they have been holding with the Teutonic and Turkish statesmen should be held with open, not closed doors, and all the world has been audience …
“Mr. Lloyd George has spoken with admirable candor and in admirable spirit for the people and government of Great Britain.”
Wilson went on to discuss in friendly tones the state of mind of the Russian people: “They call to us to say what it is that we desire, in what, if anything, our purpose and our spirit differ from theirs: and I believe that the people of the United States would wish me to respond with utter simplicity and frankness. Whether their present leaders believe it or not, it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to obtain their utmost hope of liberty and ordered peace.”
At this point came the first applause. People were still filing into the galleries. Senators and representatives were sneaking into their seats.
“What we demand in this war, therefore is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live in … All the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us.”
The chamber was very silent when he began to enumerate the points of a program for a permanent peace: first open covenants openly arrived at; then freedom of the seas, the removal of economic barriers, the reduction of armaments; in the adjustment of colonial claims the interests of the subject populations must be considered equally with those of the colonizers; all conquered territory in Belgium and France and Russia must be evacuated and restored.