Heart of War (59 page)

So why did he do it?

Because Wharton told him the only way to be free was to toss himself off in the Navy's face … and he'd done it. The defiance of decency, the deliberate public defilement of his uniform, had indeed freed him from something – but not yet from himself. He picked up the
Observer
and scanned the principal headline:

At last, Cate thought, at long, long last … poor America, after trying so hard to keep out, forced in at the bloodiest, beastliest time. The torpedoing of the American ship
City of Memphis
a couple of weeks ago had been another shove in that direction, after so many other sinkings and drownings before it, but the Zimmermann telegram had been the final straw. The Americans, judging by the excerpts from their newspapers, had gone mad with rage at the thought that Germany was proposing to give away bits of
their
country. It would be most interesting to know just how the text of the Zimmermann telegram had come into Allied hands, for surely the Germans must have taken extreme precautions to keep such an explosive communication secret.

The war, which Cate felt had been out of human control for some months or even years, was now really taking the bit between its teeth. Wherever you looked the news was not merely sanguinary – of death and destruction – but weird. The Czar had abdicated – the beloved Little Father, gone, and a republic set up in his place! But what was Russia without a Czar? Baghdad was under the rule of a British general … but where were Haroun-al-Raschid, Scheherazade, the Caliphs, the harem women of the Arabian Nights? In Ireland the out-and-out Sinn Feiners were actually winning elections: that was unheard of a year or two ago; at any time before the Easter Rising of 1916 and the subsequent executions, to be honest …

He started, spilling a little coffee out of his cup – Johnny Merritt had sworn a dozen times, in his hearing, that as soon as America declared war, he'd join the U.S. Army. That would leave Stella alone, if he meant it. But did he? He'd better ride over to Beighton and talk to Stella about it … telephone first perhaps, as Stella often wasn't at home, these days – she liked to shop in Hedlington, and was also, she said, studying a lot in the Public Library: the poor girl was lonely, that was the truth, with Johnny working so hard. If he went off to war, she'd be much lonelier.

The high limousine reached the Treasury building and began the final climb up Pennsylvania Avenue toward the dome of the Capitol, brilliant white against the black sky. The President sat in the back with Dr Grayson, Colonel Hartz and Mr Tumulty, the passing street lamps picking out the rain spots from the April shower that had just passed, which pearled the hats and tunics of the escorting cavalrymen. His face was set but calm, and he made no acknowledgement of the cheers, shouts, and occasional boos from the people lining the route. Police were on duty every ten yards, and the District of Columbia garbage workers were sweeping up the broken glass, thrown fruit, torn paper, and other debris from the street fights and near riots that had raged all day near the Capitol, between the nation's pacifists, who had come to disrupt the President's planned speech to the Congress, and the anti-pacifists, who had come from all over, some in special trains from New York, to support the President in what was already obvious must be a call to arms.

The limousine rode steadily on, the hum of its engine drowned in the jingle and thump, the heavy creak of leather and the steady tattoo of the horses' hooves of B Troop, 2nd Regiment of United States Cavalry, riding as escort to the President, drawn sabres resting on their right shoulders, rifles thumping in the boots on the horses' off sides.

The car swung round at the foot of the great steps of the Capitol. Small deputations from Senate and House waited there to greet the President and escort him up the steps to the robing room, then into the chamber. They were flanked by the horses and men of A and F Troops of the 2nd Cavalry, which had been on duty all day keeping pacifist demonstrators out of the Capitol and examining the special passes without which, today, no one could enter.

The President climbed down, a sheaf of notes in his hand. The waiting Congressmen removed their hats, shook hands, then turned and led him up the wide steps.

Inside the House, Stephen Merritt waited, sitting in the visitor's gallery of the House of Representatives, flanked by Andrew Mellon and Andrew Carnegie, the latter bent and hunched under the weight of his eighty-two years, but the eyes still keen. The diplomatic corps were present
en masse
, all in full evening dress, rank on rank near the floor of the House. In the centre of the floor directly in front of the dais where the Vice President and the Speaker of the House waited behind their tall desks, sat the members of the Supreme Court, without robes; Edward Douglas White, Chief Justice of the United States, in the centre of the front row; Oliver Wendell Holmes to his left.

In response to a signal from outside, unseen by any but himself, the Speaker tapped his gavel on his desk and called quietly, ‘The House will be in order!'

A sudden silence fell. The Doorkeeper of the House, in frock coat and doeskin gloves, walked in through the open door. When just inside the House he stopped, and boomed sternly, ‘Mr Speaker, the President of the United States!'

