Coolidge (69 page)

That spring of April 1928, Coolidge vetoed a number of bills: a costly new national defense act, two acts giving Indian tribes standing to sue in the Court of Claims, a law to build rural post roads, and a law to provide for the coordination of public health activities by the federal government. He also vetoed a bill extending new payments to veterans from the World War, though it seemed clear that the veto would be overridden. But some detected a weakening in Coolidge, and guessed he was giving up. The president signed a tax bill that cut rates where he would not have cut them first, on new cars. “I think it is a mistake from my point of view to repeal the automobile taxes,” he told his press men. Federal subsidy of highways was “a new proposition,” he grimly noted, But if the federal government was going to subsidize, then no tax was better suited to funding highways than this automobile tax. In another moment of apparent resignation, Coolidge signed flood legislation that represented one of the largest single outlays the federal government had made since the war. Gone was the principle of states paying their share that he had endorsed so often; the burden of this law fell upon Washington. The lawmakers had passed a bill subsidizing fisheries and civil service jobs for veterans, and, most symbolically, an expensive government plan to keep Muscle Shoals in federal hands. Coolidge appeared indifferent. “I haven’t seen the Muscle Shoals bill and know but very little about it,” he told the press group.

Once the recess came, however, the tiger pounced. He used the lethal pocket veto for Muscle Shoals, the fisheries, and civil service jobs for vets. Suddenly, instead of writing stories about Grace or Hoover,
The New York Times
committed space to trying to explain the obscurity of the pocket veto to readers: Coolidge “disapproves it by inaction” was how the paper finally captured it.

In the same period, Kellogg was hunting down further signatories, one by one. His bounty was already impressive: that spring, Italy, Japan, Germany, and Great Britain not only had indicated that they would sign but also were already reviewing drafts of the treaty. The text was a partial playback of Briand’s own writing and, now giving in, Briand was flattered. On May 7, a day the Coolidge administration had wrestled with lawmakers over the flood funding, a remarkable event had taken place at Heidelberg University. Gustav Stresemann, the German foreign minister, and Jacob Schurman, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, had gone to the historic university to accept honorary degrees. Schurman, Kellogg’s deputy, flattered Germany by elevating it in a speech above France: Germany and the United States, he told the students, were together “marching forward in a great and noble adventure in the cause of humane civilization.” The students pounded the floor with their feet to express their approval. Again the French government protested, though this time the form the protest took was more pout than rant. “The picture drawn by Mr. Schurman of Germany with America leading France and the other nations on the road to peace hurts the French intensely,” explained
The New York Times
.

The media interest yielded precisely what the State Department sought: Germany’s eagerness made the other parties eager to sign Kellogg’s treaty sooner. “Germany Accepts Our Anti-war Plan Would Sign at Once,” read a headline two weeks later; “Turkey Sees Need for Balkan Peace”; “India Is Ready.” All the peace activists in the United States were beginning to realize they might get a real treaty after all. Nicholas Murray Butler thought the idea had come from him: he recalled advising Briand to read Carl von Clausewitz, the Prussian military strategist. Clausewitz had written of war as an instrument of policy. The treaty renounced war as an instrument. Butler felt certain that Briand had taken Butler’s advice and based his formulation on the recommended book. The treaty was not yet a success, but it already had many fathers.

“My inside information,” Salmon Levinson, the old advocate of outlawry, wrote to an ally, “is that everybody, from the president on, is 18k fine on Outlawry. Oh, the miracle of it!” On Memorial Day, with Congress safely out of session, Coolidge finally made the great public pro-treaty declaration Kellogg would need to collect signatures. He chose to do so at Gettysburg, Lincoln’s great battlefield. The treaty was so new, Coolidge told the crowd, but had already had an effect. During the eleven months since Briand had made his statement calling for a treaty to end the use of war as a policy, “this suggestion has been developed into one of the most impressive peace movements the world has ever seen.” A nation could prevent bloody battles like Gettysburg; but to do so the country must “bend our every effort to prevent any recurrence of war.”

