'W
Michigan State
University

 

 

 

PLACE IN RETURN BOX to remove this checkout from your record.
TO AVOID FINES return on or before date due.
MAY BE RECALLED with earlier due date if requested.

 

DATE DUE DATE DUE DATE DUE
JUL 93729253311 ‘

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6/01 c:/CIRC/DateDue.p6&p.15

ABOVE THE MOUNTAINS OF THE EARTH; THE AMERICAN
PRESBYTERIAN ROOTS OF WOODROW WILSON’S FOREIGN POLICY

Malcolm Dean Magee

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of History

2004

n

PRESB":

 

 

E?
(I!
.9

Enigma". tr.

153d the h a}

v , ‘
Av" ,
meme {cider

6.. . -
1 rimmed. an

A”. ‘ , _
“3‘0 grin-up

“f" I .
‘50: E'Nw --

Hui“)

3w. .
' i¥)_.' a)“ I
:lu an GILT

.a M i‘ " .~
4“
' i’ “s
b;
l'.
i‘

ABSTRACT

ABOVE THE MOUNTAINS OF THE EARTH; THE AMERICAN
PRESBYTERIAN ROOTS OF WOODROW WILSON’S FOREIGN POLICY

By

Malcolm Dean Magee

This dissertation is an examination of the manner in which Woodrow Wilson’s
Presbyterian thought and practice influenced the international relations policies of his
presidential administration from 1913 to 1921. This American Presbyterian tradition
shaped the way that Woodrow Wilson perceived the world. It shaped his concepts of
effective leadership and the way in which he used language. It shaped the way in which
he reasoned, and in particular it accustomed him to the theological principle of antinomy:
that two principles could both be right even when others, looking at them in the light of
logic rather than faith, found them mutually contradictory. Using archival material on the
Wilson administration, the collected papers of members of his inner circle, as well as
Presbyterian denominational archives this dissertation explores the religious thread that
was an integral part of the tapestry of the political thought of the 28th President of the
United States. This dissertation prioritizes the manner in Wilson thought rather than the
specifics of what he thought. The work focuses on how this theological concept of
antinomy as practiced by the American Calvinist tradition in which the president was
raised influenced his pattern of reconciling contradiction in his international political

practice.

© 2004
Malcolm Dean Magee

All Rights Reserved

 

No. pr
others. First ._
mum
fizz-e and he}; '

brie dunno '

("

iiqoryclau: a
aspnject. [.1
am r6335

|
greens that ..
if‘igill. Sm:
23.15521 The:

I
and Cftiliisms .

533335 on Arr. v.

 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

No project of the scope of a Ph.D. dissertation can be done with out the help of
others. First among these is John Coogan who’s scholarship, friendship, criticism and
encouragement made this dissertation possible. I owe him a great debt of gratitude for his
time and help. I must also express heartfelt thanks to Sayuri Shimizu who brought me
books during my hospital recovery, allowed me to sit in on her international relations
history class and who, in so many ways, went beyond the call of duty in helping me finish
this project. David Bailey helped to focus my thinking about nineteenth century
American religion. Werner Dannhauser made numerous helpful suggestions regarding
questions that should be addressed in applying Wilson’s religious thought to his political
thought. Sam Thomas provided me the necessary kick in the pants to get this project
finished. Thanks also to Amy DeRogatis and Simei Qing for their helpful suggestions
and criticisms of this work. Mark N011 and John Mulder helped in directing me to
sources on American Presbyterianism as it related to Woodrow Wilson. Hal Bush, David
Stowe, Michael Peters and Roy Matthews deserve my thanks for encouragement at
various stages of this project. And, thank you Janet Roe-Darden for all your help with the
University bureaucracy which continues to baffle me.

Personal encouragement and help came from too many sources to mention, and
yet I will try. Thanks must go to Bryn Jones who, prior to his death, encouraged me to
pursue this project, and Alan Scotland who continued that encouragement to the finish.
Thanks also to James Muffett, Mitch Bean and the congregation of Liberty Christian

Church who tolerated my angst about this project with little complaint. There is no way

iv

'- ll ‘JMLAI

.~Lu".

 

Librarm‘i“?

COLLIC “all a:

 

:5 l N r! I
it}. 103;. prV¥
km (and :
I

rm: tier 's. r

someone “or;

 

 

to say thank you enough to Karyn Coward who ran errands for me, located material at the
library, pointed out my consistent formatting flaws and generally acted as my legs until I
could walk again. Your friendship and help will not be forgotten.

Finally, thank you to my family and adopted family who put up with me through
this long process and often left me alone to work. Thank you Katie, Jim, John, Kari and
Kristin, (and the two additional spouses, Jeremy and Micki) as well as Shelley and Curt.
Final thanks, however, must go to my wife Judy. Anyone who has been the spouse of

someone working on a Ph.D. dissertation will know what she has suffered. Thanks.

 

NRODL'C

CHAPTER I

THE DEl'El

(ENTER 2
THE CHAD,
BERVATU

[PAPER 3
KEEPING It

 

CHtPTER 4
xtoorurr‘

APPENDIX 1,

.lPPRfDiX l.’ I

 

I
APPENDIX I

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 1
CHAPTER 1

THE DEVELOPMENT OF WOODROW WILSON’S THOUGHT TO 1913 ................... 9
CHAPTER 2

THE CHALLENGE OF THE PRESENT AGE: THE PERSISTENCE OF THE
INTERNATIONAL ORDER ............................................................................................. 49
CHAPTER 3

KEEPING TO THE PRINCIPLES IN PEACE AND WAR ............................................. 83
CHAPTER 4

NEGOTIATING THE TABLETS OF STONE ............................................................... 111
APPENDIX I .................................................................................................................... 151
APPENDIX II .................................................................................................................. 153
APPENDIX III ................................................................................................................. 156
APPENDIX IV ................................................................................................................. 163
BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................ 1 70

vi

 

 

Engf.
me that \l'
,4

3m. weakness

.. , ,

I'"~ 4“D,~V’:

Bind}: LICK-..
‘

underused mo

garment. He

 

 

Introduction

English economist John Maynard Keynes following the Paris Peace Conference
wrote that Woodrow Wilson thought like a Presbyterian minister, with all the strengths
and weaknesses of that manner of thinking.1 Keynes, the chief economic advisor to the
British delegation, who had been present at many of the meetings with the president,
condensed months of observation, personal interaction, and disappointment into this
statement. He asserted that the foundation of Wilson’s thinking about the world and
international affairs did not rest upon a secular ideology or definition of national interests.
It lay instead in his personal religious faith, a faith so absolute and pervasive that it
determined not only what he thought but, more importantly, how he thought. Keynes
argued that one could understand neither Wilson nor his policies without understanding
his Presbyterian roots: intellectual, rhetorical, organizational and moral as well as
theological.

Keynes insight is missing, for the most part, from modern historical scholarship
concerning US foreign relations during the Wilson presidency from 1913 to 1921. Indeed
some historians dismiss it entirely, acknowledging only that religious feeling was present
in the president but that it comprised little more than cultural evangelicalism. Among
these are historians such as Niels Aage Thorsen, John Milton Cooper and John A.

Thompson. Of these, Cooper gives Wilson the most credit for his religious views but

 

'John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences Of The Peg, (New York, Harper and Row,
1920)42.

«9:11;. ‘ ‘73:?
N

 

 

a, ‘
x CHIC u

new L‘: T

Tim at

    

 

I. T".-
”m; M _

defines them as views which would have remained quite separate from his secular
profession. Cooper argues that Calvinist doctrines had little impact on Wilson, that his
religious background created in him a humility about his ability to know the purposes of
God, that he was not concerned about being a moral uplifier, and that he would never
become deluded into becoming a messianic crusader in politics.2 Cooper has retained this
view throughout the course of his scholarly career, repeating it in his most recent work on
Wilson at Versailles and during the treaty fight with the Senate.3 Thorsen takes this
further, dismissing outright any religious influence in Wilson’s political thought as
“premodern.” To Thorsen, the president’s religious thought was only a rhetorical tool in
his political career. To consider Wilson’s religion leads away from his political thought
not toward it.4 Thompson states it most bluntly: “Wilson’s career cannot persuasively be
interpreted as an attempt to reform human affairs in accordance with some higher, or
Christian, ideal.”5 The president’s politics were nothing more than America’s secular
ideology applied to international relations. These historians argue that conformity to
nineteenth century cultural evangelicalism made Wilson comfortable, his identification
with an established and respected denomination made him electable, but religion had
little or no impact on his political thought, policies or actions in international affairs.

Even historians who endorsed Keynes’ general observation have failed to examine

 

2John Milton Cooper, The Warriorand The Priest, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University
Press, 1983) 19.

3John Milton Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World, Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the
League of Nations, (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

‘Niels Aage Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson, 1875-1910, (Princeton
University Press, 1988), 237-238.

5John A. Thompson, Woodrow Wilson, (London, Pearson Education Ltd., 2002), 249.

2

the foundation of Wilson’s complex and highly personal religious beliefs in order to
explain their specific impact on international relations. Historians Jan W. S. Nordholt,
Arthur Link, and John M. Mulder, have argued that Wilson’s religion was an integral part
of who he was. Nordholt recognized that faith was fundamental to who Wilson was, as a
person and as a politician. He also argued that most historians fail to understand this
because they have little understanding or even knowledge of the curious subculture that
Christianity has become in the twentieth century.6 Link wrote that Wilson’s Christian
faith was the basis for his understanding of the sources of power and his motivation to
public service, that he was inspired to serve God by serving his fellow man. Faith in God
and submission to the Christian ethic underlay all Wilson’s political thought.7 Mulder
took the president’s theological thought further than other historians. Writing what has
been described as a religious biography of Woodrow Wilson, Mulder showed how ideas
like “covenant,” were tied to his Presbyterian upbringing, arguing that much of his
political thought had been formed by his religious upbringing.8 The focus of Mulder’s
work, however, was the years before Wilson entered politics. None of these historians
apply specifics of how this influenced the way in which Wilson thought about
international politics. Existing professional literature portrays a president variously
motivated by idealism, realism, “higher realism,” corporatism, ideology, personal

ambition, or some combination of these. There has been no serious modern examination

 

°Jan Willem Schulte Nordholt, Woodrow Wilson: A Life For World Peace. (Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1991), 41-42.

7Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson, Vol. 2 (New York, The World Publishing Company, 1963),
64-65.

'John M. Mulder, Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Prepggation, (Princeton University Press,
Princeton, 1978).

of Wilson in Keynesian terms: as a Presbyterian in politics, a twentieth century John
Knox, a Christian statesman whose overriding motivation was his determination to do
God’s work in a fallen world.

Scholars of intemational- relations history continue to explain in almost
exclusively secular terms the foreign policies of a man who himself insisted that faith was
the foundation for all his international actions. Marxist historians such as N. Gordon
Levin argue that religion was merely a pretense on the part of the president to establish a
world capitalist economic order. The central and founding motivation was economic
hegemony, not ideology.9 Robert S. MacNamara and James G. Blight credit Wilson’s
grand vision for a new world to his secular life and experience in the post-Civil War
South. They juxtapose this grand vision birthed by secular America with the narrow,
petty, Presbyterian morality of the president which doomed it to failure.‘0 This is
consistent with much of the scholarly explanation which fails to see that there is no
juxtaposition between the two visions in Wilson. They continue to explain in rational
terms the foreign policies of a man who, when an aide suggested that his reparations
policy had logical inconsistencies, snapped “I don’t give a damn for logic.”

Other scholars fall into variations of the categories of thought described above.
Lloyd Ambrosius recognizes the existence of a religious tradition but places the
foundation for “Wilsonianism” on the president’s scholarship in history and American
politics. He notes that modern scholars do not understand Wilson’s use of language and

often accuse him of hypocrisy, but argues the key is to be found in the president’s

 

9N. Gordon Levin, Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics, (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1968).

l0Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight, Wilson’s Ghost, (New York, Public Affairs, 2001)

4

 

 

 

 

examine I.

note the p:

bower. s

 

 

scholarly record. He fails to note that this record itself is founded on a deeper layer
created by the president’s faith.ll Religion professor P. C. Kemeny notes Wilson’s
comfort with religion in a secular context and how that fueled his views of educational
reform while at Princeton. He does not look closely at how the future president’s faith
acted upon his thinking processes, which Keynes observed, and, like Mulder, does not
examine the Wilson presidency at all.‘2 Edwin Weinstein and Kendrick Clements both
note the president’s tendency to view the world from a religious perspective. They,
however, see that view as emerging only when the president’s health was in decline and
he was unable to approach the world from a more reasonable frame of mind. In this view
Wilson’s religion was a safe emotional place to go when his stroke incapacitated his
greater mental faculties.l3 Thomas Knock, Daniel Stid, Phyllis Levin and Margaret
MacMillan, all provide further variations on the approaches previously discussed.”

This dissertation is an attempt to let Wilson be Wilson, the man who throughout
his life used such terms as “covenant” and “freedom” not in terms of their modern secular
definitions but in terms of a very specific Calvinist rhetorical tradition, one largely

unfamiliar today, especially among scholars of American foreign relations. The

 

llLloyd E.Ambrosius, Wilsonianigm: Woodrow Wilson And His Legacy In American Foreign
Relations, (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).

l2P. C. Kemeny, Princeton in the Nation’s Service, Religious Ideals and Educational Practice,
1868-1928, (New York, Oxford University Press, 1998).

l3Edwin A.Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson, A Medical and Psychological Biography, (Princeton,
Princeton University Press, 1981) and Kendrick A.C1ements, Woodrow Wilson, World Statesman

(Chicago, Ivan R. Dee, 1999).

 

I"1"homasJ. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson a‘nd thfluest for a New World Order,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), Daniel D. Stid, The President as Staman, Woodrow Wilson
and the Constitution, (University Press of Kansas, 1998), Phyllis Lee Levin, Editflnd Woodrow, (New
York, Scribner, 2001), Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919. Six Months That Changed the World, (New York,
Random House, 2001).

 

 

n
m—v“ ‘Tvv "J.

 

mderlvzng

' |
the tandem;
gloialism c-
ow. histont

The '.
reticular Pr
limlf). at :5
1100330“. a:
3031 his 10;;
R1501 percc
1111?; “iih 1'11:

“3:1 111 \1 thl'

 

underlying assumption of this work is that to understand Wilson it is necessary to resist
the tendency to see him in terms of twenty-first century concerns such as corporate
globalism or American unilateralism. Historians should seek instead to return him to his
own historical context, that of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The thesis of this dissertation is that the future president was immersed in a
particular Princeton and Southern Presbyterian tradition which he absorbed, quite
literally, at the knees of his father, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, his devout mother, Janet
Woodrow, and the religiously active clergy, family and friends he was surrounded by
from his youth onward. This tradition and these influences shaped the way that Woodrow
Wilson perceived the world. Indeed, as Link has written, it was almost as if Wilson was
born with these convictions. They shaped his concepts of effective leadership and the
way in which he used language. They shaped the way in which he reasoned, and in
particular they accustomed him to the theological principle of antinomy: that two
principles could both be right even when others, looking at them in the light of logic
rather than faith, found them mutually contradictory. His Presbyterianism made him
believe that “law” was a living embodiment of personal conscience and spirit, not a rigid
matter of words, statutes, and precedents. True freedom was obedience to divine order,
and he used “covenant” not as an elegant synonym for “treaty” but rather in its full Old
and New Testament meaning of nations, and peoples accepting divine order in return for
divine blessings. These convictions ultimately made him believe he was Providentially
chosen to bring that divinely ordered freedom to the nations and peoples of the earth, by
peaceful means if possible but through force if necessary.

Religion is not the whole story of Woodrow Wilson. It is one thread in the

 

 

ingest}: B‘

'srszooc'
foreign rel.-
contcxt that
Inmate in

Presbjttcnzr.

“rich 1115:. ll

 

 

tapestry. But it is the part of the tapestry of this complex, contradictory man least
understood by current historians and least well integrated into current scholarship on his
foreign relations. The task of restoring the president and his policies to the religious
context that helped to form them is difficult but not impossible. There is a substantial
literature in the field of American religious history on Princeton and Southern
Presbyterianism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the tradition from
which Wilson came and which would always remain an integral part of him. This
literature is rarely cited in studies of his foreign policy, but is only one example of the
resources that can be deployed profitably by the international historian. Other resources
are denominational archives, such as the Presbyterian Historical Society’s, in which
manuscripts and printed material specific to Wilson’s tradition are stored. The
eyewitness accounts of those who worked closely with the president, found in their public
papers, provide further evidence of the religious character of Wilson’s thought.

Before any new sources can be integrated effectively with prevailing scholarship,
however, historians must become more comfortable with the reality of a believing,
practicing, evangelical Christian in the White House. It is not easy for scholars trained in
the secular, rational study of foreign relations to deal with a president who read his wife a
poem — and effitsively thanked its author — that compared him to David, King of Israel,
and asserted that “His speech was voice of human man, His thoughts the words of living
God.” Yet the poem and the correspondence concerning it are in volume 41 of Link’s
edition of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, available since 1983. Historians may find the
language, tone and content of such material uncomfortable and, indeed, embarrassing.

But they simply cannot continue to ignore it because it does not fit their own visions of a

 

 

" A
"41>; UIJ:

other secL

 

realist or an idealist or a liberal-capitalist or a progressive-internationalist or any of the

other secular labels applied to Wilson.

C_h_apter 1: The Development of Woodrow Wilson’s Thought to 1913

On the morning of March 4, 1913, one thousand Princeton undergraduates
escorted Woodrow Wilson from the Shoreham Hotel to the United States Capitol
building to be sworn in as the twenty-eighth President of the United States.1 The man
taking the oath of ofiice that morning held deep religious beliefs that would eventually
compel him to attempt the reorganization of the entire world.

To understand Wilson and his approach to foreign policy requires an awareness of
the religious convictions that informed his world view, his ideals, his assumptions and
prejudices. His religion was inseparable from the other aspects of his philosophy. His
biographer, Arthur S. Link, stated that faith was a way of life for Wilson. It remained so
throughout his life. He was unshaken by the theological storms of the later half of the
nineteenth century. “Historical criticism and the evolutionary hypothesis, which he
readily accepted, only strengthened his belief in revelation and the truth of scriptures.”2
God ordered the affairs of men after his own fashion. Faith was the means of making
sense out of chaos. Faith in God gave ultimate meaning to the affairs of men. In
December 1918, Wilson spoke to a group of Free Church leaders in London. “I think one

would go crazy if he did not believe in Providence. It would be a maze without a clue.

 

'Frederic Yates, Volume 27, 155, Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Volumes 1- 68, Arthur S. Link,
Editor, (Princeton University Press, 1966 -l978).

2Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson, A Brief Biography, (Cleveland, Ohio, The World Publishing
Co., 1963) 27.

Unless there were some supreme guidance we would despair of the results of human
counsel.”3 In times of crisis and physical breakdown the president retreated to this
foundational world view. In his triumphs it was always an essential part of the tapestry of
his thought.

This religious outlook on life came to Wilson as naturally as breath. Born
December 28, 1856, in Staunton, Virginia, he was the first son of Presbyterian minister
Joseph Ruggles Wilson and Hattie Woodrow Wilson. He grew to maturity surrounded by
people who took their religion seriously. His father was pastor of the First Presbyterian
Churchof Staunton, the most prominent pulpit in the Lexington Presbytery.4 His
ancestors on his mother’s side included several generations of Presbyterian ministers.5
Shortly after Woodrow’s birth the family moved to Augusta, Georgia, where J. R. Wilson
continued to advance within the Presbyterian Church. When Woodrow was four years
old the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America held its first General
Assembly in the Augusta church and elected Reverend Wilson to the office of Permanent
Clerk. He continued to hold high office in the Southern Church, including Moderator, its
highest office, until shortly before his death in 1903.6 Joseph Wilson was the single
greatest influence in his son’s life.

Woodrow Wilson always believed that he held an orthodox evangelical faith even

 

3Woodrow Wilson, Remarks in London to Free Church Leaders, December 28, 1918, Papers, Vol.
53, 530.

‘For a further discussion on Joseph Wilson and the specifics of both his theology and the influence
he had on his son see; John Mulder, Joseph Ruggles Wilson: Southern Presbyterian Patriarch, Journal Of

Presbflerian Histog, Vol. # 52, 1974.

5Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson Life and Letters, Youth 1856-1890 (Garden City, N.Y.,
Doubleday, Page and Co., 1927) 1.

“Mulder, Woodrow Wilson, The Years Of Prepgation, 10.

10

as the changing times forced him to negotiate other views. He held Charles Hodge,7 his
father’s mentor and a chief defender of traditional American Calvinism at Princeton, in
high regard. Hodge’s combination of intellectual strength and fidelity to the faith
impressed him.8 Academic inquiry did not pose any obstacle to Wilson’s faith. On the
contrary, he held contradiction explainable in mystery, drawing a distinction between the
intellectual difficulties of faith and faith itself. In 1889, he confided in his journal that; “I
saw the intellectual difficulties, but I was not troubled by them: they seemed to have no
connection with my faith in the essentials of the religion I had been taught. Unorthodox in
the reading of the standards of the faith, I am nevertheless orthodox in my faith.”9 That
Wilson believed his faith was orthodox was shown by his statements on the Bible and
Divine Providence. He understood the nuances of the theology in which he had been
raised. Occasionally in his later speeches he took time to show his audience that he
understood their theological positions. In Youth and Christian Progress Wilson
commented with approval on the exclusion of a group of Unitarian ministers at the Inter-
Church Conference on Federation;

1 spoke for a few moments with several gentlemen of those faiths which

teach salvation by character. I regard such an enterprise as one of

despair. . . . I would not want to ofler [my character] as a certificate of my

salvation. If I started out to make character I would be a prig. Character

is a by product. If one sets out to make a by product by itself for itself he

 

7Mark Noll, The Princeton Theology. 1812 - 1921, (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1983) 14.
Hodge has until recently been an assigned text in conservative Presbyterian seminaries.

‘Shorthand Diary, September 10, 1876, PWW, Vol. 1, 191.

°Confidential Journal, December 28, 1889, PWW, Vol. 6, 462-463.

11

 

 

L"

dame t
med to d.

i ‘n
m;- o. ..

as the sir:

. 3,, “.- ‘1
mug-ACLU

v. 5
‘ i ’ I '-
hill-£3 ill} n

grin?!—

' n ,r
5“,:qu 1

spoils the main product. . . . A church that pads itself with doctrine and

thus betakes itself out of direct contact with the son of God is far less

eflective than a church that is in direct contact with Christ. '0
While claiming to decry hidebound doctrine, he used the occasion to lay out the essential
doctrine of his evangelical faith. This passage, which historian John Milton Cooper has
cited to document Wilson’s alleged lack of interest in theology,” displays instead his
grasp of his own theology and the differences between Protestant denominations, as well
as the shrewdness with which he could marshal that knowledge in his speeches.

Critics of the idea that religious views influenced Wilson point to the great
comfort with which he used non-theological political language. They note that he
rejected the ministry when it would have been natural and consistent for him, if
influenced by his religion, to follow the path of his father, his uncle and so many of his
Woodrow and Wilson forebears. This argument fails to take into account the degree to
which his religion was at home in the world. Wilson’s language and career that seem
secular to most modern historians only clothed the religious ideas that were his
intellectual foundations. Theological ideas defined the essential character of the words he
used and often the actions he took. The distinction between “secular” and “religious” that
Cooper and many other modern historians attempt to make simply did not exist in

Wilson’s mind, as a young man, as a scholar, or as president of the United States.”

 

l0Two news reports of an address in New York, November 19, 1905, PWW, Vol. 16, p. 228 &
230.

”John Milton Cooper, The Warrior and The Priest, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard
University Press, 1983) 19.

”Perhaps the most thorough argument against placing any importance on religious influence when

examining Wilson’s politics is Niels Aage Thorsen, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson. 1875-1910,
(Princeton University Press, 1988). Thorsen demonstrates the problem secular historians face in making the

12

Religion robed in secular garb was not unique to Wilson. The Presbyterianism
that he inherited from his father was equally comfortable with the world. There was very
little sacred/secular division in this theological outlook. The elder Wilson’s sermons, like
those of Calvin, Knox or Edwards, were as likely to touch on business or statesmanship
as a way to demonstrate Christian faith as they were to speak of the more “spiritual”
matters that modern secular historians would recognize as religious.

Woodrow quite naturally synthesized his faith with what he believed to be his life
mission: politics. In 1886 he explicitly compared the effective methods of politicians
with those of preachers. The “success of great popular preachers contains a lesson for the
students of politics. . . . ” A political leader should take the example of the great
preachers by adapting their methods to politics, bypassing official channels and
identifying directly with constituents to win them to the cause.'3 Wilson sent this article
to his father, who compared the recommendations of the article favorably to his own
methods of theological inquiry. Joseph Wilson encouraged his son to adopt the same
approach that he [the father] had used pursuing theological truth to his [Woodrow’s]
inquiry into political truth.l4

Wilson again explicitly connected his theological tradition to his political life by

 

connection between Wilson’s religion and his political thought. He argues that the word “covenant” was
not a religious concept in Wilson’s mind because his religious background was Pauline and not Abrahamic.
The Presbyterian idea of “covenant”, however, was both Pauline and Abrahamic. Thorsen’s secular
prejudice is even more evident when he argues that ascribing importance to Wilson’s religion makes him
“premodern” and takes away from the substance of his modern political thought. This line of argument
does not take Wilson’s intellectual antinomy into account, projects a sacred/secular divide that did not exist
in Wilson’s mind and displays a “modern” prejudice against placing any substantial importance upon
religious belief in Wilson’s political language. The evidence from Wilson’s private writings, the private
writings of those who knew him and the overall course of his life argues against this approach.

”0fthe Study ofPolitics, November 25, 1886, wa, Vol. 5, 399.

l"J. R. Wilson, letter, March 12, 1887, PWW, Vol. 5, 467.

13

portraying Calvinist theological thought and John Calvin himself in political terms in a
set of Bryn Mawr College lecture notes prepared in 1887. To Professor Wilson, Calvin’s
theology was a political philosophy, and Calvin himself the “great reforming Christian
statesman?” The future president referred to the Genevian reforms in political, social
and even literary, rather than theological, terms. The praise which Wilson lavished upon
Calvin as an international reformer reached the point where Wilson cited the Institutes of
the Christian Religion as the cornerstone of French literature.”

That the young professor considered a foundational work of Protestant theology
the cornerstone of literature in a Roman Catholic nation shows the future president’s bias
in favor of the Reformed faith, to say nothing of his ignorance of French history and
culture. But these notes also demonstrate the esteem with which he regarded Calvin’s
example as a statesman. Wilson believed that Geneva had produced a “government
founded upon the authority of the congregation, centering in the church and the school,
constituting as complete a fusion of church and state and as complete a subjection of the
individual to humanity as ever existed in Greece or Rome.” That government had
international influence: “[The French Calvinists’] participation in politics was an almost
necessary outcome of their adherence to the faith of the great Christian statesman of
”17

Geneva: their work promised to be a reconstruction of the society as his had been.

Calvin’s Geneva was ordered by a political theology: to reconstruct the world on the

 

l’Wilson, Calvin—Geneva, France, April 14, 1887, PWW, Vol. 5, 488. This was not unique to
Wilson. Calvin’s theology has always been paired with political philosophy. See Michael Walzer, T_he
Revolution of the Saints. (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1965) and for a more
recent citation, Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey, History of Political Philosophy. (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1987).

"Calvin—Geneva, April 14, 1887, PWW, Vol. 5, 488-490.

ITahiti—Geneva, April 14, 1887, PWW, Vol. 5, 488-490.

14

pattern of God’s covenant. To Wilson, though he had not yet fully formed his own
political and international views, Calvinist Christianity was inherently political and
international in its mission. His “Christian statesman,” was committed to social and
political reform. That statesman must work to reconstruct his own society in covenantal
patterns. If given the opportunity, he would reconstruct the world.

Wilson’s views of Calvin were shared by his father. Two years before
Woodrow’s lectures at Bryn Mawr, the elder Wilson delivered an address to the Board of
Directors of Southwestern Presbyterian Seminary. Father and son collaborated on this
project with Woodrow providing the outline and recommending content.” In the speech
Rev. Wilson described his own theology. He praised Zwingli, Knox, Huss, Latimer and
other Protestant reformers in general terms. When it came to Calvin and Calvin’s
Geneva, however, he devoted two printed pages to describing the reformer, his
government and his theology. Rev. Wilson compared Geneva with Nicene era
Alexandria and Calvin to Athanasius, the hero of the council of Nicea. He did not stop
there:

”[ Calvin ’s ] Geneva that modern but improved Athanasian Alexandria—

the theology which fed the faith and fanned the hopes and fortified the

courage of a ‘thus-saith-the-Lord’ ancestry, the intelligence, the

intrepidity, the inspiring activity of whose robust piety have never been

excelled— the well-tried-theology which now signalizes our unequaled

 

"Jan. 15, 1885; Dec. 17, 1884; PWW, Vol. 3, 549, 612-613. Inaugural Address, delivered before
the board of directors of the Southwestern Presbyterian Seminary, June, 1885, Rhodes College archives,
Memphis, Tenn.

15

 

 

Both 1104
form of g.
Parieipa:
at 11,,
ifiilclpati i;
“‘36 unit
strict} an

ifml’td n

Catechisms and pre-eminent Confession’ 9 . . . the theology that has

steadfastly refused to tolerate at the altar of a sin bearing sacrifice, any

Priest; or on the throne of redeeming sovereignty, any King; or within the

sanctuary of the Soul itself any Prophet— who shall shadow however

dimly, or rival, however distantly, the all-sufficient Lord Jesus Christ. . .

. H20
Both Woodrow’s Bryn Mawr notes and his father’s inaugural address present Calvin’s
form of government as more important than his explicitly theological doctrines.
Participation in politics was a necessary, not an accidental, outcome of this Calvinist
faith. The Christian politician acted from a faith in God and in accordance with an
anticipation of the coming of a covenantal international world order. These principles
were universal. Calvin’s conception of order went beyond the church. It was an order for
society and the world. A nineteenth or twentieth century Presbyterian statesman could
demand no less of himself.

This theology was the root of Wilson’s concept of order. His views on reform,
progress, and revolution are found in the Presbyterian concepts of order and freedom.
Freedom involved bringing chaos into order through obedience to God. Wilson’s concept
that “Obedience is Liberty’mhas made his views on government very hard to categorize

9" 66

by those who have tried to label him as “progressive, conservative,” “Hamiltonian,” or

“J effersonian.”

 

”The Westminster Confession of Faith

20Joseph Wilson, Inaugural Address.

2|Confidential Journal, December 29, 1889, PWW, Vol. 6, 463-464.

16

As President of Princeton Wilson evidenced these views and patterns from his
religious background already seen in him as a young man and as a junior faculty member
at Bryn Mawr. Students had hoped that the first layman president would suspend the
requirement for compulsory chapel. While Wilson did suspend one Sunday afternoon
service, he stiffened the chapel attendance requirements for the remaining services.
When a group of students complained, requesting that chapel be made optional, he gave
them a response consistent with his ideas on political liberty. “Why, gentlemen, it is

992?.

optional. If you wish to go to chapel you may. This was freedom in the Calvinist
context of order. The students were free only to do the right thing. Biblical law
instructed the believer how to live following salvation and set the pattern for organizing
church, government, and community. In this order alone was true liberty. In a note to his
confidential diary in 1889, Wilson wrote that freedom was being free to do right. It was
freedom to respect authority and do right to the poor, it was a law of liberty. This
doctrine that “obedience is liberty”23 comes directly from Calvin’s Institutes: “Obedience
to the law of liberty is not only instructive it brings the reward of freedom.”24
In this theological-political system, obedience was primarily to the divine order
administrated through conscience. It superceded blind political obedience. Human

institutions were inherently tainted with corruption. For this reason, Wilson generally did

not trust human governments. The elect, with scripture, had the ability to instruct, and if

 

22Bragdon, Woodrow Wilson: The Agademic Years, 299.
23Political Liberty, PWW, Vol. 6, 463-464.

2‘John Calvin, Institutes of The Christian Religion, (Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1960) Book
2, 369-376.

 

17

 

 

£013.71“;

beiierer.

  

ifit resist:
the world :

tmerdtit.

Trude '

fit it

 

necessary oppose, king as well as priest.25 The individual Christian was accountable to
God, the Bible, and conscience, before he or she was accountable to any human authority.
The Holy Spirit and Scripture formed the conscience of the individual believer.26 Human
government that ordered itself by God’s pattern should be obeyed, but the individual
believer, accountable to God and conscience, had to bypass or disregard human authority
if it resisted this divine order. The mission and primary goal of all believers was to bring
the world into liberty by means of God’s covenantal order. These views would have
tremendous implications when Wilson became president and was faced with the
challenge of chaotic international situations. Divinely charged in his own mind with
bringing order, but limited by the inflexibility of national and international law, he fell
back on these higher laws and reinterpreted human law to fit. Foreshadowing the
frustration he would express to his colleagues at Versailles who argued there was a fixed
and logical approach to international law, the young Wilson wrote: “Logic is no fact: it is
thought given straight air lines, elevated above fact. Politics is made up of relationships
and Law is the mirror of those relationships. . . . Law changes and so does liberty.”27
Historian Harley Notter has commented on the importance with which the

president invested the word “covenant.”28 The concept of “covenant” was Wilson’s

 

25A further discussion of this is found in W. Fred Graham, The Constructive Revolutiopayry. John
Calvin and His Socio-Economic Impact, (Lansing, Michigan, Michigan State University Press, 1987)

“Address in Denver on the Bible, May 7, 1911, wa, v61. 23, 1220.

”Political Liberty, wa, v61. 6, 464.

. 2"Harley Notter, The Origins of The Foreign Policy of Woodrow Wilson, (New York, The Johns
Horakins Press, 1937) 16.

18

starting place for the integration of the sacred and the secular.29 He embraced Southern
Presbyterian terminology which was theological in nature but commonly applied by
Presbyterians in a political context. “Covenant,” derived from the Old Testament,
reinforced and redirected by Paul’s writings in the New Testament to focus on the “whole
earth” rather than Israel, redefined during the Reformation, and fueled by the seventeenth
century Scottish Covenanters was a word that held deep meaning to Wilson. The
expression was widely used by both Princeton and Southern Presbyterian theologians.
Covenant theology delineated an interconnected relationship between the
individual, church, society, government and God. The idea of covenant organized an
entire Biblical hermeneutic.30 God had set the world under his authority to operate within
this system of legal covenants: God with man, God with creation, man with man.
Obedience to these covenants would produce blessing, prosperity, peace and was
ultimately a sign of election by God for eternal salvation; rebellion would produce the
opposite. God ordered the universe, history and his dealings with humankind through
these interconnected covenants. Human beings were either “blessed” or “cursed” based
upon their adherence. Leaders chosen by God must understand this covenantal plan.

They were responsible to lead the people into this better world order.

 

2" For further examination of this concept see chapter 1 of John Mulder, Woodrow Wilson. The
Years Of Preparation, (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1978). Also see Michael
Walzer, Mevolution of the Saints, (Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1965). Two
further works which detail this theological pattern are 0. Palmer Robertson, The Christ Of The Covenpnt_s,
(Phillipsburg, New Jersey, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1980), and David F. Wells, Ed.,
Southern Reformed Theology, (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Book House, 1989).

30John M. Mulder, Woodrow Wilson, The Years of Preparation, (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton
University Press, 1978) xiii.

19

Wilson grew up with this idea that God ordered the universe.31 Though the world
had fallen short of that divine order, God’s will would, nonetheless, bring the world to
conformity in time through the mediation of Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit and the
righteous actions of the elect. Bringing the world into a covenantal pattern was, to
Wilson, the purpose that directed all of human history. Though opposed by evil, this
order would ultimately prevail. This eschatology defined Wilson’s politics, particularly
his ideas of “progress” and “reform.” It also caused him to divide people into two camps.
A person either served the good purposes of God or the evil opposition to those purposes.

