The Illusion of Victory (7 page)

La Follette launched a searching appraisal of the origins of the war. Germany was only partly responsible. All the belligerent powers bore some blame. But the overarching cause was England’s determination to destroy Germany as a commercial rival. He devoted several minutes to England’s unsavory conduct in the 1911 crisis over Morocco. Here, Germany, England and France had signed a treaty permitting individual Germans to do business in the country. But England and France executed a secret treaty, agreeing to drive the Germans out. In return, France abandoned its claims to commercial rights in Egypt. When England backed the expulsion of the Germans, Europe almost went to war. La Follette quoted the English journalist William T. Stead, who called this underhanded diplomacy “an almost incredible crime against treaty faith.”
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Grimly La Follette reiterated:“It was our absolute right as a neutral to ship food to the people of Germany.” It was a right the United States had asserted since its foundation as a nation.“The failure to treat the belligerent nations alike, to reject the illegal war zones of both Germany and Great Britain, is wholly accountable for our present dilemma.” Instead of admitting this failure, the country was trying to “inflame the mind of our people into the frenzy of war.”
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There were only two ways out of this quandary. The first would be for the United States to admit its mistake and enforce its rights against Great Britain as strenuously as it had insisted on its rights against Germany. The other alternative would be to withhold food from both sides.

Without attempting a peroration beyond this stark choice, La Follette stopped speaking at 6:45 P.M. Tears streamed down his cheeks. To Amos Pinchot, he looked like a despairing man who had “failed to keep his child from doing itself irreparable harm.” Gilson Gardner turned to Pinchot and said,“That is the greatest speech we will either of us ever hear.”
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Senator John Sharp Williams of Mississippi leaped to his feet and began living up to his middle name. Williams had his own agenda. He saw the war as a chance to redeem the secessionist South in the eyes of the ruling North. In his speeches, he often dilated on how Southerners would volunteer en masse and go to war to the strains of “Dixie.” This vision added fuel to his ire. La Follette, he sneered, had given a speech “that would have better become Herr Bethmann-Hollweg,” a reference to Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the chancellor of Germany. Williams called the speech “pro-German, pretty nearly pro-Goth and pro-Vandal.” It was also “anti American president, anti-American Congress and anti-American people.” The Mississippian continued insulting La Follette, violating all the rules of Senate courtesy, for another seven pages of the
Congressional Record
. No senator tried to stop him. Several times, he drew guffaws from the galleries.
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Williams’s harangue was followed by more oratory, all of it pro-war. Finally, at eleven minutes after eleven, the Senate voted. The crowded gallery listened in absolute silence. Many of the lawmakers’ voices quivered with emotion. La Follette’s “No” rang out with characteristic firmness. When the clerk announced the final tally, 82 to 6, not a hand clapped, not a voice cheered in the galleries. Somehow, declaring war no longer seemed a cause for celebration. In the corridor, as Senator La Follette walked to his office, a man handed him a rope.
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The following day, April 5, was the House of Representatives’ turn. The congressmen slogged to their task through a city whipped by a mounting northeast storm. Some of them may have noticed a lamppost on Fourteenth and H Streets decorated with a yellow-striped scarecrow. The thing had two recognizable faces: One was Senator Stone of Missouri; the other, Senator Vardaman of Mississippi.
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The
New York Tribune
crowed over the Senate vote and praised John Sharp Williams for his scurrilous denunciation of Senator La Follette. It also warned of a national conspiracy of “pacifists” plotting to disrupt the war effort. The
Los Angeles Times
assured its readers there were no plans to send an American army overseas. All that the Allies needed to win the war was munitions. In New York, a young man who called Americans “a lot of skunks” at an antiwar rally got six months in jail.
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The House galleries were only half full when debate began. With the Senate vote, the conclusion probably seemed foregone. But the onlookers saw some fireworks early in the session. Congressman Fred A. Britten, a Republican from Illinois, stirred a furor when he estimated that 75 percent of the representatives secretly opposed the war but were afraid to say so. Dozens of friends had told him they “hate[d] like the devil” to vote for the war resolution, but were going to do it anyway. A startling wave of applause swept the House and the galleries. An emboldened Britten concluded that “something in the air,” perhaps the “hand of destiny” or “some superhuman movement,” seemed to be forcing them to vote for war when,“deep in our hearts,” they were just as opposed to it as their people back home.
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Numerous congressmen leaped up to rebut Britten. Some drew applause for flights of patriotic oratory. Others rose to defend him. Chicago Republican William Ernest Mason, who had been a strong proponent of the Spanish-American War, said flatly, “I am against this war because I know the people in my state are not for it.” The debate went back and forth while the northeast wind drove sheets of rain against the huge skylight above the speakers’ heads.
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A pro-war Republican, Clarence B. Miller of Minnesota, enlivened things by reading a supposedly suppressed paragraph in Herr Zimmermann’s telegram to Mexico:“Agreeably to the Mexican government, submarine bases will be established in Mexican ports, from which will be supplied arms, ammunition and supplies. All [German] reservists in the United States are ordered into Mexico. Arrange to attack all along the border.”

