WOODROW WILSON 
 
 AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 URICE LOW 
 

Photo by Clinedinst, from ( entral A ews Service, A". Y, 
 
 WOODROW WILSON 
 
WOODROW WILSON 
 
 AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 BY 
 
 A. MAURICE LOW, M.A. 
 
 \\ 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 THE AMERICAN PEOPLE : A STUDY IN 
 NATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 

 t 771 
 
 Copyright, 1918, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 rights reserved 
 
 NorfoooU 
 
 Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 Presswork by S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
So 
 K. G. 
 
 MY SEVEREST AND MOST LENIENT 
 CRITIC 
 
PREFACE 
 
 OF the dead it is easier to write than of the living. 
 Of the dead, it is true, we speak with charity, our 
 judgment is tempered even when it is critical, but the 
 historian is able to deal fairly and dispassionately with 
 the men who have passed ; with approximate accuracy 
 he can measure not only their intentions but appraise 
 their achievements ; the causes of failure are not diffi 
 cult to determine. Spread before him are motives, 
 policies, ambitions, the sum of all that make men great 
 or ignoble, and historical values are determined by 
 results. The perspective of history is the past. 
 
 The contemporary writer is denied these advantages. 
 He is too near the events of which he writes. Often 
 he is an actor, although his is a very minor role, in the 
 unfolding drama. He is the scene shifter to whom the 
 royal jewels are paste, but to the audience, looking at 
 the stage through the sorcery of softened lights and 
 the benevolence of distance, they are real. He is per 
 plexed in his attempt to render judgment, to reconcile 
 conflicting qualities, to be the impartial recorder; 
 resisting the temptation to allow his feelings to accord 
 undue praise or to indulge in unwarranted severity. 
 
 The contemporary writer is brought in contact not 
 
 vii 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 with historical personages but with men, with men on 
 whom the glamour of history has not yet fallen, who 
 have not yet made history and passed into the keeping 
 of the Immortals but are history in the making. And 
 history invests its characters with a quality of its own. 
 It makes them either very great or very small, it places 
 them on a pedestal for all ages to do them reverence, 
 or degrades them to earn the contempt of posterity 
 - for history is no gentle muse but is always extreme ; 
 but whatever the recorded verdict, to us of a later day 
 they have ceased to be men and have become legendary 
 figures. Our contemporaries are men, men like our 
 selves, whom daily we judge, criticize, condemn or ap 
 prove to meet our passing mood. 
 
 I have made no attempt to write either history or a 
 biography of Woodrow Wilson. That time has not 
 yet come. The history of the Administration of Presi 
 dent Wilson it would be inadvisable to write now, - 
 for reasons so obvious they need no enlargement, - 
 nor would it be possible unless the writer were in pos 
 session of letters, diaries, documents and state papers 
 that are not likely to gratify this generation. Some 
 of these, a few, are even now available, but discretion 
 imposes silence. For history we must wait until time 
 permits disclosures that now would be inopportune. 
 What I have endeavored to do is to interpret the char 
 acter and motives of Mr. Wilson as revealed by his 
 speeches, writings and statesmanship, letting the reader 
 draw his conclusions from the evidence presented, 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 It has seemed to me that it is work that ought to 
 be done, not only because the man who to-day occu 
 pies the largest place in the world s thought is almost 
 as little understood by his own people as he is by the 
 peoples of other countries and still remains an enigma, 
 but a certain interest may attach to the work of a con 
 temporary foreign observer who, while having the 
 benefit of long residence in the United States, and an 
 intimate knowledge of its people and politics, may 
 justly claim to take a detached point of view and to be 
 uninfluenced by personal or political considerations. 
 It is in that spirit of detachment, as if I were dealing 
 with the past and not the present, I have endeavored 
 to write; and while, I repeat, this is not history, I 
 have not been unmindful of the responsibility of the 
 historian. 
 
 In his preface to "Division and Reunion" Mr. Wil 
 son wrote: "I cannot claim to have judged rightly 
 in all cases as between parties. I can claim, however, 
 impartiality of judgment ; for impartiality is a matter 
 of the heart, and I know with what disposition I have 
 written." That sentiment I make my own. I cannot 
 hope that in all my judgments I have been correct, 
 that I have perhaps in all cases done justice, but I can 
 claim to have written with sincerity and a purpose, 
 striving to tell the truth as it is given to me to see it*, 
 
 WASHINGTON, October, 1918. 
 
