American Experience (1988–…): Season 14, Episode 5 - Woodrow Wilson: Episode Two - The Redemption of the World - full transcript
American Experience with
captioning is made possible
by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
to enhance public understanding
of the role of technology.
The foundation also seeks
to portray the lives
of the men and women engaged
in scientific
and technological pursuit.
Liberty Mutual Insurance
is a proud supporter
of The American Experience.
And by helping people live
safer, more secure lives,
we're also proud supporters
of the American dream.
At the Scotts Company, we help
make gardens more beautiful
lawns greener, trees taller.
If there's a better business
to be in,
please... let us know.
This program has been made
possible by a grant
from the National Endowment
for the Humanities
and The Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations.
American Experience
is also made possible
by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and contributions
to your PBS station from:
In 1915, the great powers
of Europe were engaged
in the most brutal war
mankind had ever fought.
After just six months
of fighting,
more than one million young men
had been killed.
President Woodrow Wilson
was trying to keep America
out of the cataclysm...
But he was crippled by a crisis
in his personal life.
His wife Ellen had died
just as the war began.
Wilson, who had always relied
on a strong woman for support,
was utterly bereft.
Not long after Ellen died,
the week that the war broke out,
he made a comment that he wished
somebody might shoot him.
He was that miserable
over the loss of Ellen;
he was terribly lonely.
Wilson's deep need
for female companionship
stood in stark contrast to
his cold and aloof public image.
Well, he was
a deeply passionate man.
He was passionate
in his relationship with women.
He was passionate in
his relationship with his God.
All that came from a kind
of much repressed, but inward,
highly-burning fire.
Wilson's intense drive
had seen him
through the worst trial
of his life.
While president of Princeton,
the blood vessels
behind one eye had burst.
Fearing that his high blood
pressure might kill him,
doctors urged him to retire,
but Wilson ignored them.
Here is a man
who's relatively young
who already has
an advanced disease.
The fact of the matter
is, the piper was going
to have to be paid
at some point.
He was living on borrowed time.
Wilson had defied the odds
to become president
of the United States
by promising to give
all Americans a chance
to share in the wealth created
by the new industrial age.
The first two years
of Wilson's first term
are one of the most
remarkable moments
in modern American politics.
There's more reform agenda
accomplished
in that brief moment
than in virtually
any other two-year period
in the 20th century.
Now Europe was
a vast killing field.
Haunted by
his childhood experience
of the horrors of the Civil War,
Wilson became obsessed
with creating a new world order.
No one else had tried
to fundamentally recast
the international order in a way
that would make war impossible.
He... his was to be
a revolutionary peace,
one that would transform
the world.
But Wilson's pursuit of his
dream would almost kill him.
One afternoon in early 1915,
as President Woodrow Wilson
approached the elevator
in the White House,
its doors opened to reveal
a striking woman
in walking clothes
and muddy boots.
The 59-year-old president wasted
no time getting acquainted
with Edith Bolling-Gault,
a 42-year-old widow.
She was a friend of a female
relative of Wilson's
who was living
at the White House.
They'd just happened
to wander in
when Wilson came back
from a golf game...
And this chance meeting...
And, uh, he was absolutely
dazzled, just plain dazzled.
Edith Bolling-Gault
was a woman ahead of her time,
confident and independent.
She was a wealthy widow.
You know, her husband
had been dead a few years.
She wore clothes from Paris.
She drove her own little
electric car around Washington.
After the first dinner Edith has
at the White House with Woodrow,
she writes to a friend, saying,
"You know, I dined tonight
with the president."
You don't get the sense
of a woman
who's been swept off her feet.
Most Americans believed it
was inappropriate for any man...
And especially the president...
To be dating
so soon after his wife's death.
Wilson had to do
his courting in secret.
Day after day, the president's
chauffeur-driven Pierce-Arrow
rolled at 20 miles an hour
through
the Virginia countryside.
You are so vivid.
You are so beautiful.
I have learned what you are, and
my heart is wholly enthralled.
Woodrow Wilson was
a very vital, passionate man.
They'd go for long drives
along the Potomac,
and they'd sit in the backseat,
and they would talk, and they
would hug each other and kiss.
In a way, what woman
wouldn't be flattered
by attracting the president?
Here is the most important man
in the country.
He's bright, he's witty,
he's warm.
And he's president.
Wilson's long drives with Edith
terrified his advisers,
who feared that the relationship
would be discovered
and Wilson's reelection
put at risk.
Their fears were realized
when a rumor raced
through Washington
that the president
of the United States
had been seen necking
with a woman in his car.
Then, the Washington Post
society columnist revealed
that "the president
has been 'entertaining'
Edith Bolling-Gault regularly."
But due to a misprint,
the article stated,
"The president
has been 'entering'
Edith Bolling-Gault regularly."
The entire edition of the paper
had to be recalled.
With gossip spreading
across the country,
Wilson was desperate to make
the relationship respectable.
Only three months
after meeting Edith,
he asked her to marry him.
But Edith was shocked at the
proposal and turned him down.
It wasn't considered
proper to marry so soon.
So I think part of that
was Edith's feeling,
and part was just,
what woman would change her life
so completely in five weeks?
Remember, she was used to going
to Europe when she wanted,
she had plenty of money,
she had the best
of Washington society
and she could travel
wherever she wanted.
She wasn't too taken
with the idea
of living in the White House.
For the moment, Woodrow Wilson
would have to cope
with life as a single man.
In August 1914, it took
only one day to show the world
how horrific
the European war would be.
Wearing 19th-century uniforms
of bright red trousers
and blue coats,
French troops marched in
formation across open ground
toward the invading German Army.
Machine guns mowed them down.
27,000 French soldiers
were killed.
Woodrow Wilson wanted to avoid
the conflict at all costs.
He believed that if the United
States could stay out,
that we could be the great
reconciler, the great mediator.
And in order to do that,
we can't get involved
in something
like this horrible war.
It's destructive,
it's the antithesis
of civilization,
and what's more,
he deeply suspected the motives
of all the belligerents
in there.
Wilson also knew that America's
vast immigrant population
had divided interests
in the war.
He feared that
if the U.S. joined the fight,
it might split the country.
We have to remember
that the moment
Wilson assumes the presidency
is the moment
when there were more immigrants,
relative to
the general population,
than in any other moment
in American history,
including our own.
And many of those immigrants
came from the countries
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and from Germany,
and it was anybody's guess
where their loyalties might lie.
Wilson wanted no part of that,
because he saw
that it was potentially the case
that a European war would tear
the fragile, very delicate web
of American unity right apart.
But no matter how much
Wilson might wish
to avoid choosing sides,
the fact was
that the American economy
had already chosen for him.
By 1915, he found
that the American economy
doesn't work in a neutral way;
that in order
for the American economy to work
they had to sell goods
to the belligerents...
The people who were fighting
in Europe.
And it just so happened
that most American banking ties
were with the British
and the French,
and as a result,
Wilson finds himself, by 1915,
essentially locked in
on the British-French side.
On a sunny afternoon
in May of 1915,
the British luxury liner
Lusitania was nearing
the end of its voyage
from New York to England.
A German submarine
sighted the vessel.
It fired one torpedo.
The great ship exploded
and sank in 22 minutes.
This was not a military ship
or even a merchant ship.
It was a passenger liner
with men, women and children...
Noncombatants...
And among them, of course,
128 Americans went down
among the 1,200 who died.
The sinking of the Lusitania
shocked Americans,
because it seemed like an act
of almost wanton murder.
Germany's aggression
on the high seas stoked
nationalist cries
for America to enter the war.
Wilson's bitter rival, former
President Theodore Roosevelt,
was eager for the United States
to wield a "big stick"
on the world stage.
When Wilson failed to retaliate
against the Germans,
"T.R." called the president
a "prime-jackass"
and threatened to "skin him
alive if he doesn't go to war."
Republican congressmen,
led by Henry Cabot Lodge,
were also furious
with the president.
"Wilson is afraid,"
Senator Lodge declared.
"He flinches in the presence
of danger, physical and moral."
Wilson's true feelings
about the conflict
were reflected in a newly
erected Civil War monument
that the president passed
each time he journeyed
to the Capitol.
I come from the South
and I know what war is,
for I have seen
its terrible wreckage and ruin.
It is easy for me, as president,
to declare war.
I do not have to fight,
and neither do the gentlemen
on the Hill
who now clamor for it.
It is some poor farmer's boy,
or the son of some poor widow,
who will have to do the fighting
and the dying.
In the spring of 1915,
Woodrow Wilson still had
his eyes on Edith Bolling-Gault.
Though she had not agreed
to marry him,
she was willing
to continue seeing him.
And when the war
kept Wilson closeted
with his advisers
at the White House,
she sent him letters
by secret courier.
I will kiss the tired eyes
that have strained so
to see the right course
through the blackness ahead,
and try to shut out the tumult
that is raging around you
on every side
by whispering
in your listening ears:
"I love you,
my precious Woodrow."
There's an old saying
that power is
the greatest aphrodisiac.
Wilson certainly used
the presidency
as a way of wooing
the widow Gault.
He shared his thoughts with her.
He shared secrets of state
with her.
He would show her the
correspondence with the Germans
over the Lusitania,
over the submarine.
He used the presidency as a way
of winning this woman.
By fall, Wilson was on the verge
of popping the question again.
Suddenly, their love
was put in jeopardy
by the president's relationship
with another woman.
Nine years earlier,
on the island of Bermuda,
Wilson had had an affair with
a socialite named Mary Peck.
Now, as the presidential
election approached,
Wilson learned that the
Republicans were planning
to make his infidelity
an issue in the campaign.
Woodrow decided he had no choice
but to tell Edith
about his affair with Peck,
and warn her
that she might now be caught up
in a major scandal.
When Woodrow confessed to Edith
that he had had this
relationship with Mary Peck,
she really had second thoughts,
as I think any woman would.
And she gave... I guess
she must've begun thinking
how many other people
knew about this,
what kind of scandal
might be involved,
how many other women
there might be.
She really began to take
another look at this man,
because this was a side of him
that she did not know.
On September 22,
Edith retreated to her home
to decide on the future
of their relationship.
As she deliberated,
a letter from Woodrow arrived,
begging her forgiveness.
I know I have no rights,
but I also know
that it would break
my heart and my life
if I could not call you
my darling.
Finally, Edith made her reply.
Dearest, I am not afraid
of any gossip or threat
with your love as my shield.
I now see straight
into the heart of things
and am ready to follow the road
where love leads.
Well, at the end
of a long night's thinking,
Edith comes around and decides
that she really does want
to marry Woodrow.
And I think, frankly,
historians are divided
about how much of it
was really great love
and how much of it
was the attraction
of the power of the White House.
On the October 9, 1915,
the couple made their first
public appearance together
at the World Series
in Philadelphia.
Two months later, as a Marine
band played the "Wedding March,"
the couple was married in a
small ceremony in Edith's home.
Though there were still
public murmurs of disapproval,
Wilson's three daughters
welcomed Edith into the family,
firm in their belief
that their mother Ellen
would have approved.
With her marriage to one of the
most powerful men in the world,
Edith Wilson knew
she was embarking
on a remarkable journey.
"You will lay your hand
in mine," she wrote,
"and with the other,
turn the pages of history."
In 1916, while struggling
to keep the nation neutral,
Wilson had to campaign
for reelection.
His Republican opponent
was Charles Evans Hughes,
a former governor of New York
and Supreme Court justice.
In private, Theodore Roosevelt
called Hughes
a "bearded iceberg."
But T.R.'s deep-seated hatred
for Woodrow Wilson
drove him
onto the campaign trail,
where he extolled Hughes
and attacked the president.
"No one displays more despicable
baseness than Wilson,"
Roosevelt declared,
"who is without a touch
of the heroic
in his cold, selfish
and timid soul."
Wilson was acutely aware
of the way
other people perceived him,
the public at large,
that he was
"a human thinking machine,"
that ice water ran
through his veins.
And that bothered him a bit.
Every now and then,
when he'd be out on the hustings
and give a speech,
and he got fired up,
and somebody from the audience
would yell,
"You tell them, Woody!",
he loved it.
