The fourth morning before the late dawn an American company crept into the woods around the charcoalburners’ huts where the Russian attackers were camping. The plan was to attack with as much noise as possible. It worked. The Bolos were surprised asleep. The hut where their ammunition was stored was set afire and made such a racket that the Bolos thought a whole division was on their trail and either ran off into the forest or surrendered.
The counterattack saved the day. That and the arctic winter. Zero temperatures froze the Dvina and drove the Red Army gunboats back to Kotlas.
When things quieted down the Russian woman, who had seen her Bolo lover breathe his last, turned out to have taken excellent care of the sick and wounded. Her story was that she had been a member of Kerensky’s Women’s Battalion and was following the war for the sport of it. She remained as a nurse in the Allied hospitals, and was revered by the doughboys under the title of Lady Olga.
To the American troops, who had lost twentyeight dead and seventy wounded, the siege of Toulgas became known as the Battle of Armistice Day.
PART FIVE
Mr. Wilson’s Peace
It is to America that the whole world turns today, 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 these expectations have in them the quality of terrible urgency. 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 millenium is not created immediately. Yet you know and I know, that these ancient wrongs, these present unhappinesses, are not to be remedied in a day, or with the wave of the hand. What I seem to see — with all my heart I hope I am wrong — is a tragedy of disappointment.
— Woodrow Wilson to George Creel as they paced back and forth on the deck of the George Washington bound for France
Chapter 22
THE PRESIDENT’S PLEDGE
ON September 27, 1918, inaugurating the Fourth Liberty Loan drive at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York, Woodrow Wilson made a speech which did as much to bring the war to a speedy close as the mutual butchery of the armies contending along the Meuse and in the Argonne Forest.
“… If it be in deed and in truth,” he said, “the common object of the Governments associated against Germany and the nations whom they govern, as I believe it to be, to achieve by the coming settlements a secure and lasting peace, it will be necessary that all who sit down at the peace table shall come willing and ready to pay the price, the only price that will procure it … That price is impartial justice on every item of the settlement, no matter whose interest is crossed; and not only impartial justice, but also the satisfaction of the several peoples whose fortunes are dealt with. That indispensable instrumentality is a League of Nations formed under covenants …”
Colonel House, who was in attendance, noted in his diary that the opera house was beautifully decorated and crowded with the most important people in New York.
“The President read his address. Most of it seemed somewhat over the heads of the audience, the parts of it which were unimportant bringing the most vigorous applause. We are all wondering how the press will receive it. After speaking the President asked me to ride with him to the Waldorf … He was flushed with excitement and altogether pleased with the day’s effort.”
The response to the President’s speech was more favorable in the English newspapers than at home. American editorial writers were still befuddled by the theory, piped out of Washington by Creel’s bureau, that the upheaval in Germany was a piece of sinister playacting staged by the High Command. London’s “cocoa press” commented favorably. Cables of congratulation arrived from Grey and Lord Robert Cecil.
From Germany, the immediate response to Wilson’s call for a peace of impartial justice was Prince Max of Baden’s note, transmitted through the Swiss, asking for an armistice on the basis of the Fourteen Points.
The German note, coming on the heels of similar proposals from the Austrians, threw Capitol Hill into an uproar. Prince Max’s suggestion of a mixed commission to arrange the details of the evacuation of occupied territory by the German armies was seen as a device to allow the Hun to regroup his forces for a defensive war on his own frontiers. “A trap”; clamored the newspapers. In the Senate Lodge marshalled the irreconcilables in a drive for unconditional surrender.
Meanwhile the President was consulting the members of his cabinet; and House, who was still in New York, over the longdistance telephone. House’s suggestion was that he gain time by announcing that he was taking up the German request with the Allied Powers. “I would advise that you ask the Allies to confer with me in Paris at the earliest opportunity.”
The confidential colonel hastened to Washington.
“I arrived at the White House as the clock was striking nine,” wrote House … “The President met me and we went into his study.” Lansing arrived. The President read the first draft of his reply to the two of them. Lansing sniffed and said the reply was an inquiry rather than an answer. House considered it too lenient. “He seemed much disturbed when I expressed decided disapproval of it. I did not believe the country would approve what he had written. He did not seem to realize … the nearly unanimous sentiment in this country against anything but unconditional surrender. He did not seem to realize how war-mad our people had become.”
After Lansing went home to bed Wilson and House sat up till one in the morning reworking the President’s reply to the German note. Their final version demanded, as preliminary to an armistice, the clearcut acceptance by the Germans of Wilson’s Fourteen Points; the immediate evacuation of invaded territory without any dillydallying over a mixed commission; assurances that the government in Berlin spoke for the German people and not for the military clique.
The President’s note of October 8 constituted the final wedge driven in between the Kaiser and his subjects. At the same time it was considered by neutrals and belligerents alike as a pledge by Woodrow Wilson that, if the Germans laid down their arms, they would be treated “with impartial justice” according to the principles of the Fourteen Points.
Comment in the American press was respectful but unenthusiastic.
On Columbus Day, renamed Liberty Day for the occasion, Woodrow Wilson marched at the head of a parade up Fifth Avenue and received, according to the New York Times, “an ovation such as no President has ever before encountered in this city … The Wilson smile was in evidence from start to finish, and his arm worked with the regularity of a piston doffing his tall hat to the cheering throngs.”
That evening, while President and Mrs. Wilson were dining at the Waldorf before attending a benefit for Italian soldiers blinded in the war, again at the Metropolitan Opera House, Tumulty brought the news that the German Government had accepted the President’s terms.
“There was an enormous crowd which cheered the President with much enthusiasm,” noted House. “I was so stirred by the news that had come from Berlin I could not listen to the programme.”
The President returned to Washington determined to lose no time. Every hour’s delay meant an unnecessary sacrifice of human lives. House went with him on the train.