13 
 SoO^ 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PREFACE . . . 
 I THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 
 n AGITATION AND UNREST 
 
 III THE MAN 
 
 IV THE ENIGMA ........ 59 
 
 V A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY ...... 74 
 
 VI^ THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP . . . .87^ 
 
 VH AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR . . . Ill <- 
 
 VIII "Too PROUD TO FIGHT" ...... 152 
 
 IX THE EVANGELIST ....... 174 
 
 X AMERICA IN THE WAR ...... 212 
 
 ^T THE WAR PRESIDENT . . . . . . . 241 * 
 
 HISTORY AND THE VERDICT ..... 277 
 
WOODROW WILSON 
 
 AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 
 
 WHEN Woodrow Wilson came to the White House 
 on the fourth of March, 1913, the Democratic party 
 returned to power after sixteen years in opposition. 
 Mr. Wilson s Democratic predecessor, Mr. Cleve 
 land, left as a legacy to his successor war or peace 
 with Spain. That war, fought in the year following 
 Mr. McKinley s inauguration, had far-reaching conse 
 quences for the United States : for the first time since 
 it became a nation the United States was the master 
 of oversea dependencies and the ruler of subject races ; 
 it became an Asiatic power and its frontier was flung 
 seven thousand miles across the Pacific. In the year 
 following peace the American people were to be wit 
 ness to another and more costly war when the Boers 
 challenged the power of England ; and five years later 
 the American people, in common with the rest of the 
 world, were witness to a still mightier struggle when 
 
 1 
 
2 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Japan took up arms against Russia to decide the 
 mastery of the Far East. 
 
 Yet those three wars, important in their political 
 effects to the nations involved, produced little 
 impression upon American national consciousness. 
 The thought of America had turned from war to peace, 
 the great problems that men were grappling with were 
 not military conquest but social reform. A new spirit 
 had entered into men. They were reaching out for 
 something better than they had, they were striving to 
 remove the inequality and injustice of an artificially 
 stimulated social system. This spirit was moving men 
 in all parts of the world, but nowhere perhaps was its 
 force so insistent as in the United States. Humanity 
 was groping and toiling, not sure what it was seeking, 
 and yet quite sure what it sought was to be found ; not 
 always wise in its experiments, and yet with faith 
 struggling. 
 
 Reform was in the air. The social order was chang 
 ing ; the change had almost come. Men were looking 
 at life with new vision. In the three great Democracies 
 of the world, in England, France and the United 
 States, social experimentation was being tried on a 
 vast scale. Woman suffrage, prohibition, old-age 
 pensions, State insurance, the curbing of the power of 
 monopoly and the arrogance of wealth, these were 
 symptoms of a mental and spiritual rebirth. It was a 
 time of excessive luxury, of great wealth, of intense 
 selfishness ; in some respects materialism had a deeper 
 
THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 3 
 
 hold than ever before in the world s history ; and yet 
 even those deepest sunk in their materialism, who 
 defended the existing order and resented change, dimly 
 saw that change was inevitable, vaguely felt that justice 
 cried for reform, but hoped only it might be postponed 
 so that their comfort would not be disturbed. To the 
 great mass, not alone the downtrodden and the poor 
 and the illiterate, the day of their deliverance was 
 near. 
 
 It was fitting these aspirations should be symbolized 
 in the person of the newly elected President of the 
 United States. To Mr. Wilson Democracy was less 
 a political belief than an immanent conviction, and 
 he had given repeated proof of his faith. Imbued in 
 the tenets of his political forefathers, seeing in their 
 code a moral guidance which was also the rule of 
 statesmanship, reposing confidence in the wisdom of 
 the people to govern themselves, rejecting the thought 
 that they were incapable of self-government and must 
 necessarily be directed by a selected class, his sympa 
 thies and his intellect made him support the cause 
 of the people against privilege. 
 
 He was no noisy champion. He offered no hostages 
 to the great Demos and had no nostrums to bring uni 
 versal salvation. He had no picturesque or romantic 
 past and had known no long and bitter struggle against 
 adversity. As a boy he had not toiled beyond his 
 
4 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ) 
 
 strength, and as a man he had not acquired learning 
 in odd moments snatched from his work. Of gentle 
 birth and with an inherited love of scholarship, he 
 passed through school and college to begin, as he 
 believed, his chosen vocation of the law, and to 
 abandon it forever two years later. It is popular 
 impression that Mr. Wilson divorced himself thus 
 early from his profession because it failed to provide 
 him adequate support, which is generally recognized 
 as valid ground for divorce, but incompatibility of 
 temperament was the real reason for the speedy 
 dissolution of the incongruous union. Mr. Wilson, 
 who began the practice of his profession in Atlanta, 
 was quickly disillusioned when he discovered the 
 j depth and slime of the gulf that separated the 
 philosophy of law from its practice. To an imagina 
 tive but philosophically matured youth who absorbed 
 the theory of law from textbooks in the seclusion of 
 college or heard the science of jurisprudence ex 
 pounded in the classroom, its precision and logical 
 foundation must have charmed a mind that clarified 
 thought and was always strongly responsive to a sense 
 of justice; but the law in its practical application 
 came as a shock. 
 