The president reached out
to a wide range of progressives:
from laborers and farmers
to ethnic minorities
and women suffragists
who already had the vote
in the West.
Social justice progressives,
by 1916,
came to feel
that Woodrow Wilson was somebody
that they could work with.
He was not yet
their perfect candidate,
but they also perceived him
as the candidate
who was the most likely
to keep the country out of war.
Edith relished campaigning
in a way Wilson's first wife
never had.
But she also became an issue in
an increasingly dirty campaign.
Republican women held so-called
"indignation meetings"
to protest Wilson's pursuit
of Edith
so soon after the death
of his first wife.
And bawdy jokes about Edith
began to circulate.
One joke that did evidently
persist, the question was,
"What did Mrs. Gault do
when the president of the United
States proposed to her?"
And the answer was,
"She fell out of bed."
Which, in 1915, would've been
extremely risqué.
I guess it would be risqué
even today,
but 1915, that was pretty risqué
a story to pass around
about the president.
Wilson believed that the tense
international situation
called for a chief executive
who had the full support
of the American people.
He decided
that if he lost the election,
he and his vice-president
would immediately resign.
Vice-President Thomas Marshall
was not told of the plan.
The early returns showed Hughes
winning
most of the eastern states.
That night, Wilson went to bed
thinking he had lost.
The next morning, he and Edith
awoke to more bad news.
On such difficult occasions,
Wilson drew support
from his Presbyterian faith,
and he was prepared to accept
the loss as God's will.
"The news did not seem
in the least to disturb him,"
Edith recalled.
Then, as polling results
trickled in
from the western states,
the tide turned.
By only a few thousand votes,
Wilson managed to win
the crucial state of California
and the election.
On the afternoon
of January 31, 1917,
the president received
a diplomatic communiqué:
the German government
had declared
all-out submarine warfare
against American ships
in the Atlantic.
Then, a telegram was intercepted
that revealed Germany was trying
to persuade Mexico
to declare war against the U.S.
by offering the states
of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico
as potential war prizes.
The fact that Germany
is sinking American ships,
that it's plotting with Mexico
to bring on war
with the United States,
causes Wilson to lose all faith
in the good intentions
of the German government.
Wilson called
for an extraordinary session
of Congress
to receive "a communication
concerning grave matters
of national policy."
After days of agonizing,
he had decided to declare war.
Now he faced the monumental task
of telling Americans
why, after three years
of advocating neutrality,
he had changed his mind.
He had to convince Americans
that he had found something
that was worth fighting
and dying for.
On April 2, Wilson stood before
a joint session of Congress
and asked for a declaration
of war against Germany.
It is a fearful thing to lead
this great, peaceful people
into war,
into the most terrible
and disastrous of all wars.
But the right
is more precious than peace
and we shall fight
for the things
which we have always carried
nearest our hearts,
for the ultimate peace
of the world
and for the liberation
of its peoples.
The world must be made safe
for democracy.
It's the greatest presidential
speech, I think,
since Lincoln's
second inaugural address.
Wilson believed
that the United States
was a very special nation,
that we were really conceived
in liberty,
and that we had a mission
in the world
to try to make it
a better place...
To try to make it more peaceful,
more just, more democratic.
He's often accused there
of being hopelessly romantic
and idealistic.
I would argue all
to the contrary...
That Wilson, number one,
had no real alternative
but to cast the war
on this plane of idealism
because none of his country's
vital interests
were really at stake.
So he had somehow
to convince the public
that something was at stake
here, and what was at stake
was the nature of the democratic
experiment itself, worldwide.
The address was met
with wild applause,
and Wilson's justification
for going to war
was greeted with enthusiasm.
"The old isolation is finished,"
the New York World declared.
"We are no longer aloof
from the rest of the world.
"Whatever happens now
concerns us,
"and from none of it
can be withheld
the force of our influence."
When he was struggling
to keep the country neutral,
Wilson had lamented the
suspension of civil liberties
during the Civil War.
"War means autocracy,"
he had warned.
"To fight, you must be brutal
and ruthless."
Now, America was at war
once more,
and Wilson declared,
"Woe to the man
who seeks to stand in our way."
Wilson's fears
about the disloyalty
of many elements
of American society,
particularly recent immigrants,
all came rather nastily
to the fore
almost immediately
after the declaration of war.
And he allows
his attorney general
to undertake some
very aggressive prosecutions
of the ethnic
and immigrant press,
to search out and suppress
any dissident views
about the waging of the war.
It's not a lovely chapter
in the history
of American civil liberties.
The Wilson Administration
began urging American citizens
to act as vigilantes,
and report anyone
"who spreads pessimistic
stories, cries for peace,
or belittles our effort
to win the war."
From concert halls to schools,
Beethoven and Brahms,
along with all works of German
literature, were banned.
In Chicago,
schoolchildren were enlisted
to publicize the decree.
In addition, thousands
of Americans were arrested
for opposing the war on moral
and ethical grounds.
One of them was Eugene Debs,
four-time Socialist candidate
for president.
After Debs made a speech
against the war,
he was sentenced
to ten years in prison.
The Wilson Administration
supported and passed
an Espionage Act
and later a Sedition Act,
both of which limited
free speech in this country.
Under the provisions
of that act,
the Wilson Administration
could arrest anyone
that spoke out against the war,
anyone who spoke out
against Wilson's policies,
anyone who spoke out
against conscription.
On September 30, 1917,
in an event staged
for newsreel cameras,
President Wilson presided
over the first draft
since the Civil War.
With hundreds of thousands
of young men
destined for the killing fields
of Europe,
Wilson and his advisers
were deeply worried
about how the country
would react.
They launched the Committee
for Public Information,
a propaganda agency charged with
whipping up support for the war.
Hollywood stars
like Charlie Chaplin
were enlisted in the effort.
Edith Wilson did her part.
Like millions
of other Americans,
she signed a pledge to conserve
food for the war effort
and displayed
the familiar pledge card
in the window
of the White House.
Edith also joined the Red Cross
and passed out cigarettes
and chewing gum
to thousands of soldiers
at Washington's Union Station.
To publicize a Red Cross effort
to increase wool production,
Edith opened the White House
lawn to dozens of grazing sheep.
Most of the country was soon
firmly behind their president
and the war.
♪ Woodrow Wilson,
Woodrow Wilson ♪
♪ Leader of the U.S.A. ♪
♪ With your wisdom, truth
and honor ♪
♪ You led us from day to day ♪
♪ And all the nations
of this great world ♪
♪ Are stretching out
their arms to you ♪
♪ When democracy has won,
and this frightful war is done ♪
♪ Woodrow Wilson,
Woodrow Wilson ♪
♪ They will all remember you! ♪
♪ We'll remember
Woodrow Wilson. ♪
In late 1917, the first American
troops arrived in Europe.
After months of training,
they were thrown into battle.
But there were far too few
of them to turn the tide.
The stalemate with Germany
dragged on,
and now Americans, too,
were dying.
One of the casualties
was a member of a family
that Woodrow Wilson knew well:
Theodore Roosevelt's son,
Quentin, was a pilot
whose plane had crashed
behind German lines.
Wilson had
the grim responsibility
of notifying his old rival
by telegram
that his youngest son was dead.
The president was haunted
by the mounting casualties.
In his lifetime, the rifles
and cannons of the Civil War
had become the machine guns
and tanks and airplanes
of the world war.
He became convinced
that there was only one hope
for the human race:
to make this the last war.
There are times
when words seem empty
and only actions seem great.
Such a time has come.
The president sent
for his closest adviser,
Colonel Edward House.
Beneath his veneer
of Texas charm,
House was a master
political operator.
"He is an intimate man,"
an acquaintance said,
"even when he is cutting
a throat."
After his first meeting
with House, Wilson had declared,
"My dear friend, we have
known each other always."
You can't get away
from Wilson's own statements
that he and House
were the same person.
He made remarks
that are almost mystic.
And he said, "If Colonel House
said it, then I say it."
House was socially minded,
politically minded,
could talk to anybody,
always saw the other man's
point of view,
always had a compromise
in one hand.
Wilson was stiff, idealistic,
hated to compromise,
hated small talk.
And together they made
a sort of perfect president.
The task Wilson
had in mind for House
was to help create a new world
order based on democracy.
Wilson's notion that democracy
was not only good for America
but also good for the world
is fundamentally important
in understanding his decision
to go to war in 1917,
because the cause of war
and the cause of the suffering
was the existence
of aristocratic,
militaristic regimes,
whose interests had nothing
to do with the people.
Give the power to the people,
Wilson believed,
and wars would be impossible.
A democratic world
would be a world without war.
Colonel House secretly organized
a group of historians, political
scientists and geographers
to study the European situation
in depth.
Known as "the Inquiry,"
the group analyzed ways
to avoid war in the future.
In early January 1918,
the president called the colonel
back to the White House.
It was time to take
the information
compiled by "the Inquiry"
and turn it
into a concrete proposal.
Fearing leaks from his cabinet,
Wilson kept the meeting secret.
Saturday was a remarkable day.
At a quarter past 10:00, I set
to work with the president.
We took it systematically,
first outlining general terms
such as "open diplomacy,"
"freedom of the seas,"
and a "general association
of nations."
Then we began on Belgium, France
and other territorial
adjustments.
At half past 12:00, we finished
remaking the map of the world.
Their plan had 14 simple points.
The first 13 described a world
where conflicts would be settled
without war.
The last point described
the organization
that would make peaceful
coexistence possible,
a new international forum
called the League of Nations.
In Wilson's mind,
if the sacrifices
of blood and treasure
that Americans had to pay
in World War I
were ever going to be justified,
it had to be with an outcome
that didn't simply
end the fighting
but created a new
international order.
And this meant
creating a new institution
which would restructure
the way international diplomacy
and international relations
were conducted,
and that, of course,
is the League of Nations.
Wilson's vision
of how to achieve peace
was based upon his belief
that you set up institutions
that don't resolve all problems
but create a framework in which
tensions can be absorbed
and war can be avoided.
This is something he did
all his life...
Find an institutional framework
and have it as a way
of making the world safer.
Wilson's "Fourteen Points"
were translated
into a dozen languages.
They were transmitted
by wireless radio
into Russia and Austria-Hungary.
Leaflets were airdropped
into German territory
from airplanes and balloons,
and were even stuffed
into empty artillery shells...
and lobbed over
the German lines.
In one of
the first international
advertising campaigns,
Wilson's ideas
for a new world order
were spread around the globe.
In 1906, the blood vessels
behind one of Wilson's eyes
had burst,
causing a temporary loss
of vision.
Now there were ominous signs
that the condition was again
becoming a threat.
Edith watched her husband
with growing concern.
When every nerve was tense
with anxiety during the war,
there would come days
when he was incapacitated
by blinding headaches which
no medicine could relieve.
We made the room cool and dark,
and when at last
merciful sleep would come,
he would lie for hours
in this way,
apparently not even breathing.
Many a time
I stole in to listen...
To see if he were really alive.
Wilson's headaches were a sign
that high blood pressure
was gradually hardening
the arteries in his brain.
In 1917, he began to experience
fairly severe headaches,
implying that his blood pressure
was very much out of control.
Tie that in with the disease
process back in 1906,
which clearly identifies
the hypertension.
You put those two things
together,
and you see that you've got
a continuum of a problem
that's been going on
and has been unaddressed,
and the potential risk
for strokes and the like
is... is of great concern.
Wilson's physician,
a Navy medical officer
named Dr. Cary Grayson,
was deeply worried
about the president's health.
Grayson accompanied the
president wherever he went
and constantly nagged him
to relax and exercise more.
With his days of playing
baseball long behind him,
the president's favorite sport
was now golf.
He was known to play
rain or shine.
He even painted his ball red
in order to see it in the snow.
But for all his eagerness,
he was a classic duffer.
"Golf," Wilson said,
was "an ineffectual attempt
"to put an elusive ball
into an obscure hole
with implements ill-adapted
to the purpose."
It was, in fact, Edith who
became a superior golfer,
the best of any First Lady
in history.
Her diaries were soon sprinkled
with entries such as,
"Played golf with W.
And Grayson.
Beat them both."
By late spring of 1918,
over 500,000 U.S. troops
were in France,
with 250,000 more
arriving every month.