The covenant’s influence on the future president was not limited to the general
ideas common among Southern and Princeton Presbyterians. Wilson’s father explicitly

organized his theology and his politics around the idea of the covenant.32

He preached the
fixed order of God’s universe and the covenantal order of redemption.33 To Joseph
Wilson covenant explained social order, gender rules, racial and class positioning, and
human responsibility. Covenant explained how things ought to be in light of God’s
sovereignty. Both Joseph and Woodrow used this word with theological and political
meaning simultaneously. They shared a natural progression from the idea of a covenant
of the elect, to a national covenant, to an international covenant. They considered this

connection self-evident and would have recognized no need to make it apparent.

Though father and son saw the terms of the covenant as clear and absolute,

 

3|Joseph Wilson, like his contemporaries spent much time teaching on the order brought about by
the gospel covenant. See as examples the handwritten manuscripts The Heavenly Farmer, page 18, Follow
Me, page 11, James 1:25, page 9 and addendum, WWPLC, Reel 523.

32John Mulder, Woodrow Wilson, 7-9.
”Joseph R. Wilson, The Sun 0f Righteousness, June 13, 1880, handwritten sermon manuscript,

The Heavenly Farmer, 1882, sermon manuscript, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Library of Congress,
Microfilm, Reel 523..

20

another aspect of Presbyterian Calvinist theology complicated this clarity: the principle of
antinomy. Scripture was by definition infallible and could not be contradictory.
Antinomy made sense of the seeming contradictions of scripture by attributing them to
the limitation of human understanding. As a respected Calvinist theologian explained
this concept: “The whole point of an antinomy . . . is that it is not a real contradiction,
though it looks like one. It is an apparent incompatibility between two truths.”34 The
modernist approach to religion was to make the mystery and miracles of the Bible
explainable by materialism and science; the fundamentalist approach reduced religion to
what the Wilsons considered a facile, anti-intellectual leap of faith. Their form of
Presbyterianism taught them to accept that truths could still be valid truths while
maintaining some manner of tension with each other. The appearance of contradiction, in
foreign policy or in theology, merely pointed to a truth that required the simultaneous
holding of both points of view.35 It was a “living” truth which required the believer to

grasp its “spirit.”36

 

1“J. I. Packer, Evangelism and The Sovereignty of God, (Downers Grove, Illinois, Inter Varsity
Press, 1961) 18-19.

3SAnother concept which parallels antinomy in Calvinist theology is the idea of concursus. This

describes a cooperative dualism between two ideas which both explain something but which are in harmony
together. This was developed among the Princeton Theologians, particularly Wilson’s contemporary at
Princeton Seminary, Benjamin Warfield. While both of these dualisms are present in Wilson, the idea of
antinomy seems to better explain the inner intellectual conflicts which Wilson demonstrated. Wilson’s
British political contemporary Arthur J. Balfour, a student of theology and philosophy in his own right,
SPOke of another version of this concept in his first set of Gifford Lectures when he referred to the doctrine
of congruity. Balfour tied it into his overall understanding of how people arrive at belief. He argued that
this manner of theological thought produced progress through the interaction of competing ideas. For
further examination of this doctrine of congruity see, Arthur J. Balfour, Theism and Humanism, (Seattle,
Inkling Books, 2000) 143-152. For a further examination of the doctrine of concursus see, Louis Berkhof,
Systematic Theology, (Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1991), Mark Noll, The Princeton
Theology, 1812 - 1921, (Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1983), Benjamin B. Warfield, Calvin 's
Doctrine of Creation, The Works of Beniamin B. Warfield, Volume 5, (Oxford University Press, 1931).

3"For an example of this thinking see, Political Liberty, PWW, Vol. 6, 464.

21

Reverend Wilson passed on this pattern of thinking to his son. He, like his
Calvinist contemporaries, grasped the essential theological antinomy upon which their
system was founded, the conflict between human free will and God’s sovereign election.
He asserted that a Calvinist believer must follow these two seemingly incompatible
truths, human responsibility and divine predestination, but need not reconcile them, only
believe them.37 This basic intellectual tension provided a cornerstone upon which other
apparently contradictory ideas could be accommodated.

Once embraced, antinomy did not confine itself merely to the sphere of religion.
The elder Wilson applied it with to the workings of God in society. Believing that
Providence ordered the affairs of men, he was forced to grapple with the terrible
contradictions to Providence that he saw in the great tragedies that had engulfed southern
society following the Civil War. He explained the apparent failure of God’s providence to
his congregation as a failure of human understanding of God’s purposes: “However God
may sometimes am to have forgotten you. This which troubles you is nothing __rmr_e
than an appearance. Providences are often seemingly adverse, as you for the moment and
in piecemeal look at them, but they are never pgafly adverse.”38 Scripture and Providence
could not fail in reality, though it might appear so. The only real failure was flawed and
limited humanity’s inability to comprehend God’s ultimate unified purpose.

Antinomy turned the strict legal sense of covenant into an order of the heart. It
became a spiritual, not a human legal, “structure.” It owed ultimate allegiance only to the

moral authority of God himself. It created an inner sense of order that often compelled

 

3”’Joseph Wilson, Inaugpgal Address, June 1885, WWPLC.

3'Joseph Ruggles Wilson, Sermon on Mwhi 3:17, unpublished sermon, date uncertain, WWPLC.

22

“’1

 

 

7L4

preside:
his attic
Persona
appear:
law,’ vi.
pre: 21:33

Is: -." \
“0.4.10:

cantcmp.

 

6P,“

president Wilson to act upon his sense of duty to God and then find a secular rationale for
his action later. This act toward God was concurrent with human law but superceded it.
Personal channels which were organic and relational and which bypassed legal structures
appealed to Wilson. He could honor his allegiance to God and fulfill the “spirit of the
law,” while avoiding the complications that the facts of the law as others interpreted it
presented. And he could do this with confidence in his heart that he was never in actual
violation of the law. This pattern of thought toward political matters caused
contemporaries to see in him inconsistency, or worse, hypocrisy. He, on the other hand,
remained certain that he acted from a single set of principles. Logically contradictory
ideas coexisted comfortably in his mind, balanced in a tension that he accepted as God’s
will. “Logic is no fact: it is thought given straight air lines, elevated above fact.”39
Antinomy created an inner, personal, and subjective picture of truth in Wilson’s
mind. It explains, in part, the statement by Wilson that he “was not orthodox in his
reading of the standards of the faith but orthodox in” his faith.40 To a Calvinist believer
who wrestled with theological antinomy in the conflict between justice and mercy, for
example, the intellectual balance that the person finally arrived at, the point that seemed
to be the appropriate point of truthful tension between the two, determined whether the
action that person took in a given situation was to call for punishment or forgiveness.
This does not mean that the individual would have recognized that he or she was acting

subjectively. To the individual holding this truth, though it may be personal and

subjective, it seemed as if it should be as clear to others as it was in his or her own mind.

 

39Political Liberty

”PWW, Vol. 16, 462-463.

23

Since the scripture and historic creeds had spelled out the principles which were in
tension, and since others Within the Presbyterian church generally agreed upon those
principles, the subjective point of balance between the two seemed to be self—evident.“
This mystery was something Presbyterians assumed themselves to have agreed upon.
When Wilson was fully engaged with conflicting points of view, physically and
emotionally well, he would often use this pattern of analysis to compromise or add
another perspective to his thinking process. In doing so he remained fully convinced that
he was acting in accordance with “principle.” When he was in crisis, or ill, and kept
away from intellectual complications, he often became intransigent and morally
simplistic, citing that same “principle” as his justification.

Wilson’s antinomy-ian“2 approach to principle conveyed the conviction that the
truth he must obey was, in part, beyond human language or human ability to express fully.
The words themselves were expressions of contradiction held together in mystery. On the
other hand, the truth behind the words was self-evident to the elect. Wilson could
negotiate the difficulties of his faith with the confident assurance of his own inner clarity.
Puzzled that others had difficulty finding this clarity, he commented on this inner place of
faith he had reached. “1 am capable, it would seem, of being satisfied spiritually without
being satisfied intellectually.”43 Yet this was not altogether true. Wilson was

intellectually and spiritually satisfied with mystery. His understanding of Calvinist

 

"For a study of this type of thinking among evangelicals in America see, Christian Smith,
American Evangelicalism, Embattled and Thriving, (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1998).

42The word antinomy and the word antinomian have such distinctly different meanings, though
coming from the same Latin root, that I feel compelled to create a new word.

”December 28, 1889, PWW, Vol. 6, 462-463.

24

antinomy allowed him to move between disparate thoughts with a confidence that they
were not really inconsistent. Despite this mystery the principles remained clear in their
essentials to all believers. One needed only to do one’s duty, be faithful, work hard for
divine principles and all would work out in the end as God intended.

This antinomy-ian thinking process, when combined with a belief in divine
Providence, effectively elevated the opinions of the believer to the significance of divine
utterance. The equation of personal opinion with divine decree would not have been
conscious to Wilson and many of his coreligionists. Indeed the thought of doing so
would have been blasphemous to them. It was, however, the way they treated their
opinions when challenged. If forced to fight, they would argue over “principle” as if it
were the revealed word of God which they were defending, rejecting compromise as not
only immoral but heretical.

Wilson’s Presbyterian tradition placed a higher importance on the word than on
liturgy or institution. This emphasis included the written word of God and to an only
slightly lesser degree the word spoken by a divinely inspired messenger. Sunday
preaching among American evangelicals had developed into a fine art. The high
importance placed upon the word also included written contracts or covenants between
people. An examination of the constitutions and books of church order demonstrates that
the Covenanter tradition, and a high regard for covenants in general, was woven into the
very fabric of Presbyterian organization and structure. Wilson as a young man spent
much time writing constitutions and attempting to bring order to his life through
covenants. As a young man he formed “a solemn covenant” with his friend Charlie

Talcott that they would school all their powers and passions for the work of establishing

25

the principles they held in common.44 Wilson took this high regard for the word and
applied it to words in general. His article Mere Literature, published in the Atlantic in
1893, articulated a religious view of language regarding literature in general even as
others, according to Wilson, disparaged it as “mere literature.”45

Language was vital because the intuitive nature of the covenant required a
messenger to explain and establish it. Wilson had been taught from infancy about the
divine messengers of the Bible: Moses, the prophets and the ultimate messenger, Jesus.
Christ. His childhood was filled with stories of the Reformed heroes of the past: Luther,
Calvin, Zwingli, Jonathan Edwards. In addition, growing up in the south, he heard the
stories of “great Christian leaders” of Virginia such as Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson and
Robert E. Lee. Finally, the very structure of the church in which Wilson grew up required
an inspired leader who could motivate a group of elders and get his vision enacted while
still adhering to the form of constitutional government.

The emphasis on the messenger set up another antinomy in Wilson’s mind
between the individual and the organization. Though order within the organization must
always be maintained, a divine messenger, as an individual, must emerge preeminent for
that order to be truly functional. Wilson put great faith in messengers. The inspired
leader supported by a loyal constitutional body was for him the ideal method for bringing
God’s covenantal order to earth. Most important, believing that he was a divinely called

messenger provided an outlet for action that relieved the intellectual tension set up by the

 

“Letter to Ellen Axson, October 30, 1883, PWW, Vol. 2, 499-505.

”Mere Literature, June 17, 1893, PWW, Vol. 8, 240-252.

26

antinomy of his inner thinking process."6

Much of Wilson’s early writing invoked the idea of the “great man” or divine
messenger. Images including statesman, prophet and soldier appear in the first set of
articles that Wilson wrote, at age nineteen, published in his father’s newspaper, the
Wilmington North Carolina Presbyterian. From August 11, 1876, until January 30,
1877, the younger Wilson wrote seven articles and one speech, The Ideal Statesman.
These early essays illuminate the way in which he perceived the world, religion and God.
They also show the early views that he held of his personal mission in life. Emerging
from the cocoon of his religious childhood these writings stand as a testimony to his
thought as he entered adulthood. Though Wilson added to and complicated the ideas
expressed in these early writings, he never abandoned this basic view of the world which
he had developed in childhood. In a crisis he would often return to the simpler language
of the good versus evil morality of these first articles.

Whatever dualism Wilson had inherited by way of Calvinist antinomy, he did not
embrace the “sacred v. secular” divide of pietist Christianity. His faith was fully engaged
with human culture. The essay, Work-Day Religion, published August 11, 1876, attacked
those who reserved their religion for holy times and places. In it Wilson challenged his
readers to make no separation in life between the “Sabbath” and the rest of the week.

True religion was a “religion pervading every act — which is carried with us into every

 

“Wilson’s views on language as a method of governing as well as how he saw inspired leadership
using this in Government can be found in his essay, Government By Debate, (1882) PWW, Vol. 2, 159-275.
A particular look at section IV dealing with Webster, Calhoun and Clay demonstrates Wilson‘s thought on
this pattern. Other examples are found in much of Wilson’s writing on both leaders, such as Mr. Gladstone,
A Character Sketch, (1880) PWW, Vol. 1, 624- 642, and leadership such as his essay Leaders of Men,
(1889) PWW, Vol. 6, 646-671.

27

walk of life and made our one stay and hope.”47 Religion was holistic, it was an all of
life, every day, affair. It was also a great battle in which the righteous would ultimately
prevail.

The following week he wrote a second article, Christ’s Army. In it he spoke of
this hard-fought battle in the world in which the forces of evil, though great, would “quail
before the uplifted swords of the Spirit.” This battle would progress: “the army of saints
ever gains ground under divine generalship; now slowly, now rapidly, driving before
them with irresistible force the broken ranks of the enemy.” There was no place for
compromise on principle. “For there is no middle course, no neutrality. Each one must
enlist either with the followers of Christ or those of Satan.” Though the truth may be an
intellectual antinomy, it was still truth and any resistance to its “principle” was
opposition, not just to the idea of truth, but to Christ himself.48 These writings present a
foreshadowing of the adult Wilson, unable to compromise, who battled the trustees at
Princeton in 1907 and drove himself to the breaking point campaigning against the Senate
reservationists more than a decade later.

Wilson clearly believed he had been called to lead this army, as a messenger of
Christ. The specific wording of Christ ’5 Army demonstrates how the youthful Wilson
hoped to accomplish his mission. The term “sword of the Spirit” comes from the book of
Ephesians, where the sword symbolized the word of God.” The word of God was the

weapon of the messenger. The Apostle Paul instructed his readers to pray for his

 

"August 11, 1876, PWW, Vol. 1, 176-178.
4”August 17, 1876, PWW, Vol. 1, 180-181.

49Ephesians 6: 10-20.

28

boldness as he delivered the message as a good warrior/ambassador on his way to Rome
in chains. Wilson was familiar with this passage and its implications. While the Bible
recognized only one sword of the spirit, the word of God, Wilson pluralized and
individualized this idea. The focus of his article was on the heroic messengers rather than
the one historic divine message. This pattern became increasingly significant as he
matured and developed a larger understanding of his own calling as the messenger.

A Christian Statesman followed the two earlier essays. At age nineteen Wilson
was already looking to politics as the way of expressing his commitment to the divine
call. His father’s influence is evident. Joseph Wilson, like many preachers, repeated his
better sermons multiple times over the years. One, which Woodrow would have grown
up hearing, encouraged believers to serve as God’s messenger in many professions.
Foremost of the professions he listed was that of statesman. “These who lift their eyes to
the city Abraham saw which alone hath foundations and who stretch their arms towards
the conqueror’s crown Paul touched! An common ordinary believer, what is he? Well,
he is a statesman who believes in the testimony of history, and he shapes national policies
in accordance with the teachings of the past.”50 In another sermon preached several
times, once at Wilmington just two years before Wilson’s article, there was direct
encouragement to the seventeen year old son sitting before him in the pew. The sermon
touched upon the issue of the sonship of all believers to God.

Our present sonship, however, bears it would seem, but a faint

resemblance to that which is future. And in th_is obvious sense it is that “it

doth not yet appear what we shall be. ” The grain of corn you cast into the

 

”Joseph R. Wilson, Believers, Unpublished sermon, Wilson Papers, Library of Congress, circa
1870-1880.

29

ground. Would you ever dream of the grand stock. . . which shall spring

up fi'om the little grain. . . . 0r, thefeeble infant, laying helpless in its

mother’s arms; could you imagine . . . that it is ever to strengthen into the

broad-shouldered, large-minded man, by whose enterprise a nation is to

be enriched, or upon whose statesmanship it is to depend for its security

and its glory? Moses in the bulrushes - who could have foreseen in that

babe the Moses of Sinai and the wilderness? Small are all human

beginnings; in these beginnings is found only the obscures! prophecy."

Nurtured upon this diet of hope to be God’s messenger, perhaps a statesman
savior like Moses, Wilson made his pact with his friend Charlie Talcott. He recounted
this several years later in a letter to his future wife Ellen Axson: he “had then, as I still
have, a very earnest political creed and very pronounced political ambitions.” To this end
he and Talcott had formed “a solemn covenant” that they would school all their powers
and passions for the work of establishing the principles they held in common. The letter
goes on in Biblical language to describe this pivotal event in his life. Like the Hebrew
sons of Issachar52 he was determined to “know the times into which he has been born.”53

Wilson wrote A Christian Statesman during this time of great decision in his life.

This series of articles show that he had developed a comprehensive world view and a

defined purpose for his life. He would be a Christian statesman, a great national leader, a

 

"Joseph R. Wilson, [John 3:2, Unpublished sermon, Wilmington 1874, Wilson Papers, Library of
Congress.

521Chronicles 12:32, for those who hold that Wilson was only vaguely aware of theological
concepts, passages like this one are difficult to explain. The twenty year old Wilson used obscure Biblical
passages, which he was familiar with, in casual letters to friends, in this case his girlfriend and future wife.

”PWW, Vol. 2, 499-505.

30

 

 

 

. w-‘I
~ _--..V

meSSi’r-
motif:
1
in Apr?
I
shut n:
|

imam 1’

u},

mini;

.01: a

:45 '4 (‘

 

messenger of God, a modern day Moses. At the same time as these articles he also
worked on a speech, The Ideal Statesman, which appeared in Wilson’s private notebook
in April 1875 and was delivered as a speech in January 1877. Together these two works
show not only that Wilson saw his “calling” as that of a statesman but also how he
intertwined his father’s idea of mission and the Calvinist world view with his own
concept of what that statesman should be. The phrasing he used is a reflection of his
father’s: “. . .he does the deeds of the present in the declining light of the past not only
but in the rising dawn of the future as well.”54
This phrasing — using the past to work out the present and future, both a reflection of his
father’s wording, and a justification of his study of history as a way to a statesman’s
career — was used often by Wilson. In 1885 he wrote in a letter that his strength was the
ability to interpret the past into the practical life of the present and thereby impel people
by this methodology to achieve great things. To this end he was ready to accept the
Providential ordering of his life.55 The statesman was to be “prophetic,” his “faith is to be
in Christ his Saviour,” his truth was to be “in accordance with the Bible’s standard.” He
was to strive for perfection and “work and trust in God.”56

Bringing God’s covenantal order was the task at hand. Despite the complications
and intuitive nature of truth the statesman must stay with the truth and “earnestly seek aid

from God, who will surely hold him responsible for the course he pursues”57 God’s truth

 

s‘I’he Ideal Statesman, January 30, 1877, PWW, Vol.1, 244. Compare to Believers, Unpublished
sermon, circa 1870-1880, Wilson Papers, Library of Congress.

55February 24, 1885, PWW, Vol. 4, 287.

5"A Christian Statesman, PWW, Vol. 1, 188-189, The Ideal Statesman, PWW, Vol. 1, 62, 241-
245.

S7PWW, Vol. 1, 188.

31

 

 

 

l
|

and Gr
hating
intuitix
inside:
I
address
fixed a:
ubfin

meme

———___

 

and God’s order, not mere politics, motivates the Christian statesman. This sense of
having to give an account to God reinforced his inability to compromise. Logical or
intuitive, truth was truth. The Christian statesman was above partisan politics. That his
position and his principles could be considered “partisan” by others of good will was not
addressed in Wilson’s writings, as a youth or at any other period of his life. Truth was
fixed and must be found and obeyed. Unlike law or contracts, it did not evolve or change
with time. The divine messenger must be clear about the truth. The statesman/messenger
must come down from the mountain with the course set on tablets of stone and lead the
people to the promised land. He could not afford to compromise principle for he would
have to give an account.

For Wilson words themselves were the means of establishing covenantal order.
To do God’s will, to lead people or nations, the statesman used language. Rhetoric and
the power of persuasion were paramount. He was the ultimate preacher and must
“actively advocate truth.” The “statesman must possess an orator’s soul, an orator’s
words, an orator’s action. To nobleness of thought he must add nobleness of word and

conduct.”58

The New Testament principle of the “word made flesh” is evident in Wilson.
The word was embodied in a man. A great orator, a prophet, a preacher to the nations is
what a statesman should be. To Wilson, words not only had substance, they were
substance. They created reality.

Keynes, who observed Wilson during the Versailles negotiations, said that the

president had only words with no “flesh of life” to clothe the “commandments he had

 

S"PWW, Vol. 1, 188, 244.

32

 

 

 

hands:
nerds ‘
corner

tire. ‘gl

4 .
d w:

llliéiit’t

RP?”
M‘SH.
s‘fil

thundered fiom the White House.”59 What Keynes did not grasp was that to Wilson the
words were the “flesh of life.” The future president emerged from his teens with a deep
conviction that he was to be a Christian statesman. He clung fixedly to this conviction
throughout his life. Politics and religion united in Wilson with no more tension than any
of his other Presbyterian antinomies. He perceived his spiritual life as at its height during
the periods when he began to feel the call to politics most strongly.60

Organization, including government, was the other side of the Presbyterian
dialectic between the divine messenger and the regard for order. Wilson’s apparent
intellectual conflict between the individual and the organization has at times baffled
scholars as much as it did his contemporaries. Historian Henry May argued that Wilson’s
politics shified suddenly from conservative individualism to collective progressivism
between 1909-1914, and that his religious opinions changed as well." Apart from May’s
contested uses for “conservative” or “progressive,” this argument fails to allow for the
president’s thinking patterns. The apparent conflicts were evident in his thought
throughout his career. Yet in Wilson’s own mind these individualist and collectivist
ideas about social reform coexisted peacefully.

As an evangelical Protestant Woodrow Wilson gave the task priority over the
organization in religious matters. This certainly did not mean that the organization, in
Wilson’s case the Presbyterian church, was unimportant. What it did mean for

evangelicals was that the task of discipling the nations (the great commission), the

 

5"Keynes, Economic Conseguences, 43.

6°Shorthand Diary, June 3, 1877, PWW, Vol. 1, 272.

“Henry F. May, Protestant Churches and Industrial America, (New York, Harper & Brothers,
1949) 230.

33

 

_-...'
‘11”

 

 

. A.
:31.“ \l
unk’

s

359131.

message of the gospel, preceded and superceded the organization of the church.
Protestants had been ready to form new organizations when they felt the existing church
structure was impeding the task. Wilson took these religious priorities and adapted them
to his political task.62

Two speeches in 1909 illuminate the future president’s antinomy between the
corporate task which the organization was to serve and the individual messenger who
would motivate the organization to fulfill that task. He addressed McCormick
Theological Seminary in November on The Ministry and The Individual. In this speech
he appears to argue that the individual superceded the organization. The ministry had
only one responsibility, the message of salvation. That message was for individuals.
Society was saved one person at a time. He celebrated the heroic individual standing
against collective society and its institutions. This speech described the divine messenger
as Wilson understood it.63

A little more than five months earlier, however, on May 26, he had delivered an
anniversary address to the Hartford Theological Seminary. Its title was, The Present Task
of The Ministry, and it called just as eloquently for collective social responsibility. The
individual was part of a greater plan and must commit himself to the betterment of the
world for the good of all. The mission of Christianity was to save the whole world. The

individual was only a part of this great collective mission. Even personal salvation was

 

62The Great Commission calls Christians to “make disciples” of all the nations. That act involved
the kind of instruction implied in Isaiah 2, “teaching the nations.” By the nineteenth century the term
disciple was both a noun and a verb. “The Chinese students were ‘discipled’ by the missionary.” This is an
important concept for Wilson, if not an important word, in that he often tried as president to teach (disciple)
the nations in democracy. It makes more sense that he derived this idea from the Bible than from Pericles.

”November 2, 1909, PWW, Vol. 19, 477.

34

only part of the process through which the entire world was to be saved.64 This speech
focused on the other side of the antinomy, the great collective covenantal order that the
divine messenger was responsible to assist in bringing about through the church.

Henry May cites the November speech as evidence of Wilson’s non-progressive
non-social approach to religion and social issues. What emerges from a comparison of
the two speeches, however, is that Wilson held both ideas simultaneously and saw no
contradiction between them. During the November speech he referred to his May 26
speech without any indication that they represented a change in his thinking. He
reconciled May’s apparent contradiction by holding the organization and the individual in
antinomy. God’s covenants integrated the roles of church, government and individual
into an interconnected set of relationships. Men could try to understand these matters
rationally and would at times succeed. A lack of understanding, however, could not
excuse disobedience to the covenant by either individuals or organizations.

Covenantal order implemented through the empowered words of an inspired
messenger was the task, superceding human organization. The individual was
responsible for giving himself or herself to the task. The business of the Christian church
and minister was to show men their relation “to the great world processes?”5 The task
was a corporate one in which the individual was subject to the greater purpose and for
this purpose creating organizations was necessary. Nevertheless, when the organization

was given too great a priority Wilson took a different line of argument. “[No]

 

“May 26, 1909, PWW, Vol. 19, 215-222.

65May 26, 1909, PWW, Vol. 19, 218.

35

earliest-la. an a.”

 

 

 

OIE’J'I.

can ti-

 

haitot

 

“11h. ‘h

organization can be said to love the person and example of Christ.”66 No organization
can take responsibility. No organization was any better than the individuals within it.
There was no promise of vitality in the church without the individual. Collective action
was necessary and appropriate for some “temporal purposes,” such as social reform, or a
reformation of the international order, but the message and task of Christianity must
remain individualistic.67 No organization could be a divine messenger. The messenger
had to be an individual, a Moses, a Calvin, a Gladstone, . . . or a Wilson. He shifted
between these two idealistic frameworks with no apparent realization of, or discomfort
with, their contradictory nature because he saw no contradiction in them.

In a set of lecture notes from 1894 Wilson laid out further boundaries that he
placed on both individualism and state organization. The three lectures, collectively
titled, The Nature of the State and its Relation to Progress, begin with the statement, “A
State is a people independently organized for law within a definite territory.” Thus the
state as an organization began with “a people.” He defined “law” as the general will of
the people, originated by the church and religion along with other factors. The individual
was essential to a functioning state and yet the state called that individual, as an
individual, to something more. He described the state itself in religious terminology: “the
eternal, natural embodiment and expression of a higher life than the individual.” Into this
collective of individuals, made one by their adherence to this “higher life,” was injected a
set of vehicles for progress: struggle (self discipline), religion and education. These

vehicles created an interaction between individuals and the expression of higher life, the

 

“November 2, 1909, PWW, Vol. 19, 472.

67November 2, 1909, PWW, vol. 19, 478.

36

 

 

 

A 2"?» ..
”Wu“

v
‘1..._

HQ‘

state, which they had given themselves to. That interaction promoted progress. The
executive in the state was an elected father figure, or guide. Though this interaction could
be unpredictable it was not chaotic in the properly functioning state, for “liberty is found
only where there is the best order.” Progress of the state, in Wilson’s view, was a series
of dialectics that resulted in a Hegelian type of forward movement. This progress in a
properly rim state was accomplished with the fluid ease of Providential order.68

Wilson spelled out further the tension in which he held organization and
individual in an article which he wrote at age twenty-three. Self Government In France,
dated September 1879, again took a negative view toward governments and organization
when they existed as an end in themselves. While Wilson complimented the noble aims
of the French Revolution, he argued that its original leaders, as well as the subsequent
leaders of France, thwarted those aims. They would continue to do so until the French
could rid themselves of their tendency toward centralized government. France would
careen between despotism and disorder because the individuals who made up French
society were incapable of moderate constitutional action. “The French mind seems to run
at right angles to the law, and parallel with every dangerous extreme.”69

This tendency was, in part, due to the French Catholic inability to hold
contradiction in tension. In yet another set of lecture notes, Wilson praised Edmund
Burke and defended him against those critics who accused him of inconsistency for

opposing the underlying principles of the French Revolution. Burke was not inconsistent

but merely holding a proper antinomy in his mind. Wilson argued that Burke was the

 

”T he Nature of the State and Its Relationship to Progress, July 2, 1894, PWW Vol. 8, 597-608.

”Self Government in France, September 4, 1879, PWW, Vol. 1, 515-539.

37

champion of orderly reform. Such reform was only possible by holding contradiction
together as one. “All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every
virtue and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter. We balance
inconveniences: We give and take; we remit some rights that we may enjoy others. . . .”
Burke was consistent. He merely appeared inconsistent because he held a broader
understanding of truth.

Continuing to spell out the reason why the dialectic between the individual and
the organization broke down in France, Wilson argued that the failure of the French
government was due to a flaw in the mind of the individual French citizen to comprehend
that the state is to be the servant of the individual. “Thus were even the imaginations of
the most hopeful reformers enslaved by a pernicious idea of the functions of the state. To
recognize in a government only the agent or instrument of the governed would have been
to them as impossible as to efface all the past history of France. To them the state was
the nation.” He decried the elimination of the divine messenger by an organization, in
this case the Roman Catholic Church. Displaying his Presbyterian prejudice, Wilson
argued that a large part of the social problem in France was due to the role of the church.
It had conditioned the French to place too high a regard on the organization and too low a
regard for the individual. This failure to keep the proper priority between organization
and individual produced a society that vacillated between violent revolution and passivity
in the face of tyranny.70

In Wilson’s understanding of covenant order the Pope could not be a divine

messenger. To some degree, of course, this opinion represented his Protestant prejudice

 

70PWW, Vol. 1, 515-539.

38

 

 

agurs

 

derite
apt‘Oi:
tildes

author
superc,
criticis:

10: pm

itnctior

 

 

[hath

“ s’f‘tt

against the Roman church. Of greater importance, however, was the fact that the Pope
derived his authority from an organization and not from the “people” through divinely
appointed constitutional (covenantal) means. The Roman church did away with the
dialectic between the task and the individual and replaced it with church hierarchy. Papal
authority was derived from this hierarchy, an organization that Wilson believed
superceded individual conscience and existed apart from the task. A slightly later
criticism he made of Roman Catholicism was that its “organization” diminished the need
for preaching, a practice which was essential to his understanding of the messenger’s
function. 7'

In a series of letters to the North Carolina Presbyterian attacking a set of
moderately pro-Catholic articles in the local paper, Wilson did not blame theology but
organization as the flaw of the Roman church. He pointed to education as the gate by
which this “organization” made headway into American society. The Roman Catholic
Church was “openly antagonistic to the principles of free government.”72 These attacks
were moderated with a note that they were not directed at individual Catholics, who could
be good citizens, but at the organization of the Roman Church.

In later years Wilson would compliment individual Catholic clergy who did good
for humanity and benefitted society.73 He could be very loyal to individual Catholics
whom he considered friends. When House and Secretary of the Treasury (and son-in-

law) William Gibbs McAdoo approached the president with their suspicions that his

 

7'Letter to the editor, “Anti Sham,” January 25, 1882, PWW, Vol. 2, 98-102.
”PWW, Vol. 2, 98.

73The Minister and the Community, March 30 1906, PWW, Vol. 16, 347, 352.

39

 

 

utter
edit
out of
lunri

.. ’1..
SUIM

Giant

£953”.

itwl
3.3,, ;.
A.

secretary, Joseph Tumulty, might be controlling the information that reached the oval
office in order to aid Roman Catholic political interests, he dismissed their accusations
out of hand. House commented that the president was unwavering in his loyalty to
Tumulty.” Yet over the next month Wilson and House privately discussed ways to
“strike the Catholics a public blow.”75 He had no problem expressing loyalty and
friendship to individual Catholics, even when their Catholicism was the issue.
Nevertheless, there was always an undercurrent of suspicion toward the institution and
leadership of the Catholic church. Wilson had no difficulty with the use of authority. But
he believed that the world would be a much better place if run by a constitutional system
of authority that could maintain the proper priority between the individual and the
organization.

Wilson’s conflicting approaches to social issues, his sometimes chaotic
administration and his contradictory ideals reflected his religious thought applied to
political life and society. The individual vs. the collective is but one set of “truths” which
Wilson kept in internal tension. Recognizing that he gave priority to the task (God’s
message) over the organization helps to explain some of his actions while in the White
House. For the task of reforming the international order and bringing in world peace he
could envision great organizations: a League of Nations, a World Court, nations bound in
solemn covenants. These were all organizations of individuals (or, in the League of
Nations, individual sovereign nations) bound together in a voluntary covenant to further

the task of world peace. When he perceived organizations to exist apart from the task,

 

74House Papers, Nov. 14, 1914.

75House Papers, Nov. 25, Dec. 16, 1914.

40

511C
in i
hr

Go

 

 

'ur
V
‘r'5 v N. x- '-'| av
.3~’
Ill.)

 

 

such as his own State Department, (and at times the apparatus of the Federal Government
in general) Wilson would bypass them and use individuals such as House or Tumulty to
further the mission. He was, after all, the messenger. He held legitimate authority from
God through the people via the covenantal/constitutional process. Opposition to him was
opposition to the message of God’s order. This opposition must be defeated either by
direct confrontation or by bypassing it altogether. In a crisis he would bypass opponents
and their legal arguments and appeal directly to the people from whom he had, through
the will of Providence, derived his authority. He sustained an almost absolute faith that if
he could speak to people they would understand and agree. The word of the divine
messenger carried the power to create a providential order in the minds of the people.

Wilson believed that the United States was divinely chosen to do God’s will on
earth. A divinely ordained body must support the messenger. For spiritual purposes that
body was the church, for political purposes that body was God’s other minister: the
state.76 Beginning with the Puritans, expressly spelled out by Jonathan Edwards, and
continuing throughout the nineteenth century, the idea of America as God’s chosen nation
gained strength. A strongly post-millennial eschatology fueled a belief in progress,
supported this view and looked forward to the ultimate triumph of a peaceful, earthly
expression of the “Kingdom of God.” This “reign of God” was not a material theocracy
but a spiritual kingdom set up in the collective minds of Christian people and given

expression among the nations of the world by behavior consistent with the rule of

 

76Romans l3 spells out the concept that government is ordained by God and is God’s minister. In
the hands of the elect it could be even more so.

41

Clrri.

oiCl

1115111

infill

 

Christ.77 Human governments run by people who were themselves submitted to the reign
of Christ would administer this “kingdom” through humanly created but divinely inspired
institutions. American adherents to this view saw the United States as the chosen
instrument to bring this order about.

The Civil War had purified the nation in fire and blood for this chosen task.
Wilson was a southemer and continued to support many southern positions such as
“states rights” and limited Federal government. He nevertheless was not a fan of those
obsessed with the “lost cause.”78 He saw the outcome of the war as Providence preparing
a great country to serve his purposes among the nations of the world.79 This “chosen
nation” version of American post-millennialism also fit what Wilson believed about
himself and his calling as a messenger statesman. Indeed these views in some form were
essential to Wilson if he were to sustain the synthesis between his sense of divine calling
and its expression in secular politics.

Some historians have argued that Wilson had no systematic plan of international
relations until the events of the First World War thrust the United States onto the
international stage. It is true the Wilson held few specifics regarding international

relations before becoming President. That given, his theological mindset infused him

 

77'I’his view is elaborated in Ernest Lee Tuveson, Redeemer Nation, (University of Chicago Press,
1968). See also Michael Peters, The Politicization of Jonflan Edwards’ Millennialism, unpublished Ph.D.
dissertation, St. Louis University, 2000. Two other works on this subject are Gerald McDermott, One Holy
Happy Society, (University Park, Pennsylvania State University Press,l992) and Michael Mooney
Millennialism and Antichrist in New England, 1630-1760, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Syracuse
University, 1982.