Coolidge’s main sentiment as summer approached was relief. He had made it through his last great legislative session after all; all he need do now was finish decently. At the semiannual meeting with Lord, Coolidge was able to state the case for the treaty indirectly, by pointing to the solidifying achievement that each additional month or year of peace represented. In July 1921, there had been 5.7 million Americans out of work; now that figure was 1.8 million. Manufacturing output was up by a third since that time. Iron and steel production had doubled. They might not complete many more tax cuts, but the revenue acts of 1921, 1924, 1926, and 1928 represented a strong record. The national debt of $28 billion, nearly all war costs, was finally down to $17.65 billion. As Coolidge would say of the debt, “It is one-third paid.” For the first time since the Black Hills, there was even some contentment at home. Grace’s illness had sobered Coolidge, and he now objected less when Grace traveled. She in turn was softening. Coolidge liked the way the household was running, right down to the housekeeping. The December splurge on diplomats notwithstanding, Miss Riley’s books now showed that she had managed well that year. In 1926, the feeding of the White House had cost $11,667.10, versus $9,116.39 for 1927, a total saving of $2,550.71. “To Miss Riley,” wrote Coolidge in pencil, “Very fine improvement.”

The real trick now for Coolidge, the test of character, was to get through the election year without veering from his determined path of retirement and without losing his temper. Succeeding would not be easy, especially given the mounting evidence that Hoover, the activist, would subvert the Coolidge legacy. Even now there were Republicans eager to label Coolidge as a dark horse and announce his entry into the contest; Coolidge had to withstand the temptation that had lured Theodore Roosevelt to jump in at the last moment. To provide the president with distance, Starling had gone to extremes, establishing that year’s summer White House at a fishing retreat called Cedar Lodge on the Brule River in northern Wisconsin, by Lake Superior. The retreat was advertised as dry, cool, and mosquito-free. The Coolidges were to depart in mid-June, thereby missing the Republican National Convention.

That attempt to divert themselves failed when Grace fell ill again, delaying departure and leaving them both stranded in Washington during the first days of the convention. Hoover was nominated while the Coolidges were still on the train and still within reach of those who would seek to report the Coolidge reaction. There was disappointment even once the Coolidges arrived in Wisconsin: it rained hard when dry warmth was necessary for Mrs. Coolidge’s health. Even at the lodge, escaping Hoover’s emanations proved difficult: Cedar Lodge was a fly-fishing lodge, which meant that Coolidge had to fish Hoover’s way. There were other, smaller humiliations, too. Vermont’s Mountain Rule of a single term for governors was a precedent that had inspired Coolidge, just as George Washington’s decision not to run again had. The very summer before, Governor Weeks had made clear he would honor the Mountain Rule. But in the meantime, after Coolidge had decided to forgo his own chance, Governor Weeks had changed his mind: he was breaking the rule by running again. That July there was also troubling news from Mexico. The new president, General Álvaro Obregón, was assassinated. Mexico was still nowhere near normalcy and perhaps settling into dictatorship: as Morrow had feared, now President Calles might find a way to stay in office after all.

Grace began to recover after July 4, when the rain stopped. But Coolidge still found it difficult to contain his sour mood. The Hoovers traveled up to Brule River, but the president insisted on seeing only Hoover and Mrs. Hoover; all the others in the Hoover party had to stay on the mainland. Even Coolidge’s staff revolted; they were friendly with George Akerson, Hoover’s secretary. “Let’s bring him over anyhow,” said Starling. He would rather face Coolidge’s rage than tell Akerson he could not come. John was there, and Mrs. Coolidge, now improved, joined him in chatting with Lou Hoover. But Coolidge was still surly. The press asked Coolidge for a comment. Once again, Coolidge exploded. “Let him talk,” he said. “He is going to be president.”

That very day, Coolidge recovered his poise and even fished with Hoover. The press, interviewing him afterward, tried to goad him into commenting on who was the better fisherman. Coolidge, frank, said of Hoover, “He is a more expert fisherman than I am.” When the reporters asked if they could put that on the record, Coolidge said, “No.” Cedar Lodge was, after all, affording the Coolidges a chance to relax; Grace was definitively better, tan even. Coolidge improved in his fishing: he joked with the reporters a few weeks later, “I haven’t caught them all, but I have them pretty well intimidated.” Here at Cedar Lodge, he was able to reflect on his work. Reporters in the pool asked what he made of the new tax legislation, which emphasized business tax cuts, and whether it, like the preceding Coolidge cuts, would draw extra revenue. “Well, no,” Coolidge said. Corporation income would be the same, he thought. But there was a way to get more revenue. “There is another tax reduction that usually brings up the revenue, and that is one in relation to capital increases. That is, persons buy land or they buy securities and hold them. When the tax is very high they don’t sell on account of feeling that if they sell they have got to give so much to the Government that they had better hold it,” he added. Dilating on his beloved topic, the president went on, “And when taxes were reduced on that item of income it resulted in a considerable increase.”

