Wilson's Visit to Rome

Woodrow Wilson’s January 1919 visit to Rome is presented through the contrast between public ceremony and Richard Ellsworth Savage’s increasingly troubled interpretation of the President. Official receptions, speeches, and the Roman Forum give Wilson’s visit the shape of a diplomatic pageant; Richard’s account to Anne Elizabeth makes its symbols less reassuring. The ancient ruins, Wilson’s invocation of humanity, and the President’s solemn appearance lead Richard to see modern America as inheriting Rome’s imperial power rather than escaping it.

Waiting for the President

Richard had several days to wait in Rome before Wilson’s scheduled arrival on January 3. During that interval, the city was already preparing for the visit: bands practiced the national anthem, flags and stands went up, and Richard watched the preparations while couriers were held at the President’s disposal. The anticipation was both practical and ceremonial. Richard had official responsibilities, but the preparations also made the coming visit a public spectacle before Wilson appeared.

The three days of the visit were filled with official functions. Richard received cards to various receptions, listened to speeches in Italian, French, and English, saw silk hats and decorations, and repeatedly stood at attention until his back hurt. These details establish the visit not as a single address but as a succession of formal observances, where posture, credentials, and display governed the participants’ movements. The stiff military bearing of the ceremonies becomes part of Richard’s experience of political power: it is something enacted through bodies as well as expressed in speeches.

Wilson at the Roman Forum

At the Roman Forum, Richard stood close enough to the President’s party to hear an Italian guide point out the ruins of the Temple of Romulus and connect the ancient site to the events of the recent war. The dignitaries around him fell quiet, straining to hear Wilson’s response. Wilson answered that the ruins should not be regarded as mere stones, but as enduring symbols. The remark drew a subdued murmur of appreciation from the group.

The Italian then turned the comparison toward the United States, suggesting that America possessed something greater than the visible remains of Rome: something carried in the hearts of its people. Wilson replied that Americans could take pride in having demonstrated a profound love of humanity. The exchange fused the visit’s principal public themes—ancient civic greatness, American identity, and wartime moral purpose—into a carefully staged encounter among ruins and officials. The Forum served as more than a backdrop: its monumental remains lent historical weight to claims about what nations represented and what their power meant.

Richard’s description does not leave Wilson’s speech as the final measure of the scene. Looking past the feathered helmets of Italian generals, he saw the President’s long, grey, stone-like face beneath the silk hat and found the smile around his mouth strangely artificial. The contrast between Wilson’s language of humanity and Richard’s impression of his impassive appearance unsettles the ceremony’s reassuring surface. The President’s words offer an ideal; Richard’s gaze registers distance between that ideal and the visible authority of the statesman who voices it.

The private aftermath

That evening Richard met Anne Elizabeth at an apartment and recounted what he had seen at the official receptions. He remembered the gold replica of the wolf suckling Romulus and Remus on the Capitoline Hill, presented when Wilson had been made a Roman citizen, as well as the President’s face at the Forum. His description of Wilson as having a frightening, reptilian cast culminated in a broader claim: Americans, he said, were the Romans of the twentieth century, though he had wanted to be Greek. The comparison recasts American pride as a warning. Instead of treating Rome as a distant civilization whose ruins merely illustrate the past, Richard sees it as a possible likeness for his own country.

Anne Elizabeth, a great admirer of Wilson, was initially annoyed by Richard’s attack. He was nervous and excited, and continued speaking; in the chilly room she broke her pledge and drank hot rum with him. From Ed’s window they could see crowds continually passing and repassing near the Spanish Steps. Against that view, Richard spoke of people praying for Wilson and expecting him to deliver peace and restore the comfortable prewar world. He feared that those hopes concealed the suffering of people subjected to American power, and compared the situation to the sack of Corinth. His distress was not simply that the President had failed to impress him. It was that public hopes and polished speeches might obscure the consequences of political domination.

Anne Elizabeth answered by recognizing Richard as an artist and calling him her poet; he embraced her. That intimate exchange does not resolve the political argument, but it locates the argument within a moment of personal recognition. For Richard, the visit has turned the language of democracy and human feeling into a question about what powerful nations do to others. The Roman setting sharpens that question: Wilson’s ceremony presents America as morally exceptional, while Richard fears that the country is repeating the imperial history embodied in the Forum’s ruins.

Significance and limits

The episode places official idealism and private skepticism side by side without recording a policy decision or a concrete change in the course of the visit. Its significance lies in how the event is perceived and retold. Wilson’s formal statements connect American identity to humanity and to the symbolic legacy of Rome; Richard’s response turns the same setting into evidence of a troubling resemblance between modern power and ancient empire. The visit therefore functions as a political and personal turning point in Richard’s account of what he witnessed, not as a narrated resolution of the questions raised by the peace conference.