7"Letter to Harriett Woodrow, May 10, 1881, PWW Vol. 2, 64.
79Woodrow Wilson, History of The American People, Volume 5, (New York, Harper & Brothers

Publishers, 1901) Chapter [1, Return to Normal Conditions, 1 15-131, Chapter III, The End of a Century,
299-300.

42

with an ideal of what the world should look like and what America’s role should be in
that world. In an early campaign speech during his run for president he said:
There is a spirit that rules us. If I did not believe in Providence 1 would
feel like a man going blindfolded through a haphazard world. I do believe
in Providence. I believe that God presided over the inception of this
nation; I believe that God planted in us the visions of liberty; I believe that
men are emancipated in proportion as they lift themselves to the
conception of Providence and of divine destiny, and therefore I cannot be
deprived of the hope that is in me — in the hope not only that concerns
myself, but the confident hope that concerns the nation — that we are
chosen and prominently chosen to show the way to the nations of the
world how they shall walk in the paths of liberty.
How great a destiny it is and how small those who intrigue against
Providence. How God must laugh! I do not know his ways; I do not know
by what method he will work the great plot out; but I do know that there is
a power whose approaching breath we can feel, that is going to purify the
whole air of American politics, chasten every selfish man, drive out every
corrupt purpose, bring on the morning. with its light, and as the day
broadens men shall look about them and say, “Behold the heavens are
clear again! God ’3 sun is in the heavens and all shall be right. "8”
This speech, rife with biblical imagery and contemporary millennial allusions, was the

product of a steadily growing conviction of America’s place in the world and of his place

 

”May 25, 1912, wa, V01. 24, 443-444.

43

of leadership in America.

In one of Wilson’s stock speeches, Leaders of Men, delivered at various locations
from 1889 until 1900, he expands upon the idea of the universal application of the moral
law of God.8| Highlighting the way in which he applied his theological views to his
vision of America and leadership overall, he quotes from both the King James Bible and
the evangelical minister of the Presbyterian Church of which he was a member while
teaching at Wesleyan. He applies his religious understanding of God’s moral law to the
idea of national and international leadership. “Moral law was not written for men alone .
. . . it was written as well for nations, and for nations great as this of which we are
citizens. If nations reject and deride that moral law, there is a penalty which will
inevitably follow.”82 He refered to Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian statesman, as a
divine hedge around German Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Kaiser’s dismissal of the
Chancellor had removed that hedge. Speaking of the function of the presidential office
that Theodore Roosevelt would later describe as the “bully pulpit,” Wilson argued that
the statesman is the mouthpiece, the minister of the nation he serves who must arouse the
awareness of the community of itself.83 He must make the nation aware of its destiny.
For a Calvinist like Wilson to be God’s messenger, he would have to be a statesman in a
divinely predestined nation. Borrowing spiritual terminology regarding the nature of the
reign spelled out by the millennial views of the day, he argued that the self awareness of

its destiny created in the nation by the Christian statesman would develop an internal rule

 

8|Leaders ofMen, June 17, 1890, PWW, Vol. 6, 644-671.
82I’\h’\h’, V01. 6, 655.

83PWW, Vol. 6, 661.

44

J's-3:133. ' ‘

 

 

without adding more government or laws.84 It would express itself in the hearts of the
people of the nation at the right time. Leaders and reformers appear providentially at the
right time. England and Germany became protestant because their leaders came at the
right time. America would have its leaders at the right time as well. The proclaiming of
truth to the nation at the right time in its history by the right messenger would create a
society formed around an idea, indeed around a “word.” That society would then become
a reflection of the perfect law written on the hearts of men, a type of “New Covenant” in
the Christian sense.85

This concern for the right time, which he sometimes referred to as “Providential
timing,” was a consistent theme of Wilson throughout his life. In a letter dated February
1885 he wrote that he wanted to contribute something substantial to the political
knowledge of the country. To do this he felt the need to stand apart, at the present, from
radical measures that the country was not yet ready for so that he could act more
forcefully when the time was right. To Wilson, the time had to be right. Acting too early
would discredit him and destroy his chances of being listened to when his time arrivedl‘6
His language foreshadowed the possibility of more radical action when the time was
right.

What society needed was not more law but a change in the character, the hearts, of
the nation. According to Tumulty and others who spoke with the President, his veto of

the Volstead act and opposition to the XVIII Amendment instituting Prohibition was on

 

“Note discussion of Matthew Arnold, PWW, Volume 6, 662.
”Jeremiah 31:33, Romans 2:15, Hebrews 8:10.

“Woodrow Wilson to Ellen Axson, Feb. 15, 1885, PWW, Vol. 4, 255.

45

 

 

feel

3.
DIG

It.

«’3

precisely these grounds. Alcohol abuse was a problem of the heart, over which the
government had no jurisdiction. The only law that could be effective on this problem was
spiritual. The government could only implement it through moral persuasion and a
societal change of heart.87

On Wilson’s birthday in 1889, in the same month he first gave the speech,
Leaders of Men, he confided in his personal diary “1 have great confidence in progress; I
feel the movement that is in the affairs and am conscious of a persistent push behind the
present order.” He anguished over the length of time it was taking to prepare him for his
life task. He spoke of himself, using the biblical terminology regarding the sons of
Issachar, as a man with an ability to “interpret the times.” The birthday entry finishes
with the plea “Why may not the present age write through me, its political
autobiography?”88

In The Ideals of America, an address written twelve years later, he described the
United States as the “instructor of the world” and argued that “it was plain destiny that we
should come to this.” He then predicted that the coming century “shall see us a great
power in the world.” Perhaps alert to his political autobiography he wrote “Let us put our
leading characters at the front; let us pray that vision may come with power; let us ponder
our duties . . . like men who seek to serve, not subdue the world; . . .and bring a great age
in with the coming of our day of strength?”

A little more than six months later, on July 4, 1902, Wilson blended even further

 

"Joseph Tumulty, Woodrow Wilson As 1 Know Him, (Doubleday and Page, 1921) Chapter 40.
"Confidential Journal, December 28, 1889, PWW, Vol. 6, 462-463.

”The Ideals of America, December 26, 1901, PWW, Vol. 12, 208-227.

46

 

 

thei

W15

State

“:5 ii

1133.1.

the ideas of his religion and political life in a speech titled Religion and Patriotism. It
was clear in this speech that he saw patriotism in America as synonymous with obedience
to the law of God. Patriotism was a covenantal duty that the Christian in the United
States was bound to perform. He felt that he need not encourage patriotism in America,
but merely remind people what it means to be servants of God and they would
automatically serve their country. Being a good servant of God was inextricably
intertwined with being a good American.90

Wilson’s bedrock conviction that God destined the United States to instruct and
lead the world was further evidenced by other writings. In his multi-volume A Histog of
the American People he ends the final volume with the words; “Statesman knew that it
was to be their task to release the energies of the country for the great day of trade and
manufacture which was to change the face of the world . . .”9' On February 23, 1903, he
again used the “redeemer nation” language: “There is nothing that gives a man more
profound belief in Providence than the history of this country. It is undoubtably a
Providential system.”92 Two and a half years later he spoke even more explicitly of the
task of the nation in relationship to the world. “There is a mighty task before us and it
welds us together. It is to make the United States a mighty Christian nation, and to
Christianize the world.”93 Continuing the theme of America’s role in the world

throughout the Presidential campaign of 1912, he remarked in Detroit: “I believe that

 

90Religion and Patriotism, July 4, 1902, PWW, Vol. 12, 474-478.

9|Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American People. Volume 5. (New York, Harper & Brothers
Publishers, 1901) 300.

92An Address on Patriotism to the Washington Association of New Jersey, February 23, 1903,
PWW, Vol. 14, 371.

”Youth and Christian Progress, November 20, 1905, PWW, Vol. 16, 228, 230.

47

 

 

01""

\1V

DLAI\{

‘5’ ‘
“1’

«(I

 

 

 

light to shine out of the heavens that God himself has created. I believe in human liberty
as I believe in the wine of life. . . . America has promised herself and promised the world
this great heritage. Shall she break the promise?”94

While Wilson lacked experience or specific proposals that he could bring to
American international relations, he had a deeply held set of beliefs and a comprehensive
philosophy regarding how America should relate to the other nations of the world. He
knew what his role should be as leader of the nation. He also had developed a
comprehensive way of thinking, of balancing antinomies in order to discern the central
Providential plan. The evidence that he rooted his method of thought in his religious
understanding of the world and the progressive millennial views dominant at the time is
overwhelming.

March 4, 1913, came to a close. The Chief Justice had administered the oath of
office. Dignitaries had given speeches. The Princeton undergraduates who had escorted
the President elect to the Capitol were now dispersed. Woodrow Wilson, the twenty-
eighth President of the United States, sat that evening in the White House. His election
victory had convinced him of the reality of the divine calling that he had sensed
throughout his adult life. He would work hard and do his duty to bring God’s order to the
nation and to the world. The nation was ready. The people had given him God’s
authority and their own with a constitutional election victory. The world would have to

wait until some cataclysmic event signaled that its time had also come.

 

9"Address In Detroit, September 19, 1912, PWW Vol. 25, 197.

48

Ch:

'3-
LE

 

4

ins

 

Chapter 2: The Challenge of the Present Age: The Persistence of the International Order.

March 1913 was, in a sense, the beginning of a “Presbyterian Camelot.” Saying
he wanted the “best men,” President Woodrow Wilson chose associates from the
academic world as well as a number of his coreligionists to serve in high offices. A
significant part of the new administration shared a basic view of the world as the new
president believed the world should be. That view would be challenged in their first days
in office, however, by the world as it existed, particularly in Mexico and China.

Though personal and policy differences with the president would eventually cause
his resignation, Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan, was well suited for the
administration. From a less academic and more populist religious tradition than Wilson,
they were both Presbyterians and shared a similar outlook on the world. Bryan, three
times the Democratic Party nominee for president, one time jointly the national candidate
for the Democratic and Populist Parties, used his political connections to assure Wilson’s
nomination at the convention in 1912. Bryan would continue to support the president
long after their differences had forced his resignation from the office of Secretary of
State.

Much has been made of Wilson’s views on Bryan, which went from dislike, to
recognition of need, to appreciation when he discovered that the secretary would rarely

meddle in sensitive appointments and would leave the president largely free to pursue

49

 

initiatives in foreign policy.1 Bryan’s willingness to go along with the president was due
partly to party loyalty, but fundamentally to the broad areas of agreement that they shared
on foreign policy. The secretary of state liked and admired the president. Bryan was
chiefly interested in two issues at the beginning of the new administration in 1913: that he
would be free to refrain from serving alcohol at official functions and that he could
promote an international peace program.2 Wilson agreed to both.

Religious leaders in America, like Bryan, found the views Wilson had stated on
the campaign trail resonating with their own convictions. The leaders of the Federal
Council of Churches, representing the largest group of Protestant churches in America,
stirred by the language used during the campaign, wrote to offer congratulations on his
victory. They called him a man who had shown by “utterance and action” that “our social
order must be fashioned after the Kingdom of God as taught by Jesus Christ.”3 The
president believed his administration would work to bring that new social order. In
March he wrote to his friend Mary Hulbert: “God give me a clear head, good [counselors]
and a pure heart.”4 He now saw the opportunity to fulfill his role as the divine messenger.
He was steward of the office, a man with a commission. acting for God and the American
people.

Believing politics were “relationships,”5 but finding the office of the presidency

 

'E. M. House, December 19, 1912, PWW Vol.25, 614, PWW Vol. 27, 128, 253.

2It would seem that any international peace initiative not paved with plenty of alcohol was doomed
from the start. Sober leaders eventually failed to sign Bryan’s treaties.

3March 5, 1913, PWW, Vol.27, 153 - 154.
‘To Mary Allen Hulbert, March 9, I913, PWW, Vol. 27, 166 - 167.

5Political Liberty, wa, Vol. 6,464.

50

an impersonal duty, Wilson set out to reorder it according to a pattern he was familiar
with: the leadership learned from his father.6 He spoke of his “commissioning” for the
task, of the impersonal nature of the administrative apparatus of the presidency, of his
view that he was merely a tool for the job he was called to do. That job required that he
be an effective messenger, that he personalize the organization, that he focus it on the
task. He would call the American people to labor in the mission field with him.

This task versus organization language appeared in Wilson’s rhetoric from the
start of his campaign for the presidency. At Atlantic City in September 1912: “I respect a
political party merely as the means of banding men together for a service [after] which,
when they have done to the utterrnost [sic], they have forgotten parties in a common
service.”7 In his Inaugural Address he spoke of his party, which now had a majority in
Congress, as meaning “little except when the nation is using [the party] for a large and
definite purpose.”8 And shortly after taking office, in Jersey City he said: “I am not a
servant of the Democratic party. I am a servant of the people acting through the

”9

Democratic party. To call his political group the “party of the people” could be viewed
as typical partisan rhetoric, but it was rhetoric he believed. He had to believe it. It was
the only way his mission could be approved. The organization was only valid if it served

the people’s purpose and was not an end to itself. He continued to operate on the

philosophy that “if one sets out to make a by product by itself for itself he spoils the main

 

“To Hulbert, March 16, 1913, PWW, Vol. 27, 189 - 190.
7Address to Spanish War Veterans, September 10, 1912, PWW, Vol. 25, 131.
“Inaugural Address, March 4, 1913, PWW, Vol. 27, 148.

°Address on Jury Reform, May 2, 1913, PWW, Vol. 27, 387.

51

product.”lo The task he was called to must remain the central focus and “product” of his
administration.

His inaugural spoke to the nation as a Presbyterian minister’s sermon might speak
to his congregation. The people were a mixture of good and bad, created in the image of
God and yet corrupted by sin. The messenger’s job was to bring them to repentance from
evil and then to call out the best within them. The task of the administration and party
was to do the same for the United States. A party not focused on this mission was unfit
for the “large and definite purpose” which Wilson envisioned.

Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more

striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness . . .

in their eflorts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the

way of strength and hope. . . . But evil has come with the good, and much

fine gold has been corroded. With Riches has come inexcusable waste. . . .

We see the bad with the good, the debased and decadent with the sound

and vital. With this vision we approach new affairs. Our duty is to

cleanse, to reconsider, to restore, to correct the evil without impairing the

good, to purify and humanize every process of our common life without
weakening or sentimentalizing it. ”’ ’
The task at hand was the redemption of America. As the appointed messenger of

that good news, he called his American congregation to repentance, purification, and

reformation. The speech was rife with the biblical imagery of the herald. There were

 

l0November 20, 1905, PWW, Vol. 16, 228 & 230.

”InauguralAddress, March 4, 1913, PWW, Vol. 27, 148 - 152.

52

allusions to the Apostle Paul: “the scales of heedlessness have fallen from our eyes.”
There were hints from the prophets: “where justice and mercy are reconciled and the
judge and the brother are one.”” He personalized the closing of this speech in language
reminiscent of Joshua as Israel entered the promised land. He summoned the people of
America, “all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men” to his side. “God
helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me!”'3 The
messenger was ready to lead them to the promised land.

An early domestic issue that foreshadowed the approach he would use in
international initiatives was jury reform. Wilson put his office behind this issue in New
Jersey, in a speech at Jersey City on May 2. His speech displayed an approach to political
power in keeping with the notion of spheres of authority laid out in his covenant theology.
He refused to list any specific reforms the state should enact. He would simply point the
way and call upon the state government to do the right thing. Believing that his authority
in these matters was that of persuasion, he delivered a ‘sermon’ to the State of New
Jersey. His message was a call for justice, an appeal to that which was best in his
audience, as his inaugural address said he would do. He finished with a challenge to
‘repentance’ and commitment to reform. This pattern of preaching his way to reform
would continue throughout his presidency. Detractors, such as Keynes, saw this
avoidance of specifics as words lacking substance, failing to realize that to Wilson the
words were the substance. In language reminiscent of the article, Christ ’s Army, written

in his youth he stated: “the eventual outcome of the day of battle is not in doubt. There is

 

I“PWW, Vol. 27, 151.

l3PWW, Vol. 27, 152.

53

a God in the heavens, and all is well. And I am not going to be impatient.”M The United
States had become the parish of Minister Woodrow Wilson.

The president initially viewed himself as a sort of instructor in chief, but hoped to
become more than that.'5 He hoped, if possible, to write his political autobiography on
the politics of the world as well. For the moment he believed the great powers were
beyond instruction. Latin America and Asia, however, were ripe for American tutelage.
Asia without Japan that is. Japan had become a difficult student, a competitor to US.
interests in Asia, a colonial power on the European model.

The vast and ancient land of China, on the other hand, was a different situation. It
was a land of great missionary exploits. It held great potential as a laboratory for
democracy. Many American business interests also saw a great opportunity in China with
its massive population. The two visions, business and missionary democracy, were in
competition. The administration of President William Howard Taft had embraced the
idea of civilizing China through expanding trade, the idea embodied in “Dollar
diplomacy.” Wilson despised this approach. As historian Michael Hunt has pointed out:
“Wilson’s own clear conception of the obligation of the United States [was] to promote
the modern trinity -— democracy, the rule of law, and Christianity.”“5 He would be an
evangelist, a missionary, for the export of Christian democracy. The United States would

offer the gospel of democracy to the world.

 

"Address on Jury Reform, PWW, Vol. 27, 390.

lsAddress to the Pittsburgh YMCA, October 24, 1914. The speech should be looked at in its
entirety as it displays this aspect of Wilson’s approach to the presidency. It is also illuminating in regard to

his views on task and character which have been dealt with in connection to May and Cooper earlier in this
work. PWW Vol. 31, 221.

"Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship. The United States and China to 1914,
(New York, Columbia University Press, 1983), 217.

54

 

 

 

Kl.)
L,

C11

Alt

\1'

E1

The argument that Wilson wanted to project this missionary image of the United
States to the world is supported by his attempt to appoint John R. Mott Ambassador to
China. Mott was an American missionary icon. He had devoted his life to mission work.
After finishing a degree in history at Cornell, Mott became National Secretary for the
YMCA in the United States and Canada, chairman of the executive committee of the
Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, presiding officer of the World
Missionary Conference and chairman of the International Missionary Council. He had
organized the World ’s Student Christian Federation, and at the time Wilson was looking
to fill the post in Beijing Mott was also general-secretary of the International Committee
of the YMCA. Mott was a missionary’s missionary.

The first choice for China had been Dr. Charles Eliot, president of Harvard.
When Eliot declined for health reasons Wilson quickly, and with little apparent regret,
turned to Mott. Mott represented Wilson’s vision of America’s mission to the world.
The clear lines between good and evil that missionaries represented appealed to the
President. The president believed America’s role in the world was compatible with, and
could work in parallel with, Christian evangelism. He united the goals of missionaries
with the aims of the United States government.

The president became personally invested in Mott’s nomination. The lengths to
which the new president went to recruit Mott and the language he used in his attempt to
do so are telling. Two weeks before the inaugural Wilson wrote Bryan regarding China
and Mott: “The Christian influence, direct or indirect, is very prominently at the front and

I need not say, ought to be kept there.”17 He asserted that Mott possessed the qualities of

 

l7Letter to Bryan, PWW, Vol. 27, 124.

55

a statesman and the “confidence of those throughout the Christian world.” In short Mott
was the kind of “best” Wilson was looking for in a subordinate, a true Christian
statesman. When his nominee turned down the appointment, the president, rather than
accepting the answer as he had done with Eliot, began to lobby friends to pressure the
missionary to accept.'8 In the following weeks Wilson enlisted any friend of Mott’s he
could find to bring pressure to bear on him. He refused to accept Mott’s rejection of the
post twice, stating that the “interests of China and the Christian world are so intimately
involved.”19 He even went to the extraordinary step of suggesting that Mott keep his
mission post while acting as ambassador. The president would grant him leave of
absence to do missionary work as necessary. “I am eager to unite what you represent with
what this government means to try to represent.”20 Mott was finally able to turn the
China post down on April I.”

The biggest area of concern in US. foreign policy before the outbreak of war in
Europe was Latin America. It became the first test of the new administration’s
missionary foreign policy. In February 1913, a revolution in Mexico led by Victoriano
Huerta overthrew the government of president Francisco Madero. Huerta had Madero
jailed, then arranged his assassination. Mexico split into warring factions. The North
was occupied by the forces of occasional allies, Venustiano Carranza and Francisco

“Pancho” Villa. The south was a mountainous region largely controlled by Emiliano

 

l'Letter to Cleveland Dodge, PWW, Vol. 27, 167.

1”Edward Jenkins, PWW, Vol. 27, 179, 190.

20Wilson, PWW, Vol. 27, 202.

2‘Wilson kept the pressure on Mott. He eventually served on the Mexican commission, became

general secretary of the National War Work council and in 1917 was a member of the Special Diplomatic
Mission to Russia.

56

Zapata. Huerta controlled the center of the country, including the capital. This unrest in
Mexico created concern in the United States, its direct neighbor to the north, and
threatened American investments. The Mexican crisis was fully developed by the time
the president took office. Wilson focused his immediate attention on the region.

On March 12, 1913, the White House released a general statement on US.
Relations with Latin America. The Cabinet had devoted an entire day to its preparation.22
The importance that both Wilson and Bryan put on the document itself showed the degree
to which they saw word as action. The time spent by the entire cabinet discussing this
single short statement, along with the great hope they held that it alone would “stop those
who foment troubles,” was revealing.23

To Wilson and Bryan, words were acts. Wilson was the divinely appointed
messenger, now addressing an international as well as a national congregation. His view
concerning the power of the spoken message was outlined in a speech he had given on
December 17, 1912. Nothing was permanent he remarked, “except the thoughts which
you spoke to your neighbors.”24 To Wilson “thoughts which you spoke” were in
themselves a permanent thing. Thoughts embodied in words were substance. They held
ideas which would continue to create a reality when the material body was gone. His
December 17 speech, the Latin American statement, and the care with which it was
prepared, were one demonstration of how the president translated this high view of

language into political practice.

 

22Josephus Daniels, Diary, PWW, Vol. 27, 169 - 170.
”Daniels, Diary, PWW, Vol. 27, 170.

“Address to the New York Southern Society, PWW, Vol. 25, 593.

57

The Latin American statement stressed the need for orderly constitutional
processes: government based on the consent of the governed. It proclaimed that the
United States had no interest in “Central and South America except the lasting interests
of the peoples of the two continents.”25 The words had a beautiful ring but they did not
reflect the reality of US. relations with Latin America. The expressed views ran contrary
to American business interests, which were already in direct relationships with the very
forces denounced in the statement as using “arbitrary or irregular force” in order to “seize
the power of government to advance their own personal interests or ambition.”26 The
president did not propose any specific action to end these relationships or to moderate
American business practices in Latin America. Nevertheless, he did not believe his
speech was empty rhetoric. Words, he believed, had the power to create reality by
harnessing the imagination of men. He coupled that imaginative power to faith.27 The
conflict between word and reality was only “apparent” and temporary. These apparent
contradictions would work in harmony to cause the intended outcome if time were
allowed for the words to produce their fruit.

The situation in Mexico was a demonstration of the end product of Wilsonian
antinomy in foreign policy decision making. The president had developed his thinking
about intervention in foreign countries in a manner that highlighted the way he balanced

the contradictions the country faced in international politics. He had been critical of

 

25Statement on Relations with Latin America, PWW, Vol. 27, 172.

2"An example of this is United Fruit Company, which gained influence in Guatemala by working as
a de facto “shadow government” to the successive Guatemalan dictatorships. Paul Dosal, Doing Business
With the Dictators: A Political History of United Fruit in Guatemala, 1899 - 1944, (Scholarly Resources,
Wilmington, DE, 1993).

2"House, Diary, April I, 1913, Edward Mandel] House Papers, Yale collection.

58

American action in the 1846 Mexican War. In A History of the American People, he
called the war “inexcusable aggression.”28 He had rejected Taft’s formulation of “dollar
diplomacy” as a violation of the national sovereignty of weaker nations. Regarding the
1898 war with Spain, however, he held a different point of view. Though he called it a
war of “impulse” and acknowledged the sensational, exaggerated, newspaper accounts
and the personal ambition and desire to aggrandize American power that motivated some
participants, he also felt the war was justified by the intransigence and evil of the Spanish
government. Spain forced American action by sinking the battleship Maine. The war
was also just because it was fought to liberate the oppressed and suffering subjects of
Spain in Cuba. This made the war an “unselfish thing.” Doing the right, unselfish thing
allowed Providence to bless America with unintended but good consequences. The
“selfless” sacrifice of the soldiers in the Spanish American War had created an
environment in which healing had come to the sectional divisions left following the Civil
War. This logic followed Wilson’s Presbyterian view of human nature as flawed by sin
yet still able to act righteously when called to serve a higher purpose.29 A righteous cause
would have unintended righteous, Providential, consequences. When antinomy made
logic unclear the right course of action was to determine the righteous cause. Once the
right thing to do was settled, a righteous leader simply did his duty. In time the mystery
would be clear. Though he might for a time “see through a glass darkly,” all would

eventually become clear.30

 

28A His_torY of the American People, Volume 4, (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1901), 122.
2”History of the American People, Volume 5, 275, 270-272, 273. PWW, Vol. 25, 130.

3°lCorinthians 13, note Wilson’s language in Address In Jersey City, May 25, 1912. PWW Vol. 24
443, and Pueblo Speech, PWW Vol. 63, 513.

59

Wilson to applied this balance of principles to the muddy world of Mexican
politics. It was not an easy balance to maintain. To begin with, there was question about
who was the “legitimate” representative of the people in Mexico. The president quickly
determined that it could never be Huerta and refused to grant recognition to that regime.
The means by which he had gained power disqualified him. The northen forces who
opposed Huerta called themselves “Constitutionalists,” a name that immediately appealed
to Wilson.3| Reality was quite different from the name, however, and American citizens
and property fared better in the areas controlled by Federal forces than they did in the
areas held by the Constitutionalists. It was also clear to American observers that the
Constitutionalists were not united. Villa and Carranza were rivals bound only by the thin
cord of opposition to Huerta. They neither liked nor trusted each other. There was no
guarantee that they would hold together, much less win the contest. The forces with
Zapata in the south, though not powerful enough to overcome Huerta, added pressure and
complication to the precarious Constitutionalist alliance. Wilson’s view of what needed
to happen in Mexico was much clearer than the situation that actually existed in
Mexico.32

The president’s information on Mexico was confusing and spotty, but he paid
more attention to it than he would during later international challenges when forced by

health and the convergence of multiple crises to make snap judgments on superficial

 

3'Discussed in Clements, Woodrow Wilson, 127.

32Two works detailing the complications in much greater detail are: Robert Quirk, An Affair of
Honor, (University of Kentucky Press, 196 l ); and for a specific look at how Wilson worked out his
covenantal theology in practice with Mexico; Mark Benbow, _L_e_ading them to the Promised Land.
(Unpublished dissertation, Ohio University, 1999). For an eyewitness account see Edith O’Shaughnessy,
Intimate Pages of Mexican History. (New York, George H. Doran Co., 1920) and A Diplompt’s Wife In
Mexico (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1916).

 

6O

information. He removed the US. Ambassador to Mexico early in the crisis, in part as a
protest to Huerta and in part because of his dubious political loyalties to the
administration.” The chargé d’affaires in Mexico City, Nelson O’Shaughnessy, tried his
best to represent US. interests. He became close to Huerta, who called him “son” and
joined the chargé and his wife at social events. While O’Shaughnessy liked Huerta and
viewed his own president’s instructions as “asinine,” the evidence shows that he carried
those instructions out scrupulously and loyally.34 He also sent good information to
Washington. This did not reduce the president’s skepticism toward the reports he
received. In part because the information did not conform to the president’s already
conceived view of the Mexican situation and in part because Wilson was not generally
trustful of the information he received from his State Department, O’Shaughnessy’s
information was mostly ignored.

In keeping with his pattern of “personalizing” the mission, the president
commissioned fiiends to go to Mexico on his behalf. He first asked a journalist friend,
William Hale, to go so that he might get “unofficially and through the eyes of an
independent observer” reports about what was going on down there}5 Hale spoke no
Spanish and had to rely on translators to gather his information. This was, however, the
type of “unbiased” information Wilson preferred. His own government was an

organization that might or might not be advancing the higher purpose for which it was

 

3’Letter to Ellen, PWW, Vol. 28, 85.

”Nelson J and Edith O’Shaughnessy papers, quoted in Quirk, An Affair of Honor. See also Edith
O’Shaughnessy, A Diplomgt’s Wife in Mexico, (Harper and Brothers, 1916) and Papers Relating to the
Foreigp Relations of the United States, 1914, Volume 1, (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1922),
443 - 485.

35Wilson to Hale, April 19, 1913, PWW, Vol. 27, 335.

61

intended. He wanted a personal messenger. He also wanted someone who knew as little
as possible about Mexico, to see the situation with fresh eyes. It was a common joke in
Washington at the time that “among the people who came to Washington eager to lay
their knowledge of Mexican conditions before him that the only way to get to him was to
tell Tumulty that you had never been in Mexico.”36

Another set of eyes that the president sent to observe the situation in Mexico was
John Lind. A former governor of Minnesota, of Swedish birth and anxious to involve
himself in Wilson’s mission of “redeeming” the country, Lind saw the world much as
Wilson did.37 Speaking no Spanish and with strong anti-Catholic bias, Lind went to
Mexico in August 1913 and began to send back regular reports to the president. Along
with those of Lind, Hale and O’Shaughnessy, numerous reports from other sources,
official and unofficial, came back to Washington. Upon this mountain of “information”
Wilson stamped his idea of divine order. He accepted that which strengthened his
preconceived view and rejected or reinterpreted that which contradicted it.

There are direct parallels to Wilson’s views on Mexico as expressed in 1913 and
the views that he espoused in his 1879 article, Self Government In France.38 He saw in
the Mexicans the same tendency toward centralized government, a society that stumbled

between despotism and disorder, and a people incapable of moderate constitutional

action. He saw large landowning classes, a centralized Roman Catholic church and a

 

3"Charles W. Thompson, Presidents 1 Have Known and two Near Presidents, (Indianapolis, Bobbs-
Merrill, 1929), 261.

37Lind, on turning down the ambassadorship to Sweden stated that he wanted to contribute
something to the “redemption of our state.” PWW, 27, 514.

3'PWW, Vol. 1, 515-539.

62

dissident underclass that vacillated between revolution and passivity in the face of
despotism.” Nevertheless, Mexico had one great difference. Unlike France, it was in the
New World. It was made up largely of an uneducated, darker skinned population whom
the United States could instruct. Wilson told Sir William Tyrell, the personal secretary to
Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey who was acting on behalf of the British Government
in Washington during the illness of Ambassador Cecil Spring Rice, that he had decided to
“teach these countries a lesson by insisting on the removal of Huerta.”40 Until the
Mexican people produced their own “divine messenger” the American president would
fill their pulpit as interim minister.

Wilson had grown up with a specific Christian teaching regarding what actions
were righteous and what actions were evil. Righteous action was that which was
motivated by obedience to God’s law, by love for God and your fellow man, by service
not selfishness. An unrighteous act was one motivated by some self-gratifying purpose.
Selfless action was a key to the Calvinist conception of just War. War was always evil.
This view was reinforced to Wilson by his childhood experience growing up in the South
during the Civil War and Reconstruction, seeing first hand the devastation that war had
on human life. Still, war was not always the wrong course of action. Though evil, it
might still be a necessary evil. It was the motivation for war that determined whether the
participant was acting according to God’s will or not. It was this inner motivation that

allowed him to honor the soldiers who fought in war even if he felt that the motives for

 

39Conversations with Cecil Spring Rice, PWW, Vol. 29, 228-233. Kendrick Clements, Woodrow
Wilson, 127. Bryan and Wilson were concerned about the involvement of the Church in the political
process as they feared it would create yet another division between clerical and anti-clerical forces that
Wilson had described as existing in France. PWW, Vol. 28, 325-326.

“’TyreII to Grey, PWW, Vol. 28, 544.

63

 

 

the war were mixed. Soldiers were pure in that they had no selfish motives. They did
their duty and put their lives on the line. If there was any blame it would go to their
leaders. A just war was not to be conducted against people but against bad systems. It
was organizations, governments or systems that were evil and must be struggled against.
Taking a line of logic directly from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the very passage he
used in his article, Christ’s Army, he said: “I am not interested in fighting persons, but I
am interested in fighting things. I am interested in fighting bad tendencies, bad systems,
things that lower all the levels of our political and economic morality.”41 The United
States might be forced to use the military as a response to the evil in Mexico.‘12 That use,
if it came from an unselfish motivation and had an unselfish goal, was just.

Wilson’s ideas about the righteousness of the United States with respect to the use
of force in Mexico were derived from his beliefs about individual morality which he
transferred to this international situation. In his antinomy between the individual and
government he saw the government as a group of individuals and, as an organization,
subordinate to the service and mission of those individuals. His illustrations as to why
the nation might have to go to war were individual. To the National Press Club in May
1916, he said; “If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasionally

knocking him down, . . . then for the sake of his soul I have got to occasionally knock him

 

"PWW, Vol. 25, 131. Ephesians 6:12, “For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh,
but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the
spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”

42For a substantial look at the subject of just war as Wilson understood it see; Benbow, Leading
Them to the Promised Land 46-54. For Pauline theology on the role of government, as Wilson’s
contemporaries would have understood it, see Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology,
(Grand Rapids, Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1975), 320-326.

 

64

down?” Though he spoke of American military force being used to retain “moral
influence” over another country, his illustration compared that use with individual action.
To Wilson, Mexico was just a set of personal issues writ large.

Ironically, despite his rhetorical commitment to fight systems, not people, Wilson
always personalized conflict in his own mind by focusing on national leaders who he
considered evil. The individual personalities and motives of the officials of other
governments remained central as he negotiated international crises. He saw foreign
nations not as institutions but as groups of people organized for a task, led by leaders who
either embodied or opposed the task of the people they were leading. If they were evil, or
opposed the United States, the leaders inevitably opposed rather than embodied the will
of their own people. The first item of information Wilson wanted from House at the
outbreak of war in Europe concerned the personalities of the European heads of state.“
The information that Wilson most wanted from Hale, his “independent observer” in
Mexico, was an assessment of the personalities of the Mexican leaders.45 It was how he
united the concurrent principles of his covenant theology, divine mission, redemptive
purpose and American power with his commission as president. He brought all the
strands of purpose and organization together in himself. Privately he told House that he
believed the executive was the institutional leader of the collective desires of the people.
As the leader of those collective ideas, opposition to him was opposition to the desires of

the people. International conflicts were boiled down to a contest between two leaders,

 

”House, Dairy, PWW, Vol. 37, 48.
“House, Diary, August 28, 1914, Edward Mandell House Papers, Yale collection.

"Five telegrams from Hale, PWW, Vol. 28. 541-543.

65

embodying two systems, one good, the other evil.46

At a Jackson Day speech in 1915, Wilson went further. He said that while
Jackson thought that every man who disagreed with him was an enemy of the country, he
himself had, “never gone quite that far in my thoughts, but I have ventured to think that
they didn’t know what they were talking about. . . 3"” Personal leadership transcended
the government and individualized the “desires of the people.” Since “Providence
ordered the affairs of men,” and since those men had chosen him and embodied their will .
in him, it could be deduced that he was the delegated voice of God, a modern Moses by
both democratic and divine election.48

Business interests were lower on the president’s list of priorities than other, less
tangible, interests. It would be inaccurate to describe Wilson as “pro-business” in his
international relations policy. Many business leaders in the US. pressured the president
to act on their behalf in Mexico. He would not do so unless they could convince him of a
“righteous” reason. He was prompted by the thought of ‘saving’ the oppressed people of
Mexico, but it was obvious to most observers at the time that neither Wilson nor Bryan
paid much attention to American business interests in Mexico. The president even
refused to provide extra transport, other than the naval vessels already there, to evacuate
American citizens, most of whom were connected to US. businesses in Mexico.49

Wilson made the position he would take on American business in Mexico clear

 

“House, Diary, also see Constitutional Government, PWW Vol. 18, 1 l4.
"PWW, Vol. 32, 39-40.
"House, Diary, PWW, Vol. 28, 531.

