When the Cheering Stopped (6 page)

Three weeks after the Armistice was signed, on December 4, 1918, the President of the United States, the man who with his soldiers had brought the dawn, sailed for Europe to work on a final peace treaty and to form a League of Nations which would give the world justice and security and prevent war forever.

“You carry overseas with you,” Ellen's brother wrote him, “the hearts and hopes and dreams and desires of millions of your fellow Americans. Your vision of the new world that should spring from the ashes of the old
is all that has made the war tolerable to many of us. That vision has removed the sting, has filled our imaginations, and has made the war not a tragedy but a sacrament. Nothing but a new world is worth the purchase price of the war, and the comfort of millions of us is that you have the vision to glimpse it and the power to realize it in action.”

Off Brest before dawn of December 13, at four-twenty in the morning, lights were sighted on the horizon and a welcoming fleet of American warships steamed up. By seven twenty-five, nine battleships were standing alongside the warship and five destroyers that had escorted the
George Washington
across the ocean. Each fired a 21-gun salute as it came by. Twelve destroyers followed the battleships. A little after ten Brest could be seen by the President and the First Lady standing on the bridge with Cary Grayson and the First Lady's secretary, Edith Ben-ham. As they headed in, two French cruisers and nine French destroyers came up from the south firing salutes, the black puffs of smoke visible in the air moments before the roll of the guns could be heard. By eleven-thirty they were fifteen miles off shore, with the
George Washington
leading and the
Wyoming,
the
Pennsylvania,
the
Arkansas,
the
Florida,
the
Utah,
the
Nevada,
the
Oklahoma,
the
New York,
the
Texas
and the
Arizona
ranging behind in double column. The French squadron and the American destroyers followed through a calm sea and under a sky brightening after a dark morning. At one o'clock they entered the narrow strait into the harbor, and the shore batteries in the ten forts on both sides of the cliffs began firing salutes one after the other. The fleet below returned the honor gun for gun, and the booming from the heights and from the water mingled with the clouds of black smoke pouring forth. As the
George Washington
went in, military bands on top of the cliffs crashed into
The Star-Spangled Banner
and
The Marseillaise.
The pounding of the guns was deafening, but when they reached the harbor the noise grew even greater as the sound of the continual firing mixed with the whistles and sirens of the shore craft, ships dressed and yards manned.

A little after one-thirty the
George Washington
dropped
anchor a mile off shore, and the escorting and welcoming fleets took up stations around it. As far as the eye could see across the mile-long harbor, ships were standing to, and weaving through them came boats carrying welcomers. Margaret, who had been abroad singing for the troops, came on board with Pershing and a contingent of French officers and dignitaries who bore bouquets and clicked their heels as they bent to kiss the First Lady's hand. Admiral Sims walked up to Pershing, whom he had not seen in some months, and made them all laugh: “Hello, Jack, how the hell did you do it? I didn't know you had it in you.” Two hours later, after lunch, they went ashore in a tender, the President standing by the French Ambassador to the United States, Jules Jusserand, who pointed out the sights. All along the terraced shore they could see fishermen in wooden shoes, velvet coats and flat hats, and women in colorful Breton headdresses and peasant bodices. They reached the quay, where a specially constructed platform was waiting. It was covered with masses of greens and flowers, and as the tender came to it a French marine band burst into the National Anthems of first America and then France. The tender was made fast and the party went ashore, the First Lady escorted by Pershing and the President coming last, walking up the gangplank alone with his silk hat held in his hand in response to the cheers rolling toward him. The French troops and the Americans presented arms, hands slapping smartly on the rifles, and the Mayor of Brest stepped forward to present the President with a large parchment roll made fast with a ribbon of red, white and blue and containing the greetings of the Brest City Council. The Mayor's seven-year-old daughter handed a bouquet to the First Lady and received a kiss in return.

