Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations

by John Milton Cooper Jr.

The fight over the League of Nations at the end of World War I was one of the great political debates of the American twentieth century. President Woodrow Wilson, himself a key architect of the League, was uncompromising in his belief that the United States would rise to a position of leadership in the peaceful union of states that he had envisaged. A masterful politician and distinguished theorist, Wilson was unprepared for the persuasiveness of his opponents and the potency of their argument. Though he struggled tirelessly in the summer of 1919 to drum popular and political support for the League, he could not keep pace: he suffered a disabling stroke in July. The United States Senate ultimately rejected membership in the League, and the League failed to realize its diplomatic potential. In this engaging narrative, John Cooper relates the story of Wilson's battle for the League with sympathy, accuracy, and a deep understanding of the times. John Milton Cooper, Jr., is E. Gordon Fox Professor of American Institutions at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He has held Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships and served as a Fulbright Professor at Moscow University. His previous books inlcude The Warrior and the Priest (Harvard University Press, 1985) and Pivotal Decades (Norton, 1992). Cooper is Chief Historian of the forthcoming biography of Woodrow Wilson on American Experience, which will be broadcast by PBS in 2002.

Genres: American History, History

468 pages, Hardcover

First published September 24, 2001

About the author

John M. Cooper (born 1940) is an American historian, author, and educator. His specialization is late 19th- and early 20th-century American Diplomatic History. Cooper is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been fascinated with Woodrow Wilson and the many what-might-have-beens with regard to his efforts at Versailles in the formulation of the treaty ending World War I and his dream of the League of Nations since I was a college student. If things had worked out slightly differently – if, for example, he had fought skillfully enough to have the peace treaty reflect the principles elucidated in his Fourteen Points speech – not only would the United States have become a member of the League of Nations, something that may have given that instrument the “guts” to act early to thwart the first acts of aggression on the part of the Japanese in China and the earliest steps by Hitler to rearm, but also that treaty would not have created the morass out of which a resentful Germany would find cause to seek revenge on the victorious allies.

For those who see history as but the “dead past” such reflection seems worse than useless. Not only were things “destined” to play out as they had, but these long-ago events have no lessons for us who live in such different times.

However, I agree with William Faulkner who memorably said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” It is truly amazing how many of the same underlying issues that so troubled Wilson 100 years ago have not only remained, but grown in vile strength:

 Nationalism, that bane of international cooperation, is once again resurgent and, along with it, renewed disdain for those who are not truly of our people;

 The arrogance of so many “informed leaders” who truly do not know how much they don’t know;

 Despite the claims of the importance of diplomacy, too many nations, including our own, seem to place their real confidence in the importance of military strength, which not only serves to reduce efforts at diplomacy but can also so easily tip over into outright violent confrontation.

 The reservation on the part of so many nation-state leaders and politicians that, despite pledges to work cooperatively with other nations on matters of mutual importance, they so easily reserve the right of their country to take whatever action is necessary to advance their rights and protect their interests over all else.

Above all, I mourn the apparently complete absence of the kind of idealism and optimism that Wilson at his best represented. One of his most attractive features was his belief that if he just had the time he could persuade the American people to support his policies because he was willing to spell out for them in detail the arguments for doing so.

Today, sadly, it is the rare public leader who attempts to explain policy or position with reason and in using facts; rather, we repeatedly are treated to the grossest trumpet calls intended neither to inform or persuade but, instead, provoke us to respond instinctively through our basest emotions.

In this book, Cooper provides us with a truly immersive dive into the thinking of Wilson, his closest advisors, and the many senators who became players in the eventual struggle in the Senate over the question of accepting the peace treaty and the League of Nations of which it was an integral part. I stress this immersiveness because I believe that for the general reader – who is neither an amateur historian nor a person especially interested in this time and issue – the details of who said or felt what and at which time, while highly important in the development of this story, would likely also be too overwhelming. For such good persons, I would recommend such fine, broaderiok98 works as A. Scott Berg’s recent biography entitled simply Wilson or Ronald Pestritto’s Woodrow Wilson and the Roots of Modern Liberalism.

