Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate

By James Startt

James D. Startt previously explored Woodrow Wilson’s relationship with the press during his rise to political prominence. Now, Startt returns to continue the story, picking up with the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and tracing history through the Senate’s ultimate rejection in 1920 of the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations.

Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate delves deeply into the president’s evolving relations with the press and its influence on and importance to the events of the time. Startt navigates the complicated relationship that existed between one of the country’s most controversial leaders and its increasingly ruthless corps of journalists.

The portrait of Wilson that emerges here is one of complexity—a skilled politician whose private nature and notorious grit often tarnished his rapport with the press, and an influential leader whose passionate vision just as often inspired journalists to his cause.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
• Release date: May 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781623495329

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Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate

Joseph V. Hughes Jr. and Holly O. Hughes Series on the Presidency and Leadership

James P. Pfiffner, General Editor

Series Editorial Board:

Peri Arnold

H. W. Brands Jr.

George C. Edwards III

Fred I. Greenstein

Erwin C. Hargrove

Charles O. Jones

Martha Joynt Kumar

Roger Porter

Steven J. Wayne

A list of titles in this series is available at the end of the book.

Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate

JAMES D. STARTT

Texas A&M University Press

College Station

Copyright © 2017 by James D. Startt

All rights reserved

First edition

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

Binding materials have been chosen for durability.

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Startt, James D., 1932- author.

Title: Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate / James D. Startt.

Other titles: Joseph V. Hughes, Jr. and Holly O. Hughes series on the presidency and leadership.

Description: First edition. | College Station : Texas A&M University Press, [2017] | Series: Joseph V. Hughes, Jr. and Holly O. Hughes series on the presidency and leadership | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016047197 (print) | LCCN 2016048216 (ebook) | ISBN 9781623495312 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781623495329 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924. | Wilson, Woodrow, 1856–1924—Relations with journalists. | Presidents—United States—Biography. | United States—Politics and government—1913–1921. | United States—Foreign relations—1913–1921. | World War, 1914–1918—Peace. | Press and politics—United States—History—20th century. | Press—United States—Influence.

Classification: LCC E780 .S73 2017 (print) | LCC E780 (ebook) | DDC 973.91/3092 [B] —dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016047197

For Catherine, my wife

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. The President and the Press

Chapter 2. The War, the Press, and Propaganda

Chapter 3. Neutrality Tested: 1915

Chapter 4. National Anxieties: 1915

Chapter 5. Politics under the Shadow of War: 1916

Chapter 6. Peace and War in the Balance: 1916–17

Chapter 7. Managing the Media in Wartime

Chapter 8. Criticism on the Home Front

Chapter 9. Diplomatic Realities: 1917

Chapter 10. Wilson’s Peace Initiative: 1918

Chapter 11. The End of the War

Chapter 12. Interlude between War and Peace

Chapter 13. At the Summit

Chapter 14. Return to the Summit

Chapter 15. Statesmanship in Abeyance

Chapter 16. The End of the League Debate

Epilogue

List of Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

WOODROW WILSON remains one of the most controversial figures in American history. As an activist president, he aroused both praise and scorn. Opposing editors often labeled him a Puritan in politics, a Presbyterian priest, an unprincipled opportunist, and worse. But to his friends in the press, he was a gifted world statesman, a second Abraham Lincoln. Some editors considered him a prophet, in the sense that he was an inspiring leader whose passionate vision for a new and harmonious world order was contagious. Amid the international tragedy that was the First World War, a conflict of a different sort permeated the press, one that questioned his leadership. It began in prewar days when Wilson forced through a series of economic reforms that threatened conservative interests. Once the war began, his critics questioned his ability to handle the issues of neutrality and, after the United States entered the conflict, his competency as a wartime president. Later, when he tried to implement his peace plans, his opponents in the press charged that he was devoid of all reason and could not be allowed to destroy the nation’s character and security. To grasp the gravity of these concerns, it must be remembered that they were expressed against the backdrop of unprecedented war, one that claimed the lives of ten million human beings and left countless others wounded. However, politics were also at play.

World War I was a time of powerful clashing personalities and bitterly contested political battles, all fought out in the press as well as in Congress. Wilson’s antagonists in the Senate were imposing figures led by the skilled parliamentarian Henry Cabot Lodge and the staunch isolationist and brilliant orator William E. Borah. Both were partisans of the first order. However, although he often mustered bipartisan support for his war measures, Wilson was himself a partisan in his politics and a worthy combatant. Even near the end of his life, having suffered a massive crippling stroke, the journalist and his future biographer Ray Stannard Baker found him in a fighting mood. After visiting him in 1923, a year before his death, Baker wrote in his diary, The sheer spirit of the man! Here he is paralyzed, blind in one eye, an invalid, 66 years old & sees himself leading a campaign in 1924!¹ Moreover, rather than an impractical idealist as some critics claimed, Wilson was a skilled politician, one of the best of his generation, much to the frustration of his opponents. The flamboyant publisher William Randolph Hearst, the bane of many presidents, claimed that Wilson had no deep convictions, certainly none that interfered with his personal advancement.²

Since Wilson considered an informed public an integral factor in successful executive leadership, and since in his time people considered press opinion tantamount to public opinion, the opinion of the press on war-related issues was of utmost importance to him. The modern press is a composite institution that speaks in many voices. As a progressive (he preferred the term liberal), Wilson took particular interest in the opinion of left-leaning editors, but he also had to be mindful of the strong currents of press opinion in general. He had to consider its aggregate voice. But Wilson read few newspapers, usually only one, and at times none. How, then, did he stay abreast of press opinion? Conversely, what did he do to educate and lead that opinion? The book addresses these questions.

In Wilson’s time, the press was a dynamic and expanding institution. Its editors and writers expressed themselves in forceful and sometimes vindictive prose. After the opening of the war, the Great War as it came to be called, their voices were never stilled on the issues of war and peace. Since Wilson took little interest in the mechanics of mobilization and military policy, matters he delegated to the generals and other subordinates, this book concentrates on the major national and international issues that he faced during and after the war. The issues selected for discussion were those that were most contentious for Americans during the conflict, ones that received concerted attention in the press. Wilson was often at the center of that contention, and the criticism leveled at him could be severe, bitter enough to make him one of the most maligned presidents in American history.

