Ray Stannard Baker would always remember the trip back to France that March, perhaps because of what occurred when he and the Wilsons returned to Paris. If indeed he could have foreseen the events soon to unfold for the president and himself, he would have cherished the serenity of the voyage all the more.
In his journal Baker described the trip as “quiet and simple with a small group and a friendly one. Coming out of strenuous days, controversies and great meetings, the President rested…. I wish many Americans who thought [Wilson] a cold, unamiable man, could have seen him.”
On most days Wilson avoided discussions about the peace conference and told stories or talked about history, especially about the French and Lafayette. Wilson described what he considered the peculiarities of the French—on his mind for obvious reasons—and he talked about golf. Baker would remember luncheons beginning with the president’s quiet grace in low tones and then “the meal itself passing off with the friendly give-and-take of any American family meal.” He would also remember the president laughing more than usual. The Wilsons took frequent walks on the deck, attended the performances of the ship’s orchestra, played shuffleboard once, and did a lot of reading. Mrs. Wilson and Dr. Grayson took turns reading books out loud to the president, such as A. G. Gardiner’s sketches of public men entitled Prophets, Priests and Kings and Gardiner’s War Lords.
In fact, one of Baker’s most vivid memories of the trip was the day he walked down the stairs near the Wilsons’ cabin and heard the physician reading to the president from a book that was very familiar to Baker. It was written by David Grayson—no relation to the doctor—an author who, since 1906, had written several very popular books: Adventures in Contentment, Adventures in Friendship, The Friendly Road, Hempfield, and most recently, in 1917, Great Possessions.
The books were first-person observations of life in the country written with such an earth-loving, humane spirit and with such depth that they touched Americans deeply and widely. To his readers, Grayson seemed one part Thoreau and one part Mark Twain as he told of wayside adventures with strangers he helped and from whom he gleaned life lessons. The stories were not about escaping from the world by living in the country, not about isolation and narrowness, but rather about expanding an understanding of life by watching nature, listening to country sounds, smelling the changing seasons, digging fingers into the soil and feeling the texture of the earth. Grayson’s books were about sincerity, authenticity, and diligence. They were idealistic narratives about looking at the world through a lens of hope and benevolence and always traveling on a “friendly road.”
“What I am seeking is something as simple and as quiet as the trees on the hills,” Grayson wrote in Adventures in Friendship, “just to look out around me at the pleasant countryside, to enjoy a little of this passing show, to meet (and to help a little if I may) a few human beings, and thus to get more nearly into the sweet kernel of human life. My friend, you may or may not think this is a worthy object; if you do not, stop here, go no further with me; but if you do, why, we’ll exchange great words on the road; we’ll look up at the sky together; we’ll see and hear the finest things in this world! We’ll enjoy the sun.”
By the time Baker heard the words of Grayson on the deck of the Washington, the author had become so popular that there were even Grayson clubs. Graysonians, as one Florida club called them, were people who were “fond of the open air,” lived fully in the present, found fulfillment in observing the details of nature, and were willing to retrace their steps to help a stranger. There were also Grayson impostors, largely because the author led a rather mysterious life, not allowing photos or interviews. Who was David Grayson? A lawyer in Atlanta who happened to have the same name did not deny the claim to the famous books, when asked. Another man in the Midwest said he was the acclaimed author and lectured under the name. Yet another who was later exposed as a bigamist in Utah lived his double life as David Grayson and decided he might as well also claim to be the author.
From the moment Baker heard the admiral read, he recognized the author, the particular work, and perhaps even the chapter. To be sure, Baker was more knowledgeable about the works of Grayson than anyone else in the world. After all, Ray Stannard Baker was David Grayson.
