The Illusion of Victory (52 page)

A member of Hoover’s mission sent back the following description of German children in one city:“You think this is a kindergarten for the little ones. No, these are children of seven and eight years. Tiny faces with large dull eyes, overshadowed by huge puffed rickety foreheads, their small arms just skin and bones, and above the crooked legs with their dislocated joints, the swollen stomachs of the hunger edema.”
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This was a long way from the “humane peace” that Woodrow Wilson had promised Congress he would deliver in his mission to Europe. Wilson—and the rest of the American delegation—were finding out that cheers on the Champs Élysée and in Trafalgar Square did not translate into political power.

On January 1, in a royal train provided by the Italian government, Wilson and his wife headed for Rome. As the train wound through the snow-covered Alps, the monks of Saint Bernard’s Abbey were forced to slaughter six of their famous rescue dogs because they had run out of food. Oblivious to such details, the president reveled in the adoration of the Italian people. His arrival in the Eternal City was a replay of his reception in Paris. Masses of Romans chanted, “Viva Wilson, god of peace.” Low-flying planes dropped flowers on his triumphal procession. There were pictures of him in every shop window. The streets were sprinkled with golden sand, a tradition that went back to ancient Rome’s days of imperial glory.

Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando and his fellow politicians already viewed Wilson with not a little anxiety. The president still objected to their attempt to claim the Dalmatian coast and other territories promised them in the 1915 Treaty of London. Lately they had been claiming the city of Fiume and portions of the new defunct Turkish empire in the Middle East. One of the most outspoken proponents of this view was an editor named Benito Mussolini, whose Milan newspaper proclaimed on January 1, 1919, that “imperialism is the eternal, the immutable law of life.”

The Italian government tried to keep Wilson busy at state dinners and similar ceremonies. No speeches to the people were on his schedule. In the midst of these official rituals, Orlando’s government suddenly informed the president that famous visitors to Rome normally made a gift of $10,000 to the poor. An embarrassed Wilson protested that the U.S. Congress had not authorized such an outlay and he personally could not afford it. This bit of theater was patently designed to make the president look bad.

Only after strenuous insistence did Wilson manage to meet the socialist leader Leonida Bissolati. The day before Wilson arrived, Bissolati had resigned to protest the government’s greedy determination to seize the territory promised Italy in the Treaty of London. He told the president,“The Italian people are the most Wilsonian in Europe, the most adapted to your ideals.” the interview created a sensation. At a reception in the American embassy, a pumped-up Wilson took a jab at Italy’s leader. He remarked that New York had become the biggest Italian city in the world, thanks to recent immigration. Was Orlando going to claim that, too?

On January 4, Wilson visited his erstwhile peace-terms adversary, Pope Benedict XV. As if to emphasize his own faith in liberalism, the president preceded his audience with a visit to the monument of the man whose leadership had created the Italian republic, Giuseppi Garibaldi. Thereafter Wilson’s route to the Vatican became another triumphal procession. Arriving a half-hour late, the president spent twenty minutes with the pontiff, talking of nothing but the League of Nations. The pope gave the idea his blessing.

Later that day, from his balcony in the Quirinal Palace, Wilson planned to give a speech to the people of Rome, urging them to abandon Orlando’s territorial ambitions. To Wilson’s dismay, the plaza abutting his residence remained devoid of people. Troops had cordoned it off, leaving Wilson without an audience. The president made some intemperate remarks to the press and left Rome at nine o’clock that evening in an exceedingly foul mood.
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In northern Italy, on his way back to Paris, Wilson’s popular reception was equally hysterical. He was hailed as “the Savior of Humanity” and “the Moses from Across the Atlantic.” In many homes, families lit candles before his picture, an honor hitherto reserved for saints. Before a huge crowd in Milan, he delivered a bluntly radical speech, in which he proclaimed the superiority of the working classes. They were the foundation of all societies, and they were establishing “a world opinion” in favor of a league of nations and the abandonment of the old system of military alliances and imperialistic greed for territory.

