Am the director of programs exhibitions and Community Partnerships for the massachusetts historical society, and im happy to welcome you to this evenings program. This is our second inperson Program Since march of 2020. Tonight well hear about one of the most consequential battles in american diplomatic history the struggle between president Woodrow Wilson and Senate Majority leader Henry Cabot Lodge over the league of nations our speaker this evening is patricia otoole. Im inso tool is a former professor in the school of arts at columbia university. She is a fellow of the society of american historians and a member of the president ial historial Historical Commission at the New York Historical society. She has published five books including biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and henry adams the second of which was a final for the Pulitzer Prize the National Book critic circle award in the Los Angeles Times book tonight. Shell be speaking on her most recent book, which is the moralist Woodrow Wilson in the world. He made this book will also be for sale following the Program People are interested. Before we get started. I just like to mention that the Mass Historical Society hosts 60 original programs during the course of a year this these explorer all aspects of american history. We also host 35 seminars and teacher workshops and most if not all these are either free or available at a very small cost. Were only able to do this. Thanks to the sport of our donors and members. So if you enjoy it tonights program. I hope youll consider becoming a supporter of the massachusetts historical society. So without further ado, im happy to turn it over to patricia otoole. People gavin and thank you all for coming whether youre here virtually or actually we go on youtube after this right sometime after this. Yeah, so all your friends all the world can see this. I hope i do. All right for you. And im especially grateful for all the imagination and precautions that nasa store cause taken so that we could do this with a live audience. Its my first since the pandemic began actually and its the first time i felt safe enough to do one. And a one last. Thank you heartfelt to peter drummy who is somewhere around i think ah, there you are. Hes the as probably most of you know, hes the chief historian and a long time librarian here at mass historical. Its been a major help to my Biographical Research for more than 30 years since 1987 if i remember right and major help under states the case indispensable is more like it. So, thank you peter. So tomorrow is the centennial of the federal governments first major public commemoration of Armistice Day. So i thought it would be a good moment to revisit the original Armistice Day in 1918 and the ceremonies of november 11th 1921. Um, its a moment to recall the context of these events and also to look at how theyve shaped American Foreign policy. And then im going to speed walking through the history of Armistice Day because theres an ambivalence in it that i think reflects our continuing ambivalence to peace. Um, we think of the original Armistice Day as the day that mark the end of the fighting and world war. I thats what we would tell people it was but world war. I was not a term that was in use back then. The british referred to it as either the world war or the great war and thats of course great as in huge not great as in fabulous. And the french called it ladder de dere the last of the last meaning that it was in their minds historys final war. Then maybe borrowing from the English Writer hg. Wells called it the war to end war which after a while became the phrase we know better the war to end all wars. Few survivors of that catastrophe could imagine that humankind would be so dense as to fight a second world war. The military and civilian deaths caused in the world war the great war vladder, whatever you want to call it numbered about 20 million was unprecedented. Thousands of square miles of europe had been blasted to smithereens and hundreds of thousands of square miles were without National Boundaries and stable governments because for empires fell during the war. But also a good moment, i think to revisit the war of ideas between Woodrow Wilson and senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Wilsons admirers have cast lodge as the villain in that battle the fight over the league of nations. And in that version of the story lodge is a parochial highly partisan politician who rejects wilsons dream of preserving world. Peace through an International Association of governments. Because heat lodge favored a return to isolationism. I see that as a bum rap. Im gonna make my case, but first i want to to give you a little backstory. The constitution every time somebodys talking about the 20th century and then they say the constitution i think. Oh, no, we have to go back to 1787. Well never get back to what were really talking about. But this is quick the constitution puts the president in charge of Foreign Relations and when wilson became president in 1913 lodge with respectful even bucked his party on a couple of issues to back wilson. But wilson seemed to feel a rivalry with lodge from the very beginning. Wilson was used to being the smartest guy in the room and he liked it. I mean he really liked it. We also have had a phd is the first president with the phd but so did lodge. Wilson had a law degree. So did lodge. Wilson had written histories so had lodge. Someone more extroverted than wilson would have tried to build on the Common Ground i think but not wilson. And he might have shied away because lodge had one