President Wilson's Decision to Enter the War
Title
President Wilson's Decision to Enter the War
Creator
Cobb, Frank Irving, 1869-1923
Identifier
WWP25029
Date
1923 June
Description
Two reporters take down their editors memory of events from six years earlier.
Source
Library of Congress, Woodrow Wilson Papers
Publisher
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum
Subject
Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
World War, 1914-1918--United States
Contributor
Maxwell Anderson
Laurence Stallings
Danna Faulds
Language
English
Text
(Editor’s Note--No other man knew so intimately as Frank I. Cobb, the late Editor of the World, the events which led up to Woodrow Wilson’s decision to enter the great war on the side of the Allies. Unfortunately Mr. Cobb who was struck in health a year ago did not live to write his own account of these times, which he was unwilling to do during the life of Mr. Wilson. But the following is an account of a conversation he had with the President in the White House during the night before the reading of the War Message to Congress. It is a transcription from memory of Mr. Cobb’s narration in June, 1923 of that historic dialogue of April, 1917, and was set down by two members of The World staff to whom Mr. Cobb narrowly recounted its details. Mr. Cobb had a mannerism of breaking a phrase or a sentence with a swift interrogatory, “huh,” and going right ahead: a mannerism reflected in the report following).
By Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings.
Somebody had mentioned Clemenceau with disparagement. “He was a tricky old bandit,” said Cobb, as the three of us entered his office. “A tricky old bandit, huh, but, God, he knew the game. He was the most formidable person at Versailles. When it came to a pinch, Lloyd George was a child beside him. W.W. knew it and knew how to meet the old boy, but he was hampered by having ideals of justice and government. Clemenceau used to look at Wilson as if he was a new and disconcerting species. He thought Wilson had the Messiah-complex, huh?
“He was dead wrong about it, though, and everybody who thinks Wilson didn’t know his way about and didn’t know what he was in for should have heard what he said about the war before we went in. Old W. W. knew his history, huh. He knew what wars were fought for and what they do to the nations that wage them.
“The night before he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany he sent for me. I was late getting the message, somehow, and didn’t reach the White House till one o’clock in the morning. The old man was waiting for me, sitting in his study with the typewriter on his table where he used to type his own messages.
“I’d never seen him so worn down. He looked as if he hadn’t slept, huh, and he said he hadn’t. He said he was probably going before Congress the next day to ask a declaration of war, and he’d never been so uncertain about anything in his life as about that decision. For nights, he said, he’d been lying awake going over the whole situation, over the provocation given by Germany, over the probable feeling in the United States, over the consequences to the settlement and to the world at large if we entered the melee.
“‘I’ve written the message,’ he said, tapping some type-written sheets, ‘and I think I’m going before Congress with it as it stands. I can’t see any alternative. I’ve tried every way I know to avoid it. I think I know what it means. But if there is any way out, if there’s any possibility of avoiding war, I want to try it. What else can I do? Is there anything else I can do?’
“I told him his hand had been forced by Germany, that so far as I could see we couldn’t keep out.
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but do you know what that means? When I do that it over-turns the world we’ve known. So long as we stay out there’s a preponderance of normality. If we join with the Allies the world is off the peace basis and on a war basis. It means that we lose our heads along with the rest and stop weighing right and wrong. It means a majority of people in this hemisphere gone war mad, a majority who have quit thinking and devoted their energies to destruction.’
“It means that Germany will be beaten, and so badly beaten that there will be a dictated peace, a victorious peace. It means an attempt to reconstruct a peace-time civilization with war standards. At the end of the war there will be no by-standers with sufficient power to influence the terms. There won’t be any peace standards left to work with. There will be only war standards. That is what the Allies think they want, and they will have their way. And that is the thing we have hoped against and fought against.’ The man was uncanny that night. He had the whole panorama in his mind.
“He went on to say that so far as he knew he’s considered every loop-hole of escape, and as best as they were discovered Germany deliberately blocked them with some new outrage. Then he began to talk about the consequences to the United States. He had no illusions about the fashion in which we were likely to fight the war.”
“‘When a war gets going,’ he said, ‘It’s just war, and there aren’t two kinds of it. It spells illiberalism at home to re-enforce the men at the front. We can’t fight Germany and maintain the ideals of government you and I and all thinking men have shared. We’ll try it, of course, but it will be too much for us. Once lead this people into war and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on his beat, the man in the street. There’ll be but one ______, conformity, and every man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.
“‘The Constitution won’t survive it. Free speech will go. The right of assembly will go. You can’t put your strength into a war and keep your head level. It’s never been done.’