At that time, Baker wasn’t certain whether Wilson knew that he was Grayson, though recently he had been open about it to the press, if asked. Uncertain that his Grayson books would be a success and perhaps wanting the freedom of anonymity, Baker long ago had chosen to use the pen name for his country sketches. For years, many readers had assumed that John S. Phillips, Baker’s former editor at McClure’s magazine—where he had worked with Tarbell and Steffens—was the real David Grayson. Even their colleagues and friends had believed that, a situation causing awkward moments when both men were present at dinners and other social occasions. At the mention of a Grayson book or phrase, guests would hold back their smiles and send an all-knowing look to Phillips, while Baker or Phillips quickly changed the subject. And for years the only two people, outside of Baker’s immediate family, who knew the author’s true identity were Phillips and Walter Page at the great New York publishing house Doubleday, Page & Co. Eventually the increasing numbers of impostors and one very perceptive fan forced Baker to surface. The fan, David Gray, wrote him a letter and asked if Baker would be offended if Gray were to write under the pen name Ray Bakerson.
Baker had created the virtuous, noble Graysonian world as a counterpoint to the ignoble parts of society and human beings he had been exposing for years as a muckraking journalist. Born in Lansing, Michigan, in 1870 and a graduate of Michigan State College, Baker had championed the cause of the disenfranchised and the underdog from his earliest days as a cub reporter in Chicago writing for the Chicago News-Record, to his years with McClure’s magazine in the late 1890s, and later at the American Magazine. In his articles Baker examined every aspect of urban life, covering labor issues, such as the famous Pullman strike in Chicago and the 1893 Washington march of jobless men known as Coxey’s Army, and writing about race long before most white journalists were even thinking about it. For his 1908 book Following the Color Line, he spent months interviewing blacks and whites in urban and rural communities throughout America. In 1916, in a piece for the World’s Work magazine entitled “Gathering Clouds Along the Color Line,” he presciently damned the race situation in America saying it was “full of danger” and he identified what he believed was its most menacing aspect: “the contemptuous indifference of a large part of white America to what is going on in the depths of the volcano just below.”
Devotion to his journalistic work often plunged Baker into dark, hopeless situations. Longing for a lighter side, he invented David Grayson. In the name of Grayson, Baker decided to uncover the nobility of humans, to show them in virtuous circumstances, and, using a rural setting, to exhibit a genuine, simple side of life.
Grayson was a nineteenth-century idealist in the way that Wilson was. Perhaps it was Baker’s ideals as expressed in the character of Grayson that caused him to bond so strongly with Wilson, believing in him at times when others didn’t. Both Baker, through the character of Grayson, and Wilson seemed to be asking the same question: what does it mean to be fully human? But there was one major difference between Baker and Wilson. Baker used Grayson to move beyond the disturbing settings and issues about which he had been writing for years, to travel out of darkness into a heavenly world of high ideals and hopeful visions. Wilson’s journey was just the opposite. In December he had traveled to Paris under a halo of noble visions and then descended into the hellish struggle with the ignoble Realpolitik of the old world order—the self-serving politics that had caused the war to begin with. And now he was returning to Paris, to the struggle, to the abyss. That the president was connecting to Grayson now on the voyage back to France intrigued Baker. It was like sitting on a sunny beach in the moments before the crushing descent of a tidal wave.
Indeed, Baker sensed the troubles ahead. In Baker’s opinion, the president had two problems in Paris: the inextricable clash between his principles and the self-interests of the other nations at the peace conference and his unwillingness to communicate to the public exactly what he was doing to create a permanent peace. With charisma and eloquence, Wilson had expressed his ideas and made his promises, inviting the public into his world of hope and peace. But as he toiled day and night at Paris to square his actions with his words, he did not share with the public his challenges, his decisions, or his step-by-step successes. As Baker once said, Wilson’s speeches were filled with the words “I think,” “I believe,” and “I hope,” but were missing the words “I did,” “I went,” and “I fought.” Baker believed that without this sort of communication Wilson would be misunderstood.
Yes, Wilson was idolized worldwide and yes, the American public thus far had responded favorably to the concept of the League and to Wilson’s recent speeches about the Covenant. But the movement to defeat him and the League was growing, both in Paris and in Washington. To crush it, Wilson must let the public see more of his world. If the people better understood the process of peacemaking, they might be less vulnerable to Wilson’s critics. Intelligent and determined publicity was the solution, in the view of Baker, who believed that “publicity is the life blood of democracy.”