For the essence of Cooper’s argument, I cite the following from his Introduction:

“…These partisans in 1919 and 1920 believed that they were contending over the future course of world politics… For most of the participants, concern about world politics was secondary to the contention over American foreign policy. But this concern remained intimately intertwined with that conflict, and it was fought with equal fervor. All participants feared and wished to prevent a repetition of what they called “Armageddon” – the huge, hideous global conflict that had just ended….”
“…nearly everyone presented ideas for ridding the world of the risk of another global conflagration. Wilson and League advocates contended that safety for America and the world could come only through wholehearted participation in an organization that would strive to defuse international tensions, foster mediation and arbitration of disputes, promote arms reduction, and, as a last resort, be empowered to enforce collective security procedures. The majority of Republicans likewise welcomed procedures to dampen conflicts and stressed the development of international law, but they did not welcome arms reduction and viewed collective security with a jaundiced eye. For them, the road to national and global safety lay through continued exercise of the greatest possible American sovereign power. Some of those Republicans also conceded that such sovereign power should be exercised within international consultative arrangements and perhaps also within carefully limited security commitments to a few other nations. Some isolationists…maintained that the path to peace lay through a luminous American example of the avoidance of militarism, excessive armaments, and any form of international power politics. In short, nearly all the participants believed that they were also contending for the soul of the world.” (P. 8)





In closing this review, these are the principal thoughts that seem to be most important from this incredibly researched book:

1. As Cooper stressed, almost everyone involved sought the same end: a means to render much less likely a repeat of World War I and its incredible devastation.

2. But those who opposed each other, in small or major ways, saw just how to do so differently:
a. For Wilson, it was primarily through a united collection of nations who would guard against the early signs of rearmament and rabid nationalism;
b. For Senator Lodge and his supporters – which included many Democrats towards the end as well – such a League could not substitute for, nor in any way brush aside, the rights he wanted to reserve for the United States to judge both when and how the US would respond to future threats. Lodge, like several other senators and the leaders of France and Great Britain, believed that the much-hated great power maneuvering and strength through alliances would continue to play a much greater role further into the future than Wilson believed.

3. For many observers, for Cooper, and for readers of his book, such differences truly appear to be more of a degree than of a kind. Then what the hell happened?

4. A series of missteps and misfortunates that collectively derailed the best hopes:

a. Wilson’s failure to bring any Republicans of stature with him to the peace conference, and his accompanying error to place himself in the role of primary negotiator for the United States rather than positioning himself further back, a stance that would have allowed him to more carefully – and dispassionately – weight the competing demands of the principals demanding a harsher treatment of Germany and an accompanying distribution of conquered territories to the victorious allies.
b. The loss of Senate majority by the Democrats in the 1918 elections which ensured that many who disliked – even hated – Wilson would now play the principal role in deciding upon the treaty and the League.
c. That Wilson’s serious cardiovascular issues – which long-predated his serious stroke in 1919 – caused him repeated headaches and great fatigue at the peace conference, factors that allowed Clemenceau of France and Lloyd-George of Great Britain to wear him down in ongoing negotiating sessions, the consequence of which the basis Wilson hoped would be the foundation of the peace treaty – his Fourteen Points – was mostly savagely overridden.
d. Wilson’s failure to attempt to educate either the people at large or the members of the Senate about what he hoped to achieve at the peace conference and why the League was so important to the future meant that when he returned from the peace conference he had to “start at scratch” far more than he might have, and left him playing defense against the charges levied against the treaty now by not only Republicans but by former close associates who had hoped for a more truly “just” peace.
e. Although there is strong evidence that Lodge, a majority of Republican and Democratic senators, and even Wilson were open early for reaching an amicable compromise over the League, Wilson for some reason did not pursue doing so, feeling that pressure from “the people” would over time force the Senate to come around to his point of view.
f. Wilson’s serious stroke that so incapacitated him for months effectively took him out of the negotiating track, at precisely a time when future delays were increasingly working against him. Despite his confidence that “the people” were totally behind him in his position on the League, by early 1920 it was clear to many that the people were “moving on” because overwhelmed by other, largely domestic issues: resentment against immigrants, fear of “the Reds” as a consequence of the Soviet Revolution, fear of the turmoil caused by a record number of postwar labor strikes and of the infiltration of “foreign radicals” preaching both Bolshevism and anarchism.
g. More recent research into the damage caused by the type of stroke Wilson suffered shows that not only did such cause physical disabilities – such as fatigue, weakness on his left side, and some memory loss and confusion – but that it also carried with it psychological consequences of which people in Wilson’s day knew nothing. In particular, as he did experience measures of physical recovery, he also was buoyed by false impressions of competence and confidence in his powers to pull off the nearly impossible. After that stroke, he was no longer a man who could easily envision compromise.
h. The decision – apparently reached by Wilson’s wife together with Wilson’s doctor – that the full implications of Wilson’s stroke would be kept from both the public and the Congress meant that for many months the business of the United States carried on largely automatically and, critically, left the business of negotiations over the League completely stalled.
i. Wilson’s grievous error to not allow Democrats loyal to him to seek an honorable compromise that would allow tweaks to the League language without fatally undermining it.
j. The predictable consequence of this was that when the League was put to a vote, it failed, partly because of those who, like Lodge, believed that it was not acceptable without reservations – not, note, formal amendments – and partly because so many Democrats, out of misplaced loyalty at this late stage to Wilson, refused to accept the treaty with any reservations.