However, that was not always the case. Shortly before his inauguration in 1913, Wilson commented, The public man who fights the daily press won’t be a public man very long.³ As governor of New Jersey, he enjoyed good relations with the Trenton reporters and could count a number of editors as his friends. Several of them, George Harvey, editor and owner of the prestigious North American Review, and Walter Hines Page, the distinguished author and editor of World’s Work, were instrumental in Wilson’s political ascent. The progressive publicist Norman Hapgood, the Socialist Arthur Bullard, the president and general manager of Baltimore’s Sunpapers Charles H. Grasty, and many other journalists were attracted to Wilson and his cause during his presidential campaign in 1912. They became devoted supporters throughout his presidency. He was to them not only a figure capable of inspired leadership but also the hope of the then-disorganized Democratic Party. That moved Grasty to tell Wilson shortly before he entered the White House, If you should ever reach a point in standing up to the high-minded course you have set for yourself where you were in need of a friend’s help, in any way, mine will be yours for the knowing of it.⁴

Some reporters who covered him during the months when he was president-elect did not share that sentiment. Those were trying days both for the reporters and for Wilson. They were irritated by the way he refused to have comments he made to them in private appear in print. Their insistent prying into his family’s private life annoyed him. Once while vacationing in Bermuda, having returned hot and disheveled from a bicycle ride with daughter Jessie, Wilson came dangerously close to striking an awaiting newsman. Gentlemen, he said, you can photograph me to your heart’s content. I don’t care how I look. But I request you not to photograph my daughter. You know how women feel about such things. A cameraman snapped a picture of Jessie before he could finish the sentence. His face reddened in anger and his fists clenched, Wilson advanced toward the cameraman, charging, You’re no gentleman. I want to give you the worst thrashing you ever had in your life, and what’s more, I’m perfectly able to do it.⁵ Then he stalked away. Although the reporters sympathized with Wilson in this instance, the incident was an indication that his relations with the reporters had deteriorated from the period during his run for president.

Other incidents followed in which Wilson was curt with the reporters, leading one friendly newsman to tell his daughter Eleanor that her father was making a serious mistake in failing to be more considerate of the press.⁶ That understatement helps to explain why Wilson entered the presidency with his press relations troubled. In one respect, that is not surprising, since the clear majority of the country’s major newspapers were Republican and many, by some estimates 90 percent, of the Washington correspondents disliked him in a journalistic sense.⁷ Although there were some bright spots in his press relations during his years in the White House, problems persisted, and they were often of his own making.

This book follows my previous work, Woodrow Wilson and the Press: Prelude to the Presidency. That study covered Wilson’s relations with the press and its practitioners during his political rise, his governorship of New Jersey, and his presidential campaign of 1912. The present volume begins with the outbreak of World War I in July 1914 and ends in March 1920 with the Senate’s final rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, including the Covenant of the League of Nations. Set in the context of the general history of the war and the following struggles over negotiating and ratifying the peace settlement, it depicts how Wilson and the editors dealt with the great war-related issues. The book devotes special attention to Wilson’s wartime speeches, which were so important to his efforts to influence national and foreign opinion and to the role the press played in interpreting them. By focusing on the criticism opposing editors made of Wilson and his policies as well as on the way his friends in the press vigorously supported him, it elucidates the arguments characteristic of the public debate in the United States during the war and the vibrant spirit accompanying them. Historians tend to consider Wilson a failure in his dealings with the press, his handling of news inept, his experiences with the Washington correspondents a series of clashes and misunderstandings. This study takes a more sympathetic view of Wilson and the press. More than other works in the field, it also emphasizes the roles that Joseph Tumulty, the president’s private secretary, and Col. Edward M. House, his close friend and principal foreign affairs advisor, played as Wilson’s liaisons with journalists and as his chief interpreters of press opinion. Moreover, it underscores that his relationship with the newsmen was not always strained. He was on friendly terms with a number of journalists, mostly editors, as indicated by his correspondence, and he could be a pleasant host for the correspondents who accompanied him on his major trips away from Washington.

Based on the personal papers of many journalists and public figures germane to the narrative and on a cross-section of numerous newspaper and periodical sources, this book is broad in scope. During the period of America neutrality, it covers all of the issues involved in the German and British violation of American maritime rights. The protest of Wilson’s neutrality policy, the battles he had with German American and Irish American editors, and the steps he took to curtail their influence receive special attention, as does the presence of German propaganda and sabotage in the United States. After the American intervention in the war, censorship of the press became rampant. This topic claims its place in the book, along with an examination of the frustration felt by African American and some woman suffrage editors with Wilson’s failure to act on their behalf. Meanwhile, his wartime diplomacy assumes a central position in the book. As the war proceeds, the opinion of British, French, German, Italian, and, to a lesser extent, Russian newspapers acquires an importance to Wilson and his advisors. After discussing the armistice, the focus of the book shifts to the Paris Peace Conference and the role of Wilson’s press relations there. Finally, it moves to the year-long struggle for ratification and Wilson’s endeavors and failures to mobilize press support for the League of Nations. Throughout this study, Wilson emerges as a politician who had his successes and failures with the press and as a prophet who inspired many of its practitioners to his cause.

Acknowledgments

IT IS IMPOSSIBLE to write history without the help of many people, too numerous to mention. I do, however, want to recognize those to whom I am especially indebted. Gordon W. Prange, my inspiring teacher and mentor at the University of Maryland, first directed my interest to Woodrow Wilson and enthusiastically supported my work in the field until his death some years later.

