The Great War in America by Garrett Peck

Author:Garrett Peck
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

Wilson in Europe

The George Washington docked in Brest on December 13, where the docks were crowded with thousands of cheering French, and the city bedecked with red, white, and blue. Everywhere Wilson traveled in Europe he was met by huge crowds. He was an exemplar to millions and was treated like a conquering hero. Woodrow Wilson was perhaps the most famous man in the world in his day. When the Wilsons arrived in Paris, they paraded through jubilant crowded streets. “Every inch was covered with cheering, shouting humanity. The sidewalks, the buildings, even the stately horse-chestnut trees were peopled with men and boys perched like sparrows in their very tops,” Edith Wilson recalled. “Roofs were filled, windows overflowed until one grew giddy trying to greet the bursts of welcome that came like the surging of untamed waters.”29

The crowds may have convinced Wilson that his mission was destiny, that he spoke for the people of the world, and that the European people wholeheartedly supported his efforts toward peace without victory. This belief proved delusional: they cheered him for sending an army that had helped win the war. Few of the Allies had Wilson’s idealism. They wanted concrete rewards owed for their sacrifice.

Wilson set up shop in Paris, ready to get to work on the peace treaty. He quickly discovered that he had arrived a month too early: the British insisted on waiting until after their December 14 parliamentary elections, so the Peace Conference could not begin until January. England was not physically ravaged like Belgium or France; still, it had suffered battlefield casualties, and the losses to its merchant marine were enormous. Prime Minister David Lloyd George returned to Paris politically strengthened, his Labor Party government reelected on the campaign promise that they would make the Germans pay for the war.

Wilson was nearly sixty-three years old when he arrived in Paris. His health was not great, as the war had reduced his ability to exercise with the countless meetings and voluminous correspondence that never ended. While he waited for the Peace Conference to begin, Wilson undertook travels to visit the Allies. After Christmas, he and Edith journeyed to England, meeting King George and Queen Mary. After returning to France, they traveled to Rome, where they met with the king and queen of Italy and Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando. They had an audience with Pope Benedict XV, who gave Wilson a mosaic of St. Peter created in the Vatican workshops. Wilson was the first president to ever meet with the pope, a controversial step at the time, given that many Americans still considered the Catholic Church a cult. He and Edith visited hospitals to see the wounded, many with mangled bodies and faces. However, Wilson would not set foot in any of the countries that the U.S. had been at war with, not even the occupied German Rhineland.

Shortly before the Peace Conference was set to begin, an unexpected death rocked the United States: Theodore Roosevelt died in his sleep on January 6, 1919 of a pulmonary embolism.

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