Cary T. Grayson Diary

Cary T. Grayson Diary

Grayson, Cary T. (Cary Travers), 1878-1938

WWP17229

1919 September 19

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

English

FRIDAY, The train ran south on the Santa Fe during the morning, and stops were made at Oxnard and one or two other points, where the President made a rear-platform appearance and shook hands with the crowd that had gathered there. San Diego was reached at 3:30 o’clock in the afternoon, and the President was driven directly to the hotel, where he was given a public reception. He then proceeded to the big stadium, which had been transformed into an auditorium for the meeting. The first real test of the “voice phone”, an electrical device designed to spread the human voice broadcast, was made at the stadium here. Thirty thousand people were gathered in the great bowl to hear the President. A speakers’ stand had been erected at one end and a room, glass-enclosed, constructed there. This room was about twenty feet square with the front entirely open. A table had been erected in front of the speakers’ stand and megaphones installed, to which were affixed electrical wires that carried the voice to resonators at all points in the big stand outside. The President did not relish this experience. He said afterwards that it was the most difficult speech he had ever tried to deliver in his life. He could not be free and natural because it was necessary that he remain at one spot talking so that his voice carried directly into the megaphones in front of him. However, the audience heard every word that he said with the exception of the one spot directly opposite him at the far end of the stadium. Here the electrical connection apparently did not overcome the distance and a couple of thousand people were deeply disappointed by failing to hear the address. The audience was extremely sympathetic, and the President got them right from the start when he declared that he had not come to participate in any controversy with any Senator or any one else, but that he was in California to tell the people of the State just what the Treaty of Versailles actually meant. He spoke for an hour and ten minutes, and then returned to the hotel for a brief rest prior to a dinner that had been arranged in his honor by the Mayor of the City. At the dinner the President was introduced by former Secretary of the Treasury Lyman J. Gage, a staunch life-long Republican. Former Secretary Gage electrified the entire assembly when he told it that he believed if William McKinley still were alive he would endorse everything that the President had done and would say to him; “God bless you, Woodrow Wilson.” This reference very deeply touched the President, and he in his address pointed out that President McKinley had been one of the earliest advocates of the principle of a League of Nations and of arbitration to prevent war. The President paid high tribute to McKinley’s statesmanship and read extracts from his addresses which showed that Mr. McKinley had always been an ardent advocate of arbitration to settle all international disputes. San Diego was left at 10:00 o’clock, and the train was run out to a small siding directly on the ocean, where the President was allowed a night of uninterrupted rest. Originally, it had been intended that he should go to Santa Catalina Island and spend the night there, but I had vetoed this because he would have to get up so very early in the morning, and the dampness of the air might not do his throat any too much good. It developed afterwards that this was a very wise precaution, as the entire island was shrouded in a heavy fog.

Diary