”Quirk, An Affair of Honor, (New York, W. W. Norton, 1962), 17-18.

66

when he publicly rejected “dollar diplomacy” in a speech on March 18, 1913. He
specifically rejected a set of loan initiatives proposed by the Taft administration.” The
main focus of those initiatives was American loans to China but they had included Latin
America as well.51 Wilson’s concern was that these loans infringed upon the sovereignty
of the nations to whom the loans went. They violated the orderly covenantal process. In
another speech the previous December he argued that: “the service of humanity is the best
business of mankind, and that the business of mankind must be set forward by the
governments which mankind sets up, in order that justice may be done and mercy not
forgotten.”52 Banks were not covenantal institutions like governments.53 Business
interests must not dominate the sovereignty of a country. Business had not been given
that task. Divine order in Mexico required a government freely chosen by the people.
Banks were not ordained by God to make policy themselves. Returning his rhetoric to the
need for that mysterious accountability of the heart to the divine order which superceded
organization and human law, Wilson added: “There must be heart in government; there
must be a heart in the policies of government. And men must look to it that they do unto
others as they would have others do unto them.”54 Banks would not look out for the
peoples interest in Mexico. He applied the task vs organization antinomy to dollar
diplomacy. The organizational task of banks was to make money. The organizational

task of his administration was the greater task of bringing democracy and good

 

50Statement on the Chinese Loan, PWW, Vol. 27, 192-194.

"William H. Taft, Message to Congress, December 3, 1912.

”December 28, I912, PWW, Vol. 25, 629.

53The Banker and The Nation, September 30, 1908, PWW, Vol. 18, 426-430.

54PWW, Vol. 25, 629.

67

government to the people of Mexico. Money interests, left unchecked, would resist that
mission.

On October 27, 1913, Wilson spelled out his alternative to dollar diplomacy in a
speech to the Southern Commercial Congress in Mobile, Alabama. He talked of the
“spiritual” nature of the relationship between the nations in the Americas.55 The larger
powers had victimized these nations. They had not done unto them as they would have
been done unto. None of the great powers would allow “concessions” to another country
within their own borders. Yet they routinely required them of the smaller countries in
Latin America.56 Wilson sketched out his plan: “The United States will never again seek
one additional foot of territory by conquest.”S7 America conveyed an idea of individual
opportunity and liberty. While this would take work and time, America would lead the
world to new heights of justice. It was the American destiny. He closed the speech with
the biblical imagery of climbing the mountain of the Lord. “. . .slowly ascending the
tedious climb that leads to the final uplands, we shall get our ultimate view of the duties
of mankind. . . . presently —- it may be in a generation or two — [we shall] come out on
those great heights where shines, unobstructed, the light of the justice of God.”58 The
imagery of Moses climbing the mountain to view the promised land, or the Psalmist
speaking of the righteous ascending the mountain of the Lord is, unmistakable. Wilson

saw his Latin American policy as a righteous endeavor. Force would only be used as a

 

55Address on Latin America Policy, PWW, Vol. 28, 448.
56PWW, Vol. 28, 450.
f”PWW, Vol. 28, 451.

s"PWW, Vol. 28, 452.

68

tool in the service of righteousness.

The president’s new program was tested at the port of Veracruz. Historian Robert
Quirk has written that, in light of the motivation of the administration and the benevolent
idealism which Wilson believed his policies in Latin America represented, it is ironic that
Mexican historians express greater disdain for the intervention at Veracruz than to the
outright land grab of the Mexican War of 1846.59 By personalizing the foreign policy of
the United States to the degree that he did, and by cloaking it with the language of a
clearly defined morality and righteousness, Wilson created a greater hatred of his policies
than he might have had he openly pursued a traditional great power strategy. Associating
his policies with language appropriate to a coming millennial age and then using a tool of
power, military force, common to the present age, Wilson looked, to those not able to
peer into the motivations of his heart, like a moralistic, self righteous, hypocrite. From
the president’s perspective, elevating issues to the level of moral “principle” lefi no room
to compromise and heightened the stakes.

The stakes were already high. In the days leading up to the Mobile speech Wilson
drafted a Circular Note to the Powers, in which he said that the United States would not
recognize the Huerta government. That government, “Was conceived in absolutism
fastened upon the country by methods abhorrent to the conscience of the world. . . 3’60
Just as the US. had been willing to intervene to liberate Cuba from foreign political

power, it would now be willing to keep Mexico free from foreign financial power. He

was willing to use the Monroe Doctrine as justification for preventing foreign commercial

 

5"Robert E. Quirk, An Affair of Honor.

”Draft of a Circular note to the Powers, PWW, Vol. 28, 431.

69

interests from exploiting the internal affairs of Mexico.

The rhetoric from the president indicated that he was committed to both non-
intervention and the forces of constitutional democracy in Mexico. Despite the rebels’
rejection of what Wilson said the United States was supporting, he directed Bryan to
affirm strong US. support for them as early as December 1913.“ Rationalizing that he
had picked the side that supported the spirit of democracy, if not yet its form, and
believing he was acting in his role as God’s chosen agent, he tailored his policy decisions
to negotiate the antinomy between what his principles espoused and the reality in Mexico.
The will of God (the right thing) would ultimately happen so long as his acts were
righteous. He was confident that his conscience was qualified to determine what those
righteous acts were. By February 1914 the US. was fully supporting the Constitutionalist
forces. This decision was made despite their use of unconstitutional means to gain
power. By November it had become clear to Wilson’s representatives that the
Constitutionalists had other priorities than democracy. They would not allow democratic
processes until they had achieved military success and broken the power of the church,
wealthy landowners and Huerta’s military.62 This mattered little to the president, who
had made up his mind that the Constitutionalist cause was righteous.

Wilson explained his decision to throw American influence behind forces using
less than constitutional means to gain power to Spring Rice. The United States had a

“moral duty” toward a weaker state on the American continent.63 That duty preceded and

 

“Bryan to Lind, PWW, Vol. 29, 34.
”PWW, Vol. 28, 561. See also, Clements, Woodrow Wilson, 127.

“Spring Rice to Grey, PWW, Vol. 29, 230.

70

superceded the organization of a constitutional government in Mexico. The letter of the
law, the legalist approach to constitutional government, could not stand in the way of the
task of creating a mature democracy in Mexico. A radical revolution was needed in
Mexico to clear the way for constitutional change. It was too early to force
organizational, constitutional, and legal reform until the task, the spirit of that law, was
agreed upon. No one had yet emerged as the clear leader of Mexico, able to embody the
spirit of the Mexican people in his leadership. Wilson felt the hindrances to this
emerging democracy were economic more than they were political. Until the great and
powerful money interests were broken, true constitutional government could not emerge.
Any government that would emerge prior to that, being dominated by these monied
interests, might actually hinder democracy in Mexico."4 The task was of greater
importance than the legal mechanics of democracy which would surely spring up once the
right leaders, leaders who embodied the will of the people, had emerged.

For the present there was nothing the United States could do. Spring Rice
reported the president saying the Mexican people must “find their own salvation.” In fact
Wilson most likely said “They must work out their own salvation” a biblical quotation he
often used indicating that they needed to do the hard work of bringing their own society
into order.65 He made it clear that he had no interest in helping the wealthy retain their
position, but he did want to work to help the poor of Mexican society, those who could
not help themselves. For them, and for their instruction, he was willing to find a way to

bring about “salvation,” to create conditions in which the poor could save themselves.

 

“PWW, Vol. 29, 228-233.

“PWW, Vol. 29, 230.

71

Wilson seems to have demonstrated a blind faith in Providence in his approach to
Mexico. Neither he nor Bryan had a clear idea of how to handle the chaos that would
follow the collapse of the Huerta government, but they had no particular worries about it
either. The fall of Huerta was a “moral duty,” and as such the situation would right itself
if America did the right thing. Wilson continued to base United States policy on the
mystery of Providence. Obey God, work hard and all would work out in the end.

With all else in place Wilson needed to wait until the right time, a Providential
moment, to act in Mexico. All other elements were present for righteous action: an
oppressed people, an aggressive evil power, a “selfless” motive to intervene. The only
thing lefi was an incident of aggression by the evil power that would force America to
defend the righteous. The point for domestic reform had come to America with Wilson’s
election. The time to act in Mexico needed that moment as well. That point was the
Tampico incident, which Wilson himself called the “psychological moment.”66 It
provided him with the rationalization for action.

Tampico was a comparatively minor incident between American sailors and
Federal forces loyal to the Huerta government. Its only significance was that it gave
Wilson justification for his determined righteous action in Mexico. It also demonstrated
his preferred methodology for handling complicated foreign policy matters. On April 9,
1914, a small squad of US. sailors in a whaleboat entered the mouth of the river in the
port of Tampico, a point contested by the opposing sides in the Mexican conflict. The
American forces had not notified the Federal commander of their intentions to land at that

point. Federal troops arrested the crew when they discovered the Americans loading

 

“Interview with Samuel Blythe, PWW, Vol. 29, 521.

72

gasoline into their boat from a dock near the battle line. The Mexican soldiers took their
prisoners to police headquarters, where the Mexican commander promptly released them
with an apology to the American commander, Admiral Henry Mayo.

Mayo, however, demanded more than the apology given, thereby taking what
could easily have been a minor incident of no international consequence and turning it
into a major crisis. He demanded a further, formal, written apology, with a guarantee
that the officer responsible would be punished followed by a twenty-one gun salute to the
American flag. Since the United States had refused to recognize the Huerta government,
this demand constituted an unbearable humiliation.

The Admiral’s dispatch, with sparse and misleading information about the
incident, arrived in Washington on April 10. Bryan forwarded it to Wilson with the
comment: “I do not see that Mayo could have done otherwise.”67 The president, on
vacation and deeply concerned about his ailing wife, fired back a message to Bryan
escalating the incident. He demanded that O’Shaughnessy take up the matter of Mayo’s
demands with Huerta in Mexico City and press it with the utmost earnestness,
“representing to them its extreme seriousness.” This took the comparatively minor
incident to a much higher level as Wilson fully intended. He had already decided that this
was the moment to engage in a righteous fight. The president directed that Secretary of
the Navy Josephus Daniels “impress upon his officers the absolute necessity of being
entirely in the right,” and added as an afterthought that State Department Counselor

Robert Lansing “can of course supply you with precedents.”68

 

”PWW, Vol. 29, 421.

“PWW, Vol. 29, 421.

73

The president had made up his mind, without making any effort to confirm
Mayo’s report, much less to confirm whether the admiral’s action was appropriate under
international law. The process of decision-making which he demonstrated in this incident
set a pattern for future issues.69 Lansing’s expertise in international law was to serve the
president by finding the right precedent to support the course Wilson had already
determined to take. International law was to serve the righteous purpose, not to
determine if the purpose was indeed righteous. Lansing did not disappoint the president,
though it took him four days of searching and he had to go back sixty years, to find a legal
precedent which would justify unilateral American action. Charles Thompson, an
observer during this period, commented that “Wilson never distrusted himself about
anything, being more positive that he was invariably right than any man I ever saw”70
When the president privately asserted that he always sought others’ advice, House
managed to keep a straight face but noted that evening in his journal that he nearly
laughed out loud."

Wilson limited his reading of potential evidence on foreign policy issues to a

minimum, partly as a result of ill health and partly to keep his mind from the clutter of too

much detail.72 On Mexico he had made up his mind. After reading Mayo’s report he saw

 

6"This pattern had precipitated the resignation of John Bassett Moore, the most distinguished living
American international lawyer and the previous State Department counselor. Spring Rice, who admired
Moore’s grasp of international law, commented that he was oflen bypassed when the president wanted
advice and many matters of US. policy were withheld from him. PWW Vol. 29, 215-216.

70Charles W. Thompson, Presidents 1 Have Known and two near presidents, (Indianapolis, Bobbs-
Merrill, 1929), 261.

7|PWW, Vol. 29, 449.

72Wilson had permanent loss of vision in his left eye following the stroke of 1906 while he was at
Princeton. As a result, reading was difficult. He would often read with one eye covered. Prolonged
reading often brought on headaches. See Edwin A. Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical a_ng
Psychological Bioggphy, (Princeton University Press, 1981), 164-168, 201, 250.

74

no reason to belabor or reconsider the decision. He needed to act. Mexico must be
brought into righteous order. Lansing’s discovery of a precedent lent a helpful air of
legality to the action which Wilson considered legal because it was in accordance with his
own vision of a higher law, not because it was supported by treaties or jurists. Within
hours of Lansing’s fortuitous discovery, the Atlantic fleet was ordered to Mexico to
reinforce the ships already outside Tampico and Veracruz. A flurry of urgent diplomatic
communication followed. Washington was never quite sure of what was happening as
each perceived crisis gave way to the next. This was not, however, of immediate concern
to the president. The specific details of each day’s crisis were of little relevance to
Wilson in light of the larger task of bringing order to Mexico.

Creating even more confusion in Mexico City, was the lack of communication to
O’Shaugnessy. Wilson’s practice of using personal emissaries while bypassing his own
official representatives created confusion among foreign governments. Adding to this
confusion was the pretense that those representatives were still speaking for the United
States. O’Shaughnessy worked faithfully to represent his govemment’s interests, though
he often worked without clear knowledge as to what its intentions were or how it defined
those interests. In fact, he only discovered that there had been an incident at Tampico
when representatives of the Mexican government approached him to get the US.
response. Communication through the diplomatic corps was on auto pilot. The president
was not using his official diplomats for communication.”

On April 14 Wilson issued a press release regarding Mexico. It was riddled with

 

7“Edith O’Shaughnessy, Diplomgt’s Wife, 258, 268-269, 275 and Intimate lhges of Mexican
Histog, 306-332.

75

the inaccuracies that the various dispatches had conveyed to Washington.74
O’Shaughnessy, trying to do his job, used his friendship with Huerta to try to persuade the
Mexican leader accommodate American demands. Wilson, who could tolerate no
compromise with evil, viewed the closeness of O’Shaughnessy with Huerta as a prime
example of what was wrong with the diplomatic corps. In the end, his hard work to
resolve the Mexican crisis doomed the young diplomat’s career.75

The American hard line in Tampico created a political impasse for Huerta. The
weakened Mexican Federal government could not afford to appear to capitulate to
humiliating American demands. Thus Huerta was not able to respond to Wilson’s call to
repentance. He had read the mood of his citizens correctly and knew that an American
invasion would do more to help him in their eyes than it would to hurt him. In the end
Huerta chose to defy the president, refusing to sacrifice his honor or that of Mexico for
such a minor incident.

Diplomatic communications went back and forth between the two determined
national leaders. Bryan, for whom peace was the ultimate goal, went from elation to
despair and back again with each succeeding report. Wilson, with his larger goal of
world order in mind, remained clear and steadfast in his decision to act, displaying little
apparent emotional fluctuation. He had determined what action the US. should take. He
would let the situation play itself out to its Providential end. The detailed information
coming into Washington seemed incidental to his decision. He was certain that the policy

of the US. was right and would be welcomed by the Mexican people. He was, after all,

 

7"PRFRUS, 1914, Volume 1, 443 - 485.

7SDocumented in Quirk, Affair of Honor.

76

acting as their savior. House noted that the president told him privately: “When a man’s
house is on fire he should be glad if his neighbors help him out.”76

The stalemate came to an end at two o’clock on the morning of April 21. The
State Department learned that a German vessel was approaching Veracruz with an arms
shipment for the Huerta government. After finally convincing a reluctant White House
staff to awaken the president, Bryan was able to deliver the news. With no hesitation the
president ordered troops ashore to seize the customs house at Veracruz. He then returned
to bed. Congressional approval for the military action had not yet been given, but the
president lost no sleep over legal squabbles. The pieces were now in place for righteous
covenantal action. Though the seizure of Veracruz seemed to some as a direct
contradiction of his earlier statement in Mobile, “the United States will never again seek
one additional foot of territory by conquest,” there was no contradiction in Wilson’s
mind. His motive was pure and unselfish. The United States was not conquering
Veracruz, it was protecting the interests of the Mexican people, which were threatened by
their own government.77 The US. was still a neutral party. While others worried about
consequences, Wilson continued to believe that if he did his duty, obeyed God and
worked hard, all would work out right in the end. He was convinced that his actions
would bring divine order to the chaos.

In Mexico as elsewhere, the president believed the outcome was in the hands of

Providence and would work out for a better world. All the evidence thus far in his career

seemed to prove that this was the path to success. His apparent setbacks, such as the

 

76House Diary, April 15, 1914, NW, Vol. 29 448.

7"Secretary Bryan made it clear to O’Shaughnessy that the president did not see US action as
needing a congressional resolution as it was not a war. PWW, Vol. 29, 478.

77

losing battle with the Princeton board of trustees, had resulted through the mystery of
Providence in his rise to the presidency of the most powerful nation in the world.
Sticking to his principles wOuld continue to work, so he saw no incentive to change his
methods.

American sailors and marines landed in Veracruz. They were greeted with bullets
rather than open arms. The local population joined the Federal soldiers in armed
resistance. At least two hundred Mexicans were killed and many more wounded.
Nineteen American soldiers and sailors were killed and forty-seven wounded. What was
worse for Wilson’s hopes of tutoring the Mexicans in good government, after Veracruz
was captured, few municipal officials were willing to work for the United States. They
cited their sense of patriotism as well as fear of reprisal from Mexican authorities when
the territory was returned to Mexico. The US. military was forced to occupy the entire
city and establish martial law. Veracruz proved a diplomatic disaster for the United
States. The warring factions in Mexico united in anger at the invasion of their sovereign
territory. Rather than being treated as a helpful neighbor by the owner of a burning
house, the Americans were looked upon as burglars breaking into the house while the
owners were involved in a domestic dispute. Huerta expelled O’Shaughnessy following
the seizure, but Wilson never employed him again in any position of note in the US.
diplomatic service. Wilson’s policy met severe opposition in the Senate. Henry Cabot
Lodge complained: “any man who did not think the facts ought to be made to suit his will
9978

would have known that the people of Veracruz would fight.

US. troops set about organizing a military government to administer Veracruz.

 

”Lodge, Congressional Record, 63’“ Congress, 3'” Session, 1915, p. 2650, Quoted in William C.
Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policv.

78

Argentina, Brazil and Chile (the ABC commission) offered to meet in a neutral country to
mediate the conflict. The United States accepted the mediation, but on grounds that
doomed it to failure. Wilson, convinced that the United States was acting in the best
interests of Mexico, and as such was neutral, attempted to bring the negotiations to the
United States. Huerta refused to consider the United States neutral and the talks were
moved to Niagra Falls, Canada, a few hundred feet from the US. border. The president
insisted that the United States would participate only as a neutral observer. He persisted
in the idea that the US. was benign in the conflict, interested only in obtaining an end to
the Huerta regime for the good of the Mexican people. Carranza refused to send any
delegates at all, rejecting negotiation with Huerta over elections or the US. over an illegal
invasion of his country. Huerta thought that the purpose of the negotiations was to come
to an agreement with the US. over the removal of its troops from Mexico, a view shared
by the ABC commissioners. On July 2, the commissioners gave up and went home.79
Wilson refused to alter his principles or change his view of the international
situation to conform to these developments. He still saw no place for compromise. As he
had written in Christ ’s Army so many years earlier, “there is no middle course, no
neutrality. Each one must enlist either with the followers of Christ or those of Satan.”80
Though the truth may be an intellectual antinomy, clear to God but not to man, it was still
truth and any resistance to its “principle” was opposition, not just to the idea of truth, but
to Christ himself. Wilson was determined to instruct Mexico in the right way to govern.

He explained his policy to Tyrell; “I am going to teach the South American Republics to

 

7”Thomas Patterson, J. Garry Clifford, Kenneth J. Hagen, American Foreign Policy, A History
Since 1900 (Lexington, Mass, Heath and Co., 1991) 236.

 

80August 17, 1876, PWW, Vol. 1, 180-181.

79

elect good men.”“

Resisting pressure from both those who wanted to order the military to push on to
Mexico City and end the crisis by force and those who wanted to remove the troops in
order to seek a diplomatic solution, the president hovered between peace and war. He
instructed the military to put Veracruz in order. They set about the task with zeal. The
market was cleaned up, a police force was organized, the courts put in order, streets were
cleaned and sanitary measures imposed. Veracruz was an apparent model of Wilson’s
view of an ordered world. In a manner that would have both honored and satirized
Calvin’s theocratic Geneva, Veracruz became, as a historian of the affair has written, “the
cleanest, most efficient, most honest and just” despotism in Mexico.82

On July 15, Huerta, his forces routed by the advancing Constitutionalist armies,
resigned and went into exile. Wilson was overjoyed. This joy was quickly dampened by
Carranza’s response to his victory. Continued revolution, not free elections would be the
policy of the new government. He promised to punish those who had helped the
Americans at Veracruz. Those who had cooperated with Wilson’s tutoring in democracy
were to be penalized by their own new government, which Wilson had enabled to come
to power. The result was another diplomatic deadlock over principle. Eventually,
necessity dictated that Carranza concede, verbally, to get US. forces to leave Veracruz.
Wilson, with his high reliance on principle, trusted Carranza’s word. After regaining
Veracruz, Carranza’s forces punished those who had collaborated with the Americans

despite his promise to the president. Wilson would never again trust any Mexican leader.

 

"Baker, Life and Letters. Vol.4, 289.
”Quirk, 154.
80

A few months after the American marines had left Veracruz there was little evidence they
had ever been there.

The Veracruz intervention could have become a lesson to the administration on
the limits of power. It was not because Wilson would not recognize the need for such a
lesson. Instead he repeated Veracruz in varying forms throughout his terms in office.
The same pattern is evident in the motivation and outcome of the interventions in Santo
Domingo, Haiti, Nicaragua, Russia and the European War. It was deeply rooted in
Wilson’s idea of principle and his view of the world as he believed it should be. To the
end he held the conviction that the United States, if it acted righteously, would always
come out on top. Though the temporary situation might look as if it was not turning out
well, it would do so in the end. Any apparent failure in Mexico was only apparent. The
working out of God’s will over time would justify American action.

Wilson remained convinced that America, by acting on God’s behalf, was above
the venal politics of ‘this present age.’ Thus it could remain neutral even as it used its
military and economic power to produce the righteous outcome. American troops could
invade and occupy Mexican territory, but America was not an occupier. The US. could
violate all the accepted standards of neutrality as spelled out by international law and still
be neutral by a higher law. The United States was on God’s side, not that of any political
entity.

Before the Mexican situation was resolved other events had distracted the
president. In August 1914 his wife Ellen died. That same week the armies of Europe
launched a suicidal war. Mexico, which would occupy a place of interest in US. foreign

policy throughout the rest of the Wilson administration and briefly, thanks to the

81

Zimmermann telegram, inject itself into U.S.-German relations, was largely buried in

importance by an avalanche of other personal and international concerns.

82

Chapter 3: Keeping to the Principles in Peace and War.

On June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo in the Austro-Hungarian province of Bosnia, the
Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by a Serbian student,
thereby setting in motion the chain of events that would plunge Europe into war. The
European alliance system set in motion a number of diplomatic blunders that would
culminate in all the great powers going to war. The president of the United States and his
administration tried to find ways to use the good offices of the United States to mediate
the peace.l These efforts were barely noticed in Europe and, after the assassination of the
Archduke, failed to prevent the outbreak of hostilities in August, 1914.

That August was also marked by a personal crisis that competed for the
president’s attention with the chaos and death into which Europe was plunging itself.
Ellen, his wife, solace and confidant died from the complications of Bright’s disease five
weeks after their twenty-ninth wedding anniversary. His Calvinist world-view, combined
with his belief that divinely directed history was an orderly process, generated within him
an inner eschatological picture of the world toward which he believed history was
progressing. He developed his conviction about how the international order worked from
this confident, progressive, presuppositional eschatology. The Princeton Presbyterian

theologians who influenced Wilson taught these optimistic spiritual views of the world in

 

'Bryan to US. Ambassador to London, Walter Hines Page, July 28, 1914, PFRUS, l 14
ilpplemenuThe World Wg, 19.

83

combination with the present-life focus of Scottish common-sense realism.2 Ellen’s death
highlighted the manner in which all these threads came together in his mind as he dealt
with circumstances that seemed to contradict these preconceptions.

Wilson’s inner providential picture of how things should be included the presence
of Ellen. He needed a woman’s love and devotion. Ellen played her part as companion
and advisor masterfully. She had smoothed over conflict and aided in the president’s
professional and political successes.3 He relied on her for emotional security. As she
grew increasingly ill during the spring of 1914, he remained optimistic in the face of
overwhelming evidence that she was dying. As late as July 28 Wilson continued to insist
that there was nothing physically wrong with his wife. Though the people around the
president had initially kept much of the bad news away from him at the behest of the
president’s physician, Admiral Cary Grayson, his optimism continued even after they had
informed him that Ellen’s condition was terminal.4 He sat by her bedside as he worked,
writing with one hand while holding hers in the other. By August 2, four days before her
death, her health and the situation in Europe competed equally for his attention.’ On
August 6, the day she died, against overwhelming evidence and long after any reasonable
hope for recovery had vanished, he wrote his brother that there was still hope and that he

would let him know if there was any turn in her condition either way.‘5 The turn had come

 

2Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, (Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Book House, 1985) 26,
n.22.

3Ellen had arranged the meeting with Bryan that had brought him around to support Wilson.
‘See Weinstein, 254-256.
5To Mary Hulbert, PWW, Vol. 30, 327-328.

“To J. R. Wilson Jr., PWW, Volume 30, 351.

84

months before. When House received the word that Ellen had died it stunned him. None
of the president’s letters to him had suggested the seriousness of her condition.7

Ellen’s death devastated Wilson. It seemed to be a contradiction to Providence. It
was inconceivable that God’s plan did not include Ellen by his side. He simply had not
considered life without Ellen a possibility. The shock turned his emotional world upside
down. “God has stricken me almost beyond what I can hear,” he wrote to his Mary
Hulbert.8 He felt that nothing was worthwhile anymore. He looked forward to the
remaining two years of his term with complete dread.9 Three months later he told House
that he was deeply lonely and wished someone would kill him. Only his Calvinist sense
of duty kept him going.lo As his personal crisis developed he fell back on familiar

Presbyterian habits and language: “The duty has been my salvation,””

and “safety lies in
having my attention absolutely fixed elsewhere than upon myself.”'2

House recognized that Ellen’s death was a severe loss to the president. Her
counsel had been a moderating influence on him. The Colonel allowed himself to lapse
into uncharacteristically Calvinist language upon news of her death, describing her as

“one of the elect.”'3 For a time House became Wilson’s confidant, replacing Ellen in that

role to a small degree. The president could open many of his inner thoughts to House,

 

7House Papers, August 6, 1914.

8To M. A. Hulbert, August 7, 1914, PWW, Vol. 30, 357.
9House Diary, PWW, Vol. 30. 464-465.

l0House Diary, Nov. 14, 1914.

”To House, August 17, 1914, PWW, Vol. 30, 390.

”To House, August 18, 1914, PWW, Vol. 30, 395.

I’House Diary, Aug. 6, 1914.

85

and rewarded this reciprocal friendship with his confidence. '4 In the end, however,
Wilson needed a woman’s companionship.” In March 1915, at the instigation of
Grayson and Wilson’s cousin Helen Bones, a “chance” meeting took place between the
president and Edith Galt, a socially prominent Washington widow. They were married in
December.

The president’s reaction to Ellen’s sickness and death highlighted the pattern of
information processing Wilson employed when faced with circumstances that seemed to
contradict his presuppositions. He began his decision-making process with a confident,
presupposed, providential, inner picture of the truth and ultimate outcome of his action.
This inner picture was a subjective inner concursus of the competing facts as he saw
them. He subjected his judgments and language to this inner picture. Once this inner
conviction was fixed in his mind, he limited or rejected outside or contradictory
information. He read prepared summaries, gave a cursory glance at other material and
relied upon verbal reports from those closest to him who often screened out information
to keep him unencumbered with detail.'6 His decision processes were kept simple. What
information he did get was categorized by how it did or did not fit the picture and
outcome upon which he had already settled. When circumstances proved his analysis

wrong he responded with shock, as in Ellen’s death, or anger and denial, as in political

 

"House Diary, Jan. 25, 1915.

”Wilson’s need for female company is well documented. His own papers and journals note this.
Literature on this, in addition to Weinstein, includes Phyllis Levin, Edith and Woodrow, (Scribner, 2001).
The early psycho-histories (Freud/Bullitt and the Georges) have little or nothing to contribute to
understanding of Wilson’s relationship to House. A scathing refutation of the F rend/Bullitt book, Can
History Use Freud? The Case of Woodrow Wilson, was written by Barbara Tuchman and printed in The
Atlantic, February 1967.

I"House Papers, November 14, 1914.

86

reversals. He would then adjust the new information to the circumstances, refitting this
information into his existing providential view of the world and working harder toward
the original goal.

In the end, hard work, steadfast faith and duty had brought Wilson to where he
was. He believed it would be enough to get him through. Despair or disappointments
would be followed by periods of hard work, devotion to duty, an acceptance that this was
part of God’s mysterious plan to achieve the promised end, which would bring renewed
hope in the final outcome. Those around Wilson marveled at the speed with which he
came to conclusions. House commented that his friend had one of the most ordered
minds he had met.17 That was because the president’s thought processes followed an
internal Calvinist order and were not complicated by the chaos or detail of the world
around him. After processing Ellen’s death, he concluded that God had taken his wife
but left him because he had not yet accomplished his purpose as divine messenger. The
fact that he was still alive worked to strengthen an inner view of his divine mission.

Wilson’s approach to international policy during this period was colored by an
increasing tendency to personalize the interaction of nations. This tendency had always
been present in him. Indeed, to Wilson and his fellow Evangelicals, political issues
whether national or international were just personal issues writ large. Bryan’s “Prince of
Peace” speech is a classic example of this. The secretary extrapolated the idea that a
personal response to Christ was the key to getting society as a whole to become Christlike
in its service to humanity. Wilson’s approach to international relations, however, became

even more personal following Ellen’s death. “Peace will come to the world when we

 

I7House Papers, Nov. 14, 1914.

87

love our fellow man better than we love ourselves.”18 If individuals behaved differently,
the international order would change. He became even more invested in his personal
mission to create a better world. He treated the world even more like a Presbyterian
congregation. His speeches were calls for personal moral reform and conversion stated in
international political language. The nation as a whole was spoken to in the language of
the individual.

At the same time as Wilson was equating national and international politics with
the personal, he also tended to identify entire nations with the personalities of their
leaders.” He read character sketches of the European leaders with great interest and
discussed their temperaments with close friends.” Having established in his mind the
“character” of the national leader he proceeded to judge the policies of that country, in
part, based on those judgements. U.S. response to those countries often reflected his
personal like or dislike of the nation’s leadership, occasionally baffling diplomats.

As the United States became more involved in the European conflict, Bryan
became a victim of the president’s increased sense of personal mission. Prior to the
outbreak of conflict, and in the early months after the war in Europe began, Wilson
continued to hold a benign if condescending view of his secretary of state.” He had long
before categorized Bryan as an intellectual light weight who would be a liability to the

president and to the country should the United States be involved in serious foreign

 

"Remarks to the Gridiron Club, December 1 1, 1915, PWW Vol. 35, 344.
”House Diary, PWW, Vol. 30, 463.
”House Papers, Dec. 17, 1914.

21House Papers, Nov. 15, 1914.

88

business. Bryan had been useful for taking on unpopular causes from which the president
needed or wanted to distance himself. Indeed, he had been a welcome lightning rod in
keeping the heat of the more radical progressive reformers away from the president.” As
the war progressed and the international situation became more complex, however,
Bryan’s idealistic principles, which seemed unreasonable to Wilson, became an irritation.
The secretary had now become an obstacle to God’s mission. By December 1914 the
president was looking for an issue that would cause Bryan to resign.”

Wilson’s foreign policy was complicated by the way he approached the meaning
of language and written texts. Much of his apparent contradiction when it came to
language was derived from his understanding of the nature of written documents. His
internal antinomy was the truth behind the language. Even when he acted contrary to the
words of a written document, he remained convinced-that the document was important
and that he was holding to the true meaning, to the spirit of the language if not the letter.
He failed to see the difference others saw between letter and spirit. This often caused
confusion in his communication with both subordinates and other heads of state.

Wilson believed that the true meaning of a written constitution was to be found
not in the letter of its text, but rather in some agreed-upon interpretation. Interpretation,
and thus true meaning, could change without any change in the text. House noted in his
diary: “He began to speak of a flexible or fluid constitution in contradistinction to a rigid

one. He thought that constitutions changed without the text being altered, and cited our

 

22House Papers, Nov. 25, 1914.

”House Papers, Dec. 3, 1914.

89

 

rwmwww—wu...‘

own as an example.”” The president argued that the Constitution had granted the states
primacy over the union until Andrew Jackson’s presidency because the people interpreted
it that way. However, during Jackson’s presidency the view of the people changed. The
importance that they placed upon the union established its predominance and preempted-
the right of a state to secede. He tied this to the concept of the power of a messenger to
persuade people of the meaning. He had earlier spelled out the concept of Jackson’s
ability to both embody the will of the people and bring about change, which he shared
with House, in his History of the American People.” This change in the Constitution was
achieved without any change in its text. Wilson was sentimentally attached to the south,
an advocate of states rights on many issues, but committed to a flexible meaning of the
Constitution and thus willing to accept that the meaning of the US. Constitution had
changed.

Wilson approached issues of American neutrality with the same flexibility of
meaning. Just as a presbytery of elders or a general assembly could arrive at a new
agreed-upon meaning for a scriptural passage without any alteration in its text, so national
leaders could determine the meaning of treaties and conventions through deliberation
without agreeing on changes in the language of the texts.” Providence working through

this type of providential messenger caused progress. Resistance to this providential

 

24House Papers, Nov. 7, 1914.

25Woodrow Wilson, A History of the American Pemleflolume W, (New York, Harper &
Brothers Publishers, 1902) 14.

26Wilson’s contemporary, British Prime Minister (1902-1905) Arthur Balfour noted the same
principle but the opposite outcome. “Language is here no true or certain guide. . . . Men do not necessarily
believe exactly the same thing because they express their convictions in exactly the same phrases.” Wilson
and Balfour represent the poles of optimism and pessimism regarding the ability of groups to agree upon the
meaning of language. Balfour, Theism and Humanism 150.

 

90

change would leave society behind.

Wilson’s thought as the war in Europe began was influenced by a predetermined
view of the world, formed by his religion, around which he organized all information. He
categorized personalities, then saw national and international policies through the lens of
his understanding of those personalities. He held a view of language that involved a
changeable meaning which could superceded the literal or original meaning of those
words and allowed the understanding of the text to evolve. These patterns of thought
allowed him to retain an optimistic vision of his mission in the world while interpreting
conflicting external evidence in a way that brought it into conformity with his
presupposed view of world order.

On August 3, 1914, as the nations of Europe declaired war on each other, Wilson
took a break from sitting with Ellen to type a short letter to House who had just returned
from his unsuccessful mission to broker peace in Europe. With everything collapsing
around him, the president wrote of his confidence in the ultimate providential outcome of
the chaos. “I know how deep a sorrow must have come to you out of this dreadful
European conflict in view of what we had hoped the European world was going to turn to,
but we must face the situation in the confidence that Providence has deeper plans than we
could possibly have laid to ourselves.”27 As late as November 1914 the president wrote
that “The war in Europe may have been a godsend.”28 He was unshaken by the events in
Europe since, despite the carnage, they seemed to open possibilities for his own mission

to bring God’s order to the world. He was called by God. The pressure of Ellen’s death

 

27To House, PWW, Vol. 30, 336.

2”House Papers, Nov. 25, 1914.