Fearing that they would soon
be overwhelmed by the Americans,
the German High Command launched
a massive, last-ditch offensive
to try and win the war.
Beginning on May 28,
the German troops clashed
with the American forces
along a 100-mile front.
Over one million American
soldiers fought.
120,000 were killed or wounded.
But the American and Allied
Armies stopped the Germans
and forced them
into a steady retreat.
With all hope of victory gone,
Germany's Kaiser abdicated.
Eager to end the war,
the new German chancellor
wrote the American president,
saying that his nation
was willing to stop fighting
if a peace treaty was based
on Wilson's Fourteen Points.
This gives Wilson
extraordinary power
because he can
threaten the Allies
that if they don't agree
to his terms
to conduct negotiations
with the Germans,
then he will make
a separate peace with them.
What he's able to do
is to declare
that the war is at an end
even though the Allies
aren't happy with it.
When news of Wilson's armistice
was announced,
celebrations erupted
in cities around the world.
With his dreams
of a new world order
seemingly within his grasp,
Wilson turned his attention
to a far more mundane matter:
winning the midterm
congressional election.
The president
asked American voters
to give him a mandate
to pursue world peace.
But his wartime arrests
and censorship
had alienated
the very progressives
who were the most ardent
advocates of peace.
In addition, African Americans
who had once voted for Wilson
were outraged at his support
of segregation.
The president's
White House screening
of the film Birth of a Nation,
which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan
in a heroic light,
did not help matters.
He's certainly
very much a man of his times.
What he did say was that he was
going to lead his times, though,
in the right direction.
That is really the signature
of Woodrow Wilson's presidency.
In the area of race, however,
the direction was backward,
not forward.
Women's groups were also angry
at the president,
because of his lukewarm support
of universal suffrage
and the harsh treatment
of White House protesters.
He did not think that women
should be chaining themselves
to the White House fence.
His reaction to that
was not very gentlemanly
and not very democratic.
Those women were beaten
and abused in that jail,
and in protest
to their treatment,
women went on a hunger strike.
And Woodrow Wilson allowed
those women to be force-fed
by having tubes
shoved down their throats
and liquid nutrition
poured down those tubes.
Desperately trying
to rally the Democrats,
Wilson campaigned
in harsh, partisan tones.
The strategy backfired.
The Republicans won a majority
in both houses of Congress.
Shortly before his death,
Theodore Roosevelt
managed a parting shot.
The world should take note,
he warned, that Wilson
had "no authority whatever to
speak for the American people."
On December 4, 1918,
Woodrow Wilson set sail
from New York harbor
on the George Washington.
Undaunted by his losses at home,
he was on his way to Europe,
determined that the peace treaty
with Germany
retain his visionary blueprint
for world peace,
the Fourteen Points.
The voyage was a welcome rest.
Under the watchful eye
of Dr. Grayson,
Wilson enjoyed the salt air,
games of shuffleboard,
and especially
the company of Edith.
Secretary of State
Robert Lansing and Colonel House
begged Wilson not to go,
afraid that if he failed
he would be humiliated
both at home and abroad.
But Wilson was undeterred.
Wilson's aim in the
Paris Peace Conference of 1919
was probably higher than any
statesman in the modern period.
No one else had tried
to fundamentally recast
the international order
in a way that would
make war impossible.
He... his was
to be a revolutionary peace,
one that would transform
the world.
You can't imagine
a higher goal than that.
LaFEBER:
Wilson said to a friend
on his way over,
"I would not be able to do this
if I did not think I were
an instrument of God."
And the reception that he got
from millions of people
in Europe,
who looked at him literally
as a political savior,
reaffirmed for him
that he was going
to be an instrument of God.
American voters may not
have given their president
a ringing endorsement,
but the citizens of
the great cities of Europe did,
turning out by the hundreds
of thousands to cheer him.
Standing amid the crowds,
journalist Ray Baker
was troubled by the intensity
of their hopes for Wilson.
I have, curiously,
a feeling of doom
in the coming to Europe
of Wilson.
He is now approaching
the supreme test
of his triumph
and his popularity.
No man has long breathed such
a rarefied atmosphere and lived.
All the old ugly depths,
hating change, hating light,
will suck him down.
Wilson came to Paris
believing America's crucial role
in convincing the Germans
to sign the armistice
had earned him the right
to dictate the terms
of the peace treaty.
It is not too much to say
that we saved the world,
and I do not intend to let
those Europeans forget it.
They were beaten when we came in
and they know it.
British and French leaders
saw things entirely differently.
They believed that they had paid
the price for the victory...
With the blood of more
than two million young men.
Desperate for Wilson
to understand
what they had suffered,
they invited him
to tour the war zone.
But Wilson refused.
"They want me to see red,"
he told Edith,
"but I think there should
be one man at the peace table
who has not lost his temper."
It was the first
of many disagreements
between Wilson and the Allies.
Wilson arrives in Paris
to take up his part in the
peace negotiations in 1918
and he looks across the table
and he sees
that he's negotiating here
with two true sharks:
George Clemenceau,
the premier of France,
and Lloyd George, the prime
minister of Great Britain,
men who were hard and determined
to get the best deal
they possibly could
for their countries
and had no tolerance whatsoever
for Wilson's
idealistic pronouncements
about having to reform
the whole character
of the international system.
"God gave us
the Ten Commandments,
and we broke them,"
George Clemenceau declared.
"Wilson gives us
Fourteen Points.
We shall see."
His contempt for Wilson
was very deep
and believed that this was a man
who mistook words for realities,
and would do everything he could
to provide Wilson
with all the space for speeches
and none of the space
for achievements.
If Clemenceau thought little
of Wilson's ideas,
others were exhilarated by them.
Arab leaders
wanted the American president
to press for their freedom
from the British Empire.
W.E.B. Dubois, the outspoken
African-American leader,
implored Wilson
to speak out for Africa.
And a young Vietnamese student
who would later
call himself Ho Chi Minh
gave Wilson's delegation
a letter
requesting independence
for Vietnam.
LaFEBER:
When Wilson talked about
self-determination,
when he talked about
freedom of the seas,
these were things
that people in Asia or Africa
or African Americans
in the United States
had never heard before.
Here is a person who is willing
to take a position on principles
that will help them
and... and guarantee the quality
that they've been searching for
for generations.
What Wilson discovers
when he gets to Europe
is that the world's
much more complex than this,
and he gets caught up
in a whole series of issues
which he cannot control.
Britain and France
were determined
to take revenge on Germany.
Italy wanted control
over much of Yugoslavia.
Japan wanted
former German colonies in China.
One by one, Wilson was forced to
give way on his Fourteen Points.
But he would not compromise
on one point:
the League of Nations.
It was the moment
when you set up an institution
through which over time
the conflicts between nations
which were bound to arise
would be resolved.
So for him there was one
fundamental outcome
that had to emerge
from the peace negotiations,
and that was a commitment
to a League of Nations.
Everything else was secondary.
Wilson spent long hours deep in
consultation with Colonel House.
Edith, for years resentful
of her husband's close
relationship with House,
grew increasingly jealous.
To fill the time,
she visited hospitals
and rehabilitation centers
and gave words of support
to wounded soldiers.
And occasionally, Edith would
quietly go on a shopping spree
to the great fashion houses.
Edith in Paris
made a big splash.
Her French clothes,
her confidence,
and later,
when she traveled in Italy,
there was an American soldier
who wrote home
and said Mrs. Wilson
was every bit as fashionable
as the Italian queen.
Finally, the committee chaired
by the American president
finished its proposal
for the League of Nations.
Wilson scheduled a presentation
for all the peace conference
delegates for February 14.
Edith was desperate to attend,
but French Premier Clemenceau
refused her request.
Eventually, she wore
the old Frenchman down,
on condition that she arrive
before the delegates,
remain hidden behind a curtain
during the event,
and stay until
everyone had left.
As the delegates
crowded into the hall,
Edith watched her husband
from a tiny, hidden alcove.
As he stood there,
slender, calm
and powerful in his argument,
I seemed to see the people
of all depressed countries,
men, women and little children,
crowding round
and waiting upon his words.
Afterwards, the members
rushed to grasp his hand.
Hours after
his triumphant presentation,
Wilson left France, confident
that his vision for the League
had cleared
its greatest hurdles.
As soon as he arrived
in Washington,
Wilson met with key Republicans,
led by Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge.
They were outraged
at being excluded
from the treaty negotiations
and determined
to voice their opposition
to giving up U.S. sovereignty to
an international organization.
The meeting
only made matters worse.
One senator said afterward
that he felt
as if he had been "wandering
with Alice in Wonderland
and had tea
with the Mad Hatter."
Wilson, for his part,
was convinced
that the Republicans were
too selfish and shortsighted
to grasp his vision.
To him, the League
was the only hope
for a 20th century free of war.
That higher demand
produced a sense
that compromise was impossible.
And in many respects this is
a characteristic Calvinist view.
Once you get into the Lord's
work of making peace,
then great causes
have great enemies.
After just ten days at home,
Wilson sailed back to France,
anxious to finish work
on the treaty.
The second trip had none of the
tonic effects of the first.
Overtired and overwrought,
the president came down
with a bad cold.
But it wasn't an infection
that had caused his complaint,
he told Dr. Grayson.
You made an error
in my diagnosis.
It is true I have a headache,
neuralgia, sore throat,
toothache, fever and a chill,
but my trouble is
that I am suffering
from a retention of gases
generated by
the Republican senators,
and that's enough
to poison any man.
On March 13, 1919,
Wilson arrived back in France
aboard the George Washington.
As soon as the ship docked,
Colonel House went
to the president's stateroom
to brief Wilson on what
had happened while he was gone.
House informed him
that in order to obtain
British and French consent
to the treaty, he had agreed
to delete all mention
of the League of Nations.
The president was stunned.
Edith recalled that when
her husband emerged
from the meeting,
he looked as if
he had aged ten years.
"House has given away everything
I had won before we left Paris,"
he told her.
For years, the men
had been extremely close,
but now the president
felt betrayed.
Egged on by Edith, Wilson
began to freeze House out.
After June of that year, the two
men would never speak again.
Having lost confidence
in his most trusted adviser,
under attack by the Senate
and at odds with the Allies,
Wilson felt he had no one
to rely on but himself.
He was having to work harder
under greater strain
than he'd ever done in his life.
I mean, these are 14, 15 hours
a day, day after day after day.
These attitudes
worked on him temperamentally;
they worked on him in ways
they work on anybody
who finds himself
in a tense situation,
struggling every day
with a few other people
to produce a common artifact
they can all admire.
What happens is,
those conditions
make your blood pressure go up.
And in Wilson's case,
that was dangerous.
For two weeks, the president
worked furiously,
until he had won back
what House had bargained away.
Then on the afternoon
of April 3,
as Wilson met with the leaders
of France, Britain and Italy,
he became violently ill.
April 3, he was felled
by a severe viral illness
manifested by temperatures
up to 103, diarrhea,
and a very severe
productive cough.
At that point he became
delusional,
particularly at night,
and many individuals that were
associated with him at the time
began to realize he was having
some disorders of perception.
The next morning, Ike Hoover,
one of Wilson's personal aides,
sensed that the combination
of fever and high blood pressure
was causing the president
to hallucinate.
He was suddenly
a different man...
Unreasonable, unnatural,
simply impossible.
His suspicions were intensified,
his perspective distorted.
His feelings about Colonel House
now became an obsession.
And he became obsessed
with the idea
that every French employee
about the place
was a spy
for the French government.
The president was sicker
than the world ever knew.
He's really not thinking
appropriately,
he's having a delusional state,
and medically, you can define
that he did have in fact
what we would call a delirium.
After three days,
the president's fever subsided,
but not his blood pressure.
On June 28, 1919,
the world's attention turned
to the Palace of Versailles,
where the treaty finally
would be signed.
Most of Wilson's Fourteen Points
were either badly weakened
or missing altogether,
and the Allies
were demanding payments
that might bankrupt Germany
for a generation.
The German delegates felt angry
and betrayed.
LaFEBER:
The problem with Wilson was
that he had promised too much.
He cannot reconcile his rhetoric
to reality.