edge over him that there was no way he could like get a leg up on him. Wilson had taught government at princeton and elsewhere and hed written about it but before his election as president hed served in Elective Office for only two years as governor of new jersey. Lodge had been in the senate for 20 years when wilson turned up in washington. So wilson did nothing to cultivate lodge. Wilson in that regard was the polar opposite of lbj and bill clinton who were famous for walking into georgetown parties and going straight for somebody sometimes a politicians sometimes of journalists. Who disagreed with them . Both lbj and clinton wanted to win that person over. Wilson was not that sort of fellow. He was guarded. Had no idea how to schmooze. His first biographer who knew him well notice that he never took the initiative in making friends. And as a Decision Maker wilson preferred thinking things through on his own when there was a big issue. He got advice, but once he got it he liked to go off by himself and come up with a solution. And once he did that he often gave a speech that was intended to persuade the country that his way was the best approach to whatever the issue was. When there was congressional blowback to his idea, he sometimes pulled rank reminding the country that he was the president and that the president was the only federal official elected by all the people i dont think large envy wilson except maybe in one regard by all accounts. Wilson was the greatest orator of his age. And lodge was one of the poorest the joke in massachusetts was that if you were going to a large speech he went really early so you could get a seat in the back row. But i the reason i think that lodge envy wilsons oratorical brilliance is simply based on something i noticed which is that lodge spent an awful lot of time and energy tearing rules of speeches apart privately and publicly. Aside from that though large generally focused his public disagreements with the president president on substance. Not on the president s style or his personality. Your first big exchange of gunfire over Foreign Policy came in january 1917. The world war had been going on for two and a half years and wilson had made a few attempts to bring the warring parties to the negotiating table. Neither side was interested. You might think with all the killing that was going on. They would be interested, but they were both convinced that after so much sacrifice. They were going to win. So they just didnt want to negotiate anything. So as 1917 begins wilson is trying desperately to maintain the neutrality that the United States had had since the beginning of the war. And he was also looking ahead to the eventual peacemaking. You wanted all nations to focus on what was best for the world not what was best for their side because he firmly believed that what was best for the world would benefit all nations. So he went to the senate and gave one of the most important addresses of his presidency. He said that when the fighting stopped the American People through their government would have to play a role in crafting the peace treaty in order to guarantee. Peace and justice throughout the world. Ability of the peace would depend on how the combatants saw the war wilson said was it a struggle for a just secure peace, or was it the same old same old with the victors dividing the spoils and forging another set of military alliances that attempted to balance the power of one block of countries against the power of another block. For wilson, the war had exposed the fatal flaw of the balance of power model. So supposed advantage of that model was that if one member of an alliance was attacked the others were obligated come to its defense. And thats precisely what happened in 1914 austria felt attacked when its heir to the throne was assassinated and out of the way corner of the austrohungarian empire. Germany per the terms of the alliance came to the defense of austria. Then russia came to the defense of the slavs who wanted independence from the austrians. Then germany attacked belgium then britain and france rallied to the defensive belgium. And britain sent the royal navy to guard its oil fields in mesopotamia. So in the blink of an eye, the world is inflamed. That was august 1914 that all of that stuff happened. By 1917 wilson saw only one sane path forward. There must be not a balance of power but a community of power. He said not organized rivalries, but an organized common piece. He explained how this new world order could be brought about. There must first be a peace without victory. He said he believed that peace made by the victors and imposed on the vanquish would not work because the losers resentments were bound to fester and that would poison the peace. Wilson also argued that a lasting peace would require every nation regardless of its military and economic strength. To be a court of the same rights as every other nation. And every nation would have to accept the fundamental principle of democracy namely government with the consent of the government. In this Worldwide Community of selfgoverning equals wilson said there would be no competing alliances there would be just one alliance of all nations and they would be bound together by their commitment to keep the peace. Then and only then could every nation live without fear of invasion and without the need to maintain large expensive armies and navies. Wilson had been advised to by several people to delete the peace without victory phrase for a very good reason. It made no distinction between the wars perpetrators and its victims. He left it in and was roundly