The visitors got into open automobiles and began to ascend the steep road up the cliff to the railroad station, where the private train of President Poincaré of France waited to carry them to Paris. All along the route American soldiers stood at attention, and Ike Hoover, the White House usher, thought he could see their chests swell with pride to be so near their President. Above the road, over the troops and the shouting Bretons and cheering children waving American flags, hung printed signs:
HAIL THE
CHAMPION OF THE RIGHTS OF MAN. HONOR TO THE APOSTLE OF INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE. HONOR AND WELCOME TO THE FOUNDER OF THE SOCIETY OF NATIONS
. The President held his hat in his hand and smiled even though he took note that the sign about the founder of the society of nations was a little premature. At the railroad station there was a pavilion decorated in red silk and the Mayor made a speech, saying destiny brought the American leader to release the people of Europe from their tortures. The train had huge armchairs and picture windows, and at four o'clock they pulled out of the station. Just before they left, the Mayor's little girl came in again with a bouquet which she shyly pushed forward. The President made as if to take the flowers and hand them to the First Lady, but the child hung on and finally got out, “Pour Mademoiselle Veelson,” and Margaret bent laughing to kiss her.

All along the line to Paris people stood waiting to shout greetings. And in the capital itself the next day there waited the largest throng in the history of France. The weather ever since Armistice Day had been rainy and muddy, but on the day they arrived there was a soft and clear autumn-like sky and a brisk west wind. It seemed the whole of France stood in the streets. From the Madeleine to the Bois de Boulogne not a square foot of space was clear. Stools and tables were put out by the concierges of houses along the parade route, with places on them selling for ten, twenty or fifty francs, depending upon the affluence of the customer. Carpenter horses and boards were arranged into improvised grandstands, and men and boys clung to the very tops of the chestnut trees. The housetops were covered with people. Captured German cannons were ranged along the line of march and the cannons were covered. Lines formed of thirty-six thousand French soldiers, the cream of the Army, stood fast to hold back the crowds; they parted only to allow wounded comrades in wheel chairs to gain places inside the lines so as to see the visitor. The people had gathered hours before the train was due in Paris and stood waiting and looking down toward the station, a tiny bandbox on the edge of the Bois reserved for official arrivals of visiting royalty.

Past them went the chasseurs in blue berets and the spahis in their scarlet and white robes, President Poincaré and Premier Clemenceau. The military bands along the route formed in compact groups and stood silent, and in fact a great silence fell all over Paris and the hundreds of thousands of people, a silence that grew ever more deep, so that when the time came for the train's arrival only the chomping of the cavalry horses could be heard in the completely jammed streets. Then at ten o'clock the first booming of the batteries on Mont Valérien was heard off in the distance: the train was in Paris. Moments later the sound of
The Star-Spangled Banner
came floating up the boulevards from the station and a stir went through the waiting multitudes. After the guns and the music came a new sound, like the distant rumblings of thunder, and it grew louder in turn to the ears of those who stood waiting at the Porte Dauphine and on the Champs Elysées and Pont Alexander III, in front of the Chamber of Deputies and in the Place de la Concorde:
“Wil-son. Wil-son.”
And then he was in the streets of Paris in a two-horse victoria, sitting by the President of France, with the Garde Républicaine, swords on shoulder and plumes dancing, going on ahead, the cheers coming like waves as he moved. “Vive Wil-son! Vive Wil-son! Vive Wil-son!”

Never, even on Armistice Day, had such cheers been heard. From the windows poured roses, violets, forget-me-nots, holly, greens. The people screamed in holy fervor to the man standing in the victoria and holding outstretched his tall hat. He went under draped flags, and bunting, and an immense electric sign:
WELCOME TO WILSON.
The military bands beat on their drums and the bugles sounded; the noise was lost in the roaring cheers for the man who would save France from another 1870 and another 1914. The air was filled with coats and jackets thrown aloft after the hats. A huge banner stretched across the Champs Elysées:
HONOR TO WILSON THE JUST.
Flowers rained down onto the First Lady, so that people could barely see her as she rode in the carriage behind her husband. The President of France looked dazed and pale; he seemed terrified almost by the emotion before him. The American Secret Service men were in a frenzy
of fear for their charge, but it was impossible to do anything; the crowds were too enormous, the noise too loud, the press of bodies too great. People grew giddy; women wept as they screamed his name.

