National Affairs: Posthumous

Henry Cabot Lodge, late Senator, honored in New England and execrated in the South, bearded and full of strange erudition, last week posthumously published a book, The Senate and The League of Nations.* At once a section of it was taken up by the press and reproduced. The book is a defense of the Senate action in turning down the League of Nations Covenant, but the section that was repeated in (he press was the late Senator’s opinion of Woodrow Wilson:

“I had learned from a careful study of the President’s acts and utterances during those trying days —and it was as important for me to understand him as it was for his closest friends—that the key to all he did was that he thought of everything in terms of Wilson. In other words, Mr. Wilson in dealing with every great question thought first of himself. He may have thought of the country next, but there was a long interval, and in the competition the Democratic Party, I will do him the justice to say, was a poor third.

“Mr. Wilson was devoured by the desire for power. If he had been a soldier and a man of fighting temperament, the Government of the United States would have been in grave danger. He was obstinate and up to a certain point determined, but he was not a fighting man and he never could have led..an army or controlled those who would have led it for him, as was done by a very inferior type of man of the Third Napoleon. When it came to actual conflict he lacked nerve and daring, although with his temperament I doubt if he lacked the will.

“If President Wilson had been a true idealist, in regard to the covenant of the League of Nations, for example, he would have saved his covenant and secured its adoption by the Senate of the United States by accepting some modification of its terms, since the man who really seeks the establishment of an ideal will never sacrifice it because he cannot secure everything he wants at once, and always estimates the principle as more important than its details and qualifications. If if had been a real ideal with Mr. Wilson and tinged with no thought of self he would have succeeded in large measure.”

Of course Woodrow Wilson’s supporters rallied in anger. Joseph P. Tumulty, his Secretary, who in later years had a breach with him, declared:

“The recent book of Henry Cabot Lodge is the fall edition of the Hymn of Hate. It is a futile effort at self-defense—an apology weakly put forth; a retreat without a single handsome feature. No one could expect, from a pen dipped in venom, a fair or impartial appraisement of Woodrow Wilson; especially from one who, where Woodrow Wilson’s policies were concerned, was incapable of having a generous thought. It is regrettable, indeed, that at the end of his so distinguished a career a man should have put his great talents to so base a use as attempting, by insinuation and innuendo, to besmirch the reputation of one who, at a critical hour, single-handed and alone, sought to apply to the ills of the world the healing balm of peace.”

Said James M. Cox, onetime Governor of Ohio (1913-15, 1917-19, 1919-21), onetime candidate for President: “A thousand Lodge books or their like will never save the Senatorial conspirators from the place they made for themselves in history. Each day and its events increasingly reveal the tragic consequences of their political madness.”

*THE SENATE AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS—H. C. Lodge—Scribners ($4.00).