The Germans came to Wilson
and said,
"We surrendered on the basis
of the Fourteen Points.
Now you deliver
on the Fourteen Points."
And Wilson could not deliver.
The French and the British
would not let him deliver.
The Germans had no choice.
They signed
the Treaty of Versailles.
Wilson signed, too.
He had only one achievement
to point to...
The League of Nations...
But he was counting on it
to make up for all his failures.
Before leaving France,
the president made a Memorial
Day visit to a cemetery
where the bodies of 6,000
young Americans lay buried.
Here, the men of America gave
that greatest of all gifts:
the gift of life.
And here stand I,
consecrated in spirit
to the men who were once my
comrades and who are now gone,
and who have left me under
eternal bonds of fidelity.
Wilson now faced the greatest
fight of his life:
to convince the U.S. Senate to
approve the Treaty of Versailles
and the League of Nations.
But his political skills
were dwindling away...
Casualties of the changes
in his personality
brought on by his illness.
What began to occur
after that point
is an accentuation
of the one side...
Which was the self-righteous,
shall-not-compromise,
no-man-shall-put-me-down
type of scenario...
Versus the let's-work-
together-as-a-team,
which he left behind.
And so what we began to see was
an accentuation
of his personality traits.
He became a caricature
of himself, if you will.
Wilson's politics narrowed
as his arteries became blocked.
He became a man
who simply could not physically
or politically function
in the way
that he had done before.
His vision of the world
was the same.
But his sense of
what he would have to do
in order to reach his goals
became narrower and narrower
and narrower.
In his debilitated state,
Wilson underestimated
the key opponent of his League,
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
I think it's safe to say
that Woodrow Wilson
and Henry Cabot Lodge
hated each other's guts.
Henry Cabot Lodge relished
the political situation
that Wilson found himself in
after the 1918
midterm elections.
The Republicans controlled the
Senate by one, which was enough.
It meant that Henry Cabot Lodge
was going to chair the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee
and preside over
Wilson's great document.
Wilson was asking for
not only a major change
in the international system
itself,
but for a no less major change
in the way the United States
would conduct
its own international business
in partnership with other
peoples and with other nations.
This was a gigantic departure.
With Lodge's attacks on the
League taking a heavy toll,
it soon became clear
that Wilson did not have
the votes in the Senate
that he needed.
The president realized that
unless he took drastic measures,
he would lose
his League of Nations.
At last he decided that
the only alternative he had
was a direct appeal
to the people.
So he heads out on what
was really the equivalent
of a full-fledged
presidential campaign.
In September of 1919,
Wilson set out on a 10,000-mile
tour of the United States.
He was determined to create
a nationwide outpouring
of support for the League.
Both Edith and Dr. Grayson
begged him not to go.
That trip was probably the worst
thing he could have done,
given the state of his health.
He is trying to pack
a tremendous amount
of public persuasion
into a terribly short
period of time.
It is, in some ways,
an act of desperation.
Columbus, Ohio; St. Louis,
Missouri; Tacoma, Washington...
The cities came and went
in a blur.
Americans came by the thousands
to see their president.
He told them that the League
was the only hope
for reconciliation among
Germany, Britain and France.
Without it, he prophesied
that there would be
a second world war.
I do not hesitate to say
that the war
we have just been through,
though it was shot through
with terror of every kind,
is not to be compared
with the war we would
have to face next time.
What the Germans used were toys
as compared with what they
would use in the next war.
On the train, convincing
the American people
that the position he took
on the peace treaty was valid,
was one of Wilson's
highest moments.
He was able to find again that
rapport with the ordinary voter
that he had had earlier
in his presidency.
He was able to explain to people
coming by the hundreds, by the
thousands, to watch him go by,
why it mattered so much
for him to go over the heads
of the Senate,
in order to speak
to the American people
about peace and
about the future,
about their children's world
and their children's
children's world.
This is a moment when he had it
within his hands
to make his politics real.
Public support for the treaty
began to grow.
"The spirit of the crowd
seemed akin to fanaticism,"
the New York Times reported.
"The throng joined in a
continuous and riotous uproar."
But after 3,500 miles of travel
and speeches in 12 cities,
Wilson once again began
to suffer severe headaches.
He grew thinner
and the headaches increased
in duration and intensity
until he was almost blind
during the attacks.
With each revolution
of the wheels,
my anxiety for my husband's
health increased.
The incredible stress
of the trip
with each speech that had to be
given, all of the traveling,
everyone was vitally concerned
about Wilson's health
and recognized that he was
failing... all but Wilson.
The fact of the matter is
the piper was going to have
to be paid at some point.
He was living on borrowed time.
On September 25, the First Lady
and a smiling
but exhausted president
met a crowd of several thousand
in Pueblo, Colorado.
As he spoke, he seemed magically
to regain his strength.
Edith described it as "the most
vigorous and touching speech
he made on the entire tour."
Again and again,
my fellow citizens,
mothers who lost their sons
in France have come to me
and, taking my hand, have
not only shed tears upon it,
but they have added,
"God bless you, Mr. President!"
Why, my fellow citizens,
should they weep upon my hand
and pray God to bless me?
I ordered their sons overseas.
I consented to them being put
in the most dangerous parts
of the battle line,
where death was certain.
But they rightly believe
that their sons saved
the liberty of the world.
They believe
that this sacrifice was made
in order that other sons should
not be called upon to die.
I wish some of the men who are
now opposing the settlement
could feel the moral obligation
that rests upon us
not to go back on those boys
but to see this thing
through to the end
and make good
their redemption of the world.
Later that day, Edith entered
her husband's room
and saw the terrible price
that he had paid
for making his speech.
I found him sitting
on the side of his bed,
with his head resting on the
back of a chair in front of him.
He said the pain
had grown unbearable
and he thought
I had better call Dr. Grayson.
But nothing the doctor
could do gave relief.
Finally, about 5:00 in the
morning, my husband fell asleep.
The next morning,
Dr. Grayson told the president
that he might die
if he continued.
"No, no," Wilson responded,
"I must keep on."
It remained for me
to hold up the mirror to nature
and show him
that the fight was over.
The remainder of the trip
was canceled,
and the president's train
sped back to Washington.
Four days after Wilson's return
to Washington,
the worst fears
of Edith and Dr. Grayson
finally came to pass.
Grayson is summoned
to the president's bedroom,
emerges from the bedroom,
throws up his hands
and says, "My God,
the president is paralyzed."
And indeed he was
on his left side,
the entire left side
of his body.
Dr. Grayson quickly diagnosed
that Wilson had suffered
a massive stroke.
He recommended releasing
a full statement
of the president's condition
to the nation.
But Edith forbade it,
and Dr. Grayson fell in line.
Grayson and Edith Wilson
decide at this point
the wagons must be circled
because a great warrior
has fallen
but no one needs to know this.
So what was done at that point
with press releases
to be dealt with,
what would you do?
Well, what you would say,
basically
is that "the president is
incapacitated for right now,
"however, it's
nervous indigestion.
There's, uh,
not too much to be feared."
The words, however,
"paralyzed" were never utilized.
You never heard
the term "stroke."
And from that point on
the American public was kept,
effectively, in the dark.
Secretary of State Lansing
learned the truth
and told Edith and Grayson
that the Constitution called
for the appointment
of the vice-president.
They ignored him.
One week later, when Wilson took
a turn for the worse,
Vice-President Thomas Marshall
was informed
that the president might die
at any moment.
Marshall sat speechless,
staring at his hands.
For more than a month,
Wilson did little more
than sleep and eat.
The wheels of government
ground to a halt.
The Cabinet met
but made no decisions.
Foreign diplomacy
was put on hold.
Wilson's stroke caused
the worst crisis
of presidential disability
in American history,
and it was handled terribly.
Essentially, Mrs. Wilson
became a kind of regent.
She controlled access to him.
She was very specific
that she never made
a decision on her own.
But we all know
that whoever controls access
to the president
to some extent controls
the president...
Is the president.
Ike Hoover watched as
Mrs. Wilson became, in effect,
the president
of the United States.
If there were some papers
requiring his attention,
they would be read to him,
but only those that Mrs. Wilson
thought should be read to him.
Likewise, word of any decision
the president had made
would be passed back
through the same channels.
Six weeks after his stroke,
Wilson remained in seclusion.
He was still unable
to write or walk.
As the White House cover-up
continued,
Republicans became suspicious
that the president
was not fit for office.
They designated two senators,
a Republican and a Democrat,
to go see the president.
Edith and Dr. Grayson carefully
prepared for the visit.
They concealed his paralyzed
left arm under a blanket,
and lit the room so that
Wilson was in a deep shadow.
"We're praying for you,
Mr. President,"
the Republican declared.
"Which way, Senator?"
Wilson grimly retorted.
The president passed the test.
The New York Times reported
that the meeting
silenced for good
the many wild
and often unfriendly rumors
of presidential disability.
The public would never know the
full extent of Wilson's illness.
But his political health could
not be stage-managed so easily.
Senator Lodge introduced
a series of amendments
to the League charter
that severely limited American
commitments to the organization.
Edith could not get her
embittered husband
to accept the compromises.
Five months
after Wilson's stroke,
the League of Nations went down
to final defeat in the Senate.
Upon hearing the news,
he replied,
"It probably would have been
better if I had died last fall."
He was a man who believed
in this extraordinarily
difficult goal,
and when he knew
that he wouldn't get there
the moment must have been
devastating for him
since it meant that all those
deaths had been in vain
and that nothing
had been accomplished
by the American intervention
in the war itself.
At that moment
he must have felt very much
like an Old Testament prophet
who saw that he would never
reach the Promised Land,
a bit like Moses
on the mountaintop,
looking on to Canaan
and realizing that he'll
never get across the river.
A frail Wilson muddled through
the last year of his presidency.
His favorite activity
was watching newsreels
from his time in office
with old friends like Ray Baker.
Finally, the show was over,
the film had run its course.
All that glory had faded away
with a click and a sputter.
It was to us sitting there
as though the thread of life
itself had snapped.
We drew long breaths
and turned to see the stooped
figure of the president.
He turned slowly and shuffled
out of the doorway... alone.
In 1921, Woodrow Wilson
retired to a house on S Street
in Washington, D.C.
Here he received visits from
his daughters and grandchildren
and listened to baseball games
on the radio.
For his efforts to bring
a just end to the war,
he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the former president felt
that his life's work had been
rejected by his own countrymen.
Wilson, in his final days
and years,
was a truly tragic figure
who had aspired to the greatest
of heights of accomplishment
and been brought terribly low,
both politically...
Failing to get
the League of Nations...
And then his health,
just cruelly broken
in his final years.
It must have been
a very sad time for him.
In the last days of his life,
though he had
the physical deficits,
the real disturbing aspect were
these wide swings in emotion,
including crying spells
for which there was
no underlying reason
that one could discern.
And for a man of Wilson's
intellect and his pride,
what a tragedy to see
what disease had wrought
over a 20-year period.
In 1921, on Armistice Day,
the third anniversary
of the end of the war,
Wilson rode
in a somber procession
for the burial
of the Unknown Soldier.
As his carriage passed,
a murmur of recognition arose
from the crowd,
then a wave of applause swept
down the parade route.
The former president
returned home
to find 20,000 people
milling outside.
Wilson finally
appeared on his doorstep,
and with tears streaming down
his cheeks,
he spoke a single sentence:
"I can only say, God bless you."
A lot of his friends and
his daughters were surprised
at how calm
and how serene he became.
He said, "If we'd gone
into the League of Nations,
if we'd adopted my program,"
he said,
"it would have been only a
personal triumph on my part."
He said, "The people weren't
ready for it."
He said, "Now, when we do this,
"it will be because
the people want it,
because they are ready for it."
And he had his own way
of putting it, too.
He said, "God knew...
God knew what to do
better than I did."
On Sunday, February 3, 1924,
another crowd gathered
on S Street.
Woodrow Wilson was dead.
His body was carried to the
Washington Cathedral for burial.
President Calvin Coolidge,
members of Congress and heads
of foreign governments
attended the ceremony.
Edith requested Senator Lodge to
forgo his official invitation.