 Atlanta at that time was no worse, and certainly no 
 better, than other Southern cities, and its public and 
 professional morality was the standard of its day. At 
 the Atlanta bar there were men of high professional 
 standing whose code was as rigid and narrow as the 
 
THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 5 
 
 sternest critic could demand, but there were also a 
 goodly proportion of "ambulance chasers", tricksters 
 and dishonest advocates who promoted litigation in 
 the hope of gaining fees irrespective of the merits of 
 the cause. The atmosphere disgusted Mr. Wilson. 
 He found himself brought in competition with men of 
 dubious morals ; the competition was not to his 
 liking, nor were his surroundings congenial. De 
 liberately he turned his back on them, recognizing at 
 that early age, and he was only twenty-five, that he 
 could better serve himself and society by writing and 
 teaching the philosophy of the law than by helping 
 its contamination. This was the explanation he made 
 to his friend, Albert Shaw (the present editor of the 
 Review of Reviews), when he came to Baltimore to take 
 a postgraduate course at Johns Hopkins. "There 
 is Blank," mentioning the name of a well-known 
 practitioner who was rapidly becoming rich, he said 
 to young Shaw, who relates the incident, "who has 
 made a success by taking personal injury cases against 
 the railways and other corporations and is none too 
 scrupulous about the character and testimony of his 
 witnesses, and perhaps in time I may be equally 
 successful." But that was not the success he craved 
 or the measure of his ambition. That he had the 
 courage to renounce a profession whose methods were 
 to him distasteful and had the strength of will to take 
 up a new profession for which he felt himself better 
 fitted and one making a stronger appeal to him, 
 
6 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^jp 
 
 shows not only the strength of character and in 
 flexibility of will that was later to puzzle political 
 supporters and political opponents, but also that the 
 early bent of his thoughts was now unalterably fixed. 
 
 In 1879, then a student at Princeton, he had written 
 for the International Review an essay entitled "Cabinet 
 Government in the United States", which six years 
 later appeared in book form as "Congressional Govern 
 ment", and is the most important of Mr. Wilson s 
 works. "Congressional Government" is an amplifi 
 cation of the International Review essay; the under 
 lying thought and the philosophic treatment remain 
 unchanged. It is an extraordinary piece of work to 
 have been done by a youth of twenty-three, in its 
 way as rare an example of precociousness, maturity of 
 judgment and grasp of his subject as Byron s "Childe 
 Harold." 
 
 In those two years from 1883 to 1885, when he was 
 doing graduate work at Johns Hopkins in political 
 economy and history, he was preparing for the part 
 he intended to play. Whether that included politics 
 it is impossible to say, for whatever dreams beguiled 
 him or ambitions spurred his fancy he shared his con 
 fidence with no one so far as I have been able to learn ; 
 but it is certain he was determined not only to in 
 fluence thought by his pen but also to appeal to the 
 emotion of intellect through speech. In Baltimore he 
 was a close and persistent student, devoting himself 
 not only to political economy and history but also to a 
 
THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 7 
 
 study of the best masters of English forensic oratory. 
 He read with critical discrimination and a purpose 
 now quite evident the parliamentary speeches and the 
 public addresses of Burke and Chatham and Grattan 
 and other men equally well known, dissecting them, 
 appraising them, testing them, catching their tricks 
 of style and tearing from their stilled hearts the secret 
 that can never still the voice of the really great orator. 
 He wanted to be their compeer, and he was learning 
 in their school. 
 
 Shaw was one of the few men with whom Mr. 
 Wilson was on terms of intimacy at that time. Mr. 
 Wilson was neither a recluse nor unsociable; he was 
 a man with a serious purpose, although with always 
 a sense of dry humor, as every man of imagination 
 must have, but he was too deeply engrossed in study 
 to have either the time or inclination for frivolity. 
 As he wrote "Congressional Government" he gave 
 his manuscript to Shaw to read, not to invite criticism, 
 because even then Mr. Wilson did not invite criticism 
 any more than now he welcomes opposition ; perhaps 
 simply for his approval. The two young men were 
 engaged on work that had something in common. 
 While Mr. Wilson was studying history and political 
 economy and parliamentary debate, Shaw was study 
 ing the development of municipal government in 
 Europe and America. And Shaw recalls what is 
 eminently characteristic of Mr. Wilson and shows how 
 early the iron mold of his character was formed. 
 