criticized. But his idea of replacing the balance of power with a Worldwide Community of power a league of nations was widely praised. Not by large though. Large objected to just about everything wilson had said recited his objections also in a speech to the senate. Whats the world ought to believe in the superiority of peace without victory . He said but that was not the case and we must deal with things as they are. Lodge said he sympathized with wilsons ideal world a world in which every government ruled with the consent of the governed, but he wondered just how the theory could be put into practice who would force the nondemocratic governments to change their ways and how in light of its own history. Could the United States insist. He asked the United States had not expanded westward to the pacific by a vote of the people that had happened through military force with us army sweeping Indigenous Peoples out of the way. Lodge also anticipated that all would go well in this new International Community as long as quarreling nations agreed to abide by the leagues rulings on their disputes, but what if one of them refused and declared war the league would have to call on its members to send troops to enforce its ruling which might well widen the war. Lodge wanted to be constructive in this moment and in place of wilsons grand vision for the world. He offered a modest todo list for the United States. Build up National Defenses work for arms limitation and assist with the restoration of the rule of International Law which had been grossly violated by the perpetrators of the war. Lodge admitted that these were small ideas compared to wilsons but he thought that all three were reasonable and sure to do substantial good. And then as a wc fields character in a movie said to his movie wife. When he came home late one night from a bender. Things happened United States severed diplomatic relations with Germany Congress declared war on germany and two million american soldiers sailors marines and airmen went into battle on the side of the allies. As we know the fighting ended with an armistice that took effect on november 11th 1918 at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. A few later wilson went off to the paris peace conference without consulting the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, which happened to be chaired by lodge and is gavin mentioned lodge is also Senate Majority leader at this point. Given the magnitude of the task in paris fashioning lasting peace for an entire world that have been turned entirely upside down. I think most president s would have met with the house and senate Foreign Relations committees to lay out the plan solicit suggestions and seek support. A candy president also would have asked a prominent republican to join his peace delegation. But republicans had just won the midterm elections of 1918. And for the first time in his presidency, hes six years in at this point. Wilson doesnt have democratic majorities in congress. Is antipathy to lodge and to our republicans at this point. Let them to just skip the groundwork. Large in particular at irritated him by continuing to state his objections to the league of nations as wilson conceived of it large thought that the plan was too vague that the league could never live up to its promises and that it would commit the United States to send troops to any war anywhere in the world that ever popped up. Wilson assumed that he could ignore all this why. Because the senate had never failed to ratify a peace treaty. So it was offer writing high to steal a line from mark twain. He had the calm confidence of a christian with four aces. Two million us troops who fought in europe had swiftly transformed of four years stalemate into a decisive military victory for the allies. Also, the United States had made huge war loans to the allies and they needed more money to recover United States is one of the few countries in the world with any money left at the end of this war. So wilson, like most americans actually assumed that the allies would bow to uncle sams wishes in order to get uncle sams dollars. Finally ordinary people around the world were thrilled by wilsons vision for a lasting peace and by his idea that global problems required a global league. The the photographs of people greeting wilson, he made a kind of tour of europe and there are millions of people who come out to see him and in italy there were very kind of operatic about it. You know, there were people Wounded Soldiers crawling up to him this way to kiss the hem of his trousers and streets were in in italy were for him and i was skeptical when i first read this that that you know, the whole world loved something. Its like when does that happen . But it really was true at least in europe. Its peace conference lasted for six months, and im going to sum it up in less than a minute. Excuse me, if i skip your favorite part wilson got his league of nations. Any convinced the victors to scale back or give up their most egregious demands, but he had not secured secured a piece. That was generous. He had only one vote in the council of four sometimes five. Who made the decisions about what was going to be in the treaty . And what was not going to be in the treaty and the others insisted on peace terms designed to make it impossible. For germany ever to rise again and start another war. Back to washington in the middle of the conference and while he was there. He did meet with the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations logists several questions about article 10 of the treaty, which committedly members to