91

had not changed the course already fixed in his mind, rather, the pressure brought about
by her death and the simultaneous eruption of war hardened his resolve to work out his
internal providential antinomy. He need not understand, he only needed to be faithful.

The first issue that he had to work through was American neutrality. If he was
called to help bring about a peaceful world, then it was providential that America was
neutral, above the fray in Europe. His neutrality was not that of ‘leave us alone’ or ‘no
dog in this fight.’ Rather it was an integral part of a divine mission. Neutrality would
induce the warring nations to accept the American government as the honest broker who
could help settle their differences. He envisioned the United States as an active agent in
bringing peace and influencing the post war world order.

The same sense of purpose that had motivated Wilson’s sermon to his graduating
Princeton students in 1907 drove his missionary neutrality as president of the United
States: the transformation of the world to conform to a heavenly pattem.” His language
at this point in his life had become more circumspect. The office of president had
moderated his pronouncements, but the mission was unmistakably the same. The
president’s first public response to the war on August 18, 1914, shortly after he returned
from burying Ellen, explained and justified neutrality in these activist terms. America
was holding itself “ready to play a part of impartial mediation. . . .” It was a “nation fit
beyond others . . . ,” which “keeps herself fit and free to do what is necessary and
disinterested and truly serviceable for the peace of the world.”” This first statement

reiterated the “redeemer nation” aspect of Wilson’s thought. It also expressed the policy

 

29Wilson, Baccalaureate Address, PWW, Vol. 17, 188-196.

”Appeal to the American People, August 18, 1914, PWW Vol. 30, 394.

92

of activist neutrality he intended to follow as the war in Europe progressed. Providence
had put into the hands of America and its president the mission to bring peace to the
world.

America might be neutral in the fight. Wilson thought it not only above
partisanship, but so far above it that the belligerents would have to recognize American
objectivity and good will. That did not mean, however, a neutrality unaffected by good
and evil. Here again the president’s presuppositional approach to information effected his
foreign policy. From the beginning of the conflict there was a bias in the administration
toward Britain and against Germany. Wilson was predisposed to be an Anglophile. He
admired British political institutions. His Presbyterianism came from the British Isles.
Britain was the historical source of the American people’s divine sense of purpose toward
the world. This view of Britain caused Wilson to interpret information in a way that
favored British interests and penalized Germany, while continuing to believe he was
neutral.

In trying to maintain the integrity of American neutrality as he defined it, the
president did attempt to maintain a balance within his administration. He directed
American Ambassador to Germany, James Gerard to avoid anti-German statements,
while at the same time he cautioned his Ambassador to Britain, Walter Hines Page about
his inflammatory pro-British notes home.31 But these even handed warnings did not
reflect the reality of Wilson’s feelings toward the two countries involved. The president
viewed politics as relationships and the choice for ambassador to Britain and Germany

reflected Wilson’s bias. Wilson felt warmly toward Page and disliked and distrusted

 

3'House Papers, Dec. 3, 1914.

93

Gerard describing him to Edith Galt as an “ass” in a note in the margin of one of his
dispatches.” Subsequent attempts at “strict neutrality” merely highlighted his prejudice
against Germany.

Wilson had developed his prejudices toward Germany on many levels. The
Princeton theologians he knew and respected expressed many deep concerns about
“German Theology,” which was for them code for “infidelity to the truth.” Though over
time they had accepted many of the particulars of “German theology” at Princeton, the
bad reputation and feeling toward it remained.” Wilson translated his caution about
German thought into a broad judgment about German political philosophy. He described

”3" The essence of sin in Wilson’s Calvinism was

it as “selfish and lacking in spirituality.
selfishness.” It was this selfishness which he believed he had battled within himself all
his life. Following Ellen’s death he was particularly aware of the tendency to focus on
self which grief could produce. He described his presidential duty as his salvation
because it forced him to avoid focusing on himself.” For Wilson to describe the
Germans as “selfish and unspiritual” carried a significance beyond the connotation of the
words themselves. In his Presbyterian language it meant that they were evil, men who
served themselves served the cause of Satan and resisted the mission of God and his

messengers.

Another level of the president’s bias against the Germans was his perception that

 

3”Note from Gerard, September 10, 1915, PWW Vol. 34, 441.

”Mark Noll, The Princeton Theology. (Grand Rapids, Baker, 1983), 115, 157, 163-164.
3‘House Diary, August 30, 1914, PWW, Vol. 30, 462.

”On the Rural Church, December 10, 1915, PWW, Vol. 35, 330

3"To House, August 18, 1914, PWW, Vol. 30, 395.

94

they did not honor covenants. House recorded that he was indignant “at the German
Chancellor’s designation of the Belgian Treaty as being ‘only a scrap of paper’.”37
Though Wilson thought text meant what people agreed it meant, and thus was fluid, he
also had been brought up to believe that texts were sacred. Whether scripture or treaties,
texts were not mere “scraps of paper.” To change the meaning of a written covenant by
mutual informed agreement was progress. To disregard the text itself was a literal
desecration.

The administration’s effort to secure general adoption of the Declaration of
London, an unratified 1909 convention on international maritime law, demonstrates this
antinomy in Wilson operating on multiple levels. He insisted that Britain publicly
endorse the unratified Declaration. The British refused to do so, as they did not intend to
follow it. Wilson’s position was that if they would publicly honor the text of the
declaration they would be free to make supplementary statements of interpretation that
would loosen the restrictions they found objectionable. Robert Lansing made it quite
clear to Ambassador Page that if the British publicly adopted the Declaration, they would
be left free to interpret it in accordance with circumstances as they arose.” The text
provided the basis for agreement, the interpretation of the text was flexible. Meanings

involved progressive revelation or understanding, texts were fixed. The diplomatic

exchange was between the State Department and the British Government. The president,

 

”House Diaries, August 30, 1914.

”Lansing to Spring Rice, September 28, 1914, PWW Vol. 31, 97-98, Bryan, Wilson and Lansing,
September 30, 1914, PWW Vol. 31, 103-104, Lansing to Page, October 16, 1914, PWW Vol. 31, 161-163.
John Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The United States, Britain, and Maritime Rights. 1899-1915. (Ithaca,
Cornell University Press, 1981), 187. See in addition, PWW Vol. 31, 110-111, 113-114, 125-126, 133-136.

95

however, was fully involved in the negotiation.”

The president’s pronouncements on neutrality also underwent change and
reinterpretation. By April 1915 the president had begun to spell out his policy of active
neutrality. On April 20, in remarks to the Associated Press he spoke of putting “America
first.” This, he explained, was not a selfish idea. It could not be, because selfishness was
sin. Rather, putting America first was inherently unselfish, because America was not a
mere nation but a noble idea. The nation was divinely chosen to be the “mediating nation
of the world.”40 Such biblical language had always been the foundation of Wilson’s
thought. It was the eschatological language of Is_ai@, chapter two, and m, chapter
four, which Bryan had inscribed on miniature plowshares, beaten out from melted U.S.

cavalry swords, which he then delivered as gifts to embassies around the world:

The mountain of the Lord 's house shall be established in the top of the
mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow
unto it. Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the
God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his
paths.“ for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord
from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke
many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their

spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

 

3”House Diary, September 30, 1914, PWW Vol 31, 108-109. The president compared the situation
to the War of 1812 noting that the other US President from Princeton, James Madison, had dealt with the
situation differently.

”Remarks to the Associated Press in New York, April 19, 1915, PWW Vol. 33, 38.

96

neither shall they learn war any more.4|

The language of his April press conference embodied Wilson’s religious thought, the
personal sense of mission he felt and the redeemer nation image he held of the United
States. The nation was not neutral because it was afraid of righteous conflict, but rather
because it had a greater destiny than war: under the leadership of God’s messenger it

would lead the world to the promised land of peace and prosperity.”

Wilson perceived the American situation in 1914 as parallel to the War of 1812.
He often compared the two situations in private and in public, as he did in a speech to the
Chamber of Commerce in Columbus, Ohio.43 He wished to avoid the trap Madison had
fallen into, which according to the Wilsonian interpretation of history, had been going to
war with Britain while the great threat to civilization had been Napoleon. Instead, this
time, the United States would use its power as an aggressive neutral, to conquer the forces
of disorder and selfishness in the world. To enforce a peace that would create a better
system of international behavior. The president referred to his policy of neutrality as the

“peaceful conquest of the world’s,“

Wilson pursued neutrality with the object of creating, or at least being a major
influence on, the international system that would follow the war. Believing that the war

would leave two powers dominating world politics, the United States and Russia,“5

 

"Isaiah 2:2-4.
42PWW Vol. 33, 38-41.

”PWW Vol 31, 108-109, Vol. 35, 321-322. See also, John Coogan, The End of Neutrality: The
United States Britain and Maritime Rights. 1899-1915. (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1981), 179-181.

 

“PWW Vol. 35, 327.

"House Diary, PWW Vol. 30, 462.

97

Wilson and House discussed ways to fuse the Western hemisphere together in a
democratic alliance, dominated by the United States which could compel this new

international system.“6 American neutrality had international purpose.

The president grew more confident in his role as divine messenger as he continued
to face the challenges of the war in Europe. He was not hesitant about blending faith with
his position, and worried little about separating his personal religion from his actions in
office. When a report circulated in the press that he had led the Cabinet in prayer seeking
divine guidance in the difficult times, he responded: “I am sorry to say that this incident is

not true. I wish that it were?”7

House was a master at reading Wilson and adapting his ideas and language to
reflect presidential views. In November 1915 he spoke of the great role Wilson had the
opportunity to play upon the international stage. “This is the part I think you are destined
to play in this world tragedy, and it is the noblest part that has ever come to a son of
man.”"8 House employed the same language of predestination, mission and duty that
Wilson used about himself. The phrase, “son of man,” though referring generically to any
human being, was normally used in Scripture when a prophet was referring to himself. In
the New Testament, in all but one passage, it referred to Christ. Wilson had appropriated
this language, in the prophetic sense, about himself. In response to a challenge to his

stance on American preparedness a few days before the House “son of man” letter, the

 

“House Papers, Nov. 25, 1914.
"Memo to Tumulty, October 15, 1915, PWW Vol. 35, 68.

“Letter from House, November 10, 1915, PWW Vol. 35, 186.

98

president quoted Ezekiel: “Son of man, speak unto the children of thy people. . . .”‘” He
explicitly compared himself to the prophet and the watchman described in the passage.
House used similar language, unusual for him, because it would register with Wilson. At
that time, the president refrained from comparing himself to Christ. Later, during the

treaty fight, even this comparison was employed.

Wilson also equated the United States with God’s chosen people in his speeches.
He extrapolated from that equation an American mission to evangelize the world
politically. He equated patriotism with Christianity. “Patriotism in its redeeming quality
resembles Christianity. . . . It makes [a man] forget himself and square every thought and
action with something infinitely greater than himself.”” To the Chamber of Commerce
in Columbus, Ohio, he had spoken about the “peaceful conquest of the world,” through
“spiritual mediation.”5| He clarified this assertion in a speech to the Gridiron Club on
December 11, 1915. That conquest was to be accomplished by conquering the “spirit of
the world?”2 This is the language of conversion, taken from the concepts in his early
speech Christ ’s Army which still organized his view of the world. He was a preacher
calling the nation and the world to repentance. Neutrality as defined by international law
was too passive a concept to express what Wilson meant.” The neutrality of the United

States would conquer, convert, and change the world: “the world cannot resist the moral

 

”Wilson to Seth Low, November 8, 1915, PWW Vol. 35, 180.
”Remarks to the Gridiron Club, PWW Vol. 35, 343.

SIOhio Chamber of Commerce, PWW Vol. 35, 327.

”PWW Vol. 35, 344.

”Address to the DAR, October 11, 1915, PWW Vol. 35, 49.

99

force of great triumphant convictions.”54

Wilson negotiated the antinomy created in his mind by this active neutrality with a
series of initiatives and statements that seemed to bounce between preparedness and
pacifism. He criticized Germany for building a military machine ostensibly in the name
of peace. “What a foolish thing it was to create a powder magazine and risk someone’s
dropping a spark into it?” He resisted pressure to prepare for possible military conflict,
especially by building a “large army.”56 But the more passive, defensive neutrality that
Bryan advocated, irritated Wilson. He said it was “unreasonable?” The president’s
active neutrality was a peacemaking endeavor, not pacifism. He sought to find ways to
“increase” the military, short of building this “large army;” ways that would make the
United States more effective in its peacemaking mission. He supported measures
designed to beef up reserve forces and modernize the military, such as the Navy bill

approved by congress on August 29, 1916.”

In speeches on “Preparedness” throughout 1915 and early of 1916 the president
tried to keep his balance between the pacifists and militarists. He justified an increase in
military spending, arguing that it was purely for defense. In many ways his words
matched the policy advocated by Bryan, but the president had a larger hope than his

secretary of state. The nation was chosen for the mission of making a better world. He

 

s”PWW Vol. 35, 51

55House Diary, PWW Vol. 30, 462.
5"House Papers, Nov. 25, 1914.
”House Papers, Nov. 8, 1914.

”Remarks on the Navy Bill, August 29, I916, PWW Vol. 38, 101-102.

100

had no intention of arming the country, as the European powers had done, for selfish
reasons. The United States would resist militarist passions, while preparing for its
mission.59 The United States was not preparing for war by strengthening its armed forces,
rather, it was making itself strong to be the “spiritual mediator” of the better covenant.
America was not a “powder keg.”60 Activist neutrality was a difficult antinomy to

maintain, but maintain it he must.

Events in Europe further complicated Wilson’s position on neutrality. On May 7,
1915 a German U-boat torpedoed the British liner Lusitania, killing 128 Americans. The
German action horrified Wilson. He spent the next two days in seclusion from the public,
going to church, reading dispatches, composing a response to Germany and visiting only
with his family and Mrs. Galt.61 House wired Wilson from England that “an immediate
demand should be made upon Germany.” House wanted a declaration of war or at least
an ultimatum threatening war. Germany should be informed that “our government should
be expected to take whatever measures were necessary.” He went on to say that “we can
no longer remain neutral spectators . . . We are being weighed in the balance, and our
position amongst the nations is being assessed by mankind.”62 Bryan, on the other hand,
encouraged the president to ban Americans from taking passage on ships also carrying

munitions, as the Lusitania had done.63 Other public and political leaders pressed for the

 

59Examples of this are the series of addresses given between January 29 and 31, 1916, PWW Vol.
36, 26-73.

°°Note speech on October 28, 1915, PWW Vol. 35, 122-123 and the address to Congress on
preparedness, PWW Vol. 35, 297-302.

"Weinstein, 282, PWW Vol. 33, 127-138.
”From House, May 9, 1915, PWW Vol. 33, 134.

63From Bryan, May 9, 1915, PWW Vol.33, I34 - 135.

101

United States to assert its right to trade with Europe even at the risk of war.64 On
Monday, May 10, Wilson went to work on the US. response. He retained the antinomy
between these contending views, but the emotion of the situation took its toll. As he
worked on his response, he became definite, more fixed in his view, less tolerant and
more suspicious of those who were putting pressure on him from either side of the issue.
When a telegram arrived at the White House saying “in the name of God and humanity
declare war on Germany,” he responded that “war isn’t declared in the name of God, it is

a human affair entirely?"5

Though angry with those who were pushing for war, he had lost his patience with
the pacifists as well. The first note to Germany was only reluctantly signed by Bryan, the
second note was too strong and the secretary of state refused to sign it. The note provided
the opportunity for the break with Bryan that the president told House he was looking for
months earlier. By June 5, with the second Lusitania note to Germany, the breach was
complete. Bryan resigned on June 9. Wilson told Mrs. Galt that he considered Bryan a
traitor for leaving the administration, despite his desire to be rid of Bryan. The outgoing
secretary was more perceptive: “Colonel House has been Secretary of State, not I, and I

have never had your full confidence.”66

Pacifist and militarist impulses were both growing in the country. Wilson
continued to try to keep them under control. If war became a necessity it must be a

peacemaking war. In Philadelphia on May 10, he made his first public address following

 

6‘Weinstein, 283
“Dairy ofCharles Lee Swem, May 10, I915, PWW Vol. 33, 138.

66PWW Vol. 33, 449.

102

the Lusitania incident. To a crowd that included a large number of newly naturalized
citizens, he spoke of America’s mission to the world. His eloquence, as it so often was,
was at its peak under pressure. He told the crowd of new Americans that by swearing
allegiance to the United States they were swearing allegiance to no one except, perhaps,
God.” America was not the people who governed but an ideal, a great body of principles.
In other words, like the president who was speaking to them, they were committing
themselves to a higher cause, something greater than a mere great power. They would
find in this commitment their own internal antinomy formed by the interaction of these

principles. Presumably, that antinomy would mirror that of their president.

Wilson again used biblical imagery and cadence as he preached to his new
congregants. They had come because of this faith. They hoped for that which they
believed in. They were dreamers of dreams and motivated by the vision which their faith

and hope had produced.68 His revival-style speech culminated:

The example of A merica must be the example, not merely of peace because
it will not fight, but of peace because peace is the healing and elevating
influence of the world, and strife is not. There is such a thing as a man
being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right

that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right. 69

Later, when sent a transcript of this speech to be published, Wilson deleted the “too proud

to fight” sentence entirely. Yet it may be a better reflector of his views than the version

 

67PWW Vol. 33, 147.
“PWW Vol. 33, 148-149.

6"PWW Vol. 33, 149.

103

edited when his passions cooled. The speech reflected his optimistic Calvinism. The
nation, like an elect individual, was willing to do the right thing even if it meant suffering
abuse and scorn for that right. America was the “house of the Lord” in prophetic
imagery, the “city on a hill” of the Puritan founders. Its leader was fulfilling his divinely
appointed mission. The pressures from either side were not going to knock him off his

righteous course.

Lansing, who replaced Bryan as Secretary of State, represented an older, more
pessimistic Presbyterian Calvinism, unwashed by the thinking of the idealistic Princeton
divines and more prone to see fallen human nature in the behavior of nations. He wrote
in his diary: “I do not recall a case in history in which a nation surrendered its sovereignty
for the sole purpose of being right.”70 Unimpressed by the president’s higher ideals, he
wrote that: “. . .[I]ntuition rather than reason played the chief part in the way in which he
reached conclusions and judgements. In fact, arguments, however soundly reasoned, did
not appeal to him if they were opposed to his feeling of what was the right thing to do.
Even established facts were ignored if they did not fit in with his intuitive sense, this
semi-divine power to select the right.” Complaining that Wilson never doubted his
judgments he went on to say: “How did he know they were right? Why he knew it, and
that was the best reason in the world. . . . When reason clashed with his intuition, reason

had to give way?“

Lansing, believing he should deal with the persistent unyielding facts of the world

as it existed, could not appreciate the inner antinomy of Wilson’s mind. Adding irony

 

7oLansing Papers, Cruel and lnhuman Acts of War, May 25, 1915, Library of Congress

"Lansing Papers, The Mentality of Woodrow Wilson, November 20, 1921.

104

were the president’s speeches, which seemed to lack any sense of self-awareness. A
speech by the president December 10, 1914, to the Federal Council of Churches, could

have described himself:

An egotist is a man who has got the whole perspective of life wrong. He
conceives of himself as the center of ajfairs even as effects the providence
of God. He has not related himself to the great forces which dominate him
with the rest of us, and, therefore, has set up a little kingdom all his own in
which he reigns with unhonored sovereignty. . . . a life that leads to all

sorts of shipwreck. Whatever our doctrine be, our life is conformed to it. 72

Wilson’s confidential relationship with House was rapidly replaced by his new
wife, Edith Galt. An increasing distance between the president and his friend, who was
now spending much of his time in Europe can be detected in House’s diaries during this
time.73 House told the Allied leaders that the United States would intervene militarily
should the Allies have a setback on the battlefield.74 This was a stronger assertion than
was warranted by the correspondence between himself and the president.” There was no
indication in their letters that Wilson was pursuing any plan other than active neutrality as
he spoke about intervention based upon the “highest human motives.”76 But House,

across the Atlantic, read the president’s correspondence to mean military intervention.

 

72Address to the Federal Council of Churches, PWW Vol. 35, 330.

73House Diary, March 6, 1916, PWW Vol. 36, 262.

74House to Wilson, PWW 36, 148.

75Communications by J. J. Jusserand, J. Cambon and A. Briand, PWW Vol. 36, 149-150.

7"’House to Wilson Feb. 9, 1916, PWW 36, 148.

105

By December 20, 1916, faced with the reluctance of the president to commit the US
military, he complained bitterly: “the president has nearly destroyed all the work I have
done in Europe.”77 This was an early indication of the coming breach. The president
could not have known of the concern as House expressed his concern subtly and with
much flattery about the president’s mission and role in the new world they were
building.78 Wilson, House and Lansing used the same words but held different
meanings.79 For Wilson, the words were connected to his internal concursus of activism
and neutrality. House acted on his interpretation of the president’s words. When he did,
Wilson began to grow concerned about the clarity of his friend’s “principles” and

eventually, honesty, courage and loyalty.

The president’s words moved between peace and war. In December 1915 he
spoke of a “peace with guarantees,” a world in which “law not power would rule.” To
achieve this, America would intervene with a “spiritual mediation.”80 Hoping to do
something new to the history of international politics, the president spoke of both “law”
and “spirit,” a combination that in his mind meant something quite different than “law” as

Lansing, a practicing lawyer, would have understood it.

On May 27, 1916, Wilson spoke to the League to Enforce Peace. He said that the
United States had no interest in the causes of the war. What was of interest to it was how

to bring about a new international order that would prevent this sort of bloody conflict

 

77House Diary, Dec. 20, 1916, PWW Vol. 40, 304-305.
78House to Wilson, PWW Vol. 40, 293-294.

79This is Balfour’s idea of congruity, the opposite of antinomy and concursus, Theism and
Humanism.

”PWW Vol. 35, 327. Nordholt, 171.

106

from happening in the future. He spoke of a world where “coercion would no longer be
used in the service of political ambition or selfish hostility, but service of common order,

”8' Short on specifics, this new order would require the

common justice, common peace.
“spiritual mediation” of the United States. If necessary the new system would use force,
as the US had been forced to do in Mexico, Haiti or the Dominican Republic, but it would
be “neutr ” force to mediate peace. God’s messenger would drive out the money
changers, enabling the poor and downtrodden to find a better world. This language, which
seemed clear to the president, confused both the advocates of peace and the advocates of

military intervention. When a group of Chicago ministers wrote to him with

encouragement to keep America at peace, Wilson responded with Ezekiel 33:6 “But if the

 

watchman see the sword come and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned, if
the sword come, and take any person from among them . . . his blood will I require at the

watchman’s hand.”82 This must have seemed to them as clear as dirt.

Looking for avenues to use the mediating offices of the United States, Wilson sent
a diplomatic communique requesting that the belligerent nations declare their war aims.
What specifically would it take for them to be able to determine that the war was over?83
The antinomy in regard to American neutrality finally found expression in his “peace
without victory” address to the Senate. It did not express a particularly new idea. On
December 14, 1914, he had said that “the chance of a just and equitable peace, and of the

only possible peace that will be lasting, will be the happiest if no nation gets the decision

 

“PWW Vol.37, 113 - 116.
82PWW Vol. 35, 180-181. Nordholt, 183.

”December 1916, PWW Vol. 40, 273-276.

107

by arms. . . 3’“ But to the Senate on January 22, 1917, he spelled it out more clearly

when he said:

. . . it must be a peace without victory. It is not pleasant to say this. I beg
that I may be permitted to put my own interpretation upon it and that it
may be understood that no other interpretation was in my thought. I am
seeking only to face realities and to face them without soft concealments.
Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor ’s terms imposed
upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at
an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter
memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only

as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. 8’
The battle for the conquest of the “spirit of the world” had begun.

World events quickly forced Wilson to renegotiate this inner providential picture.
On January 31, 1917, Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare. On February
3, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany. On February 28, the
Zimmerman telegram encouraging Mexico to retake its land in the southwestern United
States and promising German support, was published.86 Public outcry against Germany in
the United States was overwhelming. The president’s sense of justice could no longer
support even active neutrality. On April 2, 1917, before a joint session of Congress he

asked for a declaration of war. He continued to speak of the same principles that he had

 

“PWW Vol. 31, 459.
”PWW V01. 40, 536.

“Lansing gave the Associated Press a paraphrase of the telegram on March 4, 1917,
Memorandum, PWW Vol. 41, 324.

108

espoused up to this time, only now the “spiritual mediation” of the United States would
work in concursus with the steel and lead of the military. He closed the speech with a
phrase reminiscent of Martin Luther at the Diet of Worms: “America is privileged to
spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave here birth and the happiness
and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other.”87 For
Wilson, this war was still about peace. It was still about a new order. He continued to
believe that America was above the fray even as American soldiers were killing anddying
in Europe. If not literally neutral, it remained neutral in spirit, which always represented

the higher reality.

Over the nine months following the declaration of war Wilson worked to redefine
America’s providential role. He must make this a righteous war. That internal
renegotiation culminated in the Fourteen Points address which he delivered to Congress
on January 8, 1918.88 The points were his sermon on the mount applied to international
relations. They were the new tablets of stone. At last, he found a righteous cause for the
United States to fight in. For Wilson, the Fourteen Points raised the stakes, creating a
situation in which it was absolutely essential that one party win and the other lose. There
was no middle ground on the points. He was now literally leading Christ’s Army, in what
he had written so long ago would be a hard fought battle in which the great forces of evil
would “quail before the uplifted swords of the Spirit.” There was no place for

compromise on principle. “For there is no middle course, no neutrality. Each one must

 

"PWW, Vol. 41, 527.

1”Appendix 3.

109

enlist either with the followers of Christ or those of Satan.”89 Standing before the joint
session of Congress he said: “We have spoken now, . . . An evident principle runs
through the whole programme I have outlined. It is the principle of justice to all peoples
and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty and safety with one
another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this principle be made its foundation no
part of the structure of international justice can stand. . . . The moral climax of this [is
that] the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, . . 3’90 The final war, a
new system, a better covenant between the nations were at stake in language that again
echoed that of the Bible. There was no turning back. The divine messenger’s

providential time had come.

 

"August 17, 1876, PWW, Vol. 1, 180-181.

90January 8, 1918, PWW, Vol. 45, 539.

110

Chapter 4: Negotiating the Tablets of Stone.

The end of the war came suddenly and with profound implications for Wilson’s
sense of divine mission. On October 6, 1918, he received a communication fiom the
German government via the Swiss charge d’affaires asking for peace based upon the
Fourteen Points address.1 The president responded to the Germans and was so delighted
to finally be in the role of mediator he had sought for so long that he came into the
cabinet meeting of October 8 whistling.2 On October 16, he informed the head of British
intelligence in the United States, Sir William Wiseman, that the United States was
prepared to accept the offer. He again insisted that the Fourteen Points and the League of
Nations “should be the very centre [sic] of the Peace agreement. The pillars upon which
the house should rest?3

Increasingly feeling his own influence in world events, Wilson was amazed and
deeply encouraged as he watched the rapid chain of events. On October 23, he accepted

the German offer to discuss an armistice while at the same time appealing to them to

reorganize their government so that it would be constitutionally responsible to the

 

'Note from German Government, PWW Vol. 51, 253.
2Josephus Daniels, PWW Vol. 51, 275.

JPWW Vol.51, 347, 351.

111

 

German people.4 On October 28, the German constitution was altered to create a
constitutional monarchy. A few days later the German Navy mutinied, forcing the
resignation of the German Chancellor and installing a Socialist government. On
November 6, the new government sent formal peace emissaries and on November 11, the
Armistice was signed.

The apparent presidential influences on the end of the war and the reorganization
of the German government were further evidence to the president of his divine mission,
another “Providential timing.” The peace appeared to provide him the opportunity to put
into effect that which he had been elected by God to do. On November 18, changing his
mind about sending House to head the American negotiation team, he announced that he
would personally lead the American delegation to Paris.5 He was going, he said, because
the American people would approve of this errand and also because he would have to be
involved directly in the “greater outlines of the final treaty.”6 He was pursuing a divine
cause.7

Both House and Lansing felt that the decision to go to Paris in person was a
mistake.8 House was concerned about a loss of prestige, as the president would be
reduced to just one member of the committee. Lansing privately mused that Wilson

would find it difficult to “step down from his pedestal” and negotiate as an equal with

 

‘October 23, 1918, PWW Vol. 51, 417-419.
5P\NW Vol. 53, 108.
°PWW Vol. 53, 109.

7He would later refer to the Treaty as coming not from human origin but “by the hand of God.”
Address to the Senate July 10, 1919, PWW Vol. 61, 436.

'PWW Vol.53, 71-73, 127-128.

112

 

European leaders.9 Yet the president was determined to see his project through. He had
grown increasingly frustrated at the failure of those around him to see the antinomy of his
internal logic. A year earlier he had assured House that of all his administration only the
Colonel could represent him: “No one in America, or in Europe either, knows my mind
and I am not willing to trust them to attempt to interpret it.”'0 While he had been willing
to send House as his representative to the early Armistice negotiations, telling Wiseman
“He knows my mind entirely,”ll by this time even House seemed to the president
incapable of grasping the principles, much less reconciling these principles with each
other as Wilson’s internal antinomy was capable of doing. The president was personally
called by God to a mission. He could no longer trust anyone else to do it correctly. Duty,
spiritual and material, bound him to go to Paris. The dire predictions of some of his
advisors about the dangers of his going in person did not concern him. His divine destiny
would overcome any obstacles as it had overcome previous obstacles in his life.

World events conspired to create in Wilson a view of himself as not only a man
on a divine mission but a man on 11g mission of his generation, the savior of his world.
House’s language made Wilson even more sure that he must go. Following his arrival in
Paris even House seemed persuaded that the decision had been right. Following the
president’s arrival House met with Lord Northcliff and “got him to admit” that: “. . .[T]he

Entente Governments as now constituted could not interpret the aspirations of the peoples

 

9PW‘V Vol.53, 71-73, 127-128.
l"To House October 13, 1917, PWW, Vol. 44, 378.

”PWW Vol.51, 351.

113

of their respective countries and . . . Wilson was the only statesman who could do so.”'2

As a result of this meeting House worked on a publicity campaign which he convinced
the president to launch with an interview in England. In conversation and in letter he
assured the president about his historic destiny. He referred to him as the “son of man,”
sending articles which hailed Wilson as the hero of a new international order. An article
by Gustave Hervé from La Victoire of March 7, 1917, enclosed in one note, referred to
the president as one day presiding over the “Congress of Nations” which through his hard
work was “founded as upon a rock.”‘3 Herve’ called him the “shepherd of the people.”M
This Christlike imagery clearly resonated with Wilson. A poem written by
Edward Park Davis compared his second inauguration to the second coming of Christ;
He stood upon the eastern gate,
Behind him rose the pillared dome. . .
His speech was voice of human man,
His thoughts the words of living God,”

The long poem was filled with comparisons to Christ and with Christian eschatological

references. The president was “David,” the “High Priest,” “God’s voice” in the earth, the

 

12House Diary, PWW, Vol. 53, 417.

l’Wilson’s Protestant Theology would not have seen this language as referring to Peter, the “rock”
of the Roman Catholic Church. Instead it would have been tied to two other places in scripture. The
parable of the wise man who built his house upon a rock was the person who heard and acted on the words
of Christ (Matthew 7:24, Luke 6:48). Christ himself was the word, (John 1:1) thus to Wilson and his
Presbyterian contemporaries it was Peter’s confession that “Thou art the Christ the son of the living God”
rather than Peter himself upon whom Christ would build the church. This could translate in Wilson’s mind
to the view that his Fourteen Points and League and Covenant of Nations, though a lesser word than Christ,
were nevertheless divinely inspired and should be taken with a similar seriousness, a rock upon which a new
way of international relations could be built.

l"Gustave Herve, Scruples of Mr. Wilson, PWW Vol. 41, 466-467.

l5PWW, Vol. 41, 452-453.

114

 

one “before whose march oppression falls,” and other Christ images. Wilson wrote Davis
that his poem had “touched me more than I know how to say. I read it aloud to Mrs.
Wilson and Miss Bones. . . . I owe you, my dear fellow, a real debt of gratitude for the
encouragement you have given me.”“’ Historian John Milton Cooper has written that
Wilson’s clerical family background would have kept him from having any delusions
about being a messianic crusader in politics.17 Yet there is little doubt that by the end of
the war the relentless pursuit of his mission, the obstacles he had overcome, the
encouragement of those around him and the influence on world events which his office
allowed, caused him at least to entertain such views of himself.

The Europeans complicated his mission to save the world. Prior to Wilson’s
arrival in Paris the Allies put forward a proposal to form a League of their own. Put
together by the victorious Europeans, neutrals and others would be invited to join this
league at the discretion of the victorious nations. The plan disturbed the president. It was
important to Wilson that the right group of founding nations create the League. The
league needed a righteous group of founding Apostles. The members of this League must
be committed to a new way of doing international politics. The nations who signed the
treaty must have enough conviction about those principles to give up their old selfish
ambitions. The belligerents on either side lacked this commitment. “The principle is
easy to adhere to, but the moment questions of organization are taken up all sorts of

jealousies come to the front. . . .”'8 Any League must have the president of the United

 

l“PWW Vol. 41, 452.
”Cooper, Warrior and The Priest, 19.

l"To Theodore Marburg, PWW Vol. 46, 572.

115

States involved or it would be the old business with a new name.

House shared Wilson’s concern about the European allies forming their own
League. Such an organization would simply become another set of entangling alliances
with different groups vying with each other to get neutrals to join their alliance.'° Wilson
was convinced that the Allies, left to themselves, would subvert the mission of the
League. He must first get them to agree upon his principles or the organization would not F

be the servant of the task of world peace as he envisioned it.

 

Lansing believed that Wilson’s attitude changed upon his arrival in France. The

Twin“ Y- A! .
I

president’s private speech seemed less confident than it had been before, but the cheering
crowds in the streets influenced him to think himself able to accomplish anything.20 In
fact, what Lansing interpreted as Wilson’s lack of confidence in private conversations
was his growing distrust of those around him to fully grasp the “greater principles” which
motivated him as he worked to accomplish his mission.21 In Europe, the president
continued the manner of decision making he had used before his arrival. He made
decisions with little or no consultation. But now he became, as Lansing noted, even more
exclusive, his own repository for all information, opinions and speculation to which no
one else had access. The American delegation was not consulted in the decision making
process, and the members were forced to rely on leaks from the staffs of the British and

French delegations to learn their own govemment’s position on the issues they were

 

"’From House, PWW Vol. 46, 574-575.

20Robert Lansing, The Big Four and Others of the Peace Conference, (Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1921) 38, 40.

116

trying to help negotiate.22 It was not a lack of confidence which afflicted Wilson at this
point but a deepening confidence in himself alone, an inner focus on his mission, one that
he increasingly felt only he could accomplish. The comparisons he made between
himself and Christ became more pronounced and more common. His sense of divine
mission and his position at the center of world politics came together to create a sense
that he could not confide in anyone regarding his task.

Adding an emotional logic to his image of himself as redeemer of the nations and
“shepherd of the people” was Wilson’s sincere compassion for the war-ravaged
inhabitants of Europe. This sympathy was deeply rooted in him by both his Christian
faith and his experience as a youth growing up in the post-Civil War south. As the one
chosen to be president of the United States at this moment in history, he could do great
good for the downtrodden inhabitants of the world. This impulse had been part of his
underlying personal justification for the intervention in Mexico. To help tyrannized
people of the world, to feed the hungry, to cloth the naked, was further evidence of his
election by God. While rejecting salvation by character, Presbyterians acknowledged
character as evidence of salvation. Added to the other evidences, the influence he had on
world events, the challenges overcome, the frenzied crowds that greeted him in Europe,
this tangible action of “feeding the multitude,” made his already-present impulse to view
himself in redeemer language more acute. To Herbert Hoover, head of relief efforts
throughout war torn Europe, he remarked; “a preacher said the Lord’s Prayer began with

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ and said no man could worship God on an empty

 

22Lansing, Big Four, 46.

