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to the others.
    “Gentlemen, this man is dead.”
    * * *
    Robert Lansing thought that the only thing worse than finding that Woodrow Wilson was a corpse was the fact that Thomas R. Marshall was next in line to be the President of the United States, and would be so for the next five critical months. Marshall was perhaps the most incompetent vice president in the history of the United States, which, he thought ruefully, was saying a lot. He’d been despised by Wilson, who totally ignored him for two terms. Marshall was shy and insecure, and the only quote ever attributed to him was his deathless comment that “what this country needs is a good five-cent cigar.”
    What the country really needed, Lansing thought bitterly, was a vice president qualified to fill the shoes of the president in the case of disaster. And now disaster was looming. No, he thought sadly, it was present.
    General March and Lieutenant Martel departed, leaving Lansing alone. General March had been dropped off at the War Department and Martel was on his way to a local airstrip. Lansing had his driver take him to the residence of the vice president.
    A moment later, the chief justice arrived and they exchanged grim nods. Lord, thought Lansing as he went up the walk to Marshall’s house, what a strange world we live in.
    To Lansing’s surprise, Vice President Marshall answered it himself and invited them in. Except for the driver who waited patiently in the car, Lansing and Justice White were alone.
    Vice President Marshall looked at the two men in puzzlement as they entered his office. “To what do I owe the honor?”
    “Wilson is dead,” Lansing snapped. “You are now the President of the United States.”
    Marshall staggered back as if struck. “No, no. It can’t be.”
    Let’s get this over with quickly, Lansing thought. The delivery of the message had been intentionally cruel and blunt. Marshall might be a political clown and buffoon but he had a role to play and what was now a farce could not degenerate into tragedy.
    “Which can’t be, Wilson’s death or your being president?” Lansing asked. “The chief justice is here to administer the oath so you can begin immediately administering the affairs of state and leading the nation through the coming war with Germany.”
    Marshall looked wild-eyed with shock and looked like he was about to cry. “War? What in God’s name are you talking about? I know absolutely nothing about war or any crisis and don’t want to. And I most certainly don’t want to be president.”
    “You’re the next in line,” Justice White said sternly, as if talking to a schoolchild. “If you don’t want to be president, you must formally step aside.”
    Marshall took a deep breath, gathered himself, and sat down. “Gentlemen, you have surprised me. No, you have stunned me. I may not be the smartest man in the world, but I do consider myself a fairly honest one and a keen judge of my own character. I know myself and I know that I am utterly unqualified to become president of this wonderful country. If the crisis you speak of is so dire, then I should not even be an interim president until the inauguration next March. At that point you will become president, won’t you, Mr. Lansing?”
    Douglas answered. “He will. With the elected president dead, the vice president elect will become the president and will be sworn in for a four-year term, but not until March. Whoever he appoints as secretary of state will be the next in succession as there is no constitutional provision to appoint or elect a new vice president. Marshall, your term of office will be extremely brief, only five months. Then you can retire with honor back to Indiana.”
    Marshall shook his head. “If the country still exists, that is. Why are the Germans going to go to war with us ?”
    Lansing sighed. As secretary of state he had researched the contradictory and sometimes bizarre behavior of the Kaiser. Experts said that the Kaiser had been born