This was not a message Premier Vittorio Orlando was inclined to applaud. It did not seem to occur to Wilson or his advisers that making critical speeches to enthusiastic crowds was unlikely to endear him to the politicians whom he would soon meet at the peace conference.

In the United States, after forty-four days of medical treatment, Theodore Roosevelt had left the hospital and was back at his Sagamore Hill mansion, overlooking Oyster Bay. He was still a sick man; bouts of inflammatory rheumatism hampered the use of his left arm. Mysterious fevers, left over from his almost fatal exploration of Paraguay’s River of Doubt in 1914,
weakened him. Quentin’s death still depressed him. But he was by no means ready to abandon politics. As he was leaving the hospital, a worried doctor tried to hold his arm to make sure he did not fall.“Don’t do that,” TR snapped, brushing the helping hand away. “I am not sick and it will give the wrong impression.”
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In the hospital, he had written out a progressive platform for a presidential campaign. It would be his last fight, he told his sister Corinne. There was not much doubt in the Republican party that the 1920 nomination was his for the asking. Will Hays, the party chairman, was 100 percent behind his candidacy. A Midwestern Republican leader remarked to a GOP big-city boss that Roosevelt would be nominated by acclamation.“Acclamation, hell,” the boss said.“We’re going to nominate him by assault!”
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TR was still grimly and vociferously opposed to Woodrow Wilson and all his works. In a recent article, he had called the Fourteen Points “fourteen scraps of paper.” He told a visiting Henry Cabot Lodge he would like to be left alone in a room with “our great and good president” for about fifteen minutes. Then he would “cheerfully be hung.”
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On the last day of the old year, the government’s citation honoring Quentin’s death arrived. That same day, newspapers carried an account by the German flier who had shot him down. Both spread wisps of gloom through Sagamore Hill. For the next few days, Roosevelt spent most of his time upstairs on a sofa, gazing mournfully at wintry Oyster Bay. His wife wrote their son Kermit that he was in constant pain. On January 5, a wan Flora Payne Whitney came for a visit. She had been spending much of her time with the Roosevelts. TR had told her he hoped she would find happiness with “another good and fine man,” but she remained devastated by Quentin’s death.

The doctors had assured the former president he was going to recover but it would take time. TR promised he would be patient and tried to get some work done. On January 5, he seemed on the way to resuming a normal schedule. He dictated a letter to Kermit and saw several visitors. He read the proofs of a magazine article and worked on an editorial for the
Kansas City Star
, in which he found more fault with Wilson’s ideas about a league of nations. TR favored forming a limited league with the victorious Allies. At the peace table, the United States should make sure “real justice is done” by demanding “the sternest reparation” from Germany. Only after this just peace was achieved might it be possible to admit other countries into the league.
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Relaxing on a sofa after dinner, TR seemed contented until he suddenly called his wife to his side. He said he had just felt a strange sensation: A great, shadowy hand seemed to be seizing his body, crushing breath out of his lungs. His wife summoned a doctor, who could find nothing wrong. About midnight, TR’s former White House valet, James Amos, helped him upstairs to his bedroom and dozed in a corner chair while the sick man went to sleep.

At about 4 A.M., Amos was awakened by a strange rattling noise. It was TR; something was very wrong with his breathing. The valet rushed to awaken Mrs. Roosevelt and TR’s nurse. By the time they reached the bedroom, Theodore Roosevelt was dead of a pulmonary embolism at the age of sixty-one.
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Woodrow Wilson heard the news in the railroad station of Modena, Italy, on his way back to Paris. Two reporters on the platform watched him as he unfolded the telegram. His first reaction was shock; next came a smile of “transcendent triumph.” the Republicans had no one of Roosevelt’s stature to oppose the peace treaty that Wilson, having drunk the adulation of Paris, London and Rome, was now sure he could impose on Europe and the United States.
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While Wilson was feasting on worshipful applause in Italy, Germany was confronting a Bolshevik onslaught. Soldiers and People’s Councils had taken over many cities. Berlin remained unconquered, but it was teetering on the brink. Demonstrations, strikes and armed mobs were everywhere. Behind most of the demonstrations was the Spartacus Union, a radical group that found inspiration in the story of the gladiator Spartacus, leader of a revolt against Rome in 73 B.C. The Spartacists were led by Karl Liebknecht, son of a founder of the German Socialist Party, and Rosa Luxemburg, a brilliant Polish activist. Behind them was the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, who shipped them gold from Russia’s treasury and ordered them to turn Germany into a Soviet satellite.