117

stomach. Similarly hunger will bring on bolshevikism [sic] and anarchy.”23 Mixed with
fears about atheist bolshevism was the sense that he was the answer to the Lord’s Prayer
even for the distressed and defeated German people. He had been used to liberate them
from their own oppressive government; now he would secure their future as an integral
part of a prosperous, democratic, righteous world.

Wilson was convinced that the popular opinion of the world, which he
represented, would win the day. Should that popular opinion fail to convince the
European leaders, American economic power would force them to accept the Fourteen
Points and the League and Covenant of Nations.24 He went to EurOpe prepared for the
kind of battle for righteousness that he had espoused twenty years before in Christ ’s
Army. “1 want to go into the peace conference armed with as many weapons as my
pockets will hold so as to compel justice.”25 He increasingly spoke as a lone crusader.
His language and actions demonstrated that he was not just isolated from his aides and
advisors, but that he considered himself separate from the allied leaders as well. He
believed himself to be motivated by a different set of ideals. He was prepared to battle to
persuade the European leaders to embrace these greater principles.

Wilson continued to speak of “Peace without victory”even though this concept
was workable only if neither side won the war. He persisted in advancing this idea even
after his own intervention had given the Allies success on the battlefield. Now, instead of

mediating a peace between weary belligerents, he found himself in the position of trying

 

23Wilson to Hoover, Diary of Josephus Daniels. PWW, Vol. 51, 372.
2"PWW Vol. 43, 238, Vol. 51, 372.

25PWW Vol. 51, 372.

118

 

to rein in the vindictive impulses of the triumphant side. Ironically, winning the war had
weakened Wilson’s position on the peace. He soon discovered that he had less
compelling weapons in his “pockets” than he had hoped. His tendency to view rhetoric
as reality was again demonstrated on this issue. He had spelled out his principle in a
series of addresses to congress and the nation. He continued to believe that his words
would create a reality that the messy ebb and flow of the current international situation
did not reflect. Like the wise man in Christ’s parable, those who heard these words and
did them would create an international order that was “founded upon a rock.”

The president had repudiated what he identified as the system of international
politics created by the Congress of Vienna.26 He outlined a series of ideas that he felt
were interrelated in “peace without victory.” This peace would be accomplished, not
merely by war weariness, but by a broad alliance which would supercede the old
entangled network of balance of power alliances. This new system would be based upon
the larger principles of love of justice and right.27 It would do away with the very need
for balance of power, which was based upon fear, not love. Replacing the multiple
alliances with a single alliance which would eventually include all the nations of the
earth. It was an alliance for peace rather than a commitment to go to war.

To reinforce these ideas Wilson downplayed the clauses in the league covenant
which implied the use of force, such as Article 10. Those critics who pointed out

potential military entanglements abroad under the Covenant, in his view, were missing its

 

2"PWW Vol. 46, 320.

271" our Points Address to Congress, PWW Vol. 46. 320-321.

119

 

entire point.28 There would be no wars for selfish purposes in the new alliance. All wars
would be fought against war. Military conflicts, should they arise, would be peacemaking
crusades. The dilemma of what happened when national right met national right would
no longer arise. The League and the World Court would work those issues out fairly.
Neutrality and isolation would become obsolete. The principle he was fighting for, peace
without victory, created a reality that was more tangible for Wilson than the troubling fact
that a military victory had already been won. He told a group of newspaper
correspondents that he believed in peace without victory more strongly following the
signing of the Armistice than he had before}29 Peace without victory would be the spirit
of the final settlement, the manner in which the victors would treat the vanquished. The
technical fact that one side had actually won, and would write the peace terms with little
input from the defeated, was a minor detail that could not alter the principle. This new
system was so different from what had preceded it that Wilson often challenged his
listeners not to call it an “alliance.” It was more than an alliance. The league was a
deliberative body of sovereign nations bound by moral principles not legal inflexibility.
These principles, like those found in the US Constitution, would create a peacefirl world
order based upon the rule of a higher law than the old alliance systems had been able to
create.30

Challenges to principles by the messy and inconvenient world that existed

continued to encroach on Wilson’s attention. European leaders made public

 

2“Grayson, February, 22, 1919, PWW Vol. 55, 224-225, Remarks to the Democratic National
Committee, 309-324.

29PWW Vol. 53, 337.

30Press Conference, PWW Vol. 50, 790.

120

 

pronouncements that ran contrary to his understanding of the peace he believed they had
agreed upon. He was forced to entertain options to counter this European “selfishness.”
If Britain and France did not show good faith in his idea of a just peace, he threatened to
withdraw from the peace conference and make a separate peace with Germany." He
chafed at the seeming hypocrisy of the British who, after agreeing to the Fourteen Points
and the principle of disarmament, announced publicly that they intended to retain naval
supremacy. He told reporters that if they should try, the “United States could and would
build the greatest Navy in the World.”32

Determined to get the League signed, ratified and implemented, determined to get
the world to embrace his Fourteen Points, and increasingly wary of the motives of
European leaders, Wilson insisted the League be included as an integral part of the peace
treaty. The European plan had been to hold two conferences, the first to draft the peace
treaty with the Central Powers and then a second under calmer circumstances to discuss
and ratify the League.33 The president rejected this plan. He was concerned that once the
Allies got what they wanted in the first conference, they would have no interest in his
League.“ A punitive peace enforced upon Germany would make it unlikely that the
Germans would want anything to do with an international organization and system that
proposed a “peace” dictated to them by the victorious Allies. He submitted a resolution

to the Peace Conference to create a committee to frame the constitution of the League and

 

3'I’WW Vol. 53, 337.
32Diary of Dr. Grayson, PWW Vol. 53, 337.
33Memorandum from the French Government, PWW Vol. 53, 295.

"House Diary, PWW 53, 401-402, 652-653.

121

 

to make it part of the final treaty. French Premier, Georges Clemenceau was opposed to
the merging of the two, but Britain and Italy supported the move.35 With their support
Wilson became Chairman of the League of Nations Committee.

The battle to keep the League in the treaty did not go away. As the great powers
found the larger group of nations to unwieldy to work with, the conference broke into
smaller groups. The smallest and most important of these groups was the “Council of
F our,”which included the heads of state of Britain, France, Italy and the United States.
An irony not lost on Clemenceau or subsequent historians is that the proponent of “open
covenants openly arrived at” insisted on secret councils to arrive at those covenants. On
March 25, at an early meeting of the Council of Four, Clemenceau again tried to separate
the League from the peace treaty. He argued that if the Germans were not in the League,
and he was determined that they would not be, they could not sign a treaty that included a
ratification of the League. Wilson argued that the League would enforce the peace which
the Germans had to agree to and therefore they should have the chance to record their
agreement to it. There would be “so many threads” of the League in the peace treaty that
you “cannot dissect” the treaty from the League.36 Wilson was determined that there be a
League. Germany and all democratic nations would eventually be in that League. With
the support of Britain and Italy, he again prevailed. Clemenceau retained his objection

but went on to other business.37 To the president, the principle of peace without victory

 

3’Diary of Grayson, PWW Vol. 54, 262-263, Note from House, 263-264, Protocol of plenary
session, 264-271.

3“’PWW V0. 55, 418.

1”Paul Mantoux, The Deliberations of the Council of Four, Volume 1, Translated and Edited by
Arthur S. Link, (Princeton University Press, 1992) 4-5.

122

could now only be accomplished by the adoption of the League on his terms. He was
unbending on this as Moses tablets of stone.

Lansing observed that the other members of the Council of Four began to use
Wilson’s principles against him to get their material goals. The British, who were the
most supportive of the League in general, gave their support with the assumption that it
would not affect their naval superiority or limit their colonial claims. They often used
this support to broker deals in their national interest. Other leaders at the conference also
discovered that the League was the ultimate bargaining chip when dealing with the
American president. When they needed concessions, the threat to leave, to drop the
League from the treaty or back out of the League altogether, was enough to force the
president to consider their demands.

Having survived attempts to make the League a separate issue, Wilson now faced
these other battles. The president met some of these occasions with defiance and others
with compromise. When the Italian leader, Vittorio Orlando, and his delegation walked
out of the conference demanding the concession of Austrian territory for Italy, Wilson
also threatened to leave, firing off an address to the Italian people from his own
typewriter. He pulled from his “pocket” the greatest weapon he knew, his father’s
weapon, the preachers weapon, the messengers weapon: persuasive words. Appealing to
the good heart of the Italian people he delivered his sermon. “America is Italy’s fiiend. . .
. [America] trusts Italy, and in her trust believes that Italy will ask nothing of her that
cannot be made unmistakably consistent with those sacred obligations. Interest is not

now in question, but the rights of peoples, . . . and above all the right of the world to

123

 

peace. . 3’38 The response in Italy was swift and negative. Italian public opinion
expressed outrage at his condescending manner.39 National interest clashed with
Wilson’s dictated “sacred obligations” and the international popular support upon which
he counted dissolved before his eyes.40

On other issues Wilson was willing to compromise. With the conference at a
seeming impasse over colonial claims, South African leader Jan Smuts suggested a step
between empire and independence. He proposed that the “mature” democracies tutor the
emerging nations until they were able to handle full independence.“ It was a proposal
that fit with Wilson’s paternalistic tendency to see the non-white nations as being in need
of instruction as he had in Latin America. For those not ready to give up the colonial
system, it appeared to hold the possibility of a continuation of the system under another
name.42 If they could find the right wording, so that it would seem to comply with the
“spirit” of the American proposals, Wilson would accept substantial deviations from his
stated aims. This compromise allowed Wilson’s vision for the League to move forward.
In the short run, however, the compromise was less than the full “free, open-minded, and
absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims” that the president had publicly
promised.

Former president William Howard Tafi had urged the president to get language in

 

38PWW Vol. 58, 7-8.

3"PWW Vol. 58, 97-101, Lansing, 102, House, 104. Tumulty, 105,
”PWW Vol. 58, 5-8.

"PWW Vol. 45, 537, Clements, 200.

42Further discussion of this is found in Michael D. Callahan, Mandates and empire : the Leagre of
Nations and Africa, 1914-1931, (Brighton [England] ; Portland, OR : Sussex Academic Press, 1999).

124

 

the treaty that protected the Monroe Doctrine. Wilson secured such language, but at the
cost of further concessions."3 Compromises allowed uncomfortable or controversial
questions to be deferred to the League for later consideration. The willingness to defer
issues for the League and World Court, confirmed that the other great powers were
supporting the League.“ Deferring complicated issues also protected the president from
having to face potential flaws in his plan. He was most comfortable seeing issues in

terms of right and wrong. His Four Points address and other speeches highlighted this

 

attitude. But he had no clear solution for when right met right, as it often did when

 

claims of national self-determination clashed. National groups were not conveniently
grouped together with neat natural borders or easily identifiable “good” leaders they could
be “taught” to elect. Deferring complex matters to the League allowed Wilson to believe
he had kept his “principles” unsullied, while the European leaders believed they had
deferred politically unpalatable concessions, perhaps indefinitely."5

The compromise for which Wilson was most vilified by both Germany and the
political lefi was on the issue of war reparations. He agreed with the other members of
the Council of Four that Germany would pay for “civilian” losses, including some
military pensions for those families that had lost a bread winner in the war. These losses
quickly began to expand to include greater and greater allied claims. John Foster Dulles,
nephew of Robert Lansing, future secretary of state, and a junior member of the American

delegation, recounted a meeting on the subject of reparations in which the president was

 

”PWW Vol. 56, 83.
“Lansing, Big Four, 5 I.

“An good example of this somewhat simplistic reasoning on Wilson’s part is the Four Points
address to Congress. PWW Vol. 46, 318-324.

125

“continuously finding new meanings and the necessity of broad application of principles
previously enunciated. . . 3’46 Dulles pointed out the logical problem these reparations
would cause. Wilson replied that “he did not feel bound by considerations of logic. . . 3’47
Another witness to the meeting described the president as impatient and snapping: “I
don’t give a damn for logic!”48 The president was weary of haggling about details. He
had in his own mind a clear central set of goals. The details were wearing him down and fi—
getting in his way. It was not just logic that he did not “give a damn” about, but

technicalities as well. The particulars, so important to the rest of the Council, would

work themselves out if he could just get the League ratified. That was his one goal. The

 

League would fix the legal trivia once it was established. As the conference went on and
the president grew more exhausted, his views hardened. He became increasingly
inflexible and impatient about technicalities and procedures.

Though the president was not interested in the details, it would be wrong to
characterize him as unaware of technicalities or unable to grasp complicated arguments.
In the meetings the president’s grasp of detail and the clarity with which he was able to
sum up complex conversations camouflaged the simplicity of his goals. He was able to
enumerate the points of very complicated discussions without proposing any particular
plan, because he was not interested in particulars other than where they were necessary to
hasten ratification of the League. The tension between the rigidity of his simple goal to

get the League ratified and the vagueness and lack of concern over the other details of the

 

“John Foster Dulles, PWW Vol. 56, 498-499.
"John Foster Dulles, PWW Vol. 56, 498-499.

“Thomas William Lamont, PWW Vol.56, 502.

126

treaty created different perceptions in those who observed him at Paris. Some saw him as
imperious and rigid, while others spoke of him as vague and unsure of himself. This
difference of perception depended on which issues were under consideration.
Clemenceau commented on the American president’s idealistic inflexibility on the
League, the Fourteen Points and the attitude of divine mission he displayed: “The good
Lord Himself required only ten points, Wilson has fourteen.”49 “I can get on with you,”
Clemenceau told House, “you are practical. . . but talking to Wilson is something like
talking to Jesus Christ!”50 Keynes saw a different side to this inflexibility: “But in fact
the president had thought out nothing; when it came to practice his ideas were nebulous
and incomplete. He had no plan, no scheme, no constructive ideas whatever for clothing
with the flesh of life the commandments he had thundered from the White House. He
could have preached a sermon on any of them or have addressed a stately prayer to the
Almighty for their fulfillment; but he could not frame their concrete application to the
actual state of Europe.”51 Significantly, both those who thought Wilson too rigid and
those who thought him too vague portrayed him in biblical imagery. The one aspect of
his personality about which there was little debate at this time was the religious quality of
his sense of mission. His manner, his words, his personal conviction that he was God’s
messenger to the international order, all combined to evoke this imagery in those who

observed him.

 

”Quoted in Alan Sharp, The Versailles Settlement: Peacefliking in ParisLl9l9, (New York, St.
Martin’s Press, 1991) 14.

50Quoted in Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919, Six Months That Changed The World, (New York,
Random House, 2001) 18.

"John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, (New York, Harcourt, Brace
and Howe, 1920), 42-43.

127

 

Wilson’s policy was deliberately vague in regard to many of the particulars of the
overall treaty. He had told Congress that “The [US] has no desire to interfere in
European affairs or to act as arbiter in European territorial disputes.”52 Lansing
confirmed that the president was willing to stay out of the details of European squabbles.
So long as he could determine the larger principles by which they would operate, he was
content to leave the minutiae to others. Keynes considered this a fatal flaw in the
president’s personality. “Now it was that what I have called his theological or
Presbyterian temperament became dangerous. . . . Although compromises were now
necessary he remained a man of principle and the Fourteen Points a contract absolutely
binding upon him. . . . he would do nothing that was contrary to his great profession of
faith. Thus without any abatement of the verbal inspiration of the Fourteen Points, they
became a document for gloss and interpretation. . . the intellectual apparatus of self
deception, by which . . . the president’s forefathers had persuaded themselves that the
course they thought it necessary to take was consistent with every syllable of the
Pentateuch.” ’3 Keynes was correct in this observation of Wilson’s attitude toward the
Fourteen Points. So long as they were accepted they would be interpreted as a living,
adaptable document, as the scripture and United States Constitution had been in the
president’s tradition. The Fourteen Points would embody the spirit of the age. Like the
scriptures, they would be interpreted by each generation, mixing its spirit with the
principles of justice and right upon which the document was founded.

The League and the Fourteen Points must be agreed upon. To Wilson this was all

 

S2PWW Vol. 46, 321.

S3Keynes, Economic Consequences of the Peace, 50.

128

 

that mattered. The details would work themselves out in time. Lansing noted that the
president seldom forced the US. position into the treaty.” He had no definite outline or
details for a treaty other than the Fourteen Points and allowed none of his advisors to put
outline or particulars together.” The substance and detail of the Versailles settlement was
largely authored by the British and French.” Lansing did not see why this was of no
concern to Wilson. The secretary of sate’s legal mind saw this as a failure on the
president’s part. Wilson, who despised the technicalities of law, saw it as a strength. The
Europeans could haggle over the trivia, so long as the spirit and central structure of the
League was adopted. The League would eventually force justice on the world.

Wilson’s providential hopes for the world, his whole divine mission in life,
became reduced to this one scrap of paper. It became the focus, the convergence, of his
convictions about the importance of the task over the organization and his high regard for
the written word properly interpreted. His lifelong immersion in covenant theology and
his cultural background in Presbyterian church life, coupled with his own personality and
sense of mission, made this hope more intense. To Wilson the principles were clear and
simple. They defined the ultimate form that detail would take. When Lansing
commented that the president’s ideals blinded him to the material aims of the Europeans,
he failed to grasp that it was not blindness. Wilson cared greatly about the ideals and
very little about material aims. The task, in this case his mission, was embodied in the

ideals which he believed would eventually exert control over the details of the

 

"Lansing, Big Four, 56-59.
”Lansing, Big Four, 41, also cite Lansing papers.

S"Lansing, Big Four, 40-42.

129

in

 

:mw-Tr
IA

organization and the final form it would take in the material world.57 That organization
would then define the righteous settlement of all international claims. Wilson believed
this “scrap of paper” embodied the principles of the divine purpose of history and offered
fulfillment of the yearnings of the people of the world. Everything in his life to this point
hinged on agreement to this document.

Finally the document was ready. On June 28, 1919, the humiliated German

delegation signed the treaty in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The League of Nations

 

was part of the agreement, as was a battered version of Wilson’s other Fourteen Points.

 

For all that Wilson had failed to get, he had achieved remarkable success. He was certain
that the treaty spelled out the first steps toward decolonization, a moderation of the claims
of the victors, an agreement in principle to conduct international business in a new way.
Most importantly, the League of Nations and the World Court would fix the flaws of the
treaty with the help of the United States. His job was done. The Senate would have no
choice but to see the divine logic of this treaty and would be honor bound to ratify it.
Should he have to, he was willing to force the Senate to see their duty.” He worked on
his message to the Senate while traveling home on the George Washington, believing his
work was nearly done.

“The only legitimate object of organization is efficiency?” Wilson said early in
his first term in office. This idea of organizational efficiency was the crux of the task vs.

organization antinomy. An organization was only as good as its ability to achieve its

 

57Lansing, Big Four, 49.
”House, Diary, June 29, 1919, PWW Vol. 61, 354-355.

”PWW Vol. 35, 322-323.

130

task. In Wilson’s mind, Article 10 of the League treaty made the new organization
efficient. It required all nations connected to the League to “respect and preserve as
against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of
all Members of the League?"0

At this point the Senate battle over the Treaty began. To some members it
appeared that the president was taking the United States in a direction that departed fiom
its history. The League Covenant seemed a direct repudiation of George Washington’s
caution about staying out of European alliances. Article 10 seemed to pledge the United
States, in advance, to come to the assistance of any nation in distress, regardless of the
causes of the dispute. Wilson considered these concerns slanderous nonsense made up by
people ignorant of his principles or by enemies of world peace. The League would
resolve disputes without war. Any war, therefore, would pit an aggressor against the
world, represented by the League, and the American people would be eager to support the
righteous cause of the world.

Like tributaries coming together to form the river of his personality, Wilson’s
political convictions, his theological view of the world, his sense of mission and his
health converged at this moment to affect the ferocious battle with the Senate over the
treaty. During this battle Wilson’s physical condition began to deteriorate, causing him to
further harden his position and become, if possible, even less amenable to compromise.
His health exacerbated the vulnerability of the other aspects of his personality and
political convictions.

Adding impetus to his conviction that it was God’s will he prevail over all

 

”Quoted in Hamilton Foley, Woodrow Wilson’s Case For The League Of Nations, (Port
Washington, New York, Kennikat Press, Inc., 1967) 256.

131

 

opponents was the president’s conviction that he was supreme in negotiating treaties.
The battle with the Senate, sparked in part by Article 10, has been the focus of much
debate. Historian Daniel Stid has written that the views Wilson expressed on the absolute
control the president had over foreign policy set him up for his collision with the Senate.“

The Senate battle followed a pattern that Wilson had displayed when fighting over

 

principle all of his adult life. It resembled his father’s willingness to lose his pastorate m
and seminary chair in order to keep fiom giving in on principle by allowing seminary

students to attend the local Presbyterian church rather than the seminary chapel on ;
Sundays in Colombia, South Carolina. E

Wilson’s academic and political writings had spelled out the principle he was
fighting with the Senate over for thirty-four years: presidential prerogative in foreign
policy. Wilson published Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics in
1885.‘52 He wrote this book while deeply impressed with the British parliamentary
system. Both Congressional Government and the article Cabinet Government, which was
published in the Atlantic by its young editor, Henry Cabot Lodge, espoused a greater role
for Congress at the expense of the executive. Wilson believed that the best president was
one whose leadership emerged from the body of the congress as did the leadership of the
British prime minister. This would ensure a higher quality of leadership and a leader with
greater power, invested by the representatives of the people, to lead the nation. It was a
system which mirrored, in many ways, the Presbyterian system of church government that

he was familiar with. The pastor of a church or moderator of the General Assembly

 

"Daniel Stid, Lh_e President as Statesman' Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution, (University of
Kansas Press, 1998) 152-153.

 

”Wilson, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics, PWW Vol. 4, 13-179.

132

emerged from the body of his fellow elders by the common recognition by his peers of his
extraordinary abilities.

Wilson wrote of the Senate that: “The greatest consultative privilege of the
Senate, — the greatest in dignity, at least, if not in effect upon the interests of the country,
— is its right to 'a ruling voice in the ratification of treaties with foreign powers?"3 But,
this was not an un-nuanced privilege. He went on to argue that organic considerations
“have made it impossible that there should be any real consultation between the President

and the Senate. . . 3’” Whenever Wilson spoke of things organic, or the spirit of an

 

institution, that part that was organic or spirit took precedent in his thought. The E
Senate’s power was legal. He likened its role to that of an auditor’s: “I do not consult the

auditor who scrutinizes my accounts when I submit to him my books, my vouchers and a

written report of the business I have negotiated. I do not take his advice or seek his

consent; 1 simply ask his endorsement or invite his condemnation?” He argued that

since the President was not part of the process of the Senate in approving the treaty, he

had no reason to consult the senators when making a treaty. The Senate had only one

duty: to accept or reject the finished product. Even if he had reservations as to the

wisdom of the treaty the president might have the country “so pledged in the view of the

world to ceratin courses of action, that the Senate [would hesitate to bring] the

appearance of dishonor which would follow its refusal to ratify. . . 3’” Thus a president

 

63

Congressional Government, PWW Vol. 4, 129.
”PWW Vol. 4, 129-130.
”PWW Vol. 4, 130. Latterly known as “the Enron principle.”

“PWW Vol. 4, 130.

133

 

could “morally” bind the Senate to a treaty, which it would then be honor bound to ratify
because the spokesman for the government had given his word.

Wilson was concerned with the supposed weaknesses of the American system in
Congressional Government, arguing that the system would be better if the President were
more like a prime minister. Twenty-three years later, when he published Constitutional
Government in the United States, his views had evolved. He still believed that the ]
President need not consult the Senate in treaty making. But he felt that the Presidency as

it existed in the Constitution was a strength as the person in the office embodied the spirit

 

of the nation, the party and the government in one man. This was something Congress,

ll—‘l .

with its multiple local and regional constituencies, could not do.67

By 1908, professor Wilson had developed a more organic vision of national
political government. He saw that the presidency had grown with the nation and had
become stronger as the interpretation of the Constitution had evolved. The Constitution
was a living thing rather than an inflexible legal document. “It is accountable to Darwin,
not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its
functions by the sheer pressure of life. . . . There can be no successful government
without leadership. . . 3"” The fluidity of the Constitution allowed the president as leader
to stamp himself on the people’s understanding of the document itself. “The Presidents
who have not made themselves leaders” failed to live in the spirit of the Constitution.

They did not alter it. They did not put the imprint of the spirit of the nation which they

 

”PWW Vol 18, 114.

”PWW Vol. 18, 106.

134

-2, -W
m ‘iifii.

 

b-
Iw-x. 2"- - '
4.41.. J

 

themselves embodied on the understanding of the document.” “The Constitution of the

United States is not a mere lawyer’s document: it is a vehicle of life, and its spirit is

always the spirit of the age.”70
This elevated view of the Presidency fit well with Wilson’s conviction about his

own divine mission. This mission was well suited to the opinions he had expressed in

Constitutiognal Government on the power of the president in foreign policy: “One of the F.

greatest of the President’s powers. . . [is] his control, which is very absolute, of the

foreign relations of the nation.” While acknowledging the need to have the Senate ratify

 

IU‘Vo' Hf \ A"

treaties, he wrote that the President: “may guide every step of diplomacy. And to guide
diplomacy is to determine what treaties must be made, . . . He need disclose no step of the
negotiation until it is complete, and when in any matter it is completed the government is
virtually committed.”7| The president alone negotiated treaties. On March 20, 1918,
months before the Armistice, Wilson complained to House about the “folly of these
League to Enforce Peace butters-in.”72 He was determined to guard jealously the
presidential prerogative of treaty negotiation against all other contenders, popular or
congressional.

As the president left for France for his second and final round of negotiations, he
warned those who would try to oppose the League: “I want to utter this solemn warning,

not in the way of a threat; the forces of the world do not threaten, they operate. The great

 

”PWW Vol. 18, 115.
”PWW Vol. 18, 115.
7|PWW Vol. 18, 120.

72To House, PWW, Vol. 47, 85.

135

tides of the world do not give notice that they are going to rise and run; they rise in their
majesty and overwhelming might, and those who stand in the way are overwhelmed.”73
Wilson was again using Providential language. When he left for France he believed a
treaty on his terms was inevitable. The tides of the world and the inevitable direction of
history would overwhelm all opposition. Upon his return to the United States, he
believed that opposition had been overcome in Paris. The tide had risen, the rest of the
world had acknowledged it. The United States Senate would be bound to ratify this treaty
which was so evidently Providential.

Eleven years after the publication of Constitutional Government Wilson, now in

 

the office of president, returned from his triumphant trip to Europe with a treaty in hand.
It is apparent from his attitude leading up to the presentation of the treaty to the Senate
that he was convinced the reality of American politics would conform to his principles.
At a press conference a little more than an hour before his speech to the Senate one
reporter commented that the Senate was operating on the assumption that it could make
reservations by majority vote. The president replied, “That is a very dangerous
assumption?” When asked if the treaty could be ratified with reservations the president
snapped about “hypothetical questions” and said simply “The Senate is going to ratify the
treaty?”

On July 10, 1919, he introduced the treaty to the Senate. His address pulled all

 

”Speech at the Metropolitan Opera House, Mar 4, 1919, wa Vol. 55, 415.
"PWW Vol. 61,423.

”PWW Vol. 61, 424.

136

 

1m r..!.- r' a

the elements of his thought and sense of divine calling together.” America had entered
the war on a different footing from every other belligerent. “We entered the war as the
disinterested champions of right. . . .” The entrance of America meant “salvation” to the
Allies.77 He employed the language of spiritual warfare from the Gospels and Revelation.
He compared the old system of international relations to the image of Satan from the
Revelation of St. John: “The monster that had resorted to arms must be put in chains that
could not be broken?” The phrases “final war” and “only hope for mankind” were rife

with eschatological meaning. To show the need for the treaty he used Jesus’s parable

 

about the demon-possessed man who, having replaced the demon with nothing, was i:
seven times worse upon its return.79 “Again and again had the demon of war been cast '
out of the house of the peoples and the house swept clean by a treaty of peace; only to
create a time when he would enter in again with spirits worse than himself?"0 He
explicitly gave the Treaty of Versailles the role in the current international order that his
Christian theology gave to the Holy Spirit in the parable, or to Christ in the heart of the
individual. The League was the “strong man” who could hold the house against the
demon of war. To fail to ratify the treaty would “break the heart of the world.”
The president characterized himself as the embodiment of the spirit of a God-

called nation carrying a divine message of redemption to the world. He was bringing a

new and better Covenant. “The stage is set, the destiny is disclosed. It has come about by

 

”Address to Senate, PWW Vol. 61, 426-436.
77PWW Vol. 61, 428.

7"PWW 61, 434.

7”Matthew 12:44, Luke 11:25.

”PWW 61, 434.

137

no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who has led us into this way. We
cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow
the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the
way. The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else?“ All the elements of his

Calvinism, his idea of the United States as the “Redeemer Nation,” his views as to how

 

the political structures in America worked and his own sense that he was at the pinnacle n
of fulfilling his divine mission intersected in this closing statement. The speech again .
harkened back to the language of Christ ’s Army written in his youth and returned to so ‘
often. He was the general leading Christ’s army with the uplifted “sword of the spirit” as E

he addressed the Senate and nation. He could not fail. He did not even consider the
possibility of failure. The obstacles had all been overcome. The promised land was in
view.

Sadly for Wilson, politics is an antinomy of a completely different kind.
Throughout the rest of July and August he battled his opponents in the Senate. They did
not view their role as that of a mere auditor. As he did when his opponents tried to out
maneuver him at Princeton, as he had when the Lusitania was torpedoed, as he had done
upon his arrival in Paris, Wilson became inflexible in the face of external pressure. His
relationship with House, already cool, ceased. The president no longer even bothered to
open his former friend’s letters. House had been too quick to attempt compromise with
the Europeans, he had suggested the unfortunate March dinner with the Senate Foreign

Relations Committee, he could not be trusted in negotiation with the Senate.82 “Your

 

"Address to Senate, July 10, 1919, PWW, Vol. 61, 436.

”PWW Vol. 55, 488 and footnote.

138

 

dinner with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was a failure as far as getting
together was concerned,” he told House bitterly.83 Lansing, who also counseled
negotiation or compromise, was disregarded and eventually dismissed.

Providence had provided a way out of other impasses. The president felt himself

so clearly right on this issue, with such spiritual and legal right on his side, that it was not

 

possible he could fail. God would not let him fail after all he had come through to get to I?
this place. Doubt was met with confident assertions that God and the people would force

the Senate to come around. Paradise had the serpent; Wilson had Lodge and the Senate :
reservationists. The president was not tempted to taste the fruit of their reservations. To E

believe that God would let the treaty fail was unthinkable. It would imply that Satan had
thwarted God’s will.

In interviews with senators and the press, the president stated repeatedly that he
was opposed to any reservations to the treaty. Occasionally he would leave the
impression that he was willing to consider minor points of interpretation, but he never
gave the slightest hint that he was willing to yield his presidential treaty making role to
anyone else. He had given his word. He had negotiated a treaty which may as well have
been written on tablets of stone. The “spirit” of the treaty would fix the lawyer’s
language. Reasonable minds would make reasonable interpretations of the meaning of
that language. With the help of the United States the international community would
become reasonable. The hypothetical situations pointed to by his opponents would not
occur. It was unreasonable to worry about such circumstances, Providence would not

permit those conditions which might damage or destroy the new covenant of nations, this

 

”PWW Vol. 55, 499.

139

divinely ordained order.

Wilson argued his case using every real, potential and imaginary crisis as evidence
that the treaty needed to be ratified. He told reporters that “chaos might reign in Europe”
if the Senate continued to delay ratification.84 He blamed the rising cost of living on the
failure of the Senate to ratify the Treaty: “There can be no settled conditions here or
elsewhere until the treaty of peace is out of the way and the work of liquidating the war
has become the chief concern of our government and of the other governments of the
world. . . . There can be no peace prices so long as our whole financial and economic
system is on a war basis.”85 Everything was makeshift and provisional until the peace
treaty was ratified.

In the mean time, Lodge and his Senate allies were stiffening their resistance.
Having originally proposed that the reservations should be merely an expression of the
Senate’s concern, standing separate from the treaty, Senate leaders announced in the press
on August 2, 1919, that the “reservations and understandings enumerated shall become a
part of the treaty and shall not stand simply as a detached interpretation of the Senate.”86
The forces in favor of reservations were gaining strength. Some opposed the treaty under
any circumstances, others claimed they were not opposing the treaty but simply wanting

to make mild reservations, others opposed any treaty at all and others, who supported the

treaty were willing to concede some reservations in order to get some form of the treaty

 

“PWW Vol. 62, 92.
”PWW Vol.62, 211-212.

“PWW Vol. 62, 112.

140

 

ratified.87

Wilson would have none of this. American sovereignty was not at stake, but
American honor was. His personal honor and that of the presidential office was at stake.
The Senate could reject the treaty if it foolishly chose to, but it could not change the word
of the president already given. In a meeting with Gilbert Hitchcock, the Senate minority
leader and an early supporter of the League, he compared the treaty to the Law of God.
He used Christ’s words about the Law of Moses: “We’ve got to remove absolutely any
possibility of the dotting of an ‘i’ or the crossing of a ‘t’.”’38 On July 18, Wilson had
informed Wiseman privately that he might have to concede some small reservation
defining or interpreting the language of the treaty.89 But he went on to say that he “was
setting his face against any amendments or reservations.”90 As he had in the past, Wilson
grew increasingly inflexible in his position as the battle progressed. He saw only two
camps, absolutely loyal unquestioning friends or evil foes. He was soon viewing the
Senate reservationists as foes no matter how mild the reservations. The “people” were
supporting him, he told Wiseman. He Was after all, the embodiment of their collective
spirit. Elected by them and by God for this mission, he was already looking forward to
his speaking tour when he could rally their support in his mission.91 The cheering mobs
in France were still in his mind.

On August 19, 1919, Wilson made one more attempt to meet with the Senate

 

"PWW Vol. 62, 1 l2.

”PWW Vol. 62, 307. Add Biblical reference.
”Clements, 217, PWW Vol. 61, 542.
90PWW Vol. 61, 542.

"PWW Vol. 61, 542.

141

 

Foreign Relations Committee to answer their questions about the treaty. It did not go
well. The president was by this time deeply entrenched and was only willing to inform
the Senators, yet again, of his position. He would not discuss any potential reservations.
The questions went quickly to the issue of Article 10. He stated that he saw the clauses of
the treaty not as legal obligations but as “moral” ones. The senators challenged the
president as to what he had meant by previous statements that the United States was
‘bound’ by some aspects of the treaty. He replied that he “did not use the word ‘bound’,
but ‘morally bound.’”92 To Wilson this was a clear distinction between how he saw the
treaty and how the reservationist senators were viewing it. In fact he had not used the
term “morally bound,” but “bound,” in the document the senator cited.93

This rewording of the facts and revisionist memory of his own words added to the
distrust of those in the Senate, particularly Lodge, who already considered him dishonest.
The rest of the meeting was an argument over the difference between “legal” and “moral”
obligations." Republican Senator Warren G. Harding of Ohio asked: “if there is nothing
more than a moral obligation on the part of any member of the League, [then what use
are] articles 10 and 11?”95 The president’s response reflected his own internal
Presbyterian pattern of logic. A legal obligation, for the president, removed the antinomy
of concurrently balancing differing principles. Moral obligations, on the other hand,

answered all the objections raised by the reservationists about US. sovereignty. “When I

 

”PWW Vol. 62, 355.

”Wilson’s instruction to Tumulty, May 9, I919, PWW Vol. 58, 1919. Printed in the New York
Times, May 10, 1919.

94PWW Vol. 62, 355-367.

”PWW Vol. 62, 361.

142

 

speak of a legal obligation, I mean one that specifically binds you to do a particular thing
under certain sanctions. Now a moral obligation is of course superior to a legal
obligation, and, if I may say so, has a greater binding force; only there always remains in
the moral obligation the right to exercise one’s own judgment as to whether it is indeed
incumbent . . . to do that thing. In every moral obligation there is an element of

- . . . ”96 F—r.
Judgment. In a legal obligatlon there 18 not.

