Free Hollywood by Gore Vidal Page A

round clock gave the time, eight-forty.
    “He’s late,” said Frederika.
    “Did you hear how, just now,” Ned was leaning over the railing, “someone took a poke at Cabot Lodge? Look at that eye! All swollen up.”
    “Who did it?” Frederika was deeply interested in the more primitive forms of warfare.
    “A pacifist,” said Ned.
    “What fun!” Evalyn removed a pair of diamond-studded opera glasses from her handbag, and trained them on Lodge. “Must’ve been a real haymaker.…”
    The Speaker got to his feet, eyes on the door opposite his dais. “The President,” said the Speaker; then he added, as the chamber became silent, “of the United States.” The Supreme Court rose to their feet first, followed by everyone else on the floor and in the galleries. Then Woodrow Wilson, holding himself very straight, even rigid, entered the chamber. For a moment, he paused. In the stillness, rain tapping on the skylight was the only sound. Then, like thunder, the applause broke out. Quickly, Wilson walked down the aisle to the well of the House, not acknowledging any of the hands outstretched to him. He stepped up on the dais; turned and nodded to the Vice President and Speaker. Then they sat down, and the process of history began.
    Wilson held his cards above the lectern; and spoke as if to them. But the voice was firm and the cadence, as always, uncommonly beautiful. Blaise found the voice neither American nor British, the first all nasality and the second all splutter. Wilson’s voice was a happy balance between the two.
    “Gentlemen of the Congress.” A quick polite look up from the cards; then he addressed his text most intimately. “I have called the Congress into extraordinary session because there are serious, very serious choices of policy to be made, and made immediately.…” Wilson outlined briefly the problem. But as Wilson was a teacher of history as well as now a maker of it, he was obliged, in the great tradition of those who must engage in war, to address a Higher Principle than mere chagrin or hurt feelings or assaults on American persons and property. “The German submarine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind.” Blaise suddenly felt weak: Americans would be fighting, really fighting in France, the country where he had been born and brought up. He was forty-two; he must now go to war, for two countries.
    Everything seemed unreal, the dusky ill-lit chamber, the April rain on glass, the straining faces not to mention ears, many of them cupped as half-deaf statesmen tried to amplify for themselves the voice of the nation that hadbroken its long silence—last heard, when? Gettysburg? “Last best hope of earth”? Government of, by, and for the people. All these ultimate, perfect, unique concepts to describe mere politics. Nations were worldless embodiments; hence, the extraordinary opportunity for the eloquent man on the right rainy April evening to articulate the collective yet inchoate ambition of the tribe. Since such an opportunity might never come again, Blaise knew what was coming next; and it came.
    “The challenge is to all mankind. Each nation must decide for itself how it will meet it.” What then, Blaise wondered, almost laughing, would Paraguay do? or the Gold Coast? or Siam? Firmly, Wilson drove the first nail into Peace’s pretty coffin: “… armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable.” More nails. “There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission.…” There was a deep exhalation throughout the chamber, and then what sounded like a gun-shot. Bemused, the President looked up as the Chief Justice, a huge aged Southerner, held high above him his hands, which now he clapped, like a battle signal, and the troops, if that is what we are, thought Blaise, himself included, shouted in unison. Ned McLean gave a rebel yell; and took another drink from his flask. Evalyn’s eyes were bright as diamonds.