8 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4p 
 
 Baltimore is only forty miles from Washington, and 
 in Washington the Congressional Government of 
 which the Johns Hopkins student was writing was 
 functioning, but Mr. Wilson, Doctor Shaw believes, 
 seldom if ever went to Washington during those two 
 years. Almost any other man, it is safe to say, would 
 have wanted to see the machine at work, would have 
 welcomed the opportunity to talk with the engineers, 
 would have gladly absorbed the atmosphere so as to 
 create a background. Mr. Bryce came to America 
 to confirm by observation theoretical judgments. 
 Mr. Wilson, in the cold serenity of detachment, 
 kept aloof, his thoughts becoming crystal in the 
 alembic of his mind. The marvel is that the youth 
 of twenty-three, who knew nothing of Washington, 
 who had no practical knowledge of government or 
 the methods of the legislature, and the young man 
 six years later who was so sure of his conclusions that 
 he saw no necessity to revise them, should have pro 
 duced the best and most authoritative work on the 
 subject. Genius has been likened to the spider who 
 draws from itself the filaments of its web ; and genius 
 creates without extraneous assistance, drawing on its 
 own stored-up endowment. "Congressional Govern 
 ment" is almost the touch of genius. 
 
 3 
 
 Leaving Johns Hopkins in 1885 to accept the chair 
 of history and political economy in Bryn Mawr 
 
THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 9 
 
 College, Pennsylvania, an institution for the higher 
 education of women, Mr. Wilson s career falls 
 naturally into three grand divisions, and it is a career 
 unparalleled in America or England, or any other 
 democratic country, ancient or modern : 1. the 
 teacher and secular preacher; 2. the politician; 3. 
 the President. For twenty -five years, from 1885 to 
 1910, when he was elected Governor of New Jersey, 
 his entire time was given to pedagogical work, to 
 writing and to lecturing. He took no active part in 
 politics, and whatever influence he exercised on the 
 political thought of his day was indirect and exercised 
 through his books and addresses on the philosophic 
 meaning of history read by the light of modern prob 
 lems of government and politics. 
 
 His audience was never in any sense popular. He 
 had no gift of phrase or thought to arrest for an in 
 stant the scurrying feet of the jostling crowd. He was 
 deficient in the showman s arts and ignorant of the 
 trick of self advertisement. There have been college 
 professors who have attained the fleeting honor of 
 shrieking headlines on the front page and gained the 
 proud distinction of the editorial column by, at "the 
 psychological moment" so beloved of editors hunger 
 ing for a sensation, denouncing the institution of 
 marriage or advocating too much marriage, or some 
 thing else equally as irregular. In the quarter of a 
 century that he taught and spoke Mr. Wilson escaped 
 this homage. 
 
10 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 L 9 
 
 His appeal had always been to the intellectuals, to 
 those whom Americans, with their gift for crystallizing 
 a sentence in a word or two, know as "highbrows." 
 He was one of the cognoscenti, and it was the cogno 
 scenti he sought as his audience. He was over the 
 heads of the masses, and the masses, had they read or 
 heard him, would have turned away weary and with 
 out comprehension of his message, which they would 
 have dismissed succinctly as "highbrow stuff", and 
 therefore outside of their class. His addresses were 
 delivered before selected audiences, lawyers, teachers, 
 civic reformers, which precluded the general public 
 from hearing him, even if they had the inclination ; 
 and his speeches were not of a character to make 
 them popular reading and therefore to justify the press 
 in giving them extended space. He wrote for maga 
 zines and reviews that were exotic so far as the general 
 public was concerned, and whose limited circulation 
 was confined to the educated. To the multitude his 
 books were recondite, admirable although they are in 
 style, lucidity and the crystal clearness of his thought. 
 His one attempt at popularity, "A History of the 
 American People", his friends regret. Mr. Wilson 
 can write nothing without giving it distinction, and in 
 the five volumes may be found flashes of his style 
 and shrewd analysis that redeem the work from dull 
 ness, but it is not quite bad enough to be really 
 "popular" and widely read, and it is not quite good 
 enough to be the historian s history. 
 
THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 11 
 
 Mr. Wilson s position and standing in the educa 
 tional world brought to him an ever-widening circle 
 of acquaintances, and personally or by reputation 
 he was constantly becoming better known, but this 
 knowledge was confined to a class in the aggregate 
 numerically large, but actually only a minor fraction 
 of the whole. His name carried weight with educators, 
 literati, students of the science of government, 
 graduates of schools and colleges, but to the working- 
 man, the great middle class, perhaps a majority of 
 business men and the rank and file of the political 
 world, it meant nothing. Mr. Wilson s obscurity 
 and the use of the word is permissible came from 
 his having connected himself with no great popular 
 movement, with leading no clamorous demand for 
 sudden reform, with having neither sought nor held 
 political office. Unlike as they may be in many 
 things, in one thing the three great Democracies of 
 America, England and France have the same common 
 trait. Men may achieve fame through success at 
 the bar, by literature, in discovery or invention or 
 by accumulating a huge fortune, but it is as true in 
 America as it is in England and France that to become 
 known, to become what Bagehot calls "not only 
 household words, but household ideas", a man must 
 be a political leader, and his fellow men, again to 
 borrow a thought from Bagehot, must have a con 
 ception, not, perhaps, in all respects a true, but a 
 most vivid conception of what he is like. In a word, 
 
12 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^ 
 
 you cannot have a leader unless you are able to 
 visualize him ; he must symbolize not merely an idea 
 but a personality; he cannot remain, so Bagehot 
 believed, an unknown quantity. In this sense Mr. 
 Wilson, up to the time of his election as Governor 
 of New Jersey, was obscure. In this sense he had 
 none of the requirements believed necessary for 
 leadership. In this sense, to the majority of his 
 countrymen, he was an unknown quantity. Not 
 only had they no vivid conception of him, but all that 
 their imagination could picture was blurred, the in 
 distinct outlines of a name without substance. 
 
 In other countries, at long intervals under the stress 
 of a great popular movement or the fear of national 
 disaster, men hitherto obscure, by their fiery elo 
 quence, have sprung into prominence and seized 
 power; and the politician "powerful in faction and 
 debate" may count with reasonable certainty on 
 success. Here there was nothing of the kind. No 
 great emergency threatened, the people were not 
 stirred by fear, their future was not in peril. From 
 the presidency of Princeton University Mr. Wilson 
 passed to the Governor s chair. He was then fifty- 
 four years old, and he was holding his first political 
 office. It is not exaggeration to say that no man was 
 ever elected to high office under similar circumstances, 
 and no man was so much of an unknown quantity 
 to the great body of the electorate as Woodrow Wilson 
 when he took the oath of service to the people. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AGITATION AND UNREST 
 
 1 
 
 FOR the purposes of this interpretation it is unneces 
 sary to follow the campaign that led to Mr. Wilson s 
 election as Governor of New Jersey, but it is requisite 
 to ascertain the causes that made possible the election 
 of a man who, in the sense that has already been 
 noted, was obscure and so little identified in the pub 
 lic mind with practical politics. Mr. Wilson was a 
 fitting candidate because he peculiarly typified the 
 new day. 
 
 It is to the advantage of a man seeking political 
 office that he shall have a past, and sometimes it is 
 of even greater advantage that he shall be the "un 
 known quantity" that Bagehot thought made him 
 impossible; "that he should wear a clean and ir 
 reproachable insignificance", in Mr. Wilson s own 
 phrase. If he belongs to the "old guard" and has 
 served in various capacities, his party knows what to 
 expect from him, and if his party is in the majority 
 he goes through simply because party discipline com 
 pels his acceptance. An unknown man brings to 
 
 13 
 
14 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 I 
 
 his candidacy a certain element of romance and 
 mystery; he appeals to that large and constantly 
 increasing section of the electorate that distrusts the 
 professional politician and fears his associations. Mr. 
 Wilson disarmed opposition. Lawyers, doctors, men 
 of business, clergymen even, when reform was in the 
 air and the ultra-respectable vote had to be catered 
 to, have been selected as candidates for Governor, 
 but seldom if ever has the president of a great univer 
 sity passed from the seclusion of academic quiet to 
 the turmoil of politics. If, in a sense, the men to 
 whom he appealed for their suffrages knew little of 
 him, on the other hand the little they knew was in 
 his favor. He occupied a high and dignified position ; 
 his profession had kept him aloof from the sordidness 
 that the public associates with the sharp practices 
 of the lawyer or the tricky morality of the man of 
 business ; much as the public may pretend a contempt 
 for the unpractical scholar, nevertheless it has a 
 respect for learning. And in a day of great wealth, 
 when there was a deep undercurrent of resentment 
 against great wealth and, in the popular belief, its 
 unlicensed power, it did not disparage Mr. Wilson 
 that he was a poor man and a toiler. 
 