I owe a special thanks to several of Wilson’s biographers. Anyone who chooses to write about him will soon realize the debt owed to Arthur S. Link. Most of all, the sixty-nine-volume series, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson that he edited, is an indispensible source for scholars interested in Wilson or in early twentieth-century American history. Acclaimed one of the major editorial achievements of the twentieth century, it brings together tens of thousands of letters and documents pertaining to Wilson and his era. It also provides superb detailed textual annotations of vital and often hard-to-find data relating to the period. I have also benefited from the works of several other scholars beginning with Ray Stannard Baker, the first writer to use Wilson’s personal papers. Of Wilson’s more recent biographers, I have particularly relied on those works by August Heckscher, Thomas J. Knock, and John Miller Cooper, Jr.

I am also indebted to colleagues in the American Journalism Historians Association who have, for many years, sharpened my knowledge of journalism history. Their assistance as well as their exemplary geniality has been invaluable. In particular I wish to thank J. Lee Thompson, who reviewed the manuscript in full, and Eugenia Palmegiano and Ross Collins, who read individual chapters. Their critiques made this a better book. Closer to home, I am grateful to Linda Presto for her astute editing of the raw manuscript in preparation for submission to the publisher. And a special thanks goes to Jay Dew, editor in chief of Texas A&M University Press, for recognizing the value of this work and for his congenial spirit. It has been a pleasure working with him and his editorial assistant Emily Seyl and with Marsha Hall for her detailed final copyediting and for her willingness to endure my last-minute changes. As a tech-challenged individual, I needed all the help I could get.

In researching the book, I have been fortunate in having the assistance of numerous librarians and archivists. They all have my appreciation, and I wish to thank in particular Carolyn Davis at the Department of Special Collections, Syracuse University; Dwight M. Miller at the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library; Daniel J. Linke at the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University; Michael W. Lora and Jim Marshall at the Local History and Genealogy Department, Toledo-Lucas County Public Library; Doug McCabe at the Vernon R. Alden Library, Ohio University; Leslie A. Morris and Thomas P. Ford at the Houghton Library, Harvard University; Richard A. Shrader at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jane Westfeld at Allegheny College; and Ann K. Sindelar at the Western Reserve Historical Society. During my many visits to the Library of Congress, I have never failed to be impressed by the efficiency of the staff in its Manuscript Division, and I am grateful for their help. The librarians at Valparaiso University’s Christopher Center have always cheerfully handled my requests, and I thank them for their assistance.

There are a number of people close to home whom I wish to acknowledge. Valparaiso University has been generous in supporting my work, and I thank its Committee on Creative Work and Research for several grants that were especially appreciated during the early stages of writing this book. I am grateful, in particular, to the university’s former president Alan Harre and to its current president Mark A. Heckler for my ongoing appointment as senior research professor in history. This book owes a great deal to their support.

However impossible it may be to thank fully those nearest you for their sustaining support, I wish to recognize my son James, his wife Rebekah Rast, and my daughter Jennifer. Their interest in this work has often led me to probe a little more into Wilson’s life. Their patient listening to my Wilson stories deserves special thanks, which is gladly given. I reserve my deepest appreciation for my wife Catherine, a partner in writing this book from beginning to end. She typed and diligently read every draft of the manuscript, improving it each time. Her enthusiasm for this book and her uncanny ability to turn hard work into fun has been an unfailing source of encouragement for me. It is with sincere pleasure that I dedicate this book to her.

Woodrow Wilson, the Great War, and the Fourth Estate

1

The President and the Press

NO PRESIDENT ever had a greater need to engage the press and to encourage its support than Woodrow Wilson. His theories of executive leadership, advanced in his scholarly writings dating back to 1885, challenged and reinterpreted the ideas of the founding fathers. Fearing demagoguery, they established brakes on public opinion about such things as the electoral college. By the doctrine of separation of powers, they created a structure in which each of the three branches of government, while overlapping one another in some instances, would have superior power in its own realm. Wilson, however, perceived the process of government as deliberative, one in which the president, as the sole representative of all the people, would have a far more interactive role to play with Congress than the founding fathers envisioned. He contended that there was a distinction between a demagogue and a skilled political leader. The former was self-interested and exploited the whims and passions of the people; the latter appealed to their lasting interests. Far from fearing public opinion, he held that, when properly informed, it was the bedrock of democratic government.¹ He also assigned the press a major role in this deliberative process. In his acclaimed Congressional Government, he deemed it an extraordinary fact that the utterances of the press have greater weight . . . than the utterances of Congress. . . . The editor directs public opinion, the congressman obeys it.²

With the emphasis that Progressive Era politicians placed on public opinion and with the expansion of the new democracy, few would doubt that constructive press relations were indispensable to the publicity needs of a modern president. Engaging the press, however, would not be easy for Wilson. President-press relations had changed since the days when presidents could afford to remain inconspicuous to newsmen. The confluence of the progressive impulse in politics, the expanding role of the president as a national leader, and the increasing determination of the press to focus on personalities in the news rendered the old-fashioned president-press relations passé. As Richard Oulahan of the New York Times observed, Presidential personal contact with members of the press had become essential to furthering the political fortunes of a President. For the sake of his own political interests, Oulahan continued, a president must keep in touch with people to obtain support for his policies. These people must be made to see him standing out in person, not as a nebulous something described as ‘The Administration’ or ‘The Government,’ but as a man, a being of flesh and blood, with ideas that set them to thinking of him as a leader.³

It was a reciprocal need. The more presidents became major newsmakers, the more the press needed access to them. That access would come in time, but it began, in an indirect way, in 1896 when the Washington reporter William Fatty Price received the assignment to station himself at the White House and to query visitors as they arrived and departed.⁴ By the time of the Spanish-American War several reporters were allowed inside the executive mansion, including the Associated Press’s Fred A. Emery. President McKinley permitted him to maintain a telegraph wire from the White House to his office at the Washington Evening Star. In 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt renovated the White House to accommodate his large family, he designated a room, complete with telephones for reporters, next to his secretary’s office in the new West Wing.⁵ That gave them at least a semiofficial presence there. As soon as he became president following the assassination of McKinley, he called together the managers of the three major telegraphic news services in Washington and promised to cooperate with them, providing they would respect his confidences.

