Chapter V: Part THREE: Dethronements (5)

EX-PRES. (_with a dry laugh_). The man who told me he was on my side. The reason?--a kindly means of saving faces for those whom he and I were going to "persuade"--of making the "climb-down" easier for them! That seemed a helpful, charitable sort of reason, didn't it? One it would have been hard to refuse. I didn't; so the doors were shut to cover defeat and disappointment over the secret treaties. Then they had me: three against one! And their weight told--quite apart from mere argument; for each had behind him the popular voice (and when one lost it--you may remember-- another came, and took his place). But against me the popular voice had shut its mouth: I, too, was an electioneer--a defeated one. Of my lease of power then, less than a year remained. After the Senate elections I was nothing. In Paris they knew it: and I could see in their eyes that they were glad. Yes, _he_ was glad, too.

(_As he speaks, his head sinks in depression. There is a pause._)

TUMULTY (_in his best sick-bed manner_). Governor, don't you think that you'd better rest now?

EX-PRES. (_ignoring the remark_). And so the old secret diplomacy, balancing for power, with war as the only sure end of it, came back to life; and I--pledged to its secrecies with the rest--I had to stay dumb. I was a drowning man, then, Tumulty--clutching at straws, till I became an adept at it. There, perhaps, as you say, I did do "wonders"--of a kind: all I could, anyway. That was my plight, while there in Paris we held high court, and banqueted, and drank healths from dead men's skulls. Did nobody guess--outside--what was going on? I gave one signal that I thought was plain enough, when I sent for the _George Washington_ to bring me home again. But, though I listened for it then, there seemed no response. People were so busy, you say, holding their breath; and _that_ I couldn't hear.

TUMULTY (_zealous, in a pause, to show his interest_). Well, Governor, well?

EX-PRES. And then, rather than let me so go and spoil the general effect (the one power still left to me!), they began to make concessions-- concessions which, I see now, didn't amount to much; and so they persuaded me, and I stayed on, and signed my failure with the rest.

TUMULTY (_for a diversion pointing to the covered cup_). Pardon me, Governor, you must obey orders, you know. They are not mine.

EX-PRES. (_taking up the cup with a dry smile_). Executive authority has taught me that obeying orders is much simpler than giving them: you know when you've got them done. (_Removing the cover, he drains the cup and sets it down again_.) There! now let your conscience be at rest. (_After a pause he resumes_:) Tumulty, when I faced failure, when I knew that I had failed----Yes; don't trouble to contradict me. I know, dear friend, I know that you don't agree; and, God bless you! I also know why.----When I knew _that_, after the whole thing was over, and I was out again and free, do you suppose I wasn't tempted to go out and cry the truth (as some were expecting and wishing for it to be cried) in the ears of the whole world?--let all know that I _had_ failed, and so--that way at least--separate myself from the Evil Thing which there sat smiling at itself in its Hall of Mirrors--seeing no frustrate ghosts, no death's heads at that feast, as I saw them?... I came out a haunted man--all the more because those I was amongst didn't believe in ghosts--not then. People who have been overwhelmingly victorious in a great war find that difficult. But they will--some day.

TUMULTY. Well, Governor, and supposing you had yielded to this "Temptation," as you call it, what's the proposition?

EX-PRES. This ... I had one power--one weapon, still left to me unimpaired: to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God! And the proposition is just this: whether to be stark honest, even against the apparent interests of the very cause you are out to plead, is not in the long run the surest way--if it be of God-- to help it make good: whether defeat, with the whole truth told, isn't better than defeat hidden away and disowned, in the hope that something may yet come of it. You may get a truer judgment that way in the end; though at the time it may seem otherwise. Yes, I _was_ tempted to cry it aloud--to make a clean breast of it--to say, "We, the Governments of the People, the Democracies, the Free Nations of the world, have failed-- have lost the peace which we could have won, because we would not give up the things which we loved so much better--profit, revenge, our own too good opinion of ourselves, our own self-righteous judgment of others."... I was tempted to it; and yet it has been charged against me that I would not admit failure because I wanted to save my face.

TUMULTY. You have never been much scared by what people _said_, Governor. That didn't count, I reckon.

EX-PRES. No, Tumulty; but this did--that where all seemed dark, I still saw light. Down there, among the wreckage, something was left--an instrument of which I thought I saw the full future possibility more clearly than others. I believe I do still. And my main thought then was--how best to secure that one thing to which, half blindly, they had agreed. To win that, I was willing to give up my soul.