Antiwar congressmen rushed a messenger to the State Department, which denied the existence of any such paragraph. But Miller kept insisting on its authenticity and waved the paper at them to the end of the session.
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The next surprise came when Claude Kitchin of North Carolina, the Democratic majority leader, announced that he was voting nay:“After mature thought and fervent prayer for rightful guidance, [I] have marked out clearly the path of my duty, and I have made up my mind to walk it, if I go barefooted or alone.” Robert La Follette, who was among the spectators, led a burst of applause.
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Implicitly agreeing with La Follette, Kitchin denounced the failure of the United States to protest England’s violation of the right to trade with Germany. He described the North Sea as “strewed with hidden mines.” Kitchin maintained that this failure to treat the two belligerents alike was a fatal flaw in Wilson’s declaration of war.
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James Heflin of Alabama told Kitchin that he should have resigned as majority leader before he made such a statement—and then resigned his seat. John Lawson Burnett of Alabama said that Heflin ought to prove his patriotism first by enlisting in the army as a private. A shouting match erupted, adding a touch of low comedy to the scene.
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Hour after hour, the speeches, limited to ten minutes by Speaker Clark, marched on, many making the same or similar points. Like La Follette and Norris, the antiwar minority argued that sinking a handful of ships and killing some American sailors did not constitute a cause for war. They pointed out that the Mexicans had killed far more Americans in Villa’s raids and skirmishes with the Punitive Expedition. Like Kitchin, they blamed the government and U.S. corporations for sending ships into the war zone declared by Berlin—while tamely submitting to the war zone declared by the English blockade of Germany.

The pro-war speakers answered with outrage over Germany’s “barbaric tactics.” They descanted on how the British only violated property rights in their blockade, whereas the Germans were committing murder. They extended their oratory to a general denunciation of the way Germany was fighting the war in Europe, “raping” neutral Belgium and despoiling the large chunk of France it occupied. They exalted the purpose of the war, as defined by President Wilson. A war for democracy, for the rights of mankind.

Among the orators who enjoyed the loudest applause was bearded eighty-one-year-old Joseph “Uncle Joe” Cannon of Illinois, for many years the Speaker of the House in its days of Republican majorities. He rose to dilate on the power and resources of the United States,“greater than any other nation on earth.” It was time to commit them to the cause of peace. Pounding on his desk, he roared,“I—shall—vote—for—this—resolution.”
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The antiwar representatives achieved some poignant (and totally forgotten) moments. Most notable was Edward J. King of Illinois. The lawmaker said that a vote for war on the president’s arguments, with conscription thrown in, would qualify an American soldier to join the men of other nations in W. K. Enwer’s heartbreaking poem “Five Souls”:

King added to this tragic parade a sixth soul from America.

America was going to war, King said, driven by “armed plutocracy crying ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’”
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At 7 P.M., with no end of speakers in sight, Champ Clark said they would stay in session all night if necessary. At 9 P.M., Clark began to limit the speeches to five minutes. On went the oratory, until at 2:30 A.M. on April 6, the number of speeches had passed one hundred. At 2:45, the legislators at last fell silent and the weary Clark called for a vote.

The voices reciting yes and no echoed dully in the empty galleries and drifted eerily into the darkness around the skylight. The count went swiftly until the clerk of the house reached the name Rankin. There was a strained silence—and the clerk went on to other names. Uncle Joe Cannon hobbled from his seat to where Representative Jeannette Rankin of Montana sat virtually paralyzed. As the first woman elected to Congress, she had received a bouquet of flowers and an ovation when the House convened on April 2. Now, confronting her first vote, she was in torment.

Cannon leaned over her and said,“Little woman, you cannot afford not to vote. You represent the womanhood of the country. I shall not advise you how to vote but you should vote, one way or another, as your conscience dictates.”

On the second call, when the clerk reached her name, Rankin was again speechless. Finally, she struggled to her feet and said,“I want to stand by my country, but I cannot vote for war. I vote no.”

She sank into her seat and began to sob. The roll call continued until the clerk reached the last name and reported the tally to the speaker. The House of Representatives had voted for war, 373 to 50. Over half the nays were from progressive Republicans in the West, political blood brothers of Robert La Follette and George Norris. The Northeast produced only one negative vote—Meyer London, the socialist member from New York City. Four of the Democratic no votes came from Mississippi, somewhat dulling the edge of John Sharp Williams’s rhetoric. Nine of Wisconsin’s eleven representatives supported La Follette.
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Speaker Clark signed the war resolution on the spot, but Vice President Marshall, whose signature was also needed as president of the Senate, had long since gone to bed. He signed it the next day, a little after 12 noon. The resolution was immediately rushed to the White House, where the president was having lunch with his wife and his cousin Helen Woodrow Bones. They put down their knives and forks and hurried to the chief usher’s desk in the lobby. There, Rudolph Forster, the White House’s executive clerk, was waiting for them with the document. Edith Galt Wilson handed the president a gold pen he had given her as a gift, and he signed the document without the slightest fanfare or ceremony.