This carefully phrased distinction went to the heart of president’s Presbyterian

theology as it applied to the treaty. The law was fixed and unchanging but “moral law”

 

required the application of an inner moral judgment. It was a law of the spirit and thus L-
one could follow the “spirit of the law,” not the letter, and still be obedient to the law
itself. The president had taken these views and applied them to the Constitution. He had
applied them to international law of blockade and neutrality. He had applied them to the
intervention in Mexico and Russia. Now he applied them to the Treaty of Versailles.
The key was knowing the right thing to do, the will of Providence. Righteous leaders
would be able to look at the text of the law and use their judgment to locate an
interpretation in line with the “spirit” of the intention. In the words of the Bible, they
could “rightly divide the word of truth.”97

The Senators were not convinced. The president’s testimony, uncompromising in
tone and filled with inaccuracies, hurt his cause among wavering senators. He therefore
took his case to the people. Early in the morning of September 3, 1919, the presidential

train pulled out of Washington, DC, on a whirlwind tour of the nation. The president

 

9"PWW Vol. 62, 361.

9”’2 Timothy 2:15.

143

 

stopped in Columbus, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, St. Paul, Bismarck, Billings,
Spokane, Tacoma, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Reno, Salt Lake City, Denver and
Pueblo. In all he traveled to over thirty-two cities in twenty-two days with even more
events and unscheduled stops in between.98

Wilson’s speeches reiterated the divine nature of the treaty at every opportunity.
He compared the treaty to the Covenant of the seventeenth-century Scottish Covenanters:
“My ancestors were troublesome Scotchmen, and among them were some of that famous

group that were known as the Covenanters. Very well, here is the Covenant of the

 

1”” He emphasized that his Covenant, the

League of Nations. I am a Covenanter
Covenant of the League, was one of conscience not of law. “It is absolutely left to the
conscience of this nation. . . .”‘°° The speeches grew more emotional and contradictory as
the president pressed himself beyond the limits of his physical and emotional health. In
one speech, an early hint of his impending total collapse, he revised his ancestry and, to
Lodge’s horror, declared: “I have been bred, and am proud to have been bred, in the old
Revolutionary stock which set this government up. . . .”‘°' The New York Herald was
quick to refute this claim; “Just what led President Wilson to claim Pilgrim forebears is
not clear?”02

In Pueblo, Colorado, in what would prove to be his last substantial public speech,

he closed by mixing the language and syntax of the Psalms and the Epistles of Paul and

 

9"Smith, When The Cheering Stopped, Chapter 5.

99PW\N V01. 63, 75.

100wa Vol. 63, I90.

'°'Address in Columbus, September 4, 1919, PWW Vol. 63.

'"Quoted in Levin, p322, National Republican, WWPLC, 2:105.

144

John with his own words addressing the mission of America, the purpose of the treaty and
his own divine mission. “Now the mists of this great question have cleared away, I
believe that men will see the truth, eye to eye and face to face. There is one thing that the
American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice
and of liberty and of peace. We have accepted that truth, and we are going to be led by it,
and it is going to lead us, and, through us, the world, out into pastures of quietness and r

peace such as the world never dreamed of before.”103

 

Pueblo was his last speech. At two o’clock the next morning, September 26,
Grayson was summoned to the president’s car. Wilson had been overcome by a complete E
physical and mental collapse. Grayson found him in pain, highly agitated, his face
twitching uncontrollably and unable to breath.” Edith and Grayson worked with him for
the next two hours. His speech was unintelligible, his left side partially paralyzed. He
was unable to control his tears."” The rest of the speaking tour was called off and the
president was rushed back to Washington. Six days later, on October 2, he suffered a
massive stroke and was bed ridden, unable to communicate or walk.'°"

Though Wilson continued the fight for ratification of the treaty, from his bed after
he had recovered somewhat and later from a wheel chair in the oval office, the fight was
for all practical purposes over. The president’s mind was affected by the stroke. His wife

and doctor kept him away from much information that could have helped him make

 

'03PWW Vol. 63, 513.
'“Grayson, PWW Vol. 63, 518.

'°’Grayson, Diary, PWW Vol. 63, 518-521. Grayson, Woodrow Wilson, 99-100. Joseph Tumulty,
Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him, 446-448.

'°°Link, PWW Vol. 63, 542 n. 1. See also lbid, Appendix 1 & 11, 632-646.

145

'07 For weeks and perhaps months the

decisions if he had been able or so inclined.
administration carried on through inertia, with Edith and Grayson making the few
decisions that could not be postponed with varying input from the president.
Despite the stroke, Wilson retained his Providential sense of mission. He
continued to believe, against all evidence to the contrary, that the League of Nations
Covenant would prevail and that the Treaty of Versailles would pass the Senate without I.“

reservation. On November 19, 1919, seven weeks after his stroke, the treaty was defeated

in the first of three Senate votes. On March 19, 1920, it was defeated in the second vote.

 

inn—In; .\. '
=A
i

Though flexibility on some mild reservations as to interpretation would likely have
enabled the treaty to pass in some form, Wilson would have nothing to do with
compromise. By this point he was incapable of any deviation from what he now
considered a divine document. Depressed and unable to sleep following the second
defeat of the treaty, he asked Grayson to come to his bedside and read the scripture to
him. He had the doctor turn to a passage that summed up his internal resolve in the face
of all external evidence. “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are
perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not

destroyed.”'°8 “The Devil is a busy man” he told Grayson.”

He then expressed the same
sense of Providence which had pressed him this far: “If I were not a Christian, I think I

should go mad, but my faith in God holds me to the belief that He is in some way

 

'°7More information on this period of the president’s health can be found in Weinstein, Woodrow
Wilson, Phyllis Levin, Edith and Woodrow, Gene Smith, When The Cheering Stopped. Joseph Tumulty,
Woodrow Wilson As I Know Him, Cary Grayson, Woodrow Wilson and Link, Ed., The Papers of
Woodrow Wilson, Volume 63 - 68

"”2 Corinthians 4:8-9.

I09PWW Vol. 65, 108-109, Smith, When The Cheering Stopped, 150, Grayson, Woodrow Wilson,
106, Clements, 220.

146

working out his own plans through human perversities and mistakes.”1 '0 He continued to
see the treaty fight as a battle between good and evil, a contest in which the truth he held

internally was destined to triumph over all uncomfortable facts to the contrary. His inner
faith would triumph over troubling reality; the divine antinomy was at work in the affairs

of men. God understood even if men did not.

The November 1920 elections put Harding in the White House, on a platform that
promised consideration of a league of nations but which rejected the Wilsonian version of
the league. Democrat James Cox who had promised to support the existing covenant and
who Wilson was confident would win, was defeated in a landslide. The people, in who’s
name Wilson had crusaded, clearly preferred Harding’s “return to normalcy” to further
crusades for a righteous world. Wilson continued to make feeble attempts to get the
League reconsidered. He fumed at the disarray in Europe, believing the Europeans only
lacked American participation to make the League work, though he took no responsibility
for failures at Versailles or US. failure to join the League. In late 1923 he began
considering a run for president in the 1924 elections.l ” In the years following defeat of
the treaty his internal antinomy had again reprocessed the facts to fit his preconceived
belief in its ultimate triumph. “I would rather fail in a cause that some day will triumph
than win in a cause that I know some day will fail.”' '2 He began to see this failure as the
hand of God. His past failures had been only apparent and temporary, each following a

hard fought battle, each resulting in an even greater victory. Failure at law had led to a

 

“°Grayson, Woodrow Wilson, 106.
”‘wa Vol. 68, 589, Levin, 488, Smith, 226-

'”Quoted in Smith, 219.

147

 

successful academic career. Failure to get his policies adopted at Princeton had led to the
govemorship of New Jersey and to the presidency. Failure to get the League ratified must

lead to something better.

“I think it was best after all that the United States did not join the League of
Nations,” he told his daughter Margaret. “. . . [O]ur entrance into the League at the time I
returned from Europe might have been only a personal victory.” Because it would have
been “personal,” it would have been tainted, flawed, selfish. God had reined him in
personally but that was not a failure, merely a delay. The purposes of God would be fully
realized. “Now when the American people join the League it will be because they are
convinced it is the only right time for them to do it. Perhaps God knew better than I did
afier all.”“3 Wilson reprocessed the facts to fit his view of the Providence of God. As
long as he remained alive he continued to believe he had a divine plan to accomplish. He
was still speaking of “peace without victory” as late as December 1923.l '4 He continued
to battle the Senate from his house on S Street, still asserting the president’s absolute
right in foreign policy, still interpreting the Senate’s Constitutionally defined treaty
powers through his own internal antinomy. He remarked to a reporter in his last
interview only a few months before his death: “Outside the United States, the Senate does
not amount to a damn; and inside the United States the Senate is mostly despised; they
haven’t had a thought down there in fifty years.”‘ '5 The Senate as an organization had

failed in its task. Thus they were all, Democrats and Republicans alike, “damned.”

 

”’Margaret Wilson’s discussion with her father, Quoted in Smith, 219.
”‘PWW Vol. 68, 515.

”5wa Vol. 68, 589.

148

 

 

On Wilson’s last Armistice Day, November 11, 1923, a crowd gathered outside
the house on 8 Street. Looking weak and old, the former president was helped onto the
steps where he stood to greet the crowd and make his final public address. Breaking
down with emotion repeatedly, he spoke to the crowd in the same confident words that he
had always used, though in a much weaker voice, about the triumph of the mission that he
believed God had called him to accomplish. In the language of his Presbyterian father he
closed his speech with a continued determination that Providence would yet vindicate
him. “I am not one of those that have the least anxiety about the triumph of the principles
I have stood for. I have seen fools resist Providence before and I have seen the
destruction, as will come upon these again — utter destruction and contempt. That we
shall prevail is as sure as that God reigns.”"° At 11:15 AM February 3, 1924, Woodrow

Wilson died at his home on S Street.

Republican president Herbert Hoover, who served as head of the famine relief
program in war torn Europe, said that Wilson’s presidency “was a Greek tragedy, not on
the stage of the imagination, but the lives of nations?” '7 Wilson’s “tragedy,” however,
had more to do with Jerusalem than Athens. It was a tragedy of faith. Arthur Link rightly
observed that Wilson had an “absolute conviction that God had ordered the universe from
the beginning, the faith that God used men for his own purposes.” From this came his
“sure sense of destiny and a feeling of intimate connection with the sources of power.”

“Faith in God and submission to the Christian ethic underlay most of Wilson’s political

 

""PWW Vol. 68, 469.

”Herbert Hoover, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, (Washington, DC, Woodrow Wilson Center
Press, 1992, first published in 1958), 300.

149

 

assumptions and fired his ambition to serve the Almighty by serving his fellow men.”l '3

In the end Wilson’s faith in Providence became inextricably entwined with his own inner
voice. Faith inspired the best and the worst of Woodrow Wilson, his rise and his fall. It
caused him to imagine a better, more just, more noble world, a vision that inspired the
loyalty of those who followed him. It also caused him to deceive himself into believing
that his personal quest for political power was a selfless act of obedience to Providence.
The threads of Wilson’s faith are the brightest and the darkest antinomies in the tapestry

that was his life.

 

"‘Link, Wilson, Vol. 2, 64-65.

150

 

 

Appendix I

Christ’s Army
A Religious Essay By Woodrow Wilson, August 17, 1876.

One of the favorite figures with sacred writers in their references to the inhabitants
of this world is that of representing mankind as divided into two great armies. The field
of battle is the world. From the abodes of righteousness advances the host of God’s
people under the leadership of Christ. Immediately behind the great Captain of Salvation
come the veteran regiments of the soldiers of the cross with steady tread, their feet shod
with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace, girt about with truth, their breast-plates of
righteousness glittering beneath the bright rays of their Master’s love, each one grasping
the sword of the Spirit. Later come the younger troops all eager for the gray. From the
opposite side of the field, advancing from the tents of wickedness, come the hosts of sin
led by the Prince of Lies himself, riding upon death’s horse. Behind him a mighty army
marshalled by fiends under the dark banners of iniquity. The object of the warfare on the
part of the first is to gain glory for their Great Leader as well as the best good of the
conquered by persuading them to leave the ranks of the evil one and enlist under their
great Redeemer; that of the other to entice as many as will listen to them to go with them
by the alluring paths of worldliness to everlasting destruction. The foes meet upon the
great battle field of every-day life. With one sweeping charge the Christian band falls
upon the overwhelming numbers of the Prince of Darkness and are met with a cloud of
fiery darts from the hands of the Evil One. The battle waxes fierce. Some of the
Christian leaders faithfully and eagerly press onward, rallying their broken ranks more
vigorously upon every repulse. Others stand with folded arms, only now and then
languidly issuing an order or encouraging their followers, and ever incurring the
displeasure of their gracious Master by failing to carry out his orders or properly marshal]
and encourage his forces. The followers of the former, fight manfully, with only here and
there a laggard or coward; those of the latter partake of the spirit of their leaders and do
little towards gaining the battle. The hosts of sin, ever and anon charging, break through
the weak portions of the opposing battalions, and then again quail before the uplifted
swords of the Spirit. Here, the plumes streaming from the glistening helmets of salvation
are seen among the retreating brigades of sin; there, Satan leads his followers to victory
over the dead bodies of many a soldier of the Cross. Thus the battle of life progresses and
the army of Saints ever gains ground under divine generalship; now slowly, now rapidly,
driving before them with irresistible force the broken ranks of the enemy.

Surely in this great contest there is a part for every one, and each one will be made
to render a strict account of his conduct on the day of battle. Will any one hesitate as to
the part he shall take in this conflict? Will any one dare to enlist under the banners of the
Prince of Lies, under who dark folds he only marches to the darkness of hell? For there is
no middle course, no neutrality. Each and every one must enlist either with the followers
of Christ or those of Satan. How much more glorious to fight for the divine Prince of
Peace, under whose glorious standards, whose shining folds are inscribed with Love to
God, he will advance to sure victory and an everlasting reward! All professing Christians
are, no doubt, more or less enthused by such thoughts as these, and hope that they can feel
themselves soldiers in Christ’s great army; but they do not know that they are such. Why

151

 

‘a - o'l’d‘qil ‘3’".

 

should they not know? If they would be assured of the fact that their names are in the
great Roll Book, let them fight for Christ. Ah! but how do this? As you would fight for
any other cause. You know your enemies. They are evil thoughts, evil desires, evil
associations. To avoid evil thoughts altogether is, of course, impossible. But whenever
one of these subtle warriors of evil attacks you, do not fear to test your breastplate; wield
with power the sword of the Spirit and with skill the shield of faith. Overcome evil
desires, those powerful and ever present enemies, by constant watchfulness and with the
strong weapon of prayer, and by cultivating those heavenly desires which are sure to root
out the evil one. Avoid evil associations, evil companions. No one can make a good
soldier who keeps company with the emissaries and friends of the enemy. These
companions can be avoided by avoiding the places where they are to be found and
seeking the more congenial and pleasant company of the good and upright, whose
companionship will strengthen you in the struggle by making you feel that you are not
alone in it. In every minor thing watch yourself and let no fiery dart enter your soul. One
who thus faithfully does his duty and purifies himself in the smallest things has little to
fear from the foe, and, if he withal leads others by his example and precept to do likewise,
and fears not to warn the enemies of the Cross to turn from the error of their ways, he
may rest assured that his name is enrolled among the soldiers of the Cross. Twiwood.

Printed in the Wilmington North Carolina Presbyterian, Aug. 23, 1876.

152

 

Appendix II
Wilson’s Fourteen Points Address to Congress

Gentlemen of the Congress

It will be our wish and purpose that the processes of peace, when they are begun,
shall be absolutely open and that they shall involve and permit henceforth no secret
understandings of any kind. The day of conquest and aggrandizement is gone by; so is
also the day of secret covenants entered into in the interest of particular governments and
likely at some unlooked-for moment to upset the peace of the world. It is this happy fact,
now clear to the view of every public man whose thoughts do not still linger in an age
that is dead and gone, which makes it possible for every nation whose purposes are
consistent with justice and the peace of the world to avow now or at any other time the
objects it has in view. '

We entered this war because violations of right had occurred which touched us to
the quick and made the life of our own people impossible unless they were corrected and
the world secured once for all against their recurrence. What we demand in this war,
therefore, is nothing peculiar to ourselves. It is that the world be made fit and safe to live
in; and particularly that it be made safe for every peace-loving nation which, like our
own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institutions, be assured of justice and
fair dealing by the other peoples of the world as against force and selfish aggression. All
the peoples of the world are in effect partners in this interest, and for our own part we see
very clearly that unless justice be done to others it will not be done to us. The program of
the world's peace, therefore, is our program; and that program, the only possible program,
as we see it, is this:

1. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private
international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and
in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike
in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international
action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment
of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and
associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced
to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial
claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such
questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal
weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions
affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the
world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the
independent determination of her own political development and national policy and
assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her
own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need
and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months
to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as
distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

153

 

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored,
without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other
free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among
the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the
government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole
structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VH1. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and
the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has
unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that
peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly
recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to
see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity of autonomous
development.

XI. Rurnania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories
restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several
Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established
lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and
economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be
entered into.

XII. The Turkish portions of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a
secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should
be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of an
autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free
passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the
territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free
and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and
territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants
for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial
integrity to great and small states alike.

In regard to these essential rectifications of wrong and assertions of right we feel
ourselves to be intimate partners of all the governments and peoples associated together
against the Irnperialists. We cannot be separated in interest or divided in purpose. We
stand together until the end.

For such arrangements and covenants we are willing to fight and to continue to
fight until they are achieved; but only because we wish the right to prevail and desire a
just and stable peace such as can be secured only by removing the chief provocations to
war, which this program does not remove. We have no jealousy of German greatness, and
there is nothing in this program that impairs it. We grudge her no achievement or
distinction of learning or of pacific enterprise such as have made her record very bright
and very enviable. We do not wish to injure her or to block in any way her legitimate
influence or power. We do not wish to fight her either with arms or with hostile
arrangements of trade if she is willing to associate herself with us and the other
peace-loving nations of the world in covenants of justice and law and fair dealing. We
wish her only to accept a place of equality among the peoples of the world, -- the new
world in which we now live, -- instead of a place of mastery.

154

 

Neither do we presume to suggest to her any alteration or modification of her
institutions. But it is necessary, we must frankly say, and necessary as a preliminary to
any intelligent dealings with her on our part, that we should know whom her spokesmen
speak for when they speak to us, whether for the Reichstag majority or for the military
party and the men whose creed is imperial domination.

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too concrete to admit of any further doubt
or question. An evident principle runs through the whole program I have outlined. It is the
principle of j ustice to all peoples and nationalities, and their right to live on equal terms
of liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong or weak. Unless this
principle be made its foundation no part of the structure of international justice can stand.
The people of the United States could act upon no other principle; and to the vindication pm.
of this principle they are ready to devote their lives, their honor, and everything that they [I
possess. The moral climax of this the culminating and final war for human liberty has l;
come, and they are ready to put their own strength, their own highest purpose, their own I
integrity and devotion to the test. 3.

 

155

 

Appendix III

THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS.

THE HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES, In order to promote international co-
operation and to achieve international peace and security by the acceptance of obligations
not to resort to war by the prescription of open, just and honourable relations between
nations by the firm establishment of the understandings of international law as the actual
rule of conduct among Governments, and by the maintenance of justice and a scrupulous
respect for all treaty obligations in the dealings of organised peoples with one another
Agree to this Covenant of the League of Nations.

ARTICLE 1.

The original Members of the League of Nations shall be those of the Signatories which
are named in the Annex to this Covenant and also such of those other States named in the
Annex as shall accede without reservation to this Covenant. Such accession shall be
effected by a Declaration deposited with the Secretariat within two months of the coming
into force of the Covenant Notice thereof shall be sent to all other Members of the
League. Any fully self- governing State, Dominion, or Colony not named in the Annex
may become a Member of the League if its admission is agreed to by two- thirds of the
Assembly provided that it shall give effective guarantees of its sincere intention to
observe its international obligations, and shall accept such regulations as may be
prescribed by the League in regard to its military, naval, and air forces and armaments.
Any Member of the League may, after two years' notice of its intention so to do, withdraw
from the League, provided that all its international obligations and all its obligations
under this Covenant shall have been fulfilled at the time of its withdrawal.

ARTICLE 2.

The action of the League under this Covenant shall be effected through the
instrumentality of an Assembly and of a Council, with a permanent Secretariat.
ARTICLE 3.

The Assembly shall consist of Representatives of the Members of the League. The
Assembly shall meet at stated intervals and from time to time as occasion may require at
the Seat of the League or at such other place as may be decided upon. The Assembly may
deal at its meetings with any matter within the sphere of action of the League or affecting
the peace of the world. At meetings of the Assembly each Member of the League shall
have one vote, and may not have more than three Representatives.

ARTICLE 4.

The Council shall consist of Representatives of the Principal Allied and Associated
Powers, together with Representatives of four other Members of the League. These four
Members of the League shall be selected by the Assembly from time to time in its
discretion. Until the appointment of the Representatives of the four Members of the
League first selected by the Assembly, Representatives of Belgium, Brazil, Spain, and
Greece shall be members of the Council. With the approval of the majority of the
Assembly, the Council may name additional Members of the League whose
Representatives shall always be members of the Council; the Council with like approval
may increase the number of Members of the League to be selected by the Assembly for
representation on the Council. The Council shall meet from time to time as occasion may

156

 

.“Pf,-_4, ._-
1
1

require, and at least once a year, at the Seat of the League, or at such other place as may
be decided upon. The Council may deal at its meetings with any matter within the sphere
of action of the League or affecting the peace of the world. Any Member of the League
not represented on the Council shall be invited to send a Representative to sit as a
member at any meeting of the Council during the consideration of matters specially
affecting the interests of that Member of the League. At meetings of the Council, each
Member of the League represented on the Council shall have one vote, and may have not
more than one Representative.

ARTICLE 5.

Except where otherwise expressly provided in this Covenant or by the terms of the
present Treaty, decisions at any meeting of the Assembly or of the Council shall require
the agreement of all the Members of the League represented at the meeting. All matters of
procedure at meetings of the Assembly or of the Council, including the appointment of
Committees to investigate particular matters, shall be regulated by the Assembly or by the
Council and may be decided by a majority of the Members of the League represented at
the meeting. The first meeting of the Assembly and the first meeting of the Council shall
be summoned by the President of the United States of America.

ARTICLE 6.

The permanent Secretariat shall be established at the Seat of the League. The Secretariat
shall comprise a Secretary General and such secretaries and staff as may be required. The
first Secretary General shall be the person named in the Annex; thereafter the Secretary
General shall be appointed by the Council with the approval of the majority of the
Assembly. The secretaries and staff of the Secretariat shall be appointed by the Secretary
General with the approval of the Council. The Secretary General shall act in that capacity
at all meetings of the Assembly and of the Council. The expenses of the Secretariat shall
be borne by the Members of the League in accordance with the apportionment of the
expenses of the International Bureau of the Universal Postal Union.

ARTICLE 7.

The Seat of the League is established at Geneva. The Council may at any time decide that
the Seat of the League shall be established elsewhere. All positions under or in
connection with the League, including he Secretariat, shall be open equally to men and
women. Representatives of the Members of the League and officials of he League when
engaged on the business of the League shall enjoy diplomatic privileges and immunities.-
The buildings and other property occupied by the League or its officials or by
Representatives attending its meetings shall be inviolable.

ARTICLE 8.

The Members of the League recognise that the maintenance of peace requires the
reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with national safety and
the enforcement by common action of international obligations. The Council, taking
account of the geographical situation and circumstances of each State, shall formulate
plans for such reduction for the consideration and action of the several Governments.
Such plans shall be subject to reconsideration and revision at least every ten years. After
these plans shall have been adopted by the several Governments, the limits of armaments
therein fixed shall not be exceeded without the concurrence of the Council. The Members
of the League agree that the manufacture by private enterprise of munitions and
implements of war is open to grave objections. The Council shall advise how the evil

 

1
4
1

157

 

effects attendant upon such manufacture can be prevented, due regard being had to the
necessities of those Members of the League which are not able to manufacture the
munitions and implements of war necessary for their safety. The Members of the League
undertake to interchange full and frank information as to the scale of their armaments,
their military, naval, and air programmes and the condition of such of their industries as
are adaptable to war-like purposes.

ARTICLE 9.

A permanent Commission shall be constituted to advise the Council on the execution of
the provisions of Articles 1 and 8 and on military, naval, and air questions generally.
ARTICLE 10.

The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external
aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of
the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such
aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be
fulfilled.

ARTICLE 1 1.

Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the Members of the
League or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to the whole League, and the
League shall take any action that may be deemed wise and effectual to safeguard the
peace of nations. In case any such emergency should arise the Secretary General shall on
the request of any Member of the League forthwith summon a meeting of the Council. It
is also declared to be the friendly right of each Member of the League to bring to the
attention of the Assembly or of the Council any circumstance whatever affecting
international relations which threatens to disturb international peace or the good
understanding between nations upon which peace depends.

ARTICLE 12.

The Members of the League agree that if there should arise between them any dispute
likely to lead to a rupture, they will submit the matter either to arbitration or to inquiry by
the Council, and they agree in no case to resort to war until three months afier the award
by the arbitrators or the report by the Council. In any case under this Article the award of
the arbitrators shall be made within a reasonable time, and the report of the Council shall
be made within six months after the submission of the dispute.

ARTICLE 13.

The Members of the League agree that whenever any dispute shall arise between them
which they recognise to be suitable for submission to arbitration and which cannot be
satisfactorily settled by diplomacy, they will submit the whole subject-matter to
arbitration. Disputes as to the interpretation of a treaty, as to any question of international
law, as to the existence of any fact which if established would constitute a breach of any
international obligation, or as to the extent and nature of the reparation to be made or any
such breach, are declared to be among those which are generally suitable for submission
to arbitration. For the consideration of any such dispute the court of arbitration to which
the case is referred shall be the Court agreed on by the parties to the dispute or stipulated
in any convention existing between them. The Members of the League agree that they
will carry out in full good faith any award that may be rendered, and that they will not
resort to war against a Member of the League which complies therewith. In the event of
any failure to carry out such an award, the Council shall propose what steps should be

158

 

 

taken to give effect thereto.

ARTICLE 14.

The Council shall formulate and submit to the Members of the League for adoption plans
for the establishment of a Permanent Court of lntemational Justice. The Court shall be
competent to hear and determine any dispute of an international character which the
parties thereto submit to it. The Court may also give an advisory opinion upon any
dispute or question referred to it by the Council or by the Assembly.

ARTICLE 15. .

If there should arise between Members of the League any dispute likely to lead to a
rupture, which is not submitted to arbitration in accordance with Article 13, the Members
of the League agree that they will submit the matter to the Council. Any party to the
dispute may effect such submission by giving notice of the existence of the dispute to the
Secretary General, who will make all necessary arrangements for a full investigation and
consideration thereof. For this purpose the parties to the dispute will communicate to the
Secretary General, as promptly as possible, statements of their case with all the relevant
facts and papers, and the Council may forthwith direct the publication thereof. The
Council shall endeavour to effect a settlement of the dispute, and if such efforts are
successful, a statement shall be made public giving such facts and explanations regarding
the dispute and the terms of settlement thereof as the Council may deem appropriate. If
the dispute is not thus settled, the Council either unanimously or by a majority vote shall
make and publish a report containing a statement of the facts of the dispute and the
recommendations which are deemed just and proper in regard thereto Any Member of the
League represented on the Council may make public a statement of the facts of the
dispute and of its conclusions regarding the same. If a report by the Council is
unanimously agreed to by the members thereof other than the Representatives of one or
more of the parties to the dispute, the Members of the League agree that they will not go
to war with any party to the dispute which complies with the recommendations of the
report. If the Council fails to reach a report which is unanimously agreed to by the
members thereof, other than the Representatives of one or more of the parties to the
dispute, the Members of the League reserve to themselves the right to take such action as
they shall consider necessary for the maintenance of right and justice. If the dispute
between the parties is claimed by one of them, and is found by the Council, to arise out of
a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic jurisdiction of that party,
the Council shall so report, and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement. The
Council may in any case under this Article refer the dispute to the Assembly. The dispute
shall be so referred at the request of either party to the dispute, provided that such request
be made within fourteen days after the submission of the dispute to the Council. In any
case referred to the Assembly, all the provisions of this Article and of Article 12 relating
to the action and powers of the Council shall apply to the action and powers of the
Assembly, provided that a report made by the Assembly, if concurred in by the
Representatives of those Members of the League represented on the Council and of a
majority of the other Members of the League, exclusive in each case of the
Representatives of the parties to the dispute shall have the same force as a report by the
Council concurred in by all the members thereof other than the Representatives of one or
more of the parties to the dispute.

159

 

 

ARTICLE 16.

Should any Member of the League resort to war in disregard of its covenants under
Articles 12, 13, or 15, it shall ipso facto be deemed to have committed an act of war
against all other Members of the League, which hereby undertake immediately to subject
it to the severance of all trade or financial relations, the prohibition of all intercourse
between their nations and the nationals of the covenant-breaking State, and the prevention
of all financial, commercial, or personal intercourse between the nationals of the
covenant-breaking State and the nationals of any other State, whether a Member of the
League or not. It shall be the duty of the Council in such case to recommend to the several
Governments concerned what effective military, naval, or air force the Members of the
League shall severally contribute to the armed forces to be used to protect the covenants
of the League. The Members of the League agree, further, that they will mutually support
one another in the financial and economic measures which are taken under this Article, in
order to minimise the loss and inconvenience resulting from the above measures, and that
they will mutually support one another in resisting any special measures aimed at one of
their number by the covenant breaking State, and that they will take the necessary steps to
afford passage through their territory to the forces of any of the Members of the League
which are co-operating to protect the covenants of the League. Any Member of the
League which has violated any covenant of the League may be declared to be no longer a
Member of the League by a vote of the Council concurred in by the Representatives of all
the other Members of the League represented thereon.

ARTICLE 17.

In the event of a dispute between a Member of the League and a State which is not a
Member of the League, or between States not Members of the League, the State or States,
not Members of the League shall be invited to accept the obligations of membership in
the League for the purposes of such dispute, upon such conditions as the Council may
deem just. If such invitation is accepted, the provisions of Articles 12 to 16 inclusive shall
be applied with such modifications as may be deemed necessary by the Council. Upon
such invitation being given the Council shall immediately institute an inquiry into the
circumstances of the dispute and recommend such action as may seem best and most
effectual in the circumstances. If a State so invited shall refuse to accept the obligations
of membership in the League for the purposes of such dispute, and shall resort to war
against a Member of the League, the provisions of Article 16 shall be applicable as
against the State taking such action. If both parties to the dispute when so invited refuse
to accept the obligations of membership in the League for the purpose of such dispute, the
Council may take such measures and make such recommendations as will prevent
hostilities and will result in the settlement of the dispute.

ARTICLE 18.

Every treaty or international engagement entered into hereafter by any Member of the
League shall be forthwith registered with the Secretariat and shall as soon as possible be
published by it. No such treaty or international engagement shall be binding until so
registered.

ARTICLE 19.

The Assembly may from time to time advise the reconsideration by Members of the
League of treaties which have become inapplicable and the consideration of international
conditions whose continuance might endanger the peace of the world.

160

 

ARTICLE 20.

The Members of the League severally agree that this Covenant is accepted as abrogating
all obligations or understandings inter se which are inconsistent with the terms thereof,
and solemnly undertake that they will not hereafter enter into any engagements
inconsistent with the terms thereof. In case any Member of the League shall, before
becoming a Member of the League, have undertaken any obligations inconsistent with the
terms of this Covenant, it shall be the duty of such Member to take immediate steps to
procure its release from such obligations.

ARTICLE 21.

Nothing in this Covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international
engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe
doctrine, for securing the maintenance of peace.

ARTICLE 22.

To those colonies and territories which as a consequence of the late war have ceased to be
under the sovereignty of the States which formerly governed them and which are
inhabited by peoples not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of
the modern world, there should be applied the principle that the well-being and
development of such peoples form a sacred trust of civilisation and that securities for the
performance of this trust should be embodied in this Covenant. The best method of giving
practical effect to this principle is that the tutelage of such peoples should be entrusted to
advanced nations who by reason of their resources, their experience or their geographical
position can best undertake this responsibility, and who are willing to accept it, and that
this tutelage should be exercised by them as Mandatories on behalf of the League. The
character of the mandate must differ according to the stage of the development of the
people, the geographical situation of the territory, its economic conditions, and other
similar circumstances. Certain communities formerly belonging to the Turkish Empire
have reached a stage of development where their existence as independent nations can be
provisionally recognised subject to the rendering of administrative advice and assistance
by a Mandatory until such time as they are able to stand alone. The wishes of these
communities must be a principal consideration in the selection of the Mandatory. Other
peoples, especially those of Central Afiica, are at such a stage that the Mandatory must be
responsible for the administration of the territory under conditions which will guarantee
freedom of conscience and religion, subject only to the maintenance of public order and
morals, the prohibition of abuses such as the slave trade, the arms traffic, and the liquor
traffic, and the prevention of the establishment of fortifications or military and naval
bases and of military training of the natives for other than police purposes and the defence
of territory, and will also secure equal opportunities for the trade and commerce of other
Members of the League. There are territories, such as South-West Africa and certain of
the South Pacific Islands, which, owing to the sparseness of their population, or their
small size, or their remoteness from the centres of civilisation, or their geographical
contiguity to the territory of the Mandatory, and other circumstances, can be best
administered under the laws of the Mandatory as integral portions of its territory, subject
to the safeguards above mentioned in the interests of the indigenous population. In every
case of mandate, the Mandatory shall render to the Council an annual report in reference
to the territory committed to its charge. The degree of authority, control, or administration
to be exercised by the Mandatory shall, if not previously agreed upon by the Members of

161

 

the League, be explicitly defined in each case by the Council. A permanent Commission
shall be constituted to receive and examine the annual reports of the Mandatories and to
advise the Council on all matters relating to the observance of the mandates.

ARTICLE 23.

Subject to and in accordance with the provisions of international conventions existing or
hereafier to be agreed upon, the Members of the League: (a) will endeavour to secure and
maintain fair and humane conditions of labour for men, women, and children, both in
their own countries and in all countries to which their commercial and industrial relations
extend, and for that purpose will establish and maintain the necessary international
organisations; (b) undertake to secure just treatment of the native inhabitants of territories
under their control; © will entrust the League with the general supervision over the
execution of agreements with regard to the traffic in women and children, and the traffic
in opium and other dangerous drugs; (d) will entrust the League with the general
supervision of the trade in arms and ammunition with the countries in which the control
of this traffic is necessary in the common interest; (e) will make provision to secure and
maintain freedom of communications and of transit and equitable treatment for the
commerce of all Members of the League. In this connection, the special necessities of the
regions devastated during the war of 1914-1918 shall be borne in mind; (0 will
endeavour to take steps in matters of international concern for the prevention and control
of disease.

ARTICLE 24.

There shall be placed under the direction of the League all international bureaux already
established by general treaties if the parties to such treaties consent. All such international
bureaux and all commissions for the regulation of matters of international interest
hereafter constituted shall be placed under the direction of the League. In all matters of
international interest which are regulated by general conventions but which are not placed
under the control of international bureaux or commissions, the Secretariat of the League
shall, subject to the consent of the Council and if desired by the parties, collect and
distribute all relevant information and shall render any other assistance which may be
necessary or desirable. The Council may include as part of the expenses of the Secretariat
the expenses of any bureau or commission which is placed under the direction of the
League.

ARTICLE 25.

The Members of the League agree to encourage and promote the establishment and
co-operation of duly authorised voluntary national Red Cross organisations having as
purposes the improvement of health, the prevention of disease, and the mitigation of
suffering throughout the world.

ARTICLE 26.