TUMULTY. It's the Covenant, you mean, Governor?

EX-PRES. Yes, the Covenant! That at least was won--seemed won--whatever else was lost. Some of them were willing to let me have it only because they themselves believed it would prove useless--just to save my face for all I had to give up in exchange. And so I--let them "save my face" for me; let them think that it was so--just to give this one thing its chance. And so, for that, and for that alone, I bound myself to the Treaty--stood pledged to do my utmost to see it through: a different thing, that, from telling the truth. Was I wrong, Tumulty--was I wrong?

TUMULTY. No, no, Governor! You did everything a man could--under the circumstances.

EX-PRES. I have said that often to myself: and I hope, sometimes, that it may be true. But a man who gives up anything of the truth, as he sees it, for reasons however good--can he ever be sure of himself again?... It's a new thing for me to ask another man if I have done wrong. But that's the way I feel: I don't myself know. And once, once, I was so sure--that I was right, and that I should win!

(_The situation has now become one which the friendly Tumulty would like to control, but cannot. As a "soul-stirring revelation of character" he finds it, no doubt, immensely interesting; but to be thus made Father Confessor of the man whom he has followed with humble and dog-like devotion, knocks the bottom out of his world altogether. Moreover, he has received "domestic orders," and is not properly obeying them; and so, dominated by the stronger will, he glances apprehensively, now and again, toward the door, hoping that it may open and bring relief, but himself sits and does nothing. Meanwhile, insistent and remorseless at self-examination, the Ex-President continues to wear himself out_.)

When a man comes really to himself, Tumulty--sees clearly within--does it help him toward seeing also what lies outside, beyond, and ahead--make him more sure that, as regards others, he has done right? I don't know--I would give my life to know--if what I did, when all else had failed, was best. The political forces, prejudices, antagonisms, the powers of evil around me, have been so dubiously deceiving and dark, that I do not know now whether to have been uncompromisingly true to principle would have done any good. Perhaps after to-day I shall know better; perhaps only now have I become qualified to judge--a free man at last. Only in the secrecy of my own heart--now finally removed from all the interests, ambitions, fears, which gather about a man's public career--I do most earnestly and humbly pray that in this one thing I did right--not to discredit myself too utterly in the world's eyes, so that _that_, at least, might live.

TUMULTY (_doing his best_). It _will_ live, Governor!

EX-PRES. It _may_. But in what hands have I had to leave it? To men who have no faith in it, to men who dislike it, to men who will try persistently, sedulously, day in, day out, to turn it back to their own selfish ends. There, in those hands, its fate will lie--perhaps for a generation to come. And it is only by faith in the common people, not in their politicians, that I dare look forward and hope that the instrument-- blunt and one-sided though it be now--may yet become mighty and two-edged and sharp, a sword in the hand of a giant--of one whose balances are those of justice, not of power. But _I_ shan't see it, Tumulty; it won't be in my day. If America had come in, I should! That was the keystone of my policy: that gone, my policy has failed. That was my faith--is still; for faith can live on when policies lie dead. Think what it might have been! America, with that weapon to her hand, could have shaped the world's future, made it a democracy of free nations--image and superscription no longer Caesar's--but Man's. That--that was what I saw!

TUMULTY. Perhaps they saw it too, Governor. If they did, it might help to explain matters.

EX-PRES. The Covenant was the instrument--and would have sufficed. So organised, America's voice in all future contentions would have been too strong, and just, and decisive to be gainsayed. Then life would have been in it, then it would have prospered and become mighty. It would have meant--within a generation from now--world-peace. Of that I had a sure sense: it would have come. To make that possible, what I had to yield to present jealousies, discords, blindness, was of no account--only look far enough! For there, in the future, was the instrument for correcting them-- the people's vote for the first time internationally applied. And I had in me such faith that America, secure of her place in the world's councils, would have wrought to make justice international, and peace no longer a dream! Was I wrong, Tumulty, was I wrong?

TUMULTY (_expanding himself_). No man who believes in America as much as I do will ever say you were wrong, Governor.