As the funeral ended,
a choir sang out, "The strife
is over, the battle done."
captioning is made possible
by the
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
to enhance public understanding
of the role of technology.
The foundation also seeks
to portray the lives
of the men and women engaged
in scientific
and technological pursuit.
Liberty Mutual Insurance
is a proud supporter
of The American Experience.
And by helping people live
safer, more secure lives,
we're also proud supporters
of the American dream.
At the Scotts Company, we help
make gardens more beautiful
lawns greener, trees taller.
If there's a better business
to be in,
please... let us know.
This program has been made
possible by a grant
from the National Endowment
for the Humanities
and The Arthur Vining Davis
Foundations.
American Experience
is also made possible
by the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting
and contributions
to your PBS station from:
In 1915, the great powers
of Europe were engaged
in the most brutal war
mankind had ever fought.
After just six months
of fighting,
more than one million young men
had been killed.
President Woodrow Wilson
was trying to keep America
out of the cataclysm...
But he was crippled by a crisis
in his personal life.
His wife Ellen had died
just as the war began.
Wilson, who had always relied
on a strong woman for support,
was utterly bereft.
Not long after Ellen died,
the week that the war broke out,
he made a comment that he wished
somebody might shoot him.
He was that miserable
over the loss of Ellen;
he was terribly lonely.
Wilson's deep need
for female companionship
stood in stark contrast to
his cold and aloof public image.
Well, he was
a deeply passionate man.
He was passionate
in his relationship with women.
He was passionate in
his relationship with his God.
All that came from a kind
of much repressed, but inward,
highly-burning fire.
Wilson's intense drive
had seen him
through the worst trial
of his life.
While president of Princeton,
the blood vessels
behind one eye had burst.
Fearing that his high blood
pressure might kill him,
doctors urged him to retire,
but Wilson ignored them.
Here is a man
who's relatively young
who already has
an advanced disease.
The fact of the matter
is, the piper was going
to have to be paid
at some point.
He was living on borrowed time.
Wilson had defied the odds
to become president
of the United States
by promising to give
all Americans a chance
to share in the wealth created
by the new industrial age.
The first two years
of Wilson's first term
are one of the most
remarkable moments
in modern American politics.
There's more reform agenda
accomplished
in that brief moment
than in virtually
any other two-year period
in the 20th century.
Now Europe was
a vast killing field.
Haunted by
his childhood experience
of the horrors of the Civil War,
Wilson became obsessed
with creating a new world order.
No one else had tried
to fundamentally recast
the international order in a way
that would make war impossible.
He... his was to be
a revolutionary peace,
one that would transform
the world.
But Wilson's pursuit of his
dream would almost kill him.
One afternoon in early 1915,
as President Woodrow Wilson
approached the elevator
in the White House,
its doors opened to reveal
a striking woman
in walking clothes
and muddy boots.
The 59-year-old president wasted
no time getting acquainted
with Edith Bolling-Gault,
a 42-year-old widow.
She was a friend of a female
relative of Wilson's
who was living
at the White House.
They'd just happened
to wander in
when Wilson came back
from a golf game...
And this chance meeting...
And, uh, he was absolutely
dazzled, just plain dazzled.
Edith Bolling-Gault
was a woman ahead of her time,
confident and independent.
She was a wealthy widow.
You know, her husband
had been dead a few years.
She wore clothes from Paris.
She drove her own little
electric car around Washington.
After the first dinner Edith has
at the White House with Woodrow,
she writes to a friend, saying,
"You know, I dined tonight
with the president."
You don't get the sense
of a woman
who's been swept off her feet.
Most Americans believed it
was inappropriate for any man...
And especially the president...
To be dating
so soon after his wife's death.
Wilson had to do
his courting in secret.
Day after day, the president's
chauffeur-driven Pierce-Arrow
rolled at 20 miles an hour
through
the Virginia countryside.
You are so vivid.
You are so beautiful.
I have learned what you are, and
my heart is wholly enthralled.
Woodrow Wilson was
a very vital, passionate man.
They'd go for long drives
along the Potomac,
and they'd sit in the backseat,
and they would talk, and they
would hug each other and kiss.
In a way, what woman
wouldn't be flattered
by attracting the president?
Here is the most important man
in the country.
He's bright, he's witty,
he's warm.
And he's president.
Wilson's long drives with Edith
terrified his advisers,
who feared that the relationship
would be discovered
and Wilson's reelection
put at risk.
Their fears were realized
when a rumor raced
through Washington
that the president
of the United States
had been seen necking
with a woman in his car.
Then, the Washington Post
society columnist revealed
that "the president
has been 'entertaining'
Edith Bolling-Gault regularly."
But due to a misprint,
the article stated,
"The president
has been 'entering'
Edith Bolling-Gault regularly."
The entire edition of the paper
had to be recalled.
With gossip spreading
across the country,
Wilson was desperate to make
the relationship respectable.
Only three months
after meeting Edith,
he asked her to marry him.
But Edith was shocked at the
proposal and turned him down.
It wasn't considered
proper to marry so soon.
So I think part of that
was Edith's feeling,
and part was just,
what woman would change her life
so completely in five weeks?
Remember, she was used to going
to Europe when she wanted,
she had plenty of money,
she had the best
of Washington society
and she could travel
wherever she wanted.
She wasn't too taken
with the idea
of living in the White House.
For the moment, Woodrow Wilson
would have to cope
with life as a single man.
In August 1914, it took
only one day to show the world
how horrific
the European war would be.
Wearing 19th-century uniforms
of bright red trousers
and blue coats,
French troops marched in
formation across open ground
toward the invading German Army.
Machine guns mowed them down.
27,000 French soldiers
were killed.
Woodrow Wilson wanted to avoid
the conflict at all costs.
He believed that if the United
States could stay out,
that we could be the great
reconciler, the great mediator.
And in order to do that,
we can't get involved
in something
like this horrible war.
It's destructive,
it's the antithesis
of civilization,
and what's more,
he deeply suspected the motives
of all the belligerents
in there.
Wilson also knew that America's
vast immigrant population
had divided interests
in the war.
He feared that
if the U.S. joined the fight,
it might split the country.
We have to remember
that the moment
Wilson assumes the presidency
is the moment
when there were more immigrants,
relative to
the general population,
than in any other moment
in American history,
including our own.
And many of those immigrants
came from the countries
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
and from Germany,
and it was anybody's guess
where their loyalties might lie.
Wilson wanted no part of that,
because he saw
that it was potentially the case
that a European war would tear
the fragile, very delicate web
of American unity right apart.
But no matter how much
Wilson might wish
to avoid choosing sides,
the fact was
that the American economy
had already chosen for him.
By 1915, he found
that the American economy
doesn't work in a neutral way;
that in order
for the American economy to work
they had to sell goods
to the belligerents...
The people who were fighting
in Europe.
And it just so happened
that most American banking ties
were with the British
and the French,
and as a result,
Wilson finds himself, by 1915,
essentially locked in
on the British-French side.
On a sunny afternoon
in May of 1915,
the British luxury liner
Lusitania was nearing
the end of its voyage
from New York to England.
A German submarine
sighted the vessel.
It fired one torpedo.
The great ship exploded
and sank in 22 minutes.
This was not a military ship
or even a merchant ship.
It was a passenger liner
with men, women and children...
Noncombatants...
And among them, of course,
128 Americans went down
among the 1,200 who died.
The sinking of the Lusitania
shocked Americans,
because it seemed like an act
of almost wanton murder.
Germany's aggression
on the high seas stoked
nationalist cries
for America to enter the war.
Wilson's bitter rival, former
President Theodore Roosevelt,
was eager for the United States
to wield a "big stick"
on the world stage.
When Wilson failed to retaliate
against the Germans,
"T.R." called the president
a "prime-jackass"
and threatened to "skin him
alive if he doesn't go to war."
Republican congressmen,
led by Henry Cabot Lodge,
were also furious
with the president.
"Wilson is afraid,"
Senator Lodge declared.
"He flinches in the presence
of danger, physical and moral."
Wilson's true feelings
about the conflict
were reflected in a newly
erected Civil War monument
that the president passed
each time he journeyed
to the Capitol.
I come from the South
and I know what war is,
for I have seen
its terrible wreckage and ruin.
It is easy for me, as president,
to declare war.
I do not have to fight,
and neither do the gentlemen
on the Hill
who now clamor for it.
It is some poor farmer's boy,
or the son of some poor widow,
who will have to do the fighting
and the dying.
In the spring of 1915,
Woodrow Wilson still had
his eyes on Edith Bolling-Gault.
Though she had not agreed
to marry him,
she was willing
to continue seeing him.
And when the war
kept Wilson closeted
with his advisers
at the White House,
she sent him letters
by secret courier.
I will kiss the tired eyes
that have strained so
to see the right course
through the blackness ahead,
and try to shut out the tumult
that is raging around you
on every side
by whispering
in your listening ears:
"I love you,
my precious Woodrow."
There's an old saying
that power is
the greatest aphrodisiac.
Wilson certainly used
the presidency
as a way of wooing
the widow Gault.
He shared his thoughts with her.
He shared secrets of state
with her.
He would show her the
correspondence with the Germans
over the Lusitania,
over the submarine.
He used the presidency as a way
of winning this woman.
By fall, Wilson was on the verge
of popping the question again.
Suddenly, their love
was put in jeopardy
by the president's relationship
with another woman.
Nine years earlier,
on the island of Bermuda,
Wilson had had an affair with
a socialite named Mary Peck.
Now, as the presidential
election approached,
Wilson learned that the
Republicans were planning
to make his infidelity
an issue in the campaign.
Woodrow decided he had no choice
but to tell Edith
about his affair with Peck,
and warn her
that she might now be caught up
in a major scandal.
When Woodrow confessed to Edith
that he had had this
relationship with Mary Peck,
she really had second thoughts,
as I think any woman would.
And she gave... I guess
she must've begun thinking
how many other people
knew about this,
what kind of scandal
might be involved,
how many other women
there might be.
She really began to take
another look at this man,
because this was a side of him
that she did not know.
On September 22,
Edith retreated to her home
to decide on the future
of their relationship.
As she deliberated,
a letter from Woodrow arrived,
begging her forgiveness.
I know I have no rights,
but I also know
that it would break
my heart and my life
if I could not call you
my darling.
Finally, Edith made her reply.
Dearest, I am not afraid
of any gossip or threat
with your love as my shield.
I now see straight
into the heart of things
and am ready to follow the road
where love leads.
Well, at the end
of a long night's thinking,
Edith comes around and decides
that she really does want
to marry Woodrow.
And I think, frankly,
historians are divided
about how much of it
was really great love
and how much of it
was the attraction
of the power of the White House.
On the October 9, 1915,
the couple made their first
public appearance together
at the World Series
in Philadelphia.
Two months later, as a Marine
band played the "Wedding March,"
the couple was married in a
small ceremony in Edith's home.
Though there were still
public murmurs of disapproval,
Wilson's three daughters
welcomed Edith into the family,
firm in their belief
that their mother Ellen
would have approved.
With her marriage to one of the
most powerful men in the world,
Edith Wilson knew
she was embarking
on a remarkable journey.
"You will lay your hand
in mine," she wrote,
"and with the other,
turn the pages of history."
In 1916, while struggling
to keep the nation neutral,
Wilson had to campaign
for reelection.
His Republican opponent
was Charles Evans Hughes,
a former governor of New York
and Supreme Court justice.
In private, Theodore Roosevelt
called Hughes
a "bearded iceberg."
But T.R.'s deep-seated hatred
for Woodrow Wilson
drove him
onto the campaign trail,
where he extolled Hughes
and attacked the president.
"No one displays more despicable
baseness than Wilson,"
Roosevelt declared,
"who is without a touch
of the heroic
in his cold, selfish
and timid soul."
Wilson was acutely aware
of the way
other people perceived him,
the public at large,
that he was
"a human thinking machine,"
that ice water ran
through his veins.
And that bothered him a bit.
Every now and then,
when he'd be out on the hustings
and give a speech,
and he got fired up,
and somebody from the audience
would yell,
"You tell them, Woody!",
he loved it.
The president reached out
to a wide range of progressives:
from laborers and farmers
to ethnic minorities
and women suffragists
who already had the vote
in the West.
