Woodrow Wilson by H. W. Brands

Author:H. W. Brands
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.
Published: 2011-03-30T16:00:00+00:00

In certain respects, the most coercive aspect of the wartime growth of federal power was the military draft. Champ Clark spoke for his own state and many people elsewhere when he said, “In the estimation of Missourians, there is precious little difference between a conscript and a convict.”16 Before the war, Wilson was inclined to agree with Clark, but he soon changed his mind. Officials of the War Department convinced him that reliance on volunteers would never yield the kind of coordinated mobilization the country required. Volunteers had sufficed in the Spanish-American War, although even in that minor conflict the losses due to poor planning and inadequate logistics were appalling. But Germany wasn’t Spain, and the current war demanded coordination only conscription could deliver.

There was another reason for Wilson’s rethinking of the draft. For months before America entered the war, Theodore Roosevelt had been planning to reprise his heroic role from the Spanish-American War, but on a grander scale. He would raise a division (rather than a regiment) of volunteers, modeled on the Rough Riders and composed of the finest specimens of American manhood. Only days after the American declaration, he came calling at the White House to ask Wilson’s permission to lead the troops to France and into battle.

The meeting began awkwardly. For many months Roosevelt, who was even more anti-German than Lansing and House, had been publicly criticizing Wilson for slowness to respond to German provocation; in private—although his words doubtless found their way to Wilson—he had condemned the president as a coward and a hypocrite. But now he came, hat in hand, to request the permission only Wilson could give.

“Mr. President,” he declared, “what I have said and thought, and what others have said and thought, is all dust in a windy street, if we can now make your message”—Wilson’s war message—“good. Of course, it amounts to nothing if we cannot make it good. But if we can translate it into fact, then it will rank as a great state paper, with the great state papers of Washington and Lincoln.”17

Wilson eyed Roosevelt warily. “The President doesn’t like Theodore Roosevelt and he was not one bit effusive in his greeting,” recorded presidential assistant Thomas Brahany. Yet Roosevelt’s flattery and natural ebullience gradually eroded Wilson’s reserve. “The interview lasted twenty-five minutes,” Brahany continued, “and before it closed the President had thawed out and was laughing and ‘talking back.’ They had a real good visit.” Wilson thought so, too. “I was, as formerly, charmed by his personality,” Wilson told Joseph Tumulty. “There is a sweetness about him that is very compelling. You can’t resist the man. I can easily understand why his followers are so fond of him.” (Tumulty was quite taken by Roosevelt as well. Passing through the secretary’s office, Roosevelt clapped him on the back and said, “By Jove, Tumulty, you are a man after my own heart! Six children, eh?”—Roosevelt also had six—“Well, now, you get me across and I will put you on my staff, and you may tell Mrs.

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