Wilson’s job in Paris was overwhelming. Yet how many people really understood what he was doing on a daily basis? Wilson carried the same burdens as Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando in negotiating the terms of the treaty with Germany. In addition, he was shepherding his cherished League by chairing the League of Nations Commission, which met in the evening for many hours, often beyond midnight. He was also meeting with journalists, businessmen, labor representatives, and representatives of hundreds of nations seeking freedom, food, or simply to be heard. Ho Chi Minh would come to Paris to ask for the freedom of French Indochina. Mohandas Gandhi came to urge Wilson and the commissioners to relieve India from British rule. And T. E. Lawrence, the British soldier who had led the Arabs in revolt against the Turks and who, now known as “Lawrence of Arabia,” was a British delegate at the peace conference, sought nationhood for the Arabs, who had believed that in return for fighting on the side of the British they would be granted independence.
Baker would remember one delegation in particular: two Polish peasants wearing black fur Cossack caps and red-embroidered homespun wool shirts accompanied by a Polish priest who, speaking French, served as their interpreter. They came from a small community of Poles in the mountains of northern Austria and had been told that in the treaty they were supposed to now be part of the new nation of Czecho-Slovaks. Someone in their mountain village had told them that the American president was in Paris and that he believed that people should have a right to choose their own form of government. Because they were Poles they did not want to be in the new nation. And so one of them decided he would represent his people and walk from Austria to Paris to confront the president. But on the way he got lost and eventually met up with the other man, a Polish sheepherder who also wanted “to be free” and so, knowing how to navigate with the stars, the shepherd guided them both a hundred or more miles into Warsaw. A patriotic Polish society heard of their story and helped them the rest of the way to Paris, where they were told they must go to the Hôtel de Crillon. There they were directed to the president’s house across the street. Watching them walk up the carpeted stairs to the president’s study and smelling their thick wool garments, Baker would never forget their determination and courage as Wilson assured them he would do what he could. “Everyone who came to Paris upon any mission whatsoever aimed first of all at seeing the President,” Baker later wrote.
On the voyage back to France, Baker tried to talk to Wilson about the issue of publicity, pressing upon him the need “for more and better.” But Wilson seemed to fear it. From Baker’s point of view, it wasn’t that Wilson was afraid of revealing the truth about what was happening in Paris, but rather he was worried about the facts being twisted to the advantage of his enemies. “As a highly cultivated scholar,” wrote Baker, “he disliked exaggeration and distrusted sensationalism.” Wilson believed that the less said, the better. Report the results, not the process. Let the events of the day go out in the smallest possible capsule.
For Baker, this was unfortunate and frustrating. Baker’s job, after all, as head of Wilson’s press bureau, meant that he had to communicate the activities of Wilson and the American Peace Commission to about 150 American correspondents every day. He knew what Wilson was facing on a daily basis, the sometimes small yet significant accomplishments, but without the president’s willingness to share all, he could not build an adequate bridge between Wilson’s world and the public. Considering the Republican majority opposing the League in the Senate, Wilson’s only hope was to force the majority to back down by persuading their constituents to speak out strongly in favor of the League. However, public opinion was, as Baker and Wilson well knew, more focused on domestic issues. This was Baker’s challenge as Wilson’s publicity man, made more difficult by Wilson’s failure to give full disclosure of the process of making the peace.
Adding to the challenge was the fact that foreign affairs had never been the most popular subject for Americans. And, unlike Europeans, who had always been well versed in international issues, Americans had no tradition of European involvement and no incentive to be informed about events in Europe—with the exception, of course, of the war. At the same time, there was the obstacle of the technology. News traveled from Paris to America through a few overcrowded cables or on an overloaded wireless system with enormous tolls. Each day of the peace conference hundreds of committees met, representatives from scores of nations discussed their affairs, and Wilson often worked a sixteen-hour day. To cull the most important details out of all that happened on any given day, to shape them in such a way as to reveal Wilson’s step-by-step progress at the conference, was Baker’s urgent wish. The more Wilson balked, the more Baker pushed. “When people complain vaguely that they have not been given the ‘facts,’ it is this that they mean,” Baker later wrote. “They want to see and feel exactly what happened.”