 Even more than this, perhaps, he was the voice of 
 the new spirit, as the electors were soon to know, as 
 he went up and down the State addressing political 
 meetings, and they were brought under the influence 
 of his incomparable oratory and learned the principles 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 15 
 
 he had so long espoused and the reforms he promised 
 them. 
 
 They had heard much of reform and were weary of 
 the mirage of false hopes, and yet no matter how 
 often they were disappointed their faith remained un 
 shaken and hope never deserted them. Mr. Cleve 
 land, the first Democratic President since the Civil 
 War, had quickened public conscience when, as was 
 said, "he put humanity into the tariff" and brought 
 to the Presidency a new conception of public duty. 
 Although many great achievements stood to their 
 credit and they placed on the statute books much 
 memorable legislation, so long had the Republican 
 party been in power authority made them arrogant, 
 abuse fattened on their legislation and a privileged 
 class was becoming securely intrenched ; but the 
 Republicans were saved by the intellectual poverty of 
 their opponents and the incapacity of Democratic 
 leaders. Mr. Cleveland s first election was a social 
 revolution, bloodless though it was ; but it was never 
 theless a revolt of the masses against the classes ; and 
 in the day before the people spoke through the ballot 
 Mr. Cleveland would have come into power backed 
 by the pikes and swords of his adherents, or, like Wat 
 Tyler, paid the penalty for attempting to overthrow 
 the established order. 
 
 Mr. Cleveland founded no era, but as Mr. Wilson 
 wrote of him shortly after his death when the passion 
 he aroused was still hot and justice was still denied 
 
16 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^n 
 
 him, "he played a great part"; he forestalled what 
 is now the verdict of history when he said, "no such 
 great personality has appeared in our politics since 
 Lincoln", and with equal truth that "he has made 
 policies and altered parties after the fashion of an 
 earlier age in our history." Yet he founded no era, 
 he broke the Republican succession but left no heir; 
 what he did was shortly undone, and the Republicans 
 were intrenched for sixteen years. Intrenched, yes, 
 but they were always facing a foe who while not strong 
 enough to carry the assault was no longer to be 
 despised. 
 
 Mr. Bryan, who consistently led his party to defeat 
 but nevertheless retained its affection and admiration, 
 is one of the pathetic figures of history. Well mean 
 ing, with high principles and ideals, wandering in 
 an ultramontane kingdom of impossible perfection, 
 strictly adhering to his own rigid code, he was given 
 a great opportunity and accomplished nothing. Had 
 Mr. Bryan been a man of greater flexibility, with a 
 mind cast in a more generous mold, had he been able 
 to escape from the dwarfing influences of his environ 
 ment and the parochial school of politics in which he 
 trained, had he, in short, been able to see life w r hole 
 and been gifted with a wider knowledge of life and a 
 fuller understanding of its meaning, less intolerant 
 because of his pragmatic virtue and more ready to 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 17 
 
 recognize that in all men there is a spark of virtue 
 even if it is obscured by some vice, the story might 
 have been differently written. He did not attain his 
 great ambition, the Presidency, that thrice was to be 
 his and eluded him, but that must not blind us to the 
 great influence he exercised in shaping public opinion. 
 He crystallized what before had been vague and in 
 determinate. He had no power of clear thinking and 
 his argument was always specious, nevertheless he 
 was able to put into concrete form the nebulous 
 thoughts of men unable to give them coherence. It 
 was his misfortune, the same ill luck that always pur 
 sued him, that he must tie the living body of justice 
 to the corpse of economics. Political economy is a 
 science too abstruse for the masses, who are moved 
 less by reason than by prejudice and an inherited 
 tradition of injustice, but Mr. Bryan, through the force 
 of his oratory, his sincerity and his human appeal, 
 articulated his economic skeleton, he clothed it in 
 living flesh, and the people to whom he preached had 
 a glimmering of a social system resting on money and 
 the power of money in legislation. Defeated though 
 he was, too revolutionary for his conservative times, a 
 century too late or a quarter of a century too soon, he 
 dropped in fertile soil the seed of unrest which he was 
 to live to see bring forth fruit, but not for his enjoy 
 ment. 
 
