Colonel Roosevelt - Edmund Morris [285]
There was now as much of a sense of emergency on Capitol Hill as in the White House. Republicans and Democrats alike appealed to the President to summon a premature session of the Sixty-fifth Congress, which otherwise would not assemble until December.
On Monday, 5 March, the President drove in gusty rain to the Capitol to deliver his second inaugural address. He had been sworn in privately the day before. Thirty-two secret service agents guarded his carriage, and more than twice as many swordsmen of the Second Cavalry framed them in a nervously jiggling square. Pennsylvania Avenue was lined on both sides with National Guardsmen in olive drab, rifles at the ready. Many of them were bronzed from recent service in Mexico. The roofs of neighboring buildings bristled with sharpshooters. Machine gunners covered the crowd waiting in East Capitol Park.
“I beg your tolerance, your countenance, and your united aid,” Wilson shouted into the wind. He gave no hint of when, or even whether, he would ask Americans to take up arms, but talked of “the shadows that now lie dark across our path,” and prayed to God to give him “wisdom and prudence” in the days that lay ahead. Few spectators could hear what he was saying, but they were visually reassured by the long jaw jutting over the balustrade, the confident poise, and the statuesque proximity of Edith Wilson. Rolling cheers followed the presidential car all the way back downtown, along with impromptu choruses of “America.”
ROOSEVELT, WHOSE FIRST reaction to the Zimmermann telegram had been to crumple his newspaper in rage, exulted to Kermit that “the lily-livered skunk in the White House” had at last begun to act like a man. He restrained himself from public commentary, not wanting to appear disloyal to the President at a time of crisis, or to jeopardize his dream of raising a volunteer division (or two, or three, or four) with Secretary Baker’s approval.
Even now, Wilson seemed to hope that “armed neutrality” would be enough to keep the United States at peace. On 9 March, professedly bedridden with a cold, he summoned the new Congress. However, he postponed the date of its assembly to 16 April, six weeks off. That rendered Senator La Follette powerless in the interim to stop an executive order requiring all American freighters to arm themselves. For the next ten days the President remained out of sight, while his wife fronted for him.
In Russia, meanwhile, half-starved workers revolted against an imperial ban on organized demonstrations. The first news of food riots in Petrograd and Moscow reached Washington via Stockholm on 12 March. Vast crowds were reported to be on the rampage, roaring “Down with autocracy!” The Russian army, weakened by the loss of three and a half million men, was either unable or unwilling to restore order. Leon Trotsky, a Bolshevik exile living in New York, rejoiced that after twelve years of seismic buildup, the revolution of the proletariat was at last happening. Five days later The Washington Post confirmed that the Tsar had abdicated. A socialistic “provisional government” headed by Prince Lvov and dominated by the social democrat Aleksandr Kerensky was announced. “Unless improbable events occur,” The New York Times reported, “Russia has today become a republic.”
The news caused more satisfaction in the United States than in Britain and France. Both were in terror that Russia would now withdraw from the war and enable the Central Powers to turn all their firepower on the Western Front. This, plus the deaths of fifteen Americans in yet another “submarining” (the word had become a verb) put pressure on Wilson to summon Congress sooner.
On 20 March the President met with his cabinet and asked each member for advice. All were in favor of a prompt declaration of war against Germany, although Josephus Daniels, the secretary of the