Social justice progressives,
by 1916,
came to feel
that Woodrow Wilson was somebody
that they could work with.
He was not yet
their perfect candidate,
but they also perceived him
as the candidate
who was the most likely
to keep the country out of war.
Edith relished campaigning
in a way Wilson's first wife
never had.
But she also became an issue in
an increasingly dirty campaign.
Republican women held so-called
"indignation meetings"
to protest Wilson's pursuit
of Edith
so soon after the death
of his first wife.
And bawdy jokes about Edith
began to circulate.
One joke that did evidently
persist, the question was,
"What did Mrs. Gault do
when the president of the United
States proposed to her?"
And the answer was,
"She fell out of bed."
Which, in 1915, would've been
extremely risqué.
I guess it would be risqué
even today,
but 1915, that was pretty risqué
a story to pass around
about the president.
Wilson believed that the tense
international situation
called for a chief executive
who had the full support
of the American people.
He decided
that if he lost the election,
he and his vice-president
would immediately resign.
Vice-President Thomas Marshall
was not told of the plan.
The early returns showed Hughes
winning
most of the eastern states.
That night, Wilson went to bed
thinking he had lost.
The next morning, he and Edith
awoke to more bad news.
On such difficult occasions,
Wilson drew support
from his Presbyterian faith,
and he was prepared to accept
the loss as God's will.
"The news did not seem
in the least to disturb him,"
Edith recalled.
Then, as polling results
trickled in
from the western states,
the tide turned.
By only a few thousand votes,
Wilson managed to win
the crucial state of California
and the election.
On the afternoon
of January 31, 1917,
the president received
a diplomatic communiqué:
the German government
had declared
all-out submarine warfare
against American ships
in the Atlantic.
Then, a telegram was intercepted
that revealed Germany was trying
to persuade Mexico
to declare war against the U.S.
by offering the states
of Texas, Arizona and New Mexico
as potential war prizes.
The fact that Germany
is sinking American ships,
that it's plotting with Mexico
to bring on war
with the United States,
causes Wilson to lose all faith
in the good intentions
of the German government.
Wilson called
for an extraordinary session
of Congress
to receive "a communication
concerning grave matters
of national policy."
After days of agonizing,
he had decided to declare war.
Now he faced the monumental task
of telling Americans
why, after three years
of advocating neutrality,
he had changed his mind.
He had to convince Americans
that he had found something
that was worth fighting
and dying for.
On April 2, Wilson stood before
a joint session of Congress
and asked for a declaration
of war against Germany.
It is a fearful thing to lead
this great, peaceful people
into war,
into the most terrible
and disastrous of all wars.
But the right
is more precious than peace
and we shall fight
for the things
which we have always carried
nearest our hearts,
for the ultimate peace
of the world
and for the liberation
of its peoples.
The world must be made safe
for democracy.
It's the greatest presidential
speech, I think,
since Lincoln's
second inaugural address.
Wilson believed
that the United States
was a very special nation,
that we were really conceived
in liberty,
and that we had a mission
in the world
to try to make it
a better place...
To try to make it more peaceful,
more just, more democratic.
He's often accused there
of being hopelessly romantic
and idealistic.
I would argue all
to the contrary...
That Wilson, number one,
had no real alternative
but to cast the war
on this plane of idealism
because none of his country's
vital interests
were really at stake.
So he had somehow
to convince the public
that something was at stake
here, and what was at stake
was the nature of the democratic
experiment itself, worldwide.
The address was met
with wild applause,
and Wilson's justification
for going to war
was greeted with enthusiasm.
"The old isolation is finished,"
the New York World declared.
"We are no longer aloof
from the rest of the world.
"Whatever happens now
concerns us,
"and from none of it
can be withheld
the force of our influence."
When he was struggling
to keep the country neutral,
Wilson had lamented the
suspension of civil liberties
during the Civil War.
"War means autocracy,"
he had warned.
"To fight, you must be brutal
and ruthless."
Now, America was at war
once more,
and Wilson declared,
"Woe to the man
who seeks to stand in our way."
Wilson's fears
about the disloyalty
of many elements
of American society,
particularly recent immigrants,
all came rather nastily
to the fore
almost immediately
after the declaration of war.
And he allows
his attorney general
to undertake some
very aggressive prosecutions
of the ethnic
and immigrant press,
to search out and suppress
any dissident views
about the waging of the war.
It's not a lovely chapter
in the history
of American civil liberties.
The Wilson Administration
began urging American citizens
to act as vigilantes,
and report anyone
"who spreads pessimistic
stories, cries for peace,
or belittles our effort
to win the war."
From concert halls to schools,
Beethoven and Brahms,
along with all works of German
literature, were banned.
In Chicago,
schoolchildren were enlisted
to publicize the decree.
In addition, thousands
of Americans were arrested
for opposing the war on moral
and ethical grounds.
One of them was Eugene Debs,
four-time Socialist candidate
for president.
After Debs made a speech
against the war,
he was sentenced
to ten years in prison.
The Wilson Administration
supported and passed
an Espionage Act
and later a Sedition Act,
both of which limited
free speech in this country.
Under the provisions
of that act,
the Wilson Administration
could arrest anyone
that spoke out against the war,
anyone who spoke out
against Wilson's policies,
anyone who spoke out
against conscription.
On September 30, 1917,
in an event staged
for newsreel cameras,
President Wilson presided
over the first draft
since the Civil War.
With hundreds of thousands
of young men
destined for the killing fields
of Europe,
Wilson and his advisers
were deeply worried
about how the country
would react.
They launched the Committee
for Public Information,
a propaganda agency charged with
whipping up support for the war.
Hollywood stars
like Charlie Chaplin
were enlisted in the effort.
Edith Wilson did her part.
Like millions
of other Americans,
she signed a pledge to conserve
food for the war effort
and displayed
the familiar pledge card
in the window
of the White House.
Edith also joined the Red Cross
and passed out cigarettes
and chewing gum
to thousands of soldiers
at Washington's Union Station.
To publicize a Red Cross effort
to increase wool production,
Edith opened the White House
lawn to dozens of grazing sheep.
Most of the country was soon
firmly behind their president
and the war.
♪ Woodrow Wilson,
Woodrow Wilson ♪
♪ Leader of the U.S.A. ♪
♪ With your wisdom, truth
and honor ♪
♪ You led us from day to day ♪
♪ And all the nations
of this great world ♪
♪ Are stretching out
their arms to you ♪
♪ When democracy has won,
and this frightful war is done ♪
♪ Woodrow Wilson,
Woodrow Wilson ♪
♪ They will all remember you! ♪
♪ We'll remember
Woodrow Wilson. ♪
In late 1917, the first American
troops arrived in Europe.
After months of training,
they were thrown into battle.
But there were far too few
of them to turn the tide.
The stalemate with Germany
dragged on,
and now Americans, too,
were dying.
One of the casualties
was a member of a family
that Woodrow Wilson knew well:
Theodore Roosevelt's son,
Quentin, was a pilot
whose plane had crashed
behind German lines.
Wilson had
the grim responsibility
of notifying his old rival
by telegram
that his youngest son was dead.
The president was haunted
by the mounting casualties.
In his lifetime, the rifles
and cannons of the Civil War
had become the machine guns
and tanks and airplanes
of the world war.
He became convinced
that there was only one hope
for the human race:
to make this the last war.
There are times
when words seem empty
and only actions seem great.
Such a time has come.
The president sent
for his closest adviser,
Colonel Edward House.
Beneath his veneer
of Texas charm,
House was a master
political operator.
"He is an intimate man,"
an acquaintance said,
"even when he is cutting
a throat."
After his first meeting
with House, Wilson had declared,
"My dear friend, we have
known each other always."
You can't get away
from Wilson's own statements
that he and House
were the same person.
He made remarks
that are almost mystic.
And he said, "If Colonel House
said it, then I say it."
House was socially minded,
politically minded,
could talk to anybody,
always saw the other man's
point of view,
always had a compromise
in one hand.
Wilson was stiff, idealistic,
hated to compromise,
hated small talk.
And together they made
a sort of perfect president.
The task Wilson
had in mind for House
was to help create a new world
order based on democracy.
Wilson's notion that democracy
was not only good for America
but also good for the world
is fundamentally important
in understanding his decision
to go to war in 1917,
because the cause of war
and the cause of the suffering
was the existence
of aristocratic,
militaristic regimes,
whose interests had nothing
to do with the people.
Give the power to the people,
Wilson believed,
and wars would be impossible.
A democratic world
would be a world without war.
Colonel House secretly organized
a group of historians, political
scientists and geographers
to study the European situation
in depth.
Known as "the Inquiry,"
the group analyzed ways
to avoid war in the future.
In early January 1918,
the president called the colonel
back to the White House.
It was time to take
the information
compiled by "the Inquiry"
and turn it
into a concrete proposal.
Fearing leaks from his cabinet,
Wilson kept the meeting secret.
Saturday was a remarkable day.
At a quarter past 10:00, I set
to work with the president.
We took it systematically,
first outlining general terms
such as "open diplomacy,"
"freedom of the seas,"
and a "general association
of nations."
Then we began on Belgium, France
and other territorial
adjustments.
At half past 12:00, we finished
remaking the map of the world.
Their plan had 14 simple points.
The first 13 described a world
where conflicts would be settled
without war.
The last point described
the organization
that would make peaceful
coexistence possible,
a new international forum
called the League of Nations.
In Wilson's mind,
if the sacrifices
of blood and treasure
that Americans had to pay
in World War I
were ever going to be justified,
it had to be with an outcome
that didn't simply
end the fighting
but created a new
international order.
And this meant
creating a new institution
which would restructure
the way international diplomacy
and international relations
were conducted,
and that, of course,
is the League of Nations.
Wilson's vision
of how to achieve peace
was based upon his belief
that you set up institutions
that don't resolve all problems
but create a framework in which
tensions can be absorbed
and war can be avoided.
This is something he did
all his life...
Find an institutional framework
and have it as a way
of making the world safer.
Wilson's "Fourteen Points"
were translated
into a dozen languages.
They were transmitted
by wireless radio
into Russia and Austria-Hungary.
Leaflets were airdropped
into German territory
from airplanes and balloons,
and were even stuffed
into empty artillery shells...
and lobbed over
the German lines.
In one of
the first international
advertising campaigns,
Wilson's ideas
for a new world order
were spread around the globe.
In 1906, the blood vessels
behind one of Wilson's eyes
had burst,
causing a temporary loss
of vision.
Now there were ominous signs
that the condition was again
becoming a threat.
Edith watched her husband
with growing concern.
When every nerve was tense
with anxiety during the war,
there would come days
when he was incapacitated
by blinding headaches which
no medicine could relieve.
We made the room cool and dark,
and when at last
merciful sleep would come,
he would lie for hours
in this way,
apparently not even breathing.
Many a time
I stole in to listen...
To see if he were really alive.
Wilson's headaches were a sign
that high blood pressure
was gradually hardening
the arteries in his brain.
In 1917, he began to experience
fairly severe headaches,
implying that his blood pressure
was very much out of control.
Tie that in with the disease
process back in 1906,
which clearly identifies
the hypertension.
You put those two things
together,
and you see that you've got
a continuum of a problem
that's been going on
and has been unaddressed,
and the potential risk
for strokes and the like
is... is of great concern.
Wilson's physician,
a Navy medical officer
named Dr. Cary Grayson,
was deeply worried
about the president's health.
Grayson accompanied the
president wherever he went
and constantly nagged him
to relax and exercise more.
With his days of playing
baseball long behind him,
the president's favorite sport
was now golf.
He was known to play
rain or shine.
He even painted his ball red
in order to see it in the snow.
But for all his eagerness,
he was a classic duffer.
"Golf," Wilson said,
was "an ineffectual attempt
"to put an elusive ball
into an obscure hole
with implements ill-adapted
to the purpose."
It was, in fact, Edith who
became a superior golfer,
the best of any First Lady
in history.
Her diaries were soon sprinkled
with entries such as,
"Played golf with W.
And Grayson.
Beat them both."
By late spring of 1918,
over 500,000 U.S. troops
were in France,
with 250,000 more
arriving every month.