 Mr. McKinley, who defeated Mr. Bryan and suc 
 ceeded Mr. Cleveland, accepted the verdict as a man- 
 
18 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4| 
 
 date to stamp out the radicalism to which Mr. Bryan 
 had given encouragement and bring back the country 
 to the safe and easy path of "conservatism" ; a policy 
 that accorded with his political beliefs and affiliations. 
 The work that Mr. Cleveland had done, the things 
 complained of which was the protest of the six million 
 men who voted for Mr. Bryan, Mr. McKinley and 
 his party ignored. The Republican party had been 
 returned to power to carry out as the party be 
 lieved, and in a way had a right to believe the 
 policies that Republican Presidents and Republican 
 majorities in Congress year after year had fastened 
 on the country. To the politician, who reads history 
 only by the light of the latest election returns, the 
 future was not to be feared; yet reform was coming, 
 though few men could hear the quiet footsteps of the 
 herald of its approach. 
 
 The forces that were behind Mr. McKinley gave 
 strength to the rapidly increasing discontent. Mr. 
 McKinley s amiability, his blameless life, his simplicity 
 of character made him respected personally, but the 
 resentment against the men who shaped and carried 
 out his policies, who, in the popular belief, manipu 
 lated the government for the benefit of a privileged 
 class, could not be quieted. One of the great elements 
 of strength of the Republicans had been the number 
 of newspapers of large circulation and vigorously 
 edited that supported their principles, but of recent 
 years there had grown up a healthy Democratic and 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 19 
 
 Independent Press that mercilessly criticized their 
 opponents and kept alive the demand for reform. 
 There had also come into existence a Press that called 
 itself Independent, Republican or Democratic, accord 
 ing to the community in which it circulated, but 
 which pandered to passion and class hatred, and 
 without regard to truth or decency indiscriminately 
 attacked men and measures, not because they were 
 unfit or bad, but to increase their circulation and 
 power. Animated by the basest and most sordid 
 motives, but stealing the livery of virtue and pretend 
 ing only disinterestedness and sympathy for the 
 
 people powerless to defend themselves, these news- 
 
 i 
 
 papers made the unintelligent and ignorant believe 
 their condition was intolerable and could only be 
 remedied by a violent readjustment of society. 
 
 3 
 
 The bullet in the hand of a man half mad, half 
 fanatic cut the slender cord that had long been weaken 
 ing under the strain. In the natural order of things 
 the change was bound to come, but it would have come 
 gradually and without shock; now the change was 
 cataclysmic. Mr. McKinley s successor, young, virile, 
 undisciplined, with a dramatic imagination and a 
 love of show, had not been unobservant of the tend 
 ency of the times, nor had he failed to note that 
 although Mr. Bryan was defeated and Mr. McKinley 
 elected, it was Mr. Bryan who held the passionate 
 
20 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 A^ 
 
 affection of the people, it was he who had stirred their 
 emotions as they had not been moved since Lincoln 
 made politics a moral issue. Mr. Roosevelt with 
 more skill, more subtlety, more adroitness, with a 
 greater command of phrase and a more vivid appeal 
 to imagination, did what Mr. Bryan more stolidly 
 had attempted to do and failed. Mr. Bryan whimsi 
 cally remarked that Mr. Roosevelt stole his clothes 
 while he went in bathing, which was the same accusa 
 tion an English statesman had brought against his 
 rival many years earlier. It was the irony of fate 
 that what had been condemned in Mr. Bryan as being 
 too dangerous and vicious, and rejected by the coun 
 try as subversive of the security of society, was now, 
 when championed by Mr. Roosevelt, accepted not 
 as destructively radical but constructively "pro 
 gressive." There was nothing extraordinary about 
 this ; it is the same thing that has happened in every 
 country in every age. A new idea is always dangerous 
 until it is old, and it becomes old only when the world 
 has advanced far enough to accept it without fear. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt satisfied a certain want, but he did 
 not go far enough. The progressive zealot was at 
 heart a Republican. The Roosevelt administration 
 was still the party of McKinley. Any discussion of 
 American politics and their reaction on American 
 sociology must inevitably lead to the tariff. Rightly 
 or wrongly, the American people are divided into two 
 camps, one believing that the source of all their pros- 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 21 
 
 perity is in the protective tariff, the other equally con 
 vinced that the tariff is the root of all evils. The 
 expectation was great that Mr. Roosevelt would revise 
 the tariff, revise it downward in the interest of the 
 people and relieve them of the heavy exactions which 
 the Dingley tariff, enacted in the McKinley adminis 
 tration, imposed upon them. The expectation was 
 natural. Mr. Roosevelt had challenged abuse, he 
 had laid the ax of reform at more than one iniquity, 
 and the greatest of all abuses, the one whose iniquities 
 pressed hardest, was the high tariff, according to 
 its opponents. Mr. Roosevelt s passion for reform 
 was restrained by a political superstition more 
 potent than reason : the belief that the political party 
 that revises the tariff invites defeat at the next election. 
 The Republican party, that was still the party of 
 McKinley, even though the young reformer was its 
 titular head, was content to respect this superstition 
 and not hazard fate. After seven years of power Mr. 
 Roosevelt left the tariff untouched. 
 
