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On November 10, 1923, the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Armistice that ended World War I, Woodrow Wilson gave a radio address from the library of his brick house on S Street in Washington, D.C. He had spent two painful weeks preparing. His butler helped him dress, fitting his paralyzed left side into his clothes, and walked him to the elevator. His wife, Edith, stood by with a script in case his voice failed. Before the microphone, holding pages he could barely read, the former president urged the country to finish the peace by joining the League of Nations.
The library held part of his 8,000-plus books and a case of his own writings; nearby were a mosaic of Saint Peter from Pope Benedict XV and a Gobelin tapestry from the people of France. On the mantel sat a tarnished brass shell fired by American artillery against the Germans in 1917.
How he got there
After World War I, Wilson campaigned for the United States to join the League of Nations, believing it would secure a lasting peace. The Republican-controlled Senate had to ratify both the Treaty of Versailles and League membership, and it was reluctant.
| Date | |
|---|---|
| Fall 1919 | Wilson set out from Columbus, Ohio, on a cross-country speaking tour to rally public pressure on the Senate, reaching the West Coast |
| September 25, 1919 | after a passionate speech in Pueblo, Colorado, he suffered a severe headache and nervous exhaustion; his doctor canceled the rest of the tour |
| October 2, 1919 | a stroke paralyzed his left side |
| the Senate refused to ratify either the treaty or League membership; the well-received tour changed no votes | |
| 1920 | failing health and hostile politics kept him from seeking a third term |
| March 1921 | Warren G. Harding took office; Wilson moved to 2340 S Street NW |
Washington, D.C. Image from the NPS lesson on the Wilson House
The case for the League
At Pueblo, Wilson told his audience that critics had spread "an absolutely false impression" of the treaty. It was a severe settlement with Germany, he said, but much more: the Covenant of the League stood at the front of this treaty and the others to come, because without the united purpose of the great powers the settlement "will fall down like a house of cards." League members would promise never to use their power for aggression, never to threaten a neighbor's territory or independence, and never to go to war without first submitting the dispute to arbitration or to the League Council:
"In other words, they consent, no matter what happens, to submit every matter of difference between them to the judgment of mankind."
His physician had tried to talk him out of the trip. Wilson, he recalled, answered that as commander in chief he had sent soldiers to Europe who did not turn back in the trenches — and that he could not put his own health ahead of his duty now.
The case against
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, August 12, 1919:
"I have never loved but one flag and I cannot share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for the League."
Lodge called the Covenant "murky" and wanted the country spared "everlasting meddling and muddling in every quarrel great and small."
Senator William E. Borah, November 10, 1919, quoting Lincoln — "Entertain no compromise; have none of it" — argued that the League meant giving up the policy of "no entangling alliances" and the people's right to govern themselves free of foreign powers:
"Sir, we are told that this treaty means peace. Even so, I would not pay the price. Would you purchase peace at the cost of our independence?"
"Three Little Elephants," a Brooklyn Eagle cartoon by Harding on the League debate, reproduced in Thomas A. Bailey's Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (1945)
The last appeal
In his 1923 broadcast, Wilson called America's refusal to share in keeping the peace a retreat into "a sullen and selfish isolation which is deeply ignoble because manifestly cowardly and dishonorable," noted that France and Italy had "made waste paper of the Treaty of Versailles," and ended:
"Thus, and only thus, can we return to the true traditions of America."
The Covenant, and a map and list of League members. Images from the NPS lesson on the Wilson House
Epilogue
The next day, Armistice Day, a crowd of more than 20,000 gathered outside the house to honor the war president, architect of the Treaty of Versailles and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. Wilson came down to the front steps to thank them:
"I am not one of those that have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles I have stood for.... That we shall prevail is as sure as God reigns."
Three months later, he died in the house on S Street, three miles from his former office. The Woodrow Wilson House, a National Historic Landmark, is now a museum of the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Sources
Based on "Woodrow Wilson: Prophet of Peace (Teaching with Historic Places)," National Park Service, drawn from the National Register file for the Woodrow Wilson House, with speeches from The Papers of Woodrow Wilson (Arthur S. Link, ed.) and the Congressional Record; a work of the United States government in the public domain. The lesson's questions and activities are left out; the physician's recollection is paraphrased; photographs of the house credited to the Woodrow Wilson House are not reproduced.
Licenza: CC0 1.0 (pubblico dominio) · Tratto da www.nps.gov
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