The President walked steadily up the aisle between the cheering representatives, the diplomatic corps, the senators – nearly all these with small American flags in their lapels – past the justices, to the dais. There, he reached up and shook hands first with his Vice President, then with the Speaker. He turned. The Speaker again banged his gavel and announced ‘Members of the Congress, I have the high privilege and distinct honour of introducing to you the President of the United States.'

Woodrow Wilson spread his notes carefully on the lectern under the reading light, adjusted his pince-nez high on his long nose, and began:

‘I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious choices to be made, and made immediately, which it was neither right nor constitutionally permissible that I should assume the responsibilities of making.

In the House the rustle of silk and shirr of broadcloth had
died away. Looking round the gallery Stephen saw the faces as a generalized impression, not as individuals – grim, anxious, exulting; together with the mass on the floor it was the embodiment of the power of the United States, both in theory and in practice – down there the justices and senators, President and Vice President; up here – himself and Morgan and Mellon and Carnegie; Morgenthau, Vanderbilt, Baruch; Harriman, Taft, Rockefeller; Bell, Edison …

‘The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it. The choice we make for ourselves must be made with a moderation of counsel and a temperateness of judgment befitting our character and our motives as a nation. We must …'

Stephen listened intently. Carnegie was holding a wrinkled hand to his ear, making an
extempore
ear trumpet. Mellon's heavy, handsome head was up, the eyes staring fixedly at the President. Wilson was speaking more forcefully, now and then raising his head to look from side to side, not seeking applause but as though making sure the Congress was attending to him.

‘There is one choice we can not make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission …'

A clapping and cheering broke out all over the packed House. In the centre of the floor the Chief Justice was standing, arms upflung, and so remained for a long five seconds, he and the President the only two on their feet. The cheering and shouting rose to a universal pandemonium. Everyone stood. La Follette of Wisconsin stayed seated, alone, his arms folded tight across his chest, chewing gum, a sardonic smile on his slightly working face.

Wilson waited; after five minutes the cheering died down and he repeated,

‘We will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

With a profound sense of the solemn, and even tragical character of the step I am taking … I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than war against the Government and people of the United States …'

‘War,' Stephen muttered to Carnegie. The old man nodded – ‘No doubt about it. The Germans have managed to drag Wilson to the starting post when no one else could.'

‘We are at the beginning of an age in which it will be insisted that the same standard of conduct and of responsibility for wrong done shall be observed among nations and their Governments that are observed among the individual citizens of civilized States.

‘Now that it's done, one wonders why it couldn't have been done sooner,' Mellon muttered. ‘How many lives could have been saved … how much destruction averted.'

Stephen said, ‘Not many Amercian lives, or much American property. I think he was right to do all he could to save us from the war as long as it was humanly possible.'

‘The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest or domination. We ask no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind …'

‘A far cry from those speeches about “drunken brawl” … and “too proud to fight,”' Carnegie whispered hoarsely. Stephen did not respond. As a Republican he abhorred Wilson's domestic policies, but it was impossible to despise the man himself. It might have been Irish ward heelers and Southern despots who got him elected, but there was no doubting the depth and reality of his idealism.'

‘It is a fearful thing to lead this great, peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars … But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts
for democracy, for the rights of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free people as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.'

Stephen pulled out his watch and peered at it. All that had to be said had been said. This was so much rhetoric. The President was good at rhetoric; now he had brought himself to face, and deal with, facts.

War, then! His grandchildren (if Johnny and Betty ever got down to having any) would grow up into a world almost unimaginably different from the one
he
had known as a child … although the war, for all its horrors, had caused some amazing and in themselves wonderful advances, particularly in the sciences. Look at aviation, look at medicine. It was only a few days ago that he had read a piece in
The New York Times
where the writer, a military expert, had pointed out that, according to current figures, the battle casualties in this war would far exceed those caused by disease – for the first time in history.

To such a task we dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured.

God helping her, she can do no other.'

Stephen rose, clapping … Carnegie staggered up beside him. All round the gallery the people were now visibly aroused. Faces that had been sombre and reserved were open, turning red, mouths agape. The Chief Justice was again on his feet, his white mane shining like a halo, his arms upraised. From the floor Southern senators and representatives set up the flesh-creeping Rebel yell of the Confederacy – in whose ranks the Chief Justice had carried a rifle fifty-two years earlier. The clapping became frenzied. War fever … Betty had told him about dachshunds being kicked to death in the streets of England – by the English, of all people! … anyone with a German name pilloried and spat upon. Stephen felt a gloomy certainty that it was going to happen here.