EX-PRES. But when America stood out--when the Senate refused to ratify-- then I _was_ wrong. For then, what I had backed--all that remained then--was a thing of shreds and patches. Nobody can think worse of the Treaty than I do with America out of it, with the Covenant left the one-sided and precarious thing it now is. Had we only been in it--the rest wouldn't have mattered. Call it a dung-heap, if you like; yet out of it would have sprung life. It may still; but _I_ shan't see it, Tumulty; and that vision, which was then so clear, has become a doubt. Was I wrong--was I wrong to pretend that I had won anything worth winning? Would it not have been better to say "I have failed"?

TUMULTY. Forgive me, Governor: you are looking at things from a tired-out mind. That's not fair, you know.

EX-PRES. But if you knew, oh, if you knew against what odds I fought even to get that! They knew that they had got me down; and the only card left me at last was their own reluctance to let a discredited President go back to his own people and show them his empty hands, and tell them that he had failed. So a bargain was struck, and this one thing was given me, that peradventure it might have life--if I, for my part, would come back here and plead the ratification of the Treaty which they--and I--had made. Could I have done that with any effect, had I said that in almost everything I had failed?

TUMULTY. Chief, I think you did right. But I still feel I'm up a back street. How could things have come to fail as much as they did? After all, it was a just war.

EX-PRES. Tumulty, I have been asking myself whether there can be such a thing as a "just war." There can be--please God!--there must be sometimes a just _cause_ for war. When one sees great injustice done, sees it backed by the power of a blindly militarised nation, marching confidently to victory, then, if justice has any place in the affairs of men, there is sometimes just cause for war. But can there be--a just war? I mean--when the will to war takes hold of a people--does it remain the same people? Does war in its hands remain an instrument that can be justly used? Can it be waged justly? Can it be won justly? Can it, having been won, make to a just peace? No! Something happens: there comes a change; war in a people's mind drives justice out.... Can soldiers fight without "seeing red"--can a nation? Not when nations have to fight on the tremendous scale of modern war. Then they are like those monstrous mechanisms of long-range destructiveness, which we so falsely call "weapons of precision," but which are in fact so horribly unprecise that, once let loose, we cannot know what lives of harmlessness, of innocence, of virtue, they are going to destroy. You find your range, you fix your elevation, you touch a button: you hear your gun go off. And over there, among the unarmed--the weak, the defenceless, the infirm--it has done--what? Singled out for destruction what life or lives; ten, twenty, a hundred?--you do not know. So with nations, when once they have gone to war; their imprecision becomes--horrible; though the cause of your war may be just.

(_Tumulty gives a profound nod, paying his chief the compliment of letting it be seen that he is causing him to think deeply_.)

That's what happened here. Do you remember, did you realise, Tumulty, what a power my voice was in the world--till we went in?--that, because I had the power to keep them back from war (for there my constitutional prerogative was absolute), even my opponents had to give weight to my words. They were angry, impatient, but they had to obey. And, because they could not help themselves, they accepted point by point my building up of the justice of our cause. They didn't care for justice; but I spoke for the Nation then; and, with justice as my one end, I drove home my point. And then--we went in. After that, justice became vengeance. When our men went over the trenches, fighting with short arms, "_Lusitania!_" was their cry: and they took few prisoners--you know that, Tumulty.

(_Over that point the Ex-President pauses, though Tumulty sees no special reason why he should pause._)

The _Lusitania_ had been sunk, and still we had not gone to war, and no crowds came to cry it madly outside the White House as they might have done--if that was how they felt then. The _Lusitania_ lies at the bottom of the sea. There are proposals for salving her; but I think that there she will remain. The salving might tell too much.

TUMULTY. You mean that talk about fuse caps being on board might have been true? Would it matter now?