Amendments to this Covenant will take effect when ratified by the Members of the
League whose representatives compose the Council and by a majority of the Members of
the League whose Representatives compose the Assembly. No such amendment shall
bind any Member of the League which signifies its dissent therefrom, but in that case it
shall cease to be a Member of the League.

162

 

Appendix IV

A speech prepared jointly by Joseph and Woodrow Wilson:

Inaugural Address Delivered Before the Board of Directors
of the Southwestern Presbyterian University
June, 1885
By the Rev. Joseph R. Wilson, D.D.,
And Published by Request of the Board, at its Meeting in June, 1886.

Gentlemen of the Board of Directors —

The University which is under your care has attracted the pleased attention of the
fi'iends of progressive education throughout the country; and its growing importance is a
source of satisfaction to many who have no interest in its prosperity other than that which,
in large minds, springs from a gratified public spirit. From a number of our States
students have already been attracted to its several schools, and the magnet which has
drawn these is destined to be felt throughout a constantly widening circle of influence. It
needs not to be said that much of the success which has thus far been achieved, is due to
the able Faculty of your selection, at whose head appears the name of one who has the
entire confidence of all those to whom it has been given to know how to reverence
wisdom, or respect dignity, or recognize eminency. I, therefore, cannot but be conscious
of a glow of pardonable pride in view of an official connection with this rising Institution
and these superior men. ‘

Yet it has been with the recoil of an unaffected timidity that I have accepted the
Professorship upon whose active duties I am soon to enter; even the timidity which, true
to the derivation of the word, implies the presence of a certain fear. The shrinking of my
apprehensions is, however, not occasioned by the fact that the business of professorial
instruction is in itself one to which I have hitherto been unaccustomed. On the contrary,
my past life has been greatly enriched by the pleasures of class-room teaching: and I have
had abundant opportunity to discover that as no service, when discharged thoroughly, is
harder, so when not dispatched perfunctorily, there is one more fascinating. The
trepidation to which I confess is, in a large degree, due to quite another consideration; to
this: that it is expected of me to fulfill a task which no predecessor has undertaken - to
prosecute a journey for which there is no trodden path, and in which my steps are to be
those of a pioneer. The work assigned me is a work hitherto wholly untried. Instructors
in theology there are many: beginners in this department of knowledge there have been to
whom no foregoing preceptor has declared the way, nor is this the only University in
connection with which a movement has progressed similar to that on whose threshold we
are now standing. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Church with which you and I
are connected — nor any portion of it — has heretofore inaugurated what is now incipient at
this place. It is a novelty in the history of Presbyterianism. In advancing this statement, I
am not unmindful of those renowned Scotch universities wherein chairs of theology have
long been occupied by men of brilliancy and of power — of a theology, too, which is, in all
essential respects, distinctively like that of our own. These institutions are, however, of

163

 

Caesar’s headship rather than of Christ’s. Nothing that matches them, therefore, would
be tolerated in this land of unfettered Christian freedom : nothing that makes the Church a
pensioner of the State. The theological “Seminary” we have had in its stead — a species of
organization which, until after the Disruption in Scotland, was peculiar to America — and
instituted by our Presbyterian fathers at a time when there was no alternative choice : if
there was to be a perpetuation of an educated ministry, this wholly novel device seemed
indispensable. And some are bold to predict that the hour will, one day, strike when the
conventual Seminary plan must be abandoned for something wider and freer, for a plan
which shall place students of divinity in contact, at more points than now, with the world
around them; as, it might easily be shown, ought to be the case. Certain it is, however,
that by the arrangement here making — for putting a course of theology in concurrent
connection with the usual schools of a University series - you will be the first in the
history of our Church to prepare a practical answer to the question whether there shall be
a signal departure from the customary policy. And, whilst it furnishes occasion for
gratulation, that the independent enterprise of these Southwestern Synods has thus
entered upon a path which is lined upon no guiding chart, - yet, just at this point it is, that
my disquietings find their awakening and their foreboding — lest, in such hands as mind,
an experiment upon whose success so much may depend should become perplexed and
marred, and the skeptical watchers shall have it to say : “Aha! It was not worth the trial.”
But, happily, there is always to be had the help that descends from the mightiest of all, on
whose sustaining arm the humblest of His servants, who does what he can to help
himself, may confidently rely. I am sure, too, of encouragement from my brethren, to
many of whom I am indebted for such assurances of sympathy and support as might
almost serve to embolden cowardice itself. And yet, whatsoever one’s upholdings when
undergoing such a trust, he must needs be appalled, not alone by reason of the novelty of
his position and the peculiar responsibility it involves, but also because of the labor that is
required for the mastery of a science which, in addition to its own inherent ambiguities, is
constantly pressed with new questions that demand the utmost resources of the very
widest scholarship.

There is, however, not a little comfort derivable from the fact that the truths I am
to handle are not still awaiting the initiative of an original exploration ; for, the patient
industry and practiced learning of the past have not merely brought these truths forth into
large and distinct view, but, to an extent almost exhaustive, have ascertained their
interdependent relations and exhibited many of their finest harmonies. So that, with
respect to nearly all of them, there is now needed, not so much the painstaking discoverer,
or the inventive systematizer, as the trustful follower and the thoughtful imitator. What,
therefore, the occupant of this chair shall lack in brilliancy of adventure among the clouds
that may seem to hang upon the horizon of his extensive subject, ought to find its
compensation in his conservative hold upon the secure ground of established certainty,
where there is room enough, and to spare, for the largest building which intellectual
fervor — like that of Thomas Chalmers - ever erected ; or speculative fancy - like that of
Edward Irving — ever adorned.

But what is this fixed theology, whose bias is at once so broad and so trustworthy?
It had been my purpose to select a few of its most vital points, and discuss these
somewhat in extenso. But it is better, I think, to indicate in more general description the
character of the theology to which it shall be my aim to adhere — regarding it in its

164

entirety, as being less formal and more satisfactory not only, but also because time is thus
saved and tedium avoided.

It might, indeed, be sufficient simply to state that the theology to which I am
referring is strictly biblical in every portion of its structure, and as to the very atmosphere
which breathes through it all. Inasmuch, however, as it is a fact that, with scarcely an
exception, the many differing theological systems which claim to be evangelical (and
even some which can make no such claim) do likewise profess to find their own
vindication in what this same Holy Book authorizes, it is necessary to be more explicit.

That theology, then, which I regard as possessing most largely and most distinctly,
the seal of a divine warrant, is known to every student of creed-history as the Pauline ;
and whose characteristic features are quite unmistakable, if, for nothing else, by reasons
of the very peltings it has received from the numerous foes with which, in every age, it
has had to contend. Or, let us style it the theology of the Reformation, — as more
completely illustrated by brave Zwingle than by bold Luther ; as lifted into finer
prominence by Knox the hardy than by Cranmer the hesitating ; and the cardinal
principles of which the agency of undaunted Wickliffe was, long before their day, chosen
to revive amid the ashes of an apparently expiring Christianity — whilst now and again
such martyrs as the erudite Huss and the eloquent Latimer had it translated for them into
those horses of flame, the fire of whose nostrils lights the world to this day.

Or, name it, if you please, the theology of protesting Germany, of covenanting
Scotland, of counter-remonstrant Holland, to say nothing of Calvanistic Geneva that
modern but improved Athanasian Alexandria - the theology which fed the faith and
fanned the hopes and fortified the courage of a “thus-saith-the-Lord” ancestry, the
intelligence, the intrepidity, the inspiring activity of whose robust piety have never been
excelled - the well-tried theology which now signalizes our unequaled Catechisms and
preeminent Confession - and whose most conspicuous glory was, from the first, what it
still is, the glory of the cross — the theology that has steadfastly refused to tolerate at the
altar of a sin-bearing sacrifice, any Priest; or on the throne of redeeming sovereignty, any
King ; or within the sanctuary of the soul itself, any Prophet — who shall shadow however
dimly, or rival, however distantly, the all-sufficient Lord Jesus Christ, apart from whom,
whether viewed in His voluntary humiliation or in His wonderful exaltation, no sinner
can ever be saved and no believer can ever be sainted. It is that theology, therefore, the
central facts of which are the creation of man, his fall in the representative first, and his
recover in the vicarious second, Adam : - and these surrounded by a circle of doctrines
wherein emerges the necessity for repentance, for a new birth, for union with Christ, for
the indwelling Spirit, for entire sanctification through appointed means of grace — to say
nothing of that surprising eschatology which discloses the mystery of death, declares the
millennium, depicts the final judgment, divides the curtain beyond which are beheld the
raptures of heaven and the regrets of hell, the one the perfection of happiness because the
perfection of holiness, the other the perfection of grief because the perfection of guilt. It
is that theology, moreover, which is at once a proclamation of man’s personal
responsibility because of his free agency, and of God’s absolute universal rule because of
His essential supremacy : - the theology which publishes, without attempting to explain,
the unity of the God-head as immanent in three co-equal persons, and to view their
several self-distributed places in the completed plan of redeeming love : - the whole
issuing in a visible Church, whose members, entering by baptism, and composed of

165

 

 

professing believers and their offspring, are known to belong to the invisible Church by
the visible fruits of their holy living.

Such, then, (with omissions some of which are inferentially suppliable, and others
which, being left out, do not affect the general portraiture) is a sketch of that grand
theology which is familiar and precious to the thoughts of all those biblical experts who
are neither Prelatist nor Independent, Arminian nor Socinian, Antinomian nor Legalist,
Formalist nor Fatalist; Quietist nor Rationalist: - a theology which is also a philanthropy,
but which is not a mere philosophy or a mere morality :- and which, at every point, rests
upon that infallible Scripture from whose arbitrament there is no appeal as for whose
authority there is no substitute : consequently a theology from whose well defined paths if
your professor shall at any time swerve, let him be promptly silenced, for you will not
dare to absolve him, “though he were an angel from heaven.”

What then? Why, this : your voice unites with mine in a plea for conservatism,
the maintenance, unimpaired, of that great body of sacred lessons which has been given
into our hands by the orthodox belief of many preceding generations as an invaluable
deposit, freely to profit by but never to be profaned. Nor need we fear that thus we shall
lay the grasp of arrest upon and shackle the limbs of our Church’s advancement in
whatsoever direction she may propose to move for the spiritual subdual of the world.
That doctrinal conservation is not inconsistent with practical aggressiveness, let the entire
history of Presbyterian exploit, in every field of controversy and of conquest, loudly
attest. Or, if the lack of readiness as to our forward works has sometimes seemed to
throw discredit upon the calm repose of our faith, the blame is not traceable to a fettered
theology only to a frozen piety. At any rate, in these later fermenting days, when the
temptations are so sharp and so imperative, to indulge in sensational departures from “the
faith which was once (i. e. once for all) delivered to the saints,” the conviction cannot be
impressed too strongly upon our minds, that alone by walking “in the good old paths” is
there either ultimate safety or present satisfaction. Every qualified theological preceptor
may, indeed, be permitted to elaborate in his own idiosyncratic way the several truths of
which he shall treat, just as the competent preacher, to quiet the demands that are
constantly being made for newer moulds of thought, may be allowed to enforce his pulpit
themes by conformable methods of illustration. But it is one thing to alter a
superannuated fashion of doctrinal dress - although even this requires to be done with
shears of caution — and quite another to repair the texture of the cloth itself, as if this, too,
were worn out. The gold of divine things may sometimes, when the dust of ages is
dimming it, be freshly polished ; but, in the process, there must be no portion of its
precious mass rubbed away. The oldest established and truest theology may, without
detriment, be occasionally submitted to the alembic of hitherto untried tests ; but never
when the least waste shall thereby occur. It is no foe to a fertile fancy that would only
decorate it ; but its wise friends will not consent to any material change in the effort to
reform it. The originality which shall sustain it with fresh arguments is to be welcomes,
but the originality which, not content with this, proceeds to clip or to mend it is to be
warned off. The ark of God may be put into a “new cart,” as when it was brought out of
Abinadab’s house ; but it needs no anxious Uzzah, with the plausible hand, to prevent the
appointed oxen from shaking it.

And precisely here emerges a weighty reason for imparting to our future ministry
a thorough theological training -— not alone that they thus may be transfused with the great

166

 

 

principles they are to expound and impress, but that they may so be informed by these as
composing an articulated system, at the sight of whose beauty they shall be the less
incited to the bad work of tampering with it. Heresy is a malaria that may float in the
purest air. Not ofien, however, is heresy the offspring of a sound and comprehensive
scholarship. Nearly always it is the fruit of ignorance — an effect due to a limited horizon.
The apostles themselves to what errors were they not prone before their minds were fully
enlightened! What a difference between Peter the petulant denier, and Peter the Pentecost
preacher or the epistle-writer ; or between John shrinking from the shadow of the cross
and John the apocalyptic seer ; or between Saul the Old Testament harpy and Paul the
New Testament hero! Those men who, in every age of the Church, have aspired to be
teachers before they themselves had been adequately taught - it has been as a miracle
when, if possessed of constructive genius or of vivid imagination, they have not become
heretics almost as soon as they became heralds : the bringers in of false doctrines, to
which in all sincerity perhaps, they were ready to swear, because they were not familiar
with the mightier true. You will find, therefore, that it has not usually been the chair
where solid learning sits a sound theology has had the most to fear. Sciolism is the
mother of that presumption which refuses to “let the well-enough alone;” and it is the
very arrogance of presumption that essays to reconstruct those time honored standards of
ours which, having done successful battle upon so many of the high places of contention,
continue as bright and unimpaired as ever they were, are indeed all the brighter and the
better because of the blows they have received and withstood.

But, it may now be asked, does conservatism in theology for bid that this great
science shall, to any great extent, be progressive, requiring that it must always remain at a
standstill just where we find it, without the possibility of accretion or of that power of
growth which belongs to all things that live? Is it already perfect, and thus susceptible of
no manner or degree of improvement? Has it put forth all its branches or perfected all its
buds? No thoughtful man will reply to such questionings by an unqualified affirmative
answer. We are, indeed, bound to believe that the cardinal tenets of Christianity admit of
no modification whatsoever, seeing that they are the manifest product of infallible
wisdom. But who will venture to say that the time shall never come — that a clearer day
shall never dawn — when some of these shall be better understood than they are at
present? And with an advancing elucidation, the science whose office it is to make
known, not to create, must of course advance with equal step. Thus, the measure of
“progress” to which our existing theology can properly look forward, must be due to a
deeper insight into inspired Scripture itself - an insight which may issue in requiring a
less inadequate statement of the obscurer doctrines, whilst producing a still livelier
persuasion of what is fundamental, along with a broader comprehension of the whole
articulated body of sacred truth. Improved exegetical apparatus, in a word, is likely to
achieve almost every desirable result : whether in showing the Bible to be nowhere
inconsistent with itself ; or in displaying its accord with the established facts that illustrate
natural law ; or in winning from its foes so much of debatable ground as may yet, on this
hand or on that, remain as an object of dispute. That is, accepting the existing Scripture
canon, as we demonstrately must, and as it has been accepted by evangelical Christendom
from the first, ubique, semper, ab omnibus; and resting, as also we unhesitatingly must,
upon the evidence of its divine and literal inspiration, the principal call which is made
upon modern scholarship is for rendering more perspicuous, here and there, the exact

167

 

meaning of the finished Scripture’s original wording. So far, therefore, as the science of
theology includes the ever-extending science of interpretation, it is progressive, and no
further than this.

We need, accordingly, nothing of such “higher criticism,” which, not content with
illuminating the purport, with ascertaining the precise sense of God’s word, audaciously
suggests an altogether different word, by dint of denying its theopneustic integrity and by
the wild endeavor to reduce to a rank with the merely apocryphal, the Pentateuch even, to
substitute for this keying portion of the mighty arch of revelation certain dream-fictions
of its own. High criticism this! It is not genuine criticism at all - which, when true,
occupies the attitude of a witness not that of a lawgiver, of a historian not of an oracle — at
any rate, is not a specious defarner of the truth it professes, however loosely, to hold, but r
only its honest declarer ; or else its surrender altogether, which in these days much of
what is called the best criticism actually is.

Having thus said enough for justifying my occupancy of the chair to which I have
been assigned — if such justification be found in the sincere heartiness of an unreserved
subscription to those standards of our Presbyterian orthodoxy which, in the future as in
the past, are to be regarded as unchangeable, except in the one open direction of an
enlarging knowledge of its various contents — I am now about to relieve your attention,
leaving unsaid much more that might be permitted, in the way of expanding or of
illustrating what has been so partially discussed.

Only, before resuming my seat, I will take the liberty of inviting your thoughts, for
a few moments, to a question of importance which was purposely left unnoticed when
adverting to the hopeful fact that you are beginning in this University a new era in
theological education — by no longer isolating it, as has been the case with our Church
heretofore, and still is elsewhere. Is it exhaustive of your design to fumish a convenience
for the study of theology to those only who shall have the gospel ministry in their
professional prospect? This I presume it must mainly be, but not, I trust, exclusively.
For, let me ask, has not the time come — nay, did it not come much earlier than now——
when the immense science of which I have been speaking ought not to be regarded as, in
view of a complete education, essentially different from the sciences, say, of law and
medicine and engineering? Ought it to be longer classed with the merely technical or the
purely vocational? All persons have occasion, now and then, to heal the sick, or even to
prepare a case at law, or to project a road, but who is not always in need of a sound
theology upon a knowledge of which he is, at every turn of life, dependent—dependent at
the very core and centre of his being—and by the light of which his very eternity is
illumined? It would, of course, not be possible to instruct fully the multitudes in this
branch of necessary learning. These must obtain what they can, as they can, of its easier
lessons from friendly neighbor or faithful preacher, or fingered Bible : and, thank God,
they do, many of them by one means or another, find the right way amid a thousand
obstacles. Yet, suppose there were a large and every enlarging class of
persons—merchants, farmers, physicians, politicians, lawyers—who, scattered through
the land, should be so versed in the truths of a theology like ours as to be competent to
indoctrinate others also, or, at the least, to guard, where occasion offered, against
unsuspected error, what a new face society must by and by wear! How much stronger,
too, would be our churches, with men in the pew as able perhaps as the men in the pulpit,
to apprehend and to expound the messages of saving love! Nor would infidelity have so

 

168

fiee a field, when laics, such as the late Judge Black, as well as clerics, were, leader-like,
championing the cause of God-the layman being, indeed, all the mightier because of his
supposed more disinterested and unpaid volunteering.

But, however all this may be, it has, in my judgment, become well-night
indispensable : the addition to a liberal education of a theological schooling, which is the
placing of a roof upon the otherwise unfinished scholarly house, if not of an essential
bracing wall to hold it up and to make it habitable. Or, to change the figure, the ordinary
scholarship, however complete and heavily freighted, will, without this balancing adjunct,
run always as an endangered ship, upon its beam-ends, to be wrecked, perhaps, at last.

Let the departure you are making to be a great one—the greatest possible—and
the voice of it go forth as an invitation to all young men to resort hither for a training the 1"“
most thorough that can be obtained, if they will accept theology as the finish to their "
classics, as not here, at least, an esoteric study to be imparted to the inner few whilst
denied to the outside many. But, enough.

I had a dear fiiend who, an honored theological professor during a decade of
highly useful years, and completed just before he passed to his reward, entered upon his
duties with a trembling solicitude similar to that which is a part of my experience to-day. f
I allude to the Rev. Dr. A.B. VanZandt : the closing words, slightly altered, of whose 9*"-
inaugural address, delivered at New Brunswick in 1872, I fittingly adopt as my own :

“Immediate results that shall meet the desires and gladden the heart of the Church,
are more than I can promise. The issue is with God ; and, without the advantage of a
name of reputation in this new field of labor, I must cast myself upon His grace, and upon
the forbearance of His people. To my brethren in the ministry, and especially to those by
whose influence and suffrages this responsibility has been laid upon me, I claim the right
to appeal. And, by all their personal regards, by their attachment to this young institution,
the prosperity of which is identified with that of the Church in whose ranks we together
serve her adorable Head, I importune them, whilst I utter the earnest and utmost desire of
a burdened heart in those touching and comprehensive words of an apostle : ‘brethren,
pray for us.”

 

169

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Manuscript and Microfilm Archives:

The Pamrs of Ray Stannard Baker Washington, DC, Library of Congress
Photoduplication Service, 1982.

Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, Washington: United States
Government Printing Office, 1931.

The Papers of Edward M. House, New Haven, Yale University Collection.

The Papers of Robert Lansing, Washington, D. C., Library of Congress Photoduplication
Service, 1972.

Personal And Confidential Letters from Secretary Of State LansingTo Woodrow Wilson.
Washington, D. C., Library of Congress Photoduplication Service, 1972.

The Presbyterian Historical Society Archives, Montreat, North Carolina.

Princeton Review, New York, G. & C. Carville, 1830-1882.
http://moa.umdl.umich.edu/cgi/sgml/moa

Pamrs of Joseph Tumulg, Washington, D. C., Library of Congress Photoduplication
Service, 1975.

The Pagrs of Woodrow Wilson, Arthur S. Link, Ed., Princeton University Press, 1966 -
1994.

Woodrow Wilson Papers, Washington, D. C., Library of Congress Photoduplication
Service, 1972.

The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Ray Stannard Baker and William E. Dodd, Eds,
New York, Harper and Brothers, 1927.
Unpublished Dissertations or Thesis:

Benbow, Mark, Leading Them to the Promised Land, Ph.D. Dissertation, Ohio
University, 1999.

Callahan, Michael D., lntemational Law and the Neutrality of Belgium at the Outbreak of
World War 1, Masters Thesis, Michigan State University, 1988.

170

 

 

Mooney, Michael, Millennialism and Antichrist in New England, 1630-1760, Ph.D.
Dissertation, Syracuse University, 1982.

Peters, Michael, The Politicization of Jona_thgn Edwards’ Millennialism, Ph.D.
Dissertation, St. Louis University, 2000.

Published Primary Sources:

Baker, Ray 8., Woodrow Wilson Life and Letters, Garden City, New York, Doubleday,
Page & Co., 1927.

Bryan, William J. and Bryan, Mary Baird, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan.
Chicago: The John C. Winston Company, 1925.

Bryan, William J ., and Taft, William Howard, World Peace. New York: George H.
Doran Company, 1917.

Daniels, Josephus, The Life of Woodrow Wilson 1856-1924, USA, Will H. Johnston,
1924.

Grayson, Rear Admiral Cary T., Woodrow Wilson An Intimate Memoir. New York, Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, 1960.

Hoover, Herbert, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, New York, McGraw-Hill Book
Company, Inc., 1958.

House, B. M., The Intimate Papers Of Colonel House, vol. 1-4, Arranged by Charles
Seymour, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1928.

Lansing, Robert, The Big Four and Others of the Peace Conference, New York, Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1921.

Lansing, Robert, War Memoirs of Robert Lansing, New York, The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, 1935.

Mantoux, Paul, The Deliberations of the Council of Four (March 24-June 28, 1919).
Arthur S. Link, Editor, 2 Volumes, Princeton University Press, 1992.

O’Shaughnessy, Edith, Intimate Pages of Mexican History, New York, George H. Doran
Co., 1920.

O’Shaughnessy, Edith, A Diplomat’s Wife In Mexico, New York, Harper and Brothers,
1916.

171

 

 

Thompson, Charles Willis, Presidents I’ve Known and Two Near Presidents,
Indianapolis, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1929.

Tumulty, Joseph P., Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him, Garden City, New Jersey,
Doubleday, Page & Co., 1921.

Warfield, Benjamin B., The Works Of Benjamin Warfield, Volumes I - X, New York,
Oxford University Press, 1927.

Westminster Confession of Faith, Committee for Christian Education & Publication,
Atlanta, 1990. IP15.

Wilson, Woodrow, Master Wflers Book, New York, Doubleday, Page & Company,
1916.

Wilson, Woodrow, Mere Literature, Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1896.

 

Wilson, Woodrow, A History Of The American People, Vol. 1 - 10, New York, Harper & a
Brothers Publishers, 1901 .

Wilson, Woodrow, A Crossroads Of Freedom: The 1912, Campaigp Speeches Of
Woodrow Wilson, John Wells, Ed., New Haven, Yale University Press, 1956.

Works on Wilson, Wilson Era Politics, or International Relations Cited or
Referenced:

Ambrosius, Lloyd E., Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Ambrosius, Lloyd E., Wilsonianism: Woodrow Wilson And His ngacy In American
Foreign Relations, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Anderson, David D., William Jennings Bryan Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1981.
Auchincloss, Louis, Woodrow Wilson, New York, Penguin Putnam Inc., 2000.
Bailey, Thomas A., Wilson and the Peacemak_e_[§, New York, Macmillan Company, 1947.

Bailey, Thomas A. and Ryan, Paul B., The Lusitania Disaster, New York, The Free Press,
1975.

Bennett, John C. and Seifert, Harvey, US. Foreign Policv and Christian Ethics,
Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1977.

Blum, John Morton, The Republican Roosevelt, Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1965.

I72

 

Blum, John Morton, Woodrow Wilson and the Politics of Morality, Boston, Little, Brown
and Company, 1956.

Bragdon, Henry Wilkinson, Woodrow Wilson, The Academic Yegrs, Cambridge, Mass,
Harvard University Press, 1967.

Buehrig, Edward H., Woodrow Wilson and the Balance of Power. Bloomington, Indiana
University Press, 1955.

Callahan, Michael D., Mandates and empire: the League of Nations and Africa,
1914-1931, Portland, OR. Sussex Academic Press, 1999.

Clements, Kendrick A., Woodrow Wilsom World Statesmap, Chicago, Ivan R. Dee,
1999.

Coogan, John W., The End of Neutrality, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press,
1981.

Cooper, John Milton and Charles E. Nev, eds., The Wilson Era, Essays 1n Honor of
Arthur S. Link, Arlington Hts., Ill., Harlan Davidson Inc., 1991.

Cooper, John Milton, The Warrior and The Priest, Cambridge, Mass, Harvard University
Press, 1983.

Cooper, John Milton, Breaking the Heart of the World, Woodrow Wilson and the Fight
for the League of Nations, Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Craig, Hardin, Woodrow Wilson at Princeton, Norman, Oklahoma, University Of
Oklahoma Press, 1960.

Dos Passos, John, Mr. Wilson’s War, New York, Doubleday & Company, 1962.

Dosal, Paul J ., Doing Business With the Dictators, A Political Histog of United Fruit in
Guatemala 1899-1944, Wilmington, Deleware, SR Books, 1993.

Foley, Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson’s Case for the League of Nations, Port Washington,
. New York, Kennikat Press, 1923.

George, Alexander L. and George Juliette L., Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, New
York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1956.

Gregory, Ross, The Origins of American Intervention in the First World War, W.W. New
York, Norton & Company, Inc., 1971.

Hogan, Michael J., Informal Entente, The Private Structure of Cooperation 1n Anglo-
American Economic Diplomacy, 1918-1928, Chicago, Imprint Publications, 1991.

 

Hunt, Michael H., The Making of a Special Relationship, The United States and China to
1914, New York, Columbia University Press, 1983.

173

 

 

Kelly, Alfi'ed H., Winfred A. Harbison, The American Constitution, Its Origins and
Development. New York, W. W. Norton, 1970.

Kennan, George F. Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1920: Volumes 1 & 2. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1958.

Kettle, Michael, The Allies and the Russian Collapse, London, Andre Deutsch Pub.,
1981.

Kettle, Michael, The Road to Intervention, London, Routledge, 1988.

Keylor, William R., The Twentieth-Century World, An Intermtional History, Fourth
Edition, New York, Oxford University Press, 2001.

Keynes, John Maynard, Essays In Persupsion, New York, Harcourt, Brace and Company,
1932.

Keynes, John Maynard, The Economic Consequences Of The Peace, New York, Harper
and Row, 1920.

Kissinger, Henry, Diplomacy, New York, Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Knock, Thomas J. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World
Order, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Levin, N. Gordon Jr., Woodrow Wilson and World Politics. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1968.

Levin, Phyllis Lee, Edith and Woodrow, New York, Scribner, 2001.
Link, Arthur 8., American Epoch, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.

Link, Arthur S., The Imher Realism of Woodrow Wilson, Vanderbilt University Press,
1971. .

Link, Arthur S., Woodrow Wilson and the Progressive Era 1910-1917, New York, Harper
& Row, 1954.

Link, Arthur S., Woodrow Wilson, New York, The World Publishing Company, 1963.
Link, Arthur S., Wilson, (Five Volumes), Princeton University Press, 1956.

MacMillan, Margaret, Egris 1919, Six Months T_h_at Chgged the World, New York,
Random House, 2001.

Martel, Gordon, American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, New York, Routledge, 1994.

May, Ernest R., he World War and American Isolation, 1914-1917, Cambridge, Harvard
University Press, 1959.

May, Henry F., The End of American Innocence, London, Lowe and Brydone, I959.

174

 

 

Mayer, Arno J ., Political Origins of the New DiplomacL 1917-1918, New York, Howard
Fertig, 1969.

Mayer, Arno J ., Politics And Diplomacy Of Peacemaking, Containment and
Counterrevolution at Versailles 1918-1919, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1967.

 

McNamara, Robert S. And Blight, James G., Wilson’s Ghost, New York, Public Affairs,
2001.

Mulder, John M., Woodrow Wilson: The Years of Preparation, Princeton, Princeton
University Press, 1978. I!“

Nordholt, Jan Willem Schulte, Woodrow Wilson: A Life For World Peace. Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1991.

Notter, Harley, The Origins Of The Foreign Policv Of Woodrow Wilson, New York,
Russell & Russell, 1965.

 

It. .
l
1

Paterson, Thomas G., Clifford, J. Garry, Hagan, Kenneth J ., American Foreign Policy. A
History Since 1900. Lexington, Mass., D.C. Heath and Company, 1991.

Quirk, Robert, An Affair of Honor, University of Kentucky Press, 1961.

Seymour, Charles, American Diplom_acv During the World War, Baltimore, The Johns
Hopkins Press, 1942.

Sharp, Alan, The Versailles Settlement, Peacemaking in Paris, 1919, New York, St.
Martin’s Press, 1991.

Smith, Gene, When The Cheering Stopped, the Last Years of Woodrow Wilson, New
York, William Morrow and Company, 1964.

Stid, Daniel D., The President as Statesm_an. Woodrow Wilson and the Constitution.
University Press of Kansas, 1998.

Taylor, A. J. P., The First World War, New York, Perigee Books, 1980.
Thompson, John A., Woodrow Wilson, Profiles in Power, New York, Longman, 2002.

Thorsen, Niels Aage, The Political Thought of Woodrow Wilson, Princeton University
Press, 1988.

Tuchman, Barbara, The Zimmermann Teleggam, London, Phoenix Press, 1958.

Weinstein, Edwin A., Woodrow Wilson, A Medical and Psychological Bioggaphy,
Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1981.

Widenor, William C., Hem Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign
Policy, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1980.

175

 

Works on Religious History or Political Philosophy Cited or Referenced:

Ahlstrom, Sydney E., A Religious Histog of the American People, Yale University Press,
1 972.

Balfour, Arthur J ., The foundations of Belief, New York, Longmans, Green, and Co.,
1895.

Balfour, Arthur J ., Theism and Humanism, Seattle Washington, Inkling Books, 2000.

Boyer, Paul, When Time Sh_all Be No More. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard
University Press, 1992.

Bouwsma, William J., John Calvin, A Sixteenth Century Portrait, New York, Oxford
University Press, 1988.

Calhoun, David B., Princeton Seminary: Faith and Learning. 1812-1868, vol. 1, Carlisle,
The Banner of Truth Trust, 1994.

Calhoun, David B., Princeton Seminary: The Mgiestic Testimony, 1869-1929, vol. 2,
Carlisle, The Banner of Truth Trust, 1996.

Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Ford Lewis Battles, Trans,
Philadelphia, The Westminster Press, 1960.

Coalter, Milton J ., John Mulder, Louis Weeks, The Presbyterian Predicament, Louisville,
Kentucky, Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.

Coalter, Milton J., John Mulder, Louis Weeks, The Organizational Revolution,
Presbyterians and American Denominationalism, Louisville, Kentucky,
Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992.

Coalter, Milton J ., John Mulder, Louis Weeks, The Reforming Tradition, Presbyterifl
and Mainstream Protestantism, Louisville, Kentucky, Westminster/John Knox
Press, 1992.

Crunden, Robert M., Ministers of Reform, The Progressives Achievement in American
Civilization, New York, Basic Books, 1982.

Edwards, Jonathan, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 1-16, New Haven, Yale
University Press, 1998.

Graham, W. Fred, The Constructive RevolutionaryJohn Calvin and His Socio-Economic
Impact, Lansing, Michigan, Michigan State University Press, 1987.

Hart, D. G., and Noll Mark, Diction_ary of the Presbyterian & Reformed Tradition in
America, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.

Hatch, Nathan and Mark Noll, The Bible In America, New York, Oxford University
Press, 1982.

176

 

Hatch, Nathan, The Democratization of American Christianig, New Haven, Conn, Yale
University Press, 1989.

Hegel, Georg W. F., The Philosophy Of History, J. Sibree, Trans, New York, Dover
Publications, 1956.

Hegel, Georg W. F., The Philosophv Of Rigl_1_t, T. M. Knox, Trans, London, Oxford
University Press, 1952.

Kemeny, P. C., Princeton in the Nation’s Service, Religious Ideals and Educationg
Practice, 1868-1928, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998.

Marsden, George, The Evangelical Mind and the New School Presbyterian Experience,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1970.

May, Henry F., Protestant Churches and Industrial America, New York, Harper &
Brothers Publishers, 1949.

 

McDermott, Gerald, One Holy and Happy Society, The Public Theology Of Jonathan
Edwards, University Park, Penn., The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992.

I! .

Morgan, Edmund S., The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, Boston, Little,
Brown and Company, 1958.

Noll, Mark A., ed., fiarles Hodgepthe Way of Life, New York, Paulist Press, 1987.

Noll, A History of Christianig in the United States and Canada, Grand Rapids, Michigan,
Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992.

N011, Mark, ed., The Princeton Theology, 1812 - 1921, Grand Rapids, Baker Book
House, 1983.

N011, Mark, The Scandal Of The Evangelical Mind, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Wm. B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994.

North, Gary, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbflerian Church. Tyler

Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996.

Reichley, James A., Religion In American Public Life, Washington D. C., The Brookings
Institution, 1985.

Rinehart, James F., Revolution and The Millennium. Westport Conn., Praeger, 1997.

Robertson, 0. Palmer, The Christ of The Covenants, Phillipsburg, New Jersey,
Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1980.

Ridderbos, Herman, Paul: An Outline of His Theolggy, Grand Rapids, Wm. B.
Eerdmans, 1975.

Sandeen, Ernest R., The Roots of Fundamentalism British and American Millenarianism
1800-1930, The University of Chicago Press, 1970.

 

177

Stoessinger, John G., The Might Of Nations, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1990.

Strauss, Leo and Cropsey, Joseph, History of Political Philosophy, University of Chicago
Press, 1963.

Walzer, Michael, The Revolution of the Saints, Cambridge, Harvard University Press,
1965.

Tuveson, Ernest Lee, Redeemer Nation, The Idea of America’s Millennial Role, The
University of Chicago Press, 1968.

Wells, David F., ed., The Princeton Theology, Grand Rapids, Baker Book House, 1989.

Wells, David F., ed., Reformed Theology in America, Baker Book House, Grand Rapids,
1997.

Wells, David, Southern Reformed Theology, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Book
House, 1989.

Witherspoon, John, The Selected Writings Of John Witherspoon, Thomas Miller, Ed.,
Edwardsville, 111., Southern Illinois University Press, 1990.

Witherspoon, John, The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, D.D.L.L.D., Vols. 1-4,
Philadelphia, William W. Woodward, 1802.

Woodbridge, John D., Mark A. Noll, Nathan 0. Hatch, The Gospel In America. Grand
Rapids, Zondervan Publishing, 1982.

I78

 

       

     
 
     

    
  
 

MICHOGA

1111111

93

IE

11111111111

5