The new German chancellor, Socialist leader Friedrich Ebert, felt more and more helpless. He saw control of the capital and the rest of the country
slipping away from him. As his panic mounted, Ebert made a fateful decision. Not long after the armistice, he had received a call from General Wilhelm Groener, the man who had replaced Quartermaster General Ludendorff, asking if he wanted or needed the army’s support. Ebert gratefully accepted the offer. Other Socialists angrily criticized his decision. They called for dismantling the army and replacing it with a democratic militia that would elect its own officers.

Ebert dithered and at first agreed to let them try to arm workers. They turned out to be useless soldiers. Public disorder increased exponentially, and an emboldened Karl Liebknecht decided the capital was ready for revolution. (Rosa Luxemburg disagreed.) On the night of January 5–6, 1919, thousands of armed leftists poured down Berlin’s broad streets. They swiftly captured major buildings in the center of Berlin and prepared to take over the capital.

By this time the Spartacists had changed their names to the Communist Party, leaving no doubt about their goals. Ebert called on the army for help. Into action went thousands of demobilized veterans, recruited into new units called Free Corps. Their generals told them: “The place of the Imperial Government has been taken by that of Reichschancellor Ebert. . . . [He] needs strength for the struggle on our borders and the struggle within. . . . Plunder and disorder are everywhere. Nowhere can one find respect for law and justice, respect for personal and government property. . . . Therefore, we must intervene!”
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On January 10, an all-out battle erupted in the center of Berlin. The army used flamethrowers, machine guns, hand grenades, mortars and artillery to smash the Communists out of major buildings and improvised street forts. An estimated 1,000 bystanders and pedestrians were killed in the ferocious fighting, which left several buildings gutted. Hundreds of Spartacists were executed on the spot, even when they tried to surrender under white flags. Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were hunted down and dragged to a nearby hotel for a brief interrogation, then ordered to the Moabit Prison. En route their heads were smashed by rifle butts. Pistols added a coup de grâce. Luxemburg’s body was thrown into a canal, where it rotted until the end of May. The government issued a communiqué, declaring the two revolutionaries had been shot while trying to escape.

The
New York Times
Berlin correspondent all but congratulated the Free Corps for disposing of “fomenters of robbery, murder and anarchy.” A member of a special U.S. mission sent to investigate conditions in Germany wrote a more accurate epitaph for the Spartacists. They had attracted recruits because of “the serious food and economic situation, resulting in hunger, disease and unemployment . . . [and] the fact that they are in control of large sums of money principally from Russian sources.”
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A liberal visitor to Germany, Oswald Garrison Villard, editor of
The Nation
, blamed Woodrow Wilson for Germany’s descent into chaos. With a vehemence worthy of his abolitionist grandfather, William Lloyd Garrison, Villard accused the president of trying to keep secret the continuation of the blockade and the deaths of thousands of women, children and old men from starvation and malnutrition.“The godly Presbyterian from the White House . . . could not be induced to make a public stand against this indefensible cruelty to noncombatants; the screw of starvation was kept turned in order to compel the vanquished to sign whatever treaty might be drafted.”

A cable Wilson had sent to Washington from Rome would seem to support Villard’s wrathful contention. The president asked for an appropriation of $100 million to buy food for the relief of European people “outside of Germany.” In a follow-up cable, Wilson declared “food relief is now the key to the whole European situation and to the solution of peace.” an appalled Robert La Follette listened as senator after senator rose,“each straining to outdo the others to make sure not a cent should go to feed a German.”