EX-PRES. Yes. It was a horrible thing in any case--disproportionate, like most other acts of war--and it did immeasurable harm to those who thought to benefit. But this--I still only guess--might do too much good--bring things a little nearer to proportion again, which the Treaty did not try to do.... What I've been realising these last two years is a terrible thing. You go to war, you get up to it from your knees--God driving you to it--unable, yes, unable to do else. Your will is to do right, your cause is just, you are a united nation, a people convinced, glad, selfless, with hearts heroic and clean. And then war takes hold of it, and it all changes under your eyes; you see the heart of your people becoming fouled, getting hard, self-righteous, revengeful. Your cause remains, in theory, what it was at the beginning; but it all goes to the Devil. And the Devil makes on it a pile that he can make no otherwise--because of the virtue that is in it, the love, the beauty, the heroism, the giving-up of so much that man's heart desires. That's where he scores! Look at all that valiance, that beauty of life gone out to perish for a cause it knows to be right; think of the generosity of that giving by the young men; think of the faithful courage of the women who steel themselves to let them go; think of the increase of spirit and selflessness which everywhere rises to meet the claim. All over the land which goes to war that is happening (and in the enemy's land it is the same), making war a sacred and a holy thing. And having got it so sanctified, then the Devil can do with it almost what he likes. That's what he has done, Tumulty. If angels led horses by the bridle at the Marne (as a pious legend tells), at Versailles the Devil had his muzzled oxen treading out the corn. And of those--I was one! Yes; war muzzles you. You cannot tell the truth; if you did, it wouldn't be believed. And so, finally, comes peace; and over that, too, the Devil runs up his flag--cross-bones and a skull.

TUMULTY (_struggling in the narrow path between wrong and right_). But what else, Governor, is your remedy? We had to go to war; we were left with no choice in the matter.

EX-PRES. No, we _had_ no choice. And what others had any choice?-- what people, I mean? But that is what everyone--once we were at war-- refused to remember. And so we cried "_Lusitania!_" against thousands of men who had no choice in the matter at all. Remedy? There's only one. Somehow we must get men to believe that Christ wasn't a mad idealist when He preached His Sermon on the Mount; that what He showed for the world's salvation then was not a sign only, but the very Instrument itself. We've got to make men see that there's something in human nature waiting to respond to a new law. There are two things breeding in the world--love and hatred; breeding the one against the other. And there's fear making hatred breed fast, and there's fear making love breed slow. Even as things now are, it has managed--it has just managed to keep pace; but only just. If men were not afraid--Love would win.

That, I've come to see, is the simple remedy; but it's going to be the hardest thing to teach--because all the world is so much afraid.

(_And then, the worn, haggard man, having thus talked himself out, there enters by the benign intervention of Providence a Gracious Presence, more confident than he in her own ruling power. She moves quietly toward them, and her voice, when she speaks, is corrective of a situation she does not approve_!)

THE PRESENCE. Mr. Tumulty ... my dear.

(_Resting her hands on the back of the Ex-President's chair, she surveys them benevolently but critically. Then her attention is directed to the covered cup standing on its tray_!)

Have you taken your----

EX-PRES. My medicine? Yes. Your orders came through, and have been obeyed.

THE PRESENCE. It wasn't medicine. I made it myself.

EX-PRES. Then I beg its pardon--and yours.

THE PRESENCE. Will you please to remember that your holiday began at twelve o'clock to-day? I'm not going to allow any overtime now.

EX-PRES. That settles it, then, Tumulty. And that means you are to go. I had just been saying, my dear, how much simpler it was to obey orders than to give and to get them obeyed.

THE PRESENCE. Getting them obeyed is quite simple. It is merely a matter of how you give them.

EX-PRES. You see, Tumulty--it's all a matter of "how."

THE PRESENCE. There's someone waiting to speak to you on the 'phone: wants to know how you are. I thought I would come and see first.

EX-PRES. Who is it?

THE PRESENCE (_indicating the receiver_). He's there.

(_The Ex-President reaches out his hand, and Tumulty from an adjoining table gives him the instrument. As he listens, they stand watching him._)

EX-PRES. Oh, yes.... That's very kind of him.... Please will you tell the President, with my best thanks, that I am greatly enjoying my holiday.... Thank you.... Good-bye.

(_He gives the instrument back to the waiting Tumulty._)

TUMULTY (_with swelling-bosom_). Governor, that was a great answer!

EX-PRES. Easily said, Tumulty. But is it true? (_But Tumulty's breast is such a platform for the generous emotions that he does not really care whether it is true or not. And therein, between himself and his hero, lies the difference. Grasping his fallen leader forcefully by the hand and murmuring his adieux in a voice of nobly controlled emotion, he obeys the waiting eye of the Gracious Presence, and goes. And as she sees him serenely to the door, the Ex-President looks ruefully at his painfully oversqueezed hand, and begins rubbing it softly. Even the touch of a friend sometimes hurts._)

(_The door closes: the two are alone. She who-must-be-obeyed stands looking at him with a benevolent eye_.)