Act 4 — Scene V.
Reading edition
—The Presidential Room at the Capitol, Washington. Just before 12 noon on March 4th, 1921.
Woodrow Wilson, Marshall, the Vice-President, and Tumulty are waiting for the hour to strike that will make Warren Harding President of the United States of America, and Wilson a free citizen again.
Wilson: They have been great years to live in. I’ve tried to be worthy of them.
Tumulty: And succeeded, with Lincoln and George Washington, Governor.
Wilson (shyly): You put me in mighty good company. Anyone can be great in great times. The events we’ve been through called for something superhuman. I wish I could have given that.
Marshall: No man could have done more, Mr. President. Some day the world will see it.
Wilson: Marshall, I’m not ambitious for the world to see any such thing. I want my work to prosper. That is all.
Tumulty: It has made a beginning.
Wilson: A small beginning, a halting beginning, but a beginning, yes. Yet when I think of what the League could be doing to facilitate a general settling down to peace, if only America were behind it— And yet again, perhaps it is well. Maybe, if things had not so fallen out, the weaknesses of the thing we made would not have become manifest, until it was too late for improvement.
Marshall: You think it has weaknesses?
Wilson: The highest product of man’s mind, the law, is full of weaknesses, Marshall. How can this new conception have escaped them? But the idea will surely triumph. I have faith.
Tumulty: The new administration will kill it, if they can.
Wilson: I have faith.... It must be nearly time now.
A tall, spare man followed by his colleagues walks into the Chamber. This is Senator Lodge, the President’s life-long political foe.
Lodge (stiffly): Mr. President, we have come, as a Committee of the Senate, to notify you that the Senate and the House are about to adjourn, and await your pleasure.
Wilson (rising with majesty): Senator Lodge, I have no further communication to make. I thank you.... The few seconds now remaining no more than suffice me to lay down the authority derived from my office. (The clock strikes twelve.) Gentlemen, I wish you well, and farewell. Come, Tumulty.
He goes. Simultaneously a roar of applause without, proclaims the accession of President Harding.
The Scene closes.
[THE END.]
JEMIMA BLOGGS
(A Play of Life as it is, in the Manchester manner of Mr. St. John Ervine.)