Roosevelt did more than uphold his promise. He made himself accessible to reporters both individually and in groups. The group meetings, later known as press conferences, nicknamed séances by reporters, were not held at fixed intervals, nor were they open to all reporters. Roosevelt held them only when he had something he wished to communicate to the public or when the reporters together made a special request to have the president’s views on a public question.⁶ Many reporters found their association with him exhilarating. All considered, Roosevelt established a new standard for president-press relations. When he departed from office, he left White House correspondents with reason to expect his successors to match his accommodating ways. Roosevelt, of course, was a unique personality; his immediate successors, William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson, were men of different temperaments. Taft disappointed the reporters, but when Wilson entered the White House, they hoped for better treatment.⁷

Wilson’s previous record of dealing with the press seemed promising. He had an extensive association with editors and publishers, some of whom had advised him during his political ascendancy. As governor of New Jersey, he had implemented his belief that mobilizing public opinion was essential to executive leadership, and in doing so he had often reached the public through the press. He had also demonstrated the art of taking dramatic action, which the press relished. To promote his reform program in New Jersey, he broke precedent by meeting with the Democratic caucus of the legislature. As governor he enjoyed relations with the reporters in Trenton. There were exceptions, but for the most part he was generous in his dealings with them. They occupied a room across the hall from his office in full view of visitors who took advantage of his open-door policy. While the legislature was in session, he met with reporters daily. Upon completion of a day’s work, he would sometimes join them for a relaxing walk. Those accompanying him on campaign trips found him to be agreeable, unpretentious, and sometimes humorous. That same humor could also appear when he made guest appearances at meetings of the press associations.⁸

However, the frequent references newsmen made to his aloofness had foundation. A self-confident man, he could be stubborn and unyielding. Holding deep religious beliefs, he identified his convictions with the presence of moral law in world affairs. He once told an English audience, The stern Covenanter tradition that is behind me sends many an echo down the years.⁹ He was referring to the Scottish Covenanters who, during the Reformation, struggled to win political independence from England and religious independence from Rome. Wilson believed in God’s unquestioned authority, but there were liberal strains in his Presbyterian faith. He deplored religious narrowness and bigotry, eschewed the interest evangelicals of his day had in the Social Gospel movement, disapproved of what would become known as Fundamentalism, saw no conflict between the Bible and modern science, and identified Christianity with progressive democracy. Yet he believed in an ever-present providence and held that he and all people were instruments of God’s will. His vision of duty and sense of service appeared often in his speeches, and he projected them onto his world view. Providence, Wilson believed, had endowed the United States with a great body of ideas which have made America the hope of the world.¹⁰

Reserve and a sense of propriety also governed his association with people. He found it difficult to be affable with strangers. Stockton Axson, his brother-in-law and friend, observed that he was a poor mixer, saying his Scotch blood must not be forgotten in assessing Mr. Wilson.¹¹ By temperament he was sensitive, opposed to demagoguery and to sensationalism of any kind. As president he believed the press should focus on his work, not his personality. Considering the growing interest on personality in the press, this did not bode well for newsmen. It is not surprising that the correspondents often found him personally inaccessible to them.

In spite of this reserve that governed his relations with the Washington journalists, his feelings for friends were genuine and affectionate. Robert Bridges, the editor of Scribner’s Magazine and Wilson’s classmate at Princeton, once reflected, What people can’t see is the humanness of the man. He was my warm friend for fifty years.¹² Those who knew him informally appreciated his congenial conversation, his charm of manner, and his sense of amusement. As his letters to his wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, revealed, beneath his public demeanor was the heart of a passionate romantic. And there were traces of Irish lineage in his character. Reporters on previous political campaigns recognized Wilson’s wit and gift of storytelling. In meetings with them, in private conversations, and in speeches, he displayed a mastery of doggerel verse and limericks. He often used them at will to underscore a point. Charles Swem, his personal stenographer, claimed, They came to his mind as if he had them card-indexed for ready reference.¹³ Any balanced portrayal of Wilson should take this side of his character into account, for as he told the distinguished writer Ida Tarbell, There is a lot of the boy left in me. I have never forgotten how to play, never forgotten how to loaf. I get great relief as I go along by a sense of the fun in things.¹⁴ That was a strange admission from a person whom unfriendly editors portrayed as a modern-day Puritan.

Puritan or not, Wilson would have to find a way to deal with the Washington correspondents. His two immediate predecessors had dealt with them by means he deemed unsuitable for his purposes. Presidents Roosevelt and Taft had their individual favorites among the reporters. Dubbed the president’s pets by their colleagues, these reporters had access to the president, sometimes on a daily basis.¹⁵ In Roosevelt’s case, he often issued special invitations to groups of reporters, his fair-haired boys, to join him, but they were allowed to print only what he wished. If a reporter broke the president’s confidence, Roosevelt assigned him to the Ananias Club, whose members were henceforth barred from White House news sources.¹⁶ Occasionally, Roosevelt would issue an invitation to the press gallery at the Capitol to join him when he had something to announce. President Taft had met often with reporters when he was Secretary of War, but after becoming president he saw them as a group only a few times before abandoning the practice.

Wilson charted a course of his own with the correspondents. At the suggestion of his secretary Joseph Tumulty, he introduced the practice of holding regular meetings with them. The gatherings were open to all accredited correspondents and would be held twice each week in the East Room of the White House, where they crowded around the president’s desk. They were free to raise any questions they wished, but as with Roosevelt, they could quote his responses only with his expressed permission. It was not possible for him to pursue an open-door policy for Washington correspondents, now numbering more than a hundred, and he had no wish to grant them personal interviews. That would suggest the favoritism he wanted to avoid, and it would be time consuming. In one sense, the press conferences would allow him to shield himself from them individually while engaging them collectively. But, in another sense, he was modernizing president-press relations while providing a forum for executive publicity.