Fearing that they would soon
be overwhelmed by the Americans,
the German High Command launched
a massive, last-ditch offensive
to try and win the war.
Beginning on May 28,
the German troops clashed
with the American forces
along a 100-mile front.
Over one million American
soldiers fought.
120,000 were killed or wounded.
But the American and Allied
Armies stopped the Germans
and forced them
into a steady retreat.
With all hope of victory gone,
Germany's Kaiser abdicated.
Eager to end the war,
the new German chancellor
wrote the American president,
saying that his nation
was willing to stop fighting
if a peace treaty was based
on Wilson's Fourteen Points.
This gives Wilson
extraordinary power
because he can
threaten the Allies
that if they don't agree
to his terms
to conduct negotiations
with the Germans,
then he will make
a separate peace with them.
What he's able to do
is to declare
that the war is at an end
even though the Allies
aren't happy with it.
When news of Wilson's armistice
was announced,
celebrations erupted
in cities around the world.
With his dreams
of a new world order
seemingly within his grasp,
Wilson turned his attention
to a far more mundane matter:
winning the midterm
congressional election.
The president
asked American voters
to give him a mandate
to pursue world peace.
But his wartime arrests
and censorship
had alienated
the very progressives
who were the most ardent
advocates of peace.
In addition, African Americans
who had once voted for Wilson
were outraged at his support
of segregation.
The president's
White House screening
of the film Birth of a Nation,
which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan
in a heroic light,
did not help matters.
He's certainly
very much a man of his times.
What he did say was that he was
going to lead his times, though,
in the right direction.
That is really the signature
of Woodrow Wilson's presidency.
In the area of race, however,
the direction was backward,
not forward.
Women's groups were also angry
at the president,
because of his lukewarm support
of universal suffrage
and the harsh treatment
of White House protesters.
He did not think that women
should be chaining themselves
to the White House fence.
His reaction to that
was not very gentlemanly
and not very democratic.
Those women were beaten
and abused in that jail,
and in protest
to their treatment,
women went on a hunger strike.
And Woodrow Wilson allowed
those women to be force-fed
by having tubes
shoved down their throats
and liquid nutrition
poured down those tubes.
Desperately trying
to rally the Democrats,
Wilson campaigned
in harsh, partisan tones.
The strategy backfired.
The Republicans won a majority
in both houses of Congress.
Shortly before his death,
Theodore Roosevelt
managed a parting shot.
The world should take note,
he warned, that Wilson
had "no authority whatever to
speak for the American people."
On December 4, 1918,
Woodrow Wilson set sail
from New York harbor
on the George Washington.
Undaunted by his losses at home,
he was on his way to Europe,
determined that the peace treaty
with Germany
retain his visionary blueprint
for world peace,
the Fourteen Points.
The voyage was a welcome rest.
Under the watchful eye
of Dr. Grayson,
Wilson enjoyed the salt air,
games of shuffleboard,
and especially
the company of Edith.
Secretary of State
Robert Lansing and Colonel House
begged Wilson not to go,
afraid that if he failed
he would be humiliated
both at home and abroad.
But Wilson was undeterred.
Wilson's aim in the
Paris Peace Conference of 1919
was probably higher than any
statesman in the modern period.
No one else had tried
to fundamentally recast
the international order
in a way that would
make war impossible.
He... his was
to be a revolutionary peace,
one that would transform
the world.
You can't imagine
a higher goal than that.
LaFEBER:
Wilson said to a friend
on his way over,
"I would not be able to do this
if I did not think I were
an instrument of God."
And the reception that he got
from millions of people
in Europe,
who looked at him literally
as a political savior,
reaffirmed for him
that he was going
to be an instrument of God.
American voters may not
have given their president
a ringing endorsement,
but the citizens of
the great cities of Europe did,
turning out by the hundreds
of thousands to cheer him.
Standing amid the crowds,
journalist Ray Baker
was troubled by the intensity
of their hopes for Wilson.
I have, curiously,
a feeling of doom
in the coming to Europe
of Wilson.
He is now approaching
the supreme test
of his triumph
and his popularity.
No man has long breathed such
a rarefied atmosphere and lived.
All the old ugly depths,
hating change, hating light,
will suck him down.
Wilson came to Paris
believing America's crucial role
in convincing the Germans
to sign the armistice
had earned him the right
to dictate the terms
of the peace treaty.
It is not too much to say
that we saved the world,
and I do not intend to let
those Europeans forget it.
They were beaten when we came in
and they know it.
British and French leaders
saw things entirely differently.
They believed that they had paid
the price for the victory...
With the blood of more
than two million young men.
Desperate for Wilson
to understand
what they had suffered,
they invited him
to tour the war zone.
But Wilson refused.
"They want me to see red,"
he told Edith,
"but I think there should
be one man at the peace table
who has not lost his temper."
It was the first
of many disagreements
between Wilson and the Allies.
Wilson arrives in Paris
to take up his part in the
peace negotiations in 1918
and he looks across the table
and he sees
that he's negotiating here
with two true sharks:
George Clemenceau,
the premier of France,
and Lloyd George, the prime
minister of Great Britain,
men who were hard and determined
to get the best deal
they possibly could
for their countries
and had no tolerance whatsoever
for Wilson's
idealistic pronouncements
about having to reform
the whole character
of the international system.
"God gave us
the Ten Commandments,
and we broke them,"
George Clemenceau declared.
"Wilson gives us
Fourteen Points.
We shall see."
His contempt for Wilson
was very deep
and believed that this was a man
who mistook words for realities,
and would do everything he could
to provide Wilson
with all the space for speeches
and none of the space
for achievements.
If Clemenceau thought little
of Wilson's ideas,
others were exhilarated by them.
Arab leaders
wanted the American president
to press for their freedom
from the British Empire.
W.E.B. Dubois, the outspoken
African-American leader,
implored Wilson
to speak out for Africa.
And a young Vietnamese student
who would later
call himself Ho Chi Minh
gave Wilson's delegation
a letter
requesting independence
for Vietnam.
LaFEBER:
When Wilson talked about
self-determination,
when he talked about
freedom of the seas,
these were things
that people in Asia or Africa
or African Americans
in the United States
had never heard before.
Here is a person who is willing
to take a position on principles
that will help them
and... and guarantee the quality
that they've been searching for
for generations.
What Wilson discovers
when he gets to Europe
is that the world's
much more complex than this,
and he gets caught up
in a whole series of issues
which he cannot control.
Britain and France
were determined
to take revenge on Germany.
Italy wanted control
over much of Yugoslavia.
Japan wanted
former German colonies in China.
One by one, Wilson was forced to
give way on his Fourteen Points.
But he would not compromise
on one point:
the League of Nations.
It was the moment
when you set up an institution
through which over time
the conflicts between nations
which were bound to arise
would be resolved.
So for him there was one
fundamental outcome
that had to emerge
from the peace negotiations,
and that was a commitment
to a League of Nations.
Everything else was secondary.
Wilson spent long hours deep in
consultation with Colonel House.
Edith, for years resentful
of her husband's close
relationship with House,
grew increasingly jealous.
To fill the time,
she visited hospitals
and rehabilitation centers
and gave words of support
to wounded soldiers.
And occasionally, Edith would
quietly go on a shopping spree
to the great fashion houses.
Edith in Paris
made a big splash.
Her French clothes,
her confidence,
and later,
when she traveled in Italy,
there was an American soldier
who wrote home
and said Mrs. Wilson
was every bit as fashionable
as the Italian queen.
Finally, the committee chaired
by the American president
finished its proposal
for the League of Nations.
Wilson scheduled a presentation
for all the peace conference
delegates for February 14.
Edith was desperate to attend,
but French Premier Clemenceau
refused her request.
Eventually, she wore
the old Frenchman down,
on condition that she arrive
before the delegates,
remain hidden behind a curtain
during the event,
and stay until
everyone had left.
As the delegates
crowded into the hall,
Edith watched her husband
from a tiny, hidden alcove.
As he stood there,
slender, calm
and powerful in his argument,
I seemed to see the people
of all depressed countries,
men, women and little children,
crowding round
and waiting upon his words.
Afterwards, the members
rushed to grasp his hand.
Hours after
his triumphant presentation,
Wilson left France, confident
that his vision for the League
had cleared
its greatest hurdles.
As soon as he arrived
in Washington,
Wilson met with key Republicans,
led by Senator
Henry Cabot Lodge.
They were outraged
at being excluded
from the treaty negotiations
and determined
to voice their opposition
to giving up U.S. sovereignty to
an international organization.
The meeting
only made matters worse.
One senator said afterward
that he felt
as if he had been "wandering
with Alice in Wonderland
and had tea
with the Mad Hatter."
Wilson, for his part,
was convinced
that the Republicans were
too selfish and shortsighted
to grasp his vision.
To him, the League
was the only hope
for a 20th century free of war.
That higher demand
produced a sense
that compromise was impossible.
And in many respects this is
a characteristic Calvinist view.
Once you get into the Lord's
work of making peace,
then great causes
have great enemies.
After just ten days at home,
Wilson sailed back to France,
anxious to finish work
on the treaty.
The second trip had none of the
tonic effects of the first.
Overtired and overwrought,
the president came down
with a bad cold.
But it wasn't an infection
that had caused his complaint,
he told Dr. Grayson.
You made an error
in my diagnosis.
It is true I have a headache,
neuralgia, sore throat,
toothache, fever and a chill,
but my trouble is
that I am suffering
from a retention of gases
generated by
the Republican senators,
and that's enough
to poison any man.
On March 13, 1919,
Wilson arrived back in France
aboard the George Washington.
As soon as the ship docked,
Colonel House went
to the president's stateroom
to brief Wilson on what
had happened while he was gone.
House informed him
that in order to obtain
British and French consent
to the treaty, he had agreed
to delete all mention
of the League of Nations.
The president was stunned.
Edith recalled that when
her husband emerged
from the meeting,
he looked as if
he had aged ten years.
"House has given away everything
I had won before we left Paris,"
he told her.
For years, the men
had been extremely close,
but now the president
felt betrayed.
Egged on by Edith, Wilson
began to freeze House out.
After June of that year, the two
men would never speak again.
Having lost confidence
in his most trusted adviser,
under attack by the Senate
and at odds with the Allies,
Wilson felt he had no one
to rely on but himself.
He was having to work harder
under greater strain
than he'd ever done in his life.
I mean, these are 14, 15 hours
a day, day after day after day.
These attitudes
worked on him temperamentally;
they worked on him in ways
they work on anybody
who finds himself
in a tense situation,
struggling every day
with a few other people
to produce a common artifact
they can all admire.
What happens is,
those conditions
make your blood pressure go up.
And in Wilson's case,
that was dangerous.
For two weeks, the president
worked furiously,
until he had won back
what House had bargained away.
Then on the afternoon
of April 3,
as Wilson met with the leaders
of France, Britain and Italy,
he became violently ill.
April 3, he was felled
by a severe viral illness
manifested by temperatures
up to 103, diarrhea,
and a very severe
productive cough.
At that point he became
delusional,
particularly at night,
and many individuals that were
associated with him at the time
began to realize he was having
some disorders of perception.
The next morning, Ike Hoover,
one of Wilson's personal aides,
sensed that the combination
of fever and high blood pressure
was causing the president
to hallucinate.
He was suddenly
a different man...
Unreasonable, unnatural,
simply impossible.
His suspicions were intensified,
his perspective distorted.
His feelings about Colonel House
now became an obsession.
And he became obsessed
with the idea
that every French employee
about the place
was a spy
for the French government.
The president was sicker
than the world ever knew.
He's really not thinking
appropriately,
he's having a delusional state,
and medically, you can define
that he did have in fact
what we would call a delirium.
After three days,
the president's fever subsided,
but not his blood pressure.
On June 28, 1919,
the world's attention turned
to the Palace of Versailles,
where the treaty finally
would be signed.
Most of Wilson's Fourteen Points
were either badly weakened
or missing altogether,
and the Allies
were demanding payments
that might bankrupt Germany
for a generation.
The German delegates felt angry
and betrayed.
LaFEBER:
The problem with Wilson was
that he had promised too much.
He cannot reconcile his rhetoric
to reality.
The Germans came to Wilson
and said,
"We surrendered on the basis
of the Fourteen Points.