 Mr. Taft was elected by a vote large enough to 
 suggest that the struggle in the convention left no 
 heart-burnings, and that the country welcomed the 
 perpetuation of the McKinley -Roosevelt regime. Mr. 
 Taft was never the unanimous choice of his party, 
 and he was soon to learn this. The adherents of 
 Mr. Roosevelt had hoped he would again be the 
 candidate of the party, and when this was impossible 
 they accepted Mr. Taft because they had no alter- 
 
22 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 fl| 
 
 native, but without enthusiasm, grudgingly and 
 reluctantly, looking forward to enduring the next 
 four years and then to bringing Mr. Roosevelt back. 
 The demand for the revision of the tariff was now 
 so insistent it could not be ignored, and Mr. Taft, 
 as a matter of duty, urged revision upon Congress. 
 The bill was not perfect, it is doubtful if a perfect 
 tariff bill can ever be made, but Mr. Taft could 
 sign it without wrench of conscience, although some 
 of the schedules did not satisfy him. But the country, 
 led by the demagogic press and the men who were 
 eagerly seeking an opportunity to weaken the adminis 
 tration and prevent Mr. Taft s renomination so as to 
 clear the way for Mr. Roosevelt, found only fault 
 in the measure. The law of 1828 was called the tariff 
 of abominations ; this was a tariff of dishonor, accord 
 ing to its opponents, as disgraceful to the men by whose 
 votes it was enacted as it was a betrayal of the cove 
 nant by the President who signed it. Bitterly and 
 continuously attacked by his own party and not 
 spared by his political opponents, it is not surprising 
 that the people believed Mr. Taft to be weak and 
 cowardly, and that he was the creature of the great 
 predatory interests who were under the special 
 guardianship of the Republican party. No more un 
 scrupulous cabal has been known in politics ; no man 
 was more maligned or more indecently treated by 
 men who were under every obligation to treat him 
 fairly. While this injustice in one sense accom- 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 23 
 
 plished its purpose, the results were far different from 
 what its instigators hoped for. Mr. Roosevelt, yield 
 ing to his ambition and the selfish advice of men who 
 hoped to climb to exalted or petty office on his suc 
 cess, announced himself as a candidate of the Pro 
 gressive party for the Presidency, Mr. Taft was 
 renominated by the Republicans, and Mr. Wilson, 
 whose term as Governor of New Jersey had not then 
 expired, was nominated by the Democrats. 
 
 For the second time in American politics the party 
 in the majority lost the Presidency through internecine 
 strife. In 1860 the newly formed Republican party 
 was in the minority, but a hopeless division in the 
 Democratic convention between the radicals and con 
 servatives over slavery led to a split and the 
 nomination of two candidates, whose combined vote 
 was larger than that cast for Mr. Lincoln, the 
 Republican candidate; and it was one of the taunts 
 leveled at Mr. Lincoln that he was "a minority 
 President." In 1912 history repeated itself. Mr. 
 Roosevelt and Mr. Taft split the Republican vote, 
 thus insuring the election of Mr. Wilson, who, like 
 his great predecessor, was termed in reproach by some 
 of his more violent opponents "a minority President", 
 although his title was clear. 
 
 Whether Mr. Wilson would have been elected had 
 there been no factional fight in the Republican party 
 
24 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ttfe 
 
 is an entertaining but idle speculation, but the effect 
 of the agitation of the last few years and the attacks 
 on Mr. Taft and his administration were now having 
 their result. Mr. Roosevelt had disappointed the 
 country. He had kept things in a ferment, he had 
 been the most potent instrument to encourage dis 
 satisfaction and create unrest, but of real accomplish 
 ment he could claim almost nothing. He found abuses 
 and left them undisturbed, and while he had a great 
 following, dazzled by his brilliancy, his ready speech 
 and his restlessness, that kept him constantly in the 
 public gaze, as a political or party leader, in the real 
 sense of the word, he was a failure because he stood 
 for no great policy and was identified with no great 
 movement or reform. One of his judicious critics 
 doubtless unconsciously recalling Hazlitt : "No man 
 is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The 
 test of greatness is the page of