Shooting Stars (21 page)

But Wilson—tired and exhausted, undermined by sickness and the attacks of the press, blamed for delaying peace, irritated and abandoned by his own advisers, pestered by the representatives of other governments—still will not give way. He feels that he must not go against his own word, and that he will be truly fighting for peace only if he can reconcile it
with the non-military and enduring peace of the future, if he tries his utmost for the “world federation” that alone will save Europe. Scarcely on his feet again, he strikes a deciding blow. On 7th April he sends a telegram to the Navy Department in Washington: “What is the earliest possible date USS
George Washington
can sail for Brest France, and what is probable earliest date of arrival Brest. President desires movements this vessel expedited.” On the same day the world learns that President Wilson has ordered the ship to come to Europe.

The news is like a clap of thunder, and is immediately understood. All round the world it is known that President Wilson refuses to accept any peace that runs counter to the principles of the covenant, even if only in one point, and is determined to leave the conference rather than give way. A historic moment has come, a moment that will determine the fate of Europe, the fate of the world for decades, indeed centuries. If Wilson rises from the conference table the old world order will collapse, and chaos will ensue; but perhaps it will be one of those states of chaos from which a new star is born. Europe shivers impatiently. Will the other participants in the conference take that responsibility? Will he take it himself? It is a moment of decision.

A moment of decision. In that moment Woodrow Wilson's mind is still firmly made up. No compromise, no yielding, no “hard peace”, only the “just peace”. The French will not get the Saar, the Italians will not get Fiume, there will be no carving-up of Turkey, no “bartering of peoples”. Right must triumph over Might, the ideal over reality, the future over the present!
Fiat iustitia, pereat mundus
. Let there be justice, though
the world should perish. That brief hour will be Wilson's greatest, most humane and heroic moment; if he has the power to endure it his name will be immortalized among the small number of true friends of humanity, and he will have an unparalleled achievement to his credit. But after that hour, after that moment there will be a week in which he is assailed from all sides. The French, British and Italian press accuse him, the peace-maker, the
eirenopoieis
, of destroying the peace by theoretically theological rigidity, and sacrificing the real world to a private Utopia. Even Germany, having hoped for so much from him, and now distraught at the outbreak of Bolshevism in Bavaria, turns against him. And no less than his own countrymen Colonel House and Lansing implore him to change his mind, while his private secretary Tumulty, who had wired encouragingly from Washington a few days earlier—“Only a bold stroke by the President will save Europe and perhaps the world”—now cables from the same city, when Wilson has made that bold stroke: “…Withdrawal most unwise and fraught with dangerous possibilities here and abroad… President should… place the responsibility for a break of the Conference where it properly belongs… A withdrawal at this time would be a desertion.”

Dismayed, desperate, and with his confidence disturbed by this unanimous onslaught, Wilson looks around him. There is no one at his side, they are all against him in the conference hall, all his own staff too; and the voices of the invisible millions upon millions adjuring him from a distance to stand firm and
be true to himself do not reach him. He does not guess that if he carried out his threat and stood up to leave he would make his name immortal for all time, that if he did remain true to himself he would bequeath that immaculate name to the future as a postulate constantly to be invoked. He does not guess what creative force would proceed from that “No” if he announced it to the powers of greed, hatred and stupidity, he feels only that he is alone and is too weak to shoulder that ultimate responsibility. And so, fatally, Wilson gradually gives way, he relaxes his rigid stance. Colonel House acts as
go-between
; concessions will be made, for a week the bargaining over borders goes this way and that. At last, on 15th April—a dark day in history—Wilson agrees with a heavy heart and a troubled conscience to the military demands of Clemenceau, which have already been considerably toned down: the Saar will not be handed over for ever, only for fifteen years. This is the uncompromising Wilson's first compromise, and as if by magic the mood of the Parisian press changes overnight. The newspapers that were yesterday condemning him as the disturber of the peace, the destroyer of the world, now praise him as the wisest of all statesmen. But that praise burns like a reproach in his inmost heart. Wilson knows that he may indeed have saved peace, the peace of the present day; but enduring peace in a spirit of reconciliation, the only kind that saves us, has been lost, the opportunity wasted. Lack of sense has conquered true sense, passion has conquered reason. The world, storming a supra-temporal ideal, has been beaten back, and he, the leader and standard-bearer of that ideal, has lost the deciding battle, the battle against himself.

Did Wilson do right or wrong in that fateful hour? Who can say? At least, a decision was made, and the historic day cannot be called back. Its effects reach far ahead over decades and centuries, and we are paying the price for the decision with our blood, our despair, our powerlessness against destruction. From that day on Wilson's power, in his own time an
unparalleled
moral force, was broken, his prestige gone and with it his strength. A man who makes a concession can no longer stop. Compromises inevitably lead to more compromises.

Dishonesty creates dishonesty, violence engenders more violence. The peace of which Wilson dreamt as a whole entity lasting for ever remains incomplete, because it was not formed with a mind to the future or out of the spirit of humanity and the pure material of reason. A unique opportunity, perhaps the most far-reaching in history, was pitifully wasted, and the disappointed world, deprived of any element of the divine again, in a sombre and confused mood, feels the lack of it. The man who goes home, and who was once hailed as the saviour of the world, is not anyone's saviour now, only a tired, sick person who has been mortally wounded. No jubilation accompanies him, no flags are waved. As the ship sets out from the European coast, the conquered man turns away. He will not let his eyes look back at our unfortunate continent, which has been longing for peace and unity for thousands of years and has never achieved it. And once again the eternal vision of a humane world recedes into mist and into the distance.

P
USHKIN
P
RESS

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