Now you deliver
on the Fourteen Points."
And Wilson could not deliver.
The French and the British
would not let him deliver.
The Germans had no choice.
They signed
the Treaty of Versailles.
Wilson signed, too.
He had only one achievement
to point to...
The League of Nations...
But he was counting on it
to make up for all his failures.
Before leaving France,
the president made a Memorial
Day visit to a cemetery
where the bodies of 6,000
young Americans lay buried.
Here, the men of America gave
that greatest of all gifts:
the gift of life.
And here stand I,
consecrated in spirit
to the men who were once my
comrades and who are now gone,
and who have left me under
eternal bonds of fidelity.
Wilson now faced the greatest
fight of his life:
to convince the U.S. Senate to
approve the Treaty of Versailles
and the League of Nations.
But his political skills
were dwindling away...
Casualties of the changes
in his personality
brought on by his illness.
What began to occur
after that point
is an accentuation
of the one side...
Which was the self-righteous,
shall-not-compromise,
no-man-shall-put-me-down
type of scenario...
Versus the let's-work-
together-as-a-team,
which he left behind.
And so what we began to see was
an accentuation
of his personality traits.
He became a caricature
of himself, if you will.
Wilson's politics narrowed
as his arteries became blocked.
He became a man
who simply could not physically
or politically function
in the way
that he had done before.
His vision of the world
was the same.
But his sense of
what he would have to do
in order to reach his goals
became narrower and narrower
and narrower.
In his debilitated state,
Wilson underestimated
the key opponent of his League,
Senator Henry Cabot Lodge.
I think it's safe to say
that Woodrow Wilson
and Henry Cabot Lodge
hated each other's guts.
Henry Cabot Lodge relished
the political situation
that Wilson found himself in
after the 1918
midterm elections.
The Republicans controlled the
Senate by one, which was enough.
It meant that Henry Cabot Lodge
was going to chair the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee
and preside over
Wilson's great document.
Wilson was asking for
not only a major change
in the international system
itself,
but for a no less major change
in the way the United States
would conduct
its own international business
in partnership with other
peoples and with other nations.
This was a gigantic departure.
With Lodge's attacks on the
League taking a heavy toll,
it soon became clear
that Wilson did not have
the votes in the Senate
that he needed.
The president realized that
unless he took drastic measures,
he would lose
his League of Nations.
At last he decided that
the only alternative he had
was a direct appeal
to the people.
So he heads out on what
was really the equivalent
of a full-fledged
presidential campaign.
In September of 1919,
Wilson set out on a 10,000-mile
tour of the United States.
He was determined to create
a nationwide outpouring
of support for the League.
Both Edith and Dr. Grayson
begged him not to go.
That trip was probably the worst
thing he could have done,
given the state of his health.
He is trying to pack
a tremendous amount
of public persuasion
into a terribly short
period of time.
It is, in some ways,
an act of desperation.
Columbus, Ohio; St. Louis,
Missouri; Tacoma, Washington...
The cities came and went
in a blur.
Americans came by the thousands
to see their president.
He told them that the League
was the only hope
for reconciliation among
Germany, Britain and France.
Without it, he prophesied
that there would be
a second world war.
I do not hesitate to say
that the war
we have just been through,
though it was shot through
with terror of every kind,
is not to be compared
with the war we would
have to face next time.
What the Germans used were toys
as compared with what they
would use in the next war.
On the train, convincing
the American people
that the position he took
on the peace treaty was valid,
was one of Wilson's
highest moments.
He was able to find again that
rapport with the ordinary voter
that he had had earlier
in his presidency.
He was able to explain to people
coming by the hundreds, by the
thousands, to watch him go by,
why it mattered so much
for him to go over the heads
of the Senate,
in order to speak
to the American people
about peace and
about the future,
about their children's world
and their children's
children's world.
This is a moment when he had it
within his hands
to make his politics real.
Public support for the treaty
began to grow.
"The spirit of the crowd
seemed akin to fanaticism,"
the New York Times reported.
"The throng joined in a
continuous and riotous uproar."
But after 3,500 miles of travel
and speeches in 12 cities,
Wilson once again began
to suffer severe headaches.
He grew thinner
and the headaches increased
in duration and intensity
until he was almost blind
during the attacks.
With each revolution
of the wheels,
my anxiety for my husband's
health increased.
The incredible stress
of the trip
with each speech that had to be
given, all of the traveling,
everyone was vitally concerned
about Wilson's health
and recognized that he was
failing... all but Wilson.
The fact of the matter is
the piper was going to have
to be paid at some point.
He was living on borrowed time.
On September 25, the First Lady
and a smiling
but exhausted president
met a crowd of several thousand
in Pueblo, Colorado.
As he spoke, he seemed magically
to regain his strength.
Edith described it as "the most
vigorous and touching speech
he made on the entire tour."
Again and again,
my fellow citizens,
mothers who lost their sons
in France have come to me
and, taking my hand, have
not only shed tears upon it,
but they have added,
"God bless you, Mr. President!"
Why, my fellow citizens,
should they weep upon my hand
and pray God to bless me?
I ordered their sons overseas.
I consented to them being put
in the most dangerous parts
of the battle line,
where death was certain.
But they rightly believe
that their sons saved
the liberty of the world.
They believe
that this sacrifice was made
in order that other sons should
not be called upon to die.
I wish some of the men who are
now opposing the settlement
could feel the moral obligation
that rests upon us
not to go back on those boys
but to see this thing
through to the end
and make good
their redemption of the world.
Later that day, Edith entered
her husband's room
and saw the terrible price
that he had paid
for making his speech.
I found him sitting
on the side of his bed,
with his head resting on the
back of a chair in front of him.
He said the pain
had grown unbearable
and he thought
I had better call Dr. Grayson.
But nothing the doctor
could do gave relief.
Finally, about 5:00 in the
morning, my husband fell asleep.
The next morning,
Dr. Grayson told the president
that he might die
if he continued.
"No, no," Wilson responded,
"I must keep on."
It remained for me
to hold up the mirror to nature
and show him
that the fight was over.
The remainder of the trip
was canceled,
and the president's train
sped back to Washington.
Four days after Wilson's return
to Washington,
the worst fears
of Edith and Dr. Grayson
finally came to pass.
Grayson is summoned
to the president's bedroom,
emerges from the bedroom,
throws up his hands
and says, "My God,
the president is paralyzed."
And indeed he was
on his left side,
the entire left side
of his body.
Dr. Grayson quickly diagnosed
that Wilson had suffered
a massive stroke.
He recommended releasing
a full statement
of the president's condition
to the nation.
But Edith forbade it,
and Dr. Grayson fell in line.
Grayson and Edith Wilson
decide at this point
the wagons must be circled
because a great warrior
has fallen
but no one needs to know this.
So what was done at that point
with press releases
to be dealt with,
what would you do?
Well, what you would say,
basically
is that "the president is
incapacitated for right now,
"however, it's
nervous indigestion.
There's, uh,
not too much to be feared."
The words, however,
"paralyzed" were never utilized.
You never heard
the term "stroke."
And from that point on
the American public was kept,
effectively, in the dark.
Secretary of State Lansing
learned the truth
and told Edith and Grayson
that the Constitution called
for the appointment
of the vice-president.
They ignored him.
One week later, when Wilson took
a turn for the worse,
Vice-President Thomas Marshall
was informed
that the president might die
at any moment.
Marshall sat speechless,
staring at his hands.
For more than a month,
Wilson did little more
than sleep and eat.
The wheels of government
ground to a halt.
The Cabinet met
but made no decisions.
Foreign diplomacy
was put on hold.
Wilson's stroke caused
the worst crisis
of presidential disability
in American history,
and it was handled terribly.
Essentially, Mrs. Wilson
became a kind of regent.
She controlled access to him.
She was very specific
that she never made
a decision on her own.
But we all know
that whoever controls access
to the president
to some extent controls
the president...
Is the president.
Ike Hoover watched as
Mrs. Wilson became, in effect,
the president
of the United States.
If there were some papers
requiring his attention,
they would be read to him,
but only those that Mrs. Wilson
thought should be read to him.
Likewise, word of any decision
the president had made
would be passed back
through the same channels.
Six weeks after his stroke,
Wilson remained in seclusion.
He was still unable
to write or walk.
As the White House cover-up
continued,
Republicans became suspicious
that the president
was not fit for office.
They designated two senators,
a Republican and a Democrat,
to go see the president.
Edith and Dr. Grayson carefully
prepared for the visit.
They concealed his paralyzed
left arm under a blanket,
and lit the room so that
Wilson was in a deep shadow.
"We're praying for you,
Mr. President,"
the Republican declared.
"Which way, Senator?"
Wilson grimly retorted.
The president passed the test.
The New York Times reported
that the meeting
silenced for good
the many wild
and often unfriendly rumors
of presidential disability.
The public would never know the
full extent of Wilson's illness.
But his political health could
not be stage-managed so easily.
Senator Lodge introduced
a series of amendments
to the League charter
that severely limited American
commitments to the organization.
Edith could not get her
embittered husband
to accept the compromises.
Five months
after Wilson's stroke,
the League of Nations went down
to final defeat in the Senate.
Upon hearing the news,
he replied,
"It probably would have been
better if I had died last fall."
He was a man who believed
in this extraordinarily
difficult goal,
and when he knew
that he wouldn't get there
the moment must have been
devastating for him
since it meant that all those
deaths had been in vain
and that nothing
had been accomplished
by the American intervention
in the war itself.
At that moment
he must have felt very much
like an Old Testament prophet
who saw that he would never
reach the Promised Land,
a bit like Moses
on the mountaintop,
looking on to Canaan
and realizing that he'll
never get across the river.
A frail Wilson muddled through
the last year of his presidency.
His favorite activity
was watching newsreels
from his time in office
with old friends like Ray Baker.
Finally, the show was over,
the film had run its course.
All that glory had faded away
with a click and a sputter.
It was to us sitting there
as though the thread of life
itself had snapped.
We drew long breaths
and turned to see the stooped
figure of the president.
He turned slowly and shuffled
out of the doorway... alone.
In 1921, Woodrow Wilson
retired to a house on S Street
in Washington, D.C.
Here he received visits from
his daughters and grandchildren
and listened to baseball games
on the radio.
For his efforts to bring
a just end to the war,
he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
But the former president felt
that his life's work had been
rejected by his own countrymen.
Wilson, in his final days
and years,
was a truly tragic figure
who had aspired to the greatest
of heights of accomplishment
and been brought terribly low,
both politically...
Failing to get
the League of Nations...
And then his health,
just cruelly broken
in his final years.
It must have been
a very sad time for him.
In the last days of his life,
though he had
the physical deficits,
the real disturbing aspect were
these wide swings in emotion,
including crying spells
for which there was
no underlying reason
that one could discern.
And for a man of Wilson's
intellect and his pride,
what a tragedy to see
what disease had wrought
over a 20-year period.
In 1921, on Armistice Day,
the third anniversary
of the end of the war,
Wilson rode
in a somber procession
for the burial
of the Unknown Soldier.
As his carriage passed,
a murmur of recognition arose
from the crowd,
then a wave of applause swept
down the parade route.
The former president
returned home
to find 20,000 people
milling outside.
Wilson finally
appeared on his doorstep,
and with tears streaming down
his cheeks,
he spoke a single sentence:
"I can only say, God bless you."
A lot of his friends and
his daughters were surprised
at how calm
and how serene he became.
He said, "If we'd gone
into the League of Nations,
if we'd adopted my program,"
he said,
"it would have been only a
personal triumph on my part."
He said, "The people weren't
ready for it."
He said, "Now, when we do this,
"it will be because
the people want it,
because they are ready for it."
And he had his own way
of putting it, too.
He said, "God knew...
God knew what to do
better than I did."
On Sunday, February 3, 1924,
another crowd gathered
on S Street.
Woodrow Wilson was dead.
His body was carried to the
Washington Cathedral for burial.
President Calvin Coolidge,
members of Congress and heads
of foreign governments
attended the ceremony.
Edith requested Senator Lodge to
forgo his official invitation.
As the funeral ended,
a choir sang out, "The strife
is over, the battle done."