U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [285]
was too public a place to make peace in
so the High Contracting Parties
formed the Council of Ten, went into the Gobelin
Room and, surrounded by Rubens's History of Manie
de Medici,
began to dictate the peace.
But the Council of Ten was too public a place to
make peace in
so they formed the Council of Four.
Orlando went home in a huff
and then there were three:
Clemenceau,
Lloyd George,
Woodrow Wilson.
Three old men shuffling the pack,
dealing out the cards:
the Rhineland, Danzig, the Polish corridor, the
Ruhr, self determination of smal nations, the Saar, League of Nations, mandates, the Mespot, Freedom of the Seas, Transjordania, Shantung, Fiume and the
Island of Yap:
machine gun fire and arson
starvation, lice, cholera, typhusi
oil was trumps.
Woodrow Wilson believed in his father's God
so he told the parishioners in the little Lowther
Street Congregational church where his grandfather
had preached in Carlisle in Scotland, a day so chil y that
-248-the newspaper men sitting in the old pews al had to keep their overcoats on. On April 7th he ordered the George Washington
to be held at Brest with steam up ready to take the American delegation home; but he didn't go.
On April 19 sharper Clemenceau. and sharper
Lloyd George got him into their little cosy threecard-game they cal ed the Council of Four. On June 28th the Treaty of Versail es was ready
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 wal 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 over-coat, haggard with fatigue, one side of his face twitch-ing. The men in overal s, the workingstiffs let him
-249-pass in silence after al 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 cal 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
painful y 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.
-250-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