Most journalists who attended those conferences and later wrote about them were critical of Wilson’s handling of them. They complained about his failure to make the conferences newsworthy, about his lack of news sense, and about his failure to take them into his confidence. At best they resented his tendency to lecture them, his frequent rejoinders to questions claiming he did not know about the matter or that there was nothing new to report about it, and his failure to be open in his exchanges with them.¹⁷ James Kerney, editor and publisher of the Trenton Evening Times and one of Wilson’s political mentors before and during his governorship, said the correspondents had to fence with him [Wilson] all the time, and whether they got any information was a matter of luck in potshotting.¹⁸ After attending the conferences, Arthur B. Krock, a Washington correspondent for several Louisville newspapers who later became one of the country’s most esteemed journalists, wrote, As for the president, he is the most inaccessible executive of recent times and the weekly conferences with him develop no news whatever as he simply parries all questions.¹⁹ Wilson would not conceal his displeasure with the correspondents. He complained about being misinterpreted or misquoted and about his off-the-record comments appearing in print, and he could be sharp with them when stories appeared that he believed violated his family’s privacy.

The conferences were also a disappointment to Wilson. He told a colleague that they were a waste of time and later recalled:

I came to Washington with the idea that close and cordial relations with the press would prove of the greatest aid, I prepared for the conferences as carefully as for any lecture, and talked freely and fully on all large questions of the moment. Some men of brilliant ability were in the group but I soon discovered that the interest of the majority was in the personal and the trivial rather than in principles and policies.²⁰

The newsmen soon realized that he had little patience with their probing into trivial matters and that he could be quick tempered with those who did so.²¹ Yet, what Wilson considered trivial the correspondents might consider important, particularly with the growth of the human-interest factor in modern news reporting. The correspondents, moreover, wanted information that would help them interpret and anticipate events. But Wilson disliked being anticipated in the press; he failed to appreciate news reports speculating about how he might act regarding a pending question; and he believed that presidential news should focus on matters of policy, especially on reporting accomplished facts.

It should not be supposed, however, that correspondents were of one mind in their appraisals of the conferences. Some had a more positive view of them. The well-known journalist Ray Stannard Baker, who first interviewed Wilson in 1910, believed that the President held . . . the respect and admiration of editors and correspondents who counted at Washington and in the country.²² Another journalist, L. Ames Brown, in a contemporary account of the conferences, concluded that Wilson was going about procuring publicity for his administration in a businesslike fashion and that the newspaper men have appreciated his confidence in them.²³ The New York Times correspondent Charles Willis Thompson shared that opinion. Writing to his wife when the press conferences were several months old, he said, Wilson seems to be making a very favorable impression on the correspondents.²⁴ Another respected correspondent, Louis Brownlow, defended Wilson’s conferences, suggesting years later that some of the journalists critical of them in retrospect had defended them at the time of their attendance.²⁵

In any consideration of those meetings, several things should be kept in mind. First, there had never before been press conferences this open and this regular. For all of their shortcomings, they represented an improvement over the individual favoritism that characterized President Roosevelt’s press relations and to some extent those of President Taft. By holding them for more than two years, until ending them after the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915, Wilson upgraded the Washington correspondents’ professional status, despite the fact that some of them missed the personal access they had enjoyed with his predecessors. But many reporters failed to be included in that selective access. Also, some were not journalists of the caliber of the latter-day White House correspondents. Wilson had to field questions from the less able among them, interrogators who tried his patience. Nevertheless his gentlemanly manner permeated the meetings, as did his respect for the proprieties of the office he occupied. Some reporters commented on his aloofness. Roosevelt was more vicarious; Taft, more urbane. Wilson’s style was different. Recalling his press conference, Richard Oulahan, whose reputation stood high among the Washington correspondents, wrote,

He accepted our practice of asking questions as to his views, policies and actions, and appeared to show a ready appreciation of our endeavors and a sympathetic attitude toward them. When he did not care to answer some pointed inquiry he showed adroitness in his response. His manner was courteous in the extreme, and his habit of saying Yes, Sir, and No, Sir, in replying to our questions was a revelation to some of the newspapermen who were not familiar with his very natural reflection of early training in a Southern family, where the practice is the rule and not the exception.²⁶

With Wilson’s Victorian manner prevailing, the conferences continued twice a week for twenty-one months before he reduced them to a single weekly meeting in December 1914. Sometimes a hundred reporters would attend the conferences. In time, Wilson became better at fielding their questions. He even grew comfortable enough to sit back in his chair and informally chat with some who often might linger behind when sessions ended. One of the lingerers, Walter Lippmann, then beginning his long and prestigious career in journalism, later recalled, The little group that stayed on consisted of those who were concerned not with the raw news of announcements and statements in the formal press conference but with explaining and interpreting news.²⁷

Following the lead of the journalists’ recollections of the conferences, historians have tended to stress their shortcomings.²⁸ However, the considerable merits of those engagements suggest a more generous interpretation to be in order. During the years when he regularly met with reporters, Wilson grew more at ease in their presence. His interjection of humor and of apt anecdotes into his discourse created a more relaxed atmosphere for the meetings, and his tendency to fence with words could involve good-natured sparring with the correspondents.²⁹ He used the conferences to convey news he deemed appropriate and sometimes to correct speculation and to dispel rumors. The correspondents, on the other hand, received news worth reporting, though not as much as they wished, as well as important background information. Perhaps the best evidence of the value of the conferences can be found after Wilson discontinued the meetings, when both his secretary Joseph Tumulty and the reporters urged him to resume them.