“‘If there’s any alternative, for God’s sake, let’s take it.’ Well, I couldn’t see any, and I told him so.
“He didn’t have any illusions about how he was going to come out of it, either. He’d rather have done anything else than head a military machine. All his instincts were against it. He foresaw too clearly the probable influence of a declaration of war on his own fortunes, the adulation certain to follow a victory, the derision which would come with the deflation of excessive hopes. If he had it to do over again, he’d take the same course. It was a choice of evils, huh, just a choice of evils.”
By Maxwell Anderson and Laurence Stallings.
Somebody had mentioned Clemenceau with disparagement. “He was a tricky old bandit,” said Cobb, as the three of us entered his office. “A tricky old bandit, huh, but, God, he knew the game. He was the most formidable person at Versailles. When it came to a pinch, Lloyd George was a child beside him. W.W. knew it and knew how to meet the old boy, but he was hampered by having ideals of justice and government. Clemenceau used to look at Wilson as if he was a new and disconcerting species. He thought Wilson had the Messiah-complex, huh?
“He was dead wrong about it, though, and everybody who thinks Wilson didn’t know his way about and didn’t know what he was in for should have heard what he said about the war before we went in. Old W. W. knew his history, huh. He knew what wars were fought for and what they do to the nations that wage them.
“The night before he asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany he sent for me. I was late getting the message, somehow, and didn’t reach the White House till one o’clock in the morning. The old man was waiting for me, sitting in his study with the typewriter on his table where he used to type his own messages.
“I’d never seen him so worn down. He looked as if he hadn’t slept, huh, and he said he hadn’t. He said he was probably going before Congress the next day to ask a declaration of war, and he’d never been so uncertain about anything in his life as about that decision. For nights, he said, he’d been lying awake going over the whole situation, over the provocation given by Germany, over the probable feeling in the United States, over the consequences to the settlement and to the world at large if we entered the melee.
“‘I’ve written the message,’ he said, tapping some type-written sheets, ‘and I think I’m going before Congress with it as it stands. I can’t see any alternative. I’ve tried every way I know to avoid it. I think I know what it means. But if there is any way out, if there’s any possibility of avoiding war, I want to try it. What else can I do? Is there anything else I can do?’
“I told him his hand had been forced by Germany, that so far as I could see we couldn’t keep out.
“‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but do you know what that means? When I do that it over-turns the world we’ve known. So long as we stay out there’s a preponderance of normality. If we join with the Allies the world is off the peace basis and on a war basis. It means that we lose our heads along with the rest and stop weighing right and wrong. It means a majority of people in this hemisphere gone war mad, a majority who have quit thinking and devoted their energies to destruction.’
“It means that Germany will be beaten, and so badly beaten that there will be a dictated peace, a victorious peace. It means an attempt to reconstruct a peace-time civilization with war standards. At the end of the war there will be no by-standers with sufficient power to influence the terms. There won’t be any peace standards left to work with. There will be only war standards. That is what the Allies think they want, and they will have their way. And that is the thing we have hoped against and fought against.’ The man was uncanny that night. He had the whole panorama in his mind.
“He went on to say that so far as he knew he’s considered every loop-hole of escape, and as best as they were discovered Germany deliberately blocked them with some new outrage. Then he began to talk about the consequences to the United States. He had no illusions about the fashion in which we were likely to fight the war.”
“‘When a war gets going,’ he said, ‘It’s just war, and there aren’t two kinds of it. It spells illiberalism at home to re-enforce the men at the front. We can’t fight Germany and maintain the ideals of government you and I and all thinking men have shared. We’ll try it, of course, but it will be too much for us. Once lead this people into war and they’ll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fibre of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on his beat, the man in the street. There’ll be but one ______, conformity, and every man who refuses to conform will have to pay the penalty.
“‘The Constitution won’t survive it. Free speech will go. The right of assembly will go. You can’t put your strength into a war and keep your head level. It’s never been done.’
“‘If there’s any alternative, for God’s sake, let’s take it.’ Well, I couldn’t see any, and I told him so.
“He didn’t have any illusions about how he was going to come out of it, either. He’d rather have done anything else than head a military machine. All his instincts were against it. He foresaw too clearly the probable influence of a declaration of war on his own fortunes, the adulation certain to follow a victory, the derision which would come with the deflation of excessive hopes. If he had it to do over again, he’d take the same course. It was a choice of evils, huh, just a choice of evils.”
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Citation
Cobb, Frank Irving, 1869-1923, “President Wilson's Decision to Enter the War,” 1923 June, WWP25029, World War I Letters, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.