By now, however, it was increases in the treaty’s signators, not tax revenue increases, that were taking Coolidge’s attention. The pact was set for signature by the Great Powers in Paris. In mid-August, a crowd of 15,000 attendees of an American Legion conference greeted Coolidge at Marathon Park in Wausau, Wisconsin. The great memory in everyone’s mind was the speed with which the war had begun; how a chain of treaties had yanked so many nations into a world war. It made sense therefore now to lay out a network for peace that worked the other way, as a check that pulled countries back when a conflict flared. Concluded the president, “Had an agreement of this kind been in existence in 1914, there is every reason to suppose that it would have saved the situation.” The crowd roared its praise with shouts of “Atta boy, Cal!”

In that period Kellogg and Coolidge worked intensely, just as Mellon and Coolidge had once done. Kellogg traveled throughout Europe, laying the ground for treaty signature in Paris in August. Of course all the parties sought more changes now: a German diplomat confided in the U.S. chargé d’affaires that the German Foreign Office had emendations to offer but could not be seen to hold up the process, as the German public, which was pro-treaty, would be offended.

As the treaty came close to reality, the ghost of Henry Cabot Lodge returned via his grandson, the same one who had joined the Coolidges at their lunch for the Lindberghs. Lodge penned a hostile editorial on Kellogg-Briand for the
New York Herald Tribune
. He remarked, “The conception of renouncing war by government fiat is inherently absurd.” Some of Kellogg’s own colleagues were now the ones with the cold feet. Sounding like Briand now, Castle, the assistant secretary, was furiously anxious, writing in his diary, “They think they are remaking the world and actually it is nothing but a beautiful gesture while the Jugoslavs tear down the Italian consular flags and the Chinese fight.” From Wisconsin, Coolidge monitored the project closely, concerned that his partner, Kellogg, would concede too much to the French or British. The British, for example, were seeking unrelated naval concessions and trying to hold the treaty hostage. Perhaps Paris would prove too seductive to Kellogg. “I have your wire relative to the British naval proposals,” Coolidge wrote to Kellogg on August 3. “What I desire relative to have done in relation to these at present is nothing at all.” Then Coolidge went on, “I do not especially like the meeting that is to be held in Paris. While it is ostensibly to sign the treaty, I cannot help wonder whether it will be for some other purpose not yet disclosed.” Address nothing but the treaty, Coolidge warned. “I am very sorry that I agreed to go to Paris to sign the treaty,” Kellogg, now back in the calmer United States, wired back. Last-minute complaints flew thick and fast to the State Department.

Yet on August 27, in the clock room at the Quai d’Orsay, the signing went off just as planned. Six foreign ministers—Mackenzie King of Canada, Gustav Stresemann of Germany, Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia, August Zaleski of Poland, Paul Hymans of Belgium, and Lord Cushendun of Great Britain—took turns using a golden pen brought by the French for the occasion. Observing it all was a crowd of proud Americans, including Dr. Hugh Young, the Johns Hopkins doctor who had treated Grace. Also present were leaders from other nations who would shortly sign the treaty as well; Italy, Japan, New Zealand. Even at that glorious moment, Kellogg proved himself a model of modesty. Briand, predictably, gave a formal sonorous speech about the treaty’s “moral force,” and claimed credit for its creation. When Briand finished, quiet cries for
l’Américain
ran through the crowd, which expected Kellogg to take his turn. But instead Briand moved forward, reading the treaty, and the diplomats went forward to sign, having some difficulty, especially Kellogg, with the heavy pen the French had provided. Once again, Kellogg had smoothed over a moment by subordinating his own interests. From America, Coolidge wired a congratulatory note to the French president, underscoring that the treaty “had its inception in the proposal submitted last year by the government of France.” Almost instantly, additional nations signaled they would join the original group: Portugal, Romania, Austria, Brazil, and, gratifyingly, Cuba. The first part of Coolidge’s commitment at Havana was complete.