In short, none of this had to happen as it did. The United States did not have to “break the heart of the world.”

I think a careful, even meditative, reading of this excellent history shows why it is so vital that all of us – leaders, of course, but also “we the people” – must struggle to truly listen to and understand what it is that others say that offends us or seems to be in opposition to us. Moreover, unless we talk with each other we have little chance of that kind of understanding and, worse, of finding any accommodation that addresses all of our concerns.

This story of the League – the hopes it raised as well as the pettiness and, simply, humanness of key players – demonstrates how we must guard against arrogance, assumptions about how much we know and don’t know, while repeatedly working to understand and incorporate the “other side’s” main concerns into our own approach.

We seem to view “the world” and others different from us in stark black and white, either/or terms, but this is unrealistic and ultimately very harmful.

I fear that the United States may yet – once again – break the heart of the world and, indeed, of its own people, too.

[Vic Lauterbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

This detailed account of the Senate debate and ultimate rejection of the Versailles Treaty with its covenant establishing a League of Nations is fascinating at times but brims with the tedium of legislating. The partisan rancor and party squabbles of 1919 are a strangely comforting reminder that American politics hasn't changed in a century. Senatorial support for an international peacekeeping body cut across party lines, but so did opposition. The political landscape was just as complex, and Senators just as individualistic and cantankerous then as they are now. We witness how a tiny White House staff (by today's standard) struggled to restrain Wilson's autocratic nature, and how the Wilson's Secretary Joseph P. Tumulty lost control after the President suffered a massive stroke, leading to the "silent presidency" of Edith Bolling Galt Wilson during two crucial months of Senate debate. Early on, it seemed like Republican support for the earlier League to Enforce Peace would translate into bi-partisan approval of the League of Nations, but the death of Teddy Roosevelt robbed the treaty of its most influential GOP supporter, and empowered the isolationist wing of the party. Majority leader Henry Cabot Lodge led the charge to put 'reservations' in the treaty, and minority leader Gilbert Hitchcock was unable to prevent Democratic defections to the 'reservationist' camp. Damaging Senate testimony by Wilson's advisers about his disputes with the French and British during negotiations in Paris fueled the opposition, but in the end, as Cooper shows, one man doomed the treaty: Woodrow Wilson. By refusing any compromise on reservations, Wilson alienated Senators of both parties. When it finally reached the floor with 14 reservations, Wilson called on Democrats to reject it. We'll never know if U.S. participation would have prevented the eventual failure of the League, but Cooper points out that defeat of the treaty was part of a broader trend in U.S. politics, a retreat from the idealistic internationalism of Wilson to focus on domestic issues, notably the post-war recession. That trend culminated in a landslide victory for Warren G. Harding who promised a "return to normalcy." I recommend this book to those interested in serious political history. It isn't light reading, but it's very informative.