Wilson also engaged the press through several intermediaries, the most important of whom were Joseph Tumulty and Col. Edward M. House. Tumulty had been Wilson’s secretary when he was governor of New Jersey and accompanied him to Washington in the same capacity. The gregarious secretary served Wilson in many ways, and his adept handling of press relations was invaluable. In the years before there was such a position, much less an office of press secretary, Tumulty made his dealings with the correspondents and many other journalists a major part of his work. He received and returned telephone calls from newspaper offices across the country to verify a report or to dispel alarm about some circulating rumor. He met with correspondents daily at 10 a.m. and made himself available to them any hour of the day or night. Those close to him were welcomed at his luncheon table at the Shoreham Hotel. Tumulty was forthright with reporters, and they would study his every smile or frown to detect some nuance in the news he gave them. As his biographer observes, He was a great stage manager, skilled at building up interest by provocative hints and a mysterious aura of forthcoming secrets.³⁰ Tumulty supplied the correspondents with all the news deemed prudent to distribute, and in so doing he won their confidence.³¹

Some years later, in recalling his dealings with the reporters, he found that frankness and candor paid big dividends. He said his confidence was never violated.³² In Wilson’s time, when correspondents referred to White House circles or officials close to the president as their news source, they usually meant Tumulty. Irrepressible Irishman that he was, his geniality, wit, and infectious laugh put them at ease. He would praise them for a fine article, congratulate them when they received a promotion or other good fortune, and, when justified, intervene on their behalf with the president.³³ Tumulty earned their gratitude.

He also won the president’s gratitude. Not only was he Wilson’s main liaison with the journalists, some claimed his buffer with them, he also served him in less obvious ways. It was Tumulty who issued trial balloons for the administration to gauge opinion on an intended course of action. It was Tumulty who interpreted the president’s actions for the correspondents, often winning him their favor, and it was he who intervened with them at times to mitigate their irritation with various cabinet members. Tumulty was the inspiration behind the many letters Wilson wrote to editors thanking them for their support. He was Wilson’s publicity manager. Most important, however, was the effort he made to keep the president informed about public opinion. In those days before public opinion polls existed, he spent hours analyzing public sentiment. He had his small staff clip news and editorial items, both critical and laudatory, from major newspapers in the country and arrange them by topic on long yellow sheets, his Yellow Journal, which he studied for items to bring to the president’s attention. Tumulty later contended that, along with his personal correspondence, the President kept in touch with the affairs and opinion of the country and the world through the newspapers.³⁴ Considering that the Baltimore Sun was the only newspaper Wilson read regularly, Tumulty’s news and opinion-gathering efforts can be all the more appreciated. He earned the right to describe himself as the president’s listening post.³⁵

He listened for the president in yet another way. Tumulty was a member of a small group that gathered regularly in a two-room apartment over a Chinese laundry on New York Avenue near Fourteenth Street, the Washington residence of Tom Pence. A North Carolina newspaperman, Pence came to Washington as the correspondent of Josephus Daniels’s Raleigh News and Observer. In 1912, he committed himself to Wilson’s candidacy for the Democratic nomination and was indispensable in publicizing his campaign for the presidency. When the Democratic National Committee established its permanent headquarters in Washington, Pence became its secretary, its guiding genius.³⁶ Wilson had confidence in his judgment, and as Daniels recalled, relied on him implicitly. He was of that rare breed of person whose enigmatic presence the public rarely saw but who was a mover in politics. In Pence’s case, his affable manner and political astuteness led him into confidential relations with a wide circle of associates in the capital.

Several nights a week Pence would gather a handful of men in his modest apartment to discuss all matters of politics. Congressmen, senators, cabinet members, diplomats, and journalists all knew Pence as Tom. Even Wilson called him Tom, making him one of the few men he ever called by first name. Pence devoted himself to Wilson, as he said, just for the love of the man, and for the next three years, until his untimely death, he was an unofficial link between the press and the president. As Wilson’s favorite newspaperman, the two of them often met to discuss politics. Daniels believed Pence had an uncanny gift for political diplomacy; Tumulty called him an unofficial envoy extraordinary.³⁷ When news dispatches from the capital cited elsewhere in Washington as their source, the elsewhere usually referred to these meetings. Tumulty’s presence in this group placed him at one of the vital nerve centers in the capital.³⁸

As Wilson’s confidant par excellence, Colonel House also preferred to work removed from public view. Two years younger than Wilson, House was a Texan of independent means, having inherited a fortune from his father. His lifelong fascination with politics led him, in time, to become an advisor to several Texas governors. For successfully managing their gubernatorial campaigns, he received the honorary title of colonel. In 1910, he extended his interest to national politics, took an apartment in New York, and began to expand his political acquaintances. It was there that he first met Wilson in November 1911, and the two became immediate friends. The soft-spoken, discreet Texan loved mystery. He developed a system of code names to use in his communications with Wilson, choosing Beverly as his own secret identity. House sought no appointed position for himself, only the chance to serve behind the scenes as a trusted counselor. Notwithstanding Wilson’s belief that House was absolutely disinterested, the colonel, as he was often called, loved power and wished to exert influence and be near greatness.³⁹ His friend Carl Ackerman was also doubtless correct when he observed that vanity was one of House’s most dominant characteristics.⁴⁰ Nevertheless, he and Wilson enjoyed a long and intimate friendship.

House served Wilson in several ways. Historians have often chronicled his role as the president’s unofficial ambassador abroad and his services as an interpreter of public opinion. Ray Stannard Baker once portrayed House as a political reporter and as one with a genius for making friendships with important people and for receiving their confidences. Baker also noted House’s gift for getting hold of newspaper correspondents.⁴¹ In fact, he developed an extensive association not only with correspondents but also with editors and publishers, as well as with British foreign correspondents and editors. Although historians have paid scant attention to House’s relations with journalists as a source of the advice he offered to Wilson, they were endeavors to which House devoted much time and energy.⁴²

From the start of Wilson’s presidency, House’s New York apartment became a mecca for a variety of people interested in public affairs and in Wilson’s presidency. Business leaders, politicians, and journalists, understanding the special relationship House enjoyed with the president, routinely visited him. Journalists came seeking information about national policies, pending legislation, or the president’s position on current issues. House was discreet in responding to those requests, but he did have information to offer. His diary tells the story. In an entry made after the New York Evening Post’s Edward G. Lowry visited him, he noted, I went into the subject [currency legislation] in some detail so as to place him in a position to handle news from Washington correctly.⁴³ Following a visit with the editor of the World’s Work, House commented, I gave him an insight into conditions so as to guide him.⁴⁴ Sometimes journalists came to House seeking guidance for pieces they were writing about the president or his administration. At other times they were anxious to inform him about suggestions that important acquaintances had regarding national issues or about an attack on the president that, according to their sources, would soon appear in the press.⁴⁵

In his meetings with newsmen, House made an art of both sharing and gathering information. In a typical diary entry in reference to a conversation with a New York Sun newsman, House noted, I obtained information of value from him.⁴⁶ In another entry, he was more explicit. I am obtaining information, he wrote, concerning the feeling in America which will make my talk with the president of more value. I shall be able to advise him and not go at it blindly.⁴⁷ The Christian Science Monitor’s editor Frederick Dixon, one of House’s callers, as he referred to his visitors, established an enduring friendship with the colonel. Dixon likened the colonel to the famous nineteenth-century German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, the Honest Broker, perceiving House as one who appreciated an intelligent return for information he was willing to share.⁴⁸ One caller, Peter Clark Macfarlane, a writer for Collier’s and other periodicals, visited House late in 1913, seeking information about Wilson’s politics. As he was leaving, Edward S. Martin, editor of Life and frequent visitor to House’s apartment, appeared. Upon introduction, Macfarlane commented, I find this to be the intellectual clearing house of America. Martin replied, Yes, House is a great institution.⁴⁹ Wilson would benefit from that institution for years to come.

The press that Wilson and his colleagues engaged was a sprawling institution composed of myriad publications. With more than two thousand two hundred daily and fourteen thousand weekly newspapers circulating, it can be concluded that never had so many newspapers offered more news to so many Americans. Large metropolitan newspapers had influence far beyond their hometowns. Among them were some of Wilson’s strongest opponents, especially the Boston Evening Transcript, the New York Tribune, the Philadelphia North American, the Chicago Tribune, and the San Francisco Chronicle. Outside of the South where newspapers were mostly Democratic, Wilson could usually depend on the Boston Daily Globe, the Springfield (Mass.) Daily Republican, the New York World, and the Baltimore Sun. These were lively days in American journalism, and many smaller newspapers like the Grand Rapids Herald and the Phoenix Arizona Republican enlivened the political debate and had regional pulling power. Conspicuous in the press of this era were the press lords E. W. Scripps, Frank Munsey, and especially William Randolph Hearst.

Various types of newspaper combinations have a long history, but in 1878, E. W. Scripps began the first great newspaper chain. With his independent and powerful mind, he held strong opinions about anything of public importance. Committed to the democratic reform of society, he and his newspapers spritely championed the working class and society’s underdogs. His publishing empire, as of 1912, included thirty-two newspapers mainly located in small cities in the Midwest and West, the United Press Association, and the Newspaper Enterprise Association, a national newspaper feature service—which together he called the Concern. More progressive than Wilson and conditionally supporting him for months, in the end he backed Roosevelt in 1912. Although now retired, Scripps continued to exert an immense influence over the Concern, as evidenced by his ongoing correspondence with the editors.

Frank Munsey could not have been more different from Scripps. He despaired of sensationalism in the press and of what he termed the loose and insincere journalism of his day.⁵⁰ Early in his career, he made a fortune from publishing Munsey’s Illustrated Weekly and other magazines and from his financial investments. Munsey entered the field of newspaper publishing in 1891 and eventually acquired a string of East Coast dailies. His newspapers conformed to the standards of respectable journalism at the time and offered lengthy news reports and editorials, but they were uninspiring and devoid of idealism. Under his personal direction, his newspapers were conservative and sometimes reactionary. He considered them commodities to be bought, sold, killed, or combined at will, practices that made him notorious among journalists as a gravedigger for newspapers.⁵¹ A conservative and a lifelong Republican, in 1912 he bolted the party to support Theodore Roosevelt’s Progressive Party, becoming Roosevelt’s leading advocate in the press.

William Randolph Hearst was the most volatile of the press lords. His empire included newspapers in six major cities (San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, and Atlanta), the International News Service that coordinated his various syndicated services, a newsreel company, and several magazines. A force in national affairs, politicians knew the fury of his attacks could be directed at anyone, including presidents. They knew, too, that party lines were not sacrosanct with him and that he made no virtue of consistency. A man of contradictions, he was courteous, even shy, in his personal relations, but he published newspapers unscrupulous enough to earn him the title of The Czar of Sensationalism. His journalistic demagoguery, however, penetrated into the popular, especially radical, democratic opinion of the time, and he held strong and oft-expressed political views to which his publishing empire gave expression. Hearst had bitterly opposed Wilson for the democratic nomination in 1912, after which he rallied his newspapers behind the governor late in the election campaign. Moreover, he never believed that Wilson was the sincere Jacksonian Democrat he would have preferred in the White House. Following Wilson’s election, Hearst offered him moderate support and even tried to establish close relations with the new administration. But Wilson rejected that overture. For the second time, he had snubbed the publisher, having previously refused to meet with him in 1911 during the Democratic preconvention campaign. Hearst was a dangerous man to alienate, and he was soon in the vanguard of the attacks on Wilson in the press.

Prominent as were the newspapers of these press lords and numerous as were those others of the mainstream press, their publications were only part of a larger media enterprise. Special-interest newspapers flourished, voicing the concerns of African Americans, women, labor, Socialists, ethnic communities, and other constituencies. The magazine revolution of the 1890s produced a number of new mass-circulating popular magazines, such as McClure’s, which not only served as vehicles for muckraking journalism but also revitalized periodical publication in general. Older monthly magazines such as the Atlantic Monthly and Century now devoted more attention to public affairs, as did monthlies such as the North American Review. Harper’s Weekly, the Nation, the Outlook, and other weekly journals of opinion enlivened the public dialogue on political matters. Many other periodicals, too numerous to mention, rounded out the traditional political press.