“No one ever had such cheers,” wrote the journalist William Bolitho. “I, who heard them in the streets of Paris, can never forget them in my life. I saw Foch pass, Clemenceau pass, Lloyd George, generals, returning troops, banners, but Wilson heard from his carriage something different, inhuman—or superhuman. Oh, the immovably shining, smiling man!”

It seemed the Arc de Triomphe would fall before this cascade of sound. His carriage went under it—the first time within the memory of living man this had happened. The Premier of France said, “I do not think there has been anything like it in the history of the world.”

Later in the day the President spoke at a luncheon, exchanging toasts with the French President: “All that I have said or tried to do has been said and done only in the attempt to faithfully express the thoughts of the American people. From the very beginning of this war the thoughts of the people of America turned toward something higher than the mere spoils of war. Their thought was directed toward the establishment of the eternal principles of right and justice.”

That day French soldiers joined hands to drag German cannons down the street at a run; French girls screaming with laughter went along as passengers. That day the overloaded branches of a tree near the Madeleine broke and half a dozen doughboys tumbled all over the sidewalk—but it was a day when nothing could go wrong and they all jumped up unhurt and trooped away, laughing. That day
Le Petit Parisien
headlined:
VIVE WILSON
!
VIVE WILSON
! and
La Liberté
said Paris had given to him all its fire and all its heart. That night Paris was ablaze with illuminations and the boulevards were thronged with singing, dancing, confetti-tossing crowds.

He went to England. French ships escorted him to mid-Channel; British craft took up the duty there. At Dover the Lord Mayor in wig and robe greeted him, and little English schoolgirls draped in American flags threw flowers in his path. In London a wintry haze hung in the air,
but the flags and bunting and triumphal arches made of choice flowers, richly berried holly, and gilt golden eagles in front of Charing Cross seemed to glimmer as the guns in Hyde Park and the Tower pumped off blanks to announce his coming. A detachment of the Scots Guards was at the station, and the band of the Grenadiers, and of course the King in field marshal's uniform. They went out over red carpets to the great high red-and-gold royal carriages drawn by beautifully groomed bays with red harness and silk on their manes and surrounded by a Sovereign's Escort and postilions and footmen in royal livery. The people filling the Strand broke out into a roar for the man who would save England from another Continental war with its horrors of gas and mud, and they got under way, the carriages, the Royal Standard Bearer, the clattering horse escort going by Venetian masts, by the National Gallery almost hidden by flags and bunting, by the rigid ranks of the Coldstream Guards. For blocks in all directions the streets were completely jammed; the newspapers said two million people stood to see him. From Hyde Park Corner down Constitution Hill the lampposts were draped in scarlet with flags and emblems bearing Imperial and civic emblems. The Royal Horse Guards band was at Hyde Park Corner to crash into
The Star-Spangled Banner
when the carriages came to it, and bells and chimes rang out over all London. He stood not simply to raise his hat but to wave it boyishly. They went to Buckingham Palace, where the Welsh Guards band waited, and from the balcony looked over at the crowd reaching all down the Mall to the Admiralty half a mile away, overflowing St. James's Park on one side and the Green Park on the other. The crowd screamed for him to speak and waved tiny American flags hawked all through the city that day—“a penny each and all silk”—and he laughed and waved his hand to say no, there would be no speech, and went inside but in a few moments had to go out in answer to the immense rolling sound of hundreds of thousands of voices chanting in unison, “
WE WANT WILSON
.” The First Lady waved a Union Jack as she stood with her husband and the King and Queen. Never had London heard the cheers that reached up toward them.

A royal state dinner, the first held since Great Britain
went to war, was given in the palace. Everything on the table was of gold—the candelabra, dishes, forks, spoons, knives. On three different sides of the room were hung gold dishes not used during the dinner; many were the size of tea trays. Beefeaters from the Tower stood in their red uniforms holding in their motionless hands unmoving halberds. Liveried servants were everywhere. The King's hands trembled as he read off a toast; the President replied extemporaneously, addressing his host as “Sir” but not “Your Majesty.”