Joseph P. Tumulty

“ We have begun a fight that, it may be, will take many a generation to complete, the fight against privilege; but you know that men are not put into this world to go the path of ease. They are put into this world to go the path of pain and struggle. No man would wish to sit idly by and lose the opportunity to take part in such a struggle. All through the centuries there has been this slow, painful struggle forward, forward, up, up, a little at a time, along the entire incline, the interminable way which leads to the perfection of force, to the real seat of justice and honour. ”

“ I wish that they could feel the moral obligation that rests upon us not to go back on those boys, but to see the thing through, to see it through to the end and make good their redemption of the world. For nothing less depends upon this decision, nothing less than the liberation and salvation of the world.
Now that the mists of this great question have cleared away, I believe that men will see the trust, eye to eye and face to face. There is one thing that the American people always rise to and extend their hand to, and that is the truth of justice and of liberty and of peace. ”

“ Time, the great solvent, will, I am sure, vindicate this policy of humanity and forbearance. Men forget what is back of this struggle in Mexico. It is the age-long struggle of a people to come into their own, and while we look upon the incidents in the foreground, let us not forget the tragic reality in the background which towers above this whole sad picture. The gentlemen who criticize me speak as if America were afraid to fight Mexico. Poor Mexico, with its pitiful men, women, and children, fighting to gain a foothold in their own land! ”

“ The future is not for parties 'playing politics' but for measures conceived in the largest spirit, pushed by parties whose leaders are statesmen, not demagogues, who love not their offices but their duty and their opportunity for service. We are witnessing a renaissance of public spirit, a reawakening of sober public opinion, a revival of the power of the people, the beginning of an age of thoughtful reconstruction that makes our thoughts hark back to the age in which democracy was set up in America. With the new age we shall show a new spirit. ”

“ For my own part I cannot consent to any abridgment of the rights of American citizens in any respect. The honour and self-respect of the nation is involved. We covet peace, and shall preserve it at any cost but the loss of honor. To forbid our people to exercise their rights for fear we might be called upon to vindicate them would be a deep humiliation, indeed. It would be an implicit, all but an explicit, acquiescence in the violation of the rights of mankind everywhere and of whatever nation or allegiance. ”

“ I never expected that we would win in the United States the first battle in the campaign for a league of nations to keep the peace of the world. Our people were too "set" by our past history and by the apparent voice of the Fathers in an opposite course, a course of isolation. This course was hitherto the best for accomplishing the very purpose we must now accomplish by a seemingly contrary course. We must now begin the war in earnest. We will win it. Never fear, the stars in their courses are fighting with us. The League is on its feet, learning to walk, Senate coteries willy-nilly. ”

“ Well, Tumulty, this trip will either be the greatest success or the supremest tragedy in all history; but I believe in a Divine Providence. If I did not have faith, I should go crazy. If I thought that the direction of the affairs of this disordered world depended upon our finite intelligence, I should not know how to reason my way to sanity; but it is my faith that no body of men however they concert their power or their influence can defeat this great world enterprise, which after all is the enterprise of Divine mercy, peace and good will. ”

“ To such a task we can 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.
I accompanied the President to Capitol Hill on the day of the delivery of his war message, and on that fateful day I rode with him from the Capitol back to the White House, the echo of applause still ringing in my ears. ”

“ All the great nations of Europe at war, engaged in a death grapple that may involve civilization. My earnest hope and fervent prayer has been that America could withhold herself and remain out of this terrible mess and steer clear of European embroilments, and at the right time offer herself as the only mediating influence to bring about peace. We are the only great nation now free to do this. If we should go in, then the whole civilized world will become involved. ”

“ I found in politics that the great policies of a nation are simply the policies and passions of the ward extended. In the little discussions that took place in that store, I was, even as a youth, looking on from the side-lines, struck by the fine, wholesome, generous spirit of my own father. Never would he permit, for instance, in the matter of the discussion of Ireland—so dear to his heart—a shade of resentment or bitterness toward England to influence his judgment in the least, for he believed that no man could be a just judge in any matter where his mind was filled with passion ”

“ I often think of the poor man when he goes to vote: a moral unit in his lonely dignity.
The deepest conviction and passion of my heart is that the common people, by which I mean all of us, are to be absolutely trusted. The peculiarity of some representatives, particularly those of the Republican party, is that when they talk about the people, they obviously do not include themselves. Now if, when you think of the people, you are not thinking about yourself, then you do not belong in America. ”

“ We seek no material advantage of any kind. We believe that the intolerable wrongs done in this war by the furious and brutal power of the Imperial German Government ought to be repaired, but not at the expense of the sovereignty of any people—rather a vindication of the sovereignty both of those that are weak and those that are strong. Punitive damages, the dismemberment of empires, the establishment of selfish and exclusive economic leagues, we deem inexpedient and in the end worse than futile, no proper basis for a peace of any kind, least of all for an enduring peace. ”

“ Contrary to this criticism, after an uninterrupted, continuous, and most intimate association with him for eleven years, an association which brought me into close contact with him in the most delicate crises through which his administration and the nation passed, a time which threw upon the Chief Executive of the nation a task unparalleled in the history of the world, I wish to say that there is no franker or more open-minded man, nor one less dogmatic in his opinion than Woodrow Wilson. In him the desire for information and guidance is a passion. ”

“ We are hunting hornets all over the farm and letting the nest alone. None of us know how to go to the nest and crush it; and yet I despair of hunting for hornets all over the sea when I know where the nest is and know that the nest is breeding hornets as fast as I can find them. I am willing for my part, and I know you are willing because I know the stuff you are made of—I am willing to sacrifice half the navy Great Britain and we together have to crush out that nest, because if we crush it the war is won. ”

“ The world must be convinced that we are playing no favourites and that America has her own plan for a world settlement, a plan which does not contain the germs of another war. What I greatly fear, now that the end seems inevitable, is that we shall go back to the old days of alliances and competing armaments and land grabbing. We must see to it, therefore, that there is not another Alsace-Lorraine, and that when peace finally comes, it shall be a permanent and a lasting peace. We must now serve notice on everybody that our aims and purposes are not selfish. ”

“ No man, no group of men, chose these to be the issues of the struggle. They are issues of it; and they must be settled—by no arrangement or compromise or adjustment of interests, but definitely and once for all and with a full and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest.
That is what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace, if we speak sincerely, intelligently, and with a real knowledge and comprehension of the matter we deal with. ”

“ In carrying on the war we will be obliged to do certain unusual things, things that will interfere with the lives and habits of our people, which will bring down upon us a storm of criticism and ridicule. Our life, therefore, until this thing is over, and God only knows when it will be over, will be full of tragedy and heartaches."
As he spoke, he was no longer Woodrow Wilson, the protagonist of peace, but Woodrow Wilson, the stern warrior, now grimly determined to pursue the great cause of America to the end. ”

“ I found in the simple life of the community where I was brought up the same human things, in a small way, that I was subsequently to come in contact with in a larger way in the whirligig of political life in the Capitol of the Nation. I found the same relative bigness and the same relative smallness, the same petty jealousies and rivalries which manifest themselves in the larger fields of a great nation's life; the same good nature, and the same deep humanity expressing itself in the same way, only differently apparelled. ”