News and issues of the day were also subjects of the new film media. To some film commentators, the motion picture was a vital adjunct to daily journalism. First introduced in this country in 1898, moving pictures, as they were then called, were irresistibly popular. By the time Wilson entered office, the heyday of the country’s first film theaters, known as nickelodeons or nickel theaters, had passed. Higher priced, more comfortable and respectable modern screen theaters, symbols of this expanding mass medium, replaced them. Also, by this time nonfiction films had established their place alongside fictional productions. News films focusing on a single event and current event news slides were common fare in thousands of theaters. By 1911, newsreels, which offered a variety of topics on a regular weekly basis, appeared. Some observers of the new medium claimed it would revolutionize pictorial journalism. With the proliferation of newsreel companies, other enthusiasts boasted that they were a power greater than the press. They reached millions while newspapers only reached thousands.⁵²

There was much that was laudable in the early-twentieth-century news media. The best newspapers were among the finest in the world. Professionalism was growing in their ranks, and because of their embrace of modern communication technologies, they were able to speed the news to the remotest hamlet in the country. Still, there was much in the press to criticize. Most of all, critics, then and later, found sensationalistic journalism distasteful. Though by no means a new phenomenon, it was permeating more and more of the mainstream press. Critics worried that its striking format and provocative content played on public fears and anxieties. Some critics feared that it could inflame emotions and lead to war. James Bryce, the popular British ambassador to the United States and a student of the American press, once pondered why newspapers persist in trying to get up a war between the United States and Japan. He concluded that it was difficult to understand except as the hypothesis that it suits them to burn down houses for the sake of having paragraphs describing the fire. They have brought themselves to the point of believing in their own nonsense.⁵³

Nevertheless, the most common complaint that public figures had of the press was that of inaccurate reporting. As a case in point, James Bryce can again be cited. In reference to reporters who quizzed him on his travels throughout the country, he had this to say: When I refuse, as always, to talk about politics . . . [reporters] invent statements, which they put into one’s mouth. . . . Against these shameless falsehoods there seems to be no remedy and Americans who suffer from them tell me there is no redress.⁵⁴ Wilson agreed with Bryce. He, too, was irritated at the fabrications or inventions that appeared in news reports about him. Writing to his wife, the president complained, "Please do not let yourself be disturbed by what the newspapers say. They are all the while looking for something out of the usual. Trouble makes news; the ordinary course of business . . . does not. Pay no attention to them—particularly since those which are controlled are determined that there shall be trouble, and will make it themselves if no one else will.⁵⁵ Do not believe what you read in the newspapers," became a familiar refrain in his letters.⁵⁶

Aside from complaints about being misinterpreted and expressing his anger about invented news reports regarding his three daughters, Wilson mostly confined his displeasure with the press to his personal correspondence and private conversation. He concentrated instead on building congressional and public support for his policies. During his first year and a half in office, he achieved a remarkable record in winning approval for his tariff, antitrust, and currency reforms. He met and corresponded with key House and Senate leaders, consulted experts, including business leaders, on the changes he contemplated, and was conciliatory without abandoning principle. Stalwart opposition had to be overcome, both in Congress and in the press. Opposing editors could be merciless in attacking him as the most autocratic President this government has ever had.⁵⁷ The Wall Street Journal claimed that he had assumed the infallibility of a rather second-rate elementary school teacher.⁵⁸

Nothing was more important in overcoming that opposition and countering the attacks of unfriendly editors than the media support Wilson was able to generate for his policies. By 1914, his publicity apparatus was in place and, on balance, functioning well. The correspondents could not complain about the scarcity of news, since by this time the age of the handouts had arrived. For some years, publicity agents, and sometimes publicity bureaus, serving government departments and agencies had grown in Washington to the point that it was possible for a correspondent to compose a news dispatch simply by rewriting the handouts supplied them.⁵⁹ Taken together, there was a large enterprise at work to publicize the work of the administration. Nevertheless, it was news from the White House and of Wilson in particular that the correspondents wanted, and through the efforts of Wilson, Tumulty, and House, the channels for that news were open. Wilson’s press conferences helped, and at critical junctures he used them to good advantage.⁶⁰ Tumulty proved himself a master of communicating with the correspondents and at winning their trust. He found his morning meetings with the correspondents a delightful interlude in a busy day. He knew how much the correspondents wanted news of Wilson’s policies and appointments, and as soon as decisions about them were made, they had that news to wire to their newspapers. Meanwhile, in New York, House watched the number of newsmen among his callers grow. He was accommodating and, of course, found information for his own use in the process. In his efforts to have Wilson correctly interpreted, he even met with Munsey and dined with Hearst.⁶¹

An account of how Wilson built public and press support for his policies would not be complete without considering his boldest political innovation. On April 8, 1913, he appeared before Congress to present a message on his proposed tariff reform legislation. No president had spoken before Congress since John Adams last addressed that body. Wilson knew that banner headlines would follow his tradition-breaking address and that it would be a magnet attracting news reports and editorials across the land. On the previous day, he had notified the press of his intention to address Congress in person, so a battery of reporters and newsreel photographers were positioned to capture his arrival and departure from the Capitol. The address provided a major initial publicity boost for the legislation, but opponents in the press called it a Throne Speech, claiming it resembled a British monarch speaking to Parliament. They said it was a blatant effort to capture headlines—which it was. Wilson’s friend, the Alabama newspaper publisher Frank P. Glass, applauded the president’s action, saying that he understood the expediency of bold action.⁶² The speech was the first of his many subsequent addresses before Congress. Wilson was one of the finest public speakers of his generation, and his oratorical ability, which editors often compared to Lincoln’s, was one of his great political assets. In the public debate over his policies, his talent on the speakers’ platform gave him a valuable advantage in reaching the press and the public. Having covered both Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, Arthur Krock once compared the oratory of the two presidents. He described Roosevelt’s with his cultivated accents as persuasive and literate. Wilson’s, he said, was literature itself, and his delivery was Periclean.⁶³ It is hardly surprising, therefore, that in