The only stressful moments during the voyage back to France were these discussions between Wilson and Baker. Wilson was outraged at what he perceived as the French government’s control of the press. It was a veritable propaganda machine designed to undermine Wilson’s attempts to force Clemenceau to adhere to a less imperialist approach to international affairs. In fact, a French editor had leaked a memo to Wilson proving that Clemenceau was manipulating his nation’s presses. The memo instructed certain newspapers to write about the growing opposition to Wilson in America, to emphasize the disorder and anarchy in Russia and the need for more Allied intervention in that country, and to write articles about Germany’s ability to pay a large indemnity—all representing Clemenceau’s positions.
Baker urged Wilson to combat such a propaganda campaign. He was certain that his president was not aware of the strength of the forces against him. And Baker’s journalist friends in Paris, including William Allen White, Ida Tarbell, and Walter Lippmann, shared such concerns. They agreed that Wilson’s principles, despite the passion and determination behind them, could not alone topple the habits of centuries. Men like Clemenceau were not going to surrender a tradition of armed alliances to an untested system of international cooperation.
Wilson was a distant, very private man who, as Baker noted in his journal, “lived the lonely life of the mind.” He was not easy to reach, but on the March voyage back to France Baker felt closer than ever to him. Baker believed in Wilson and never doubted his sincerity. He admired the president’s courage to unveil his dreams before the entire world. But he questioned whether a world clamoring to return to life as it was before the war was ready for such a daring experiment. The approval of the League Covenant in February was a positive step, indeed an achievement, but Baker was not confident that the path ahead was clear.
In his journal, he wrote:
I have often, at Paris, and here on this voyage where I have had moments to think, the terrible doubt as to whether the actual work of the Conference thus far is in any degree fulfilling the promise of Wilson’s words. Wilson has phrased the hope of the world—the people come to power; he has spoken the great true word, but has he the genius to work it out? Has he the power? Above all, is the time ripe?
How make peace when there is so little to make it of—so little of human understanding, human sympathy, above all so little willingness to sacrifice immediate advantage for the future well-being of civilization? How make any real peace in such an atmosphere of suspicion, fear, greed, hatred, as that which now pervades Paris?
March 13 was the last night of a trip that had clearly invigorated everyone on board, as fresh air and light talk supplanted the stale and heavy struggles on both sides of the Atlantic. After a calm, leisurely dinner, just as the passengers were returning to their cabins, the crew gathered and sang “God Be with You Till We Meet Again.” Then everyone, including Wilson, sang “Auld Lang Syne.” “I wondered among what other people in the world there could develop just such relationships and such a spirit!” Baker wrote that night.
Wilson’s ship docked at Brest at 8:30 A.M. It was met by local celebrities, who cheered and greeted the president and his party, all of whom were rushed off to a special train bound for Paris. The news from Paris was shocking, all the more so after the calm cruise across the Atlantic—a veritable tempest of bad news. During the president’s absence, from February 14 to March 14, his opponents had gained considerable ground. Flinging rumors like thunderbolts, some newspapers were reporting that the League was dead and that a peace with Germany would be made very soon—one that would contain no reference to a League of Nations.
On his secret American telephone circuit, Wilson immediately called Baker. The reports must be denied, he told him, and Baker must publicly reconfirm that the League will be “an integral part of the general treaty of peace.” Baker knew that the reassertion of the president’s unalterable stand could create a standoff of such magnitude that the entire conference might fall apart. But he also knew it was necessary. It was one of Wilson’s boldest moves. Instead of succumbing to the rumors and the news, Wilson firmly reasserted his stand, reannounced the previous action of the conference that had declared the League to be part of the treaty, and proceeded as if nothing adverse had happened at all. While the controversies raged in the columns of French newspapers, the delegates resumed work toward the various settlements that would comprise the treaty. Two days later, the committees were conferring and the heads of state were meeting. Even the newspapers were toning down the storm of sensational coverage. But, as Baker wrote in his journal early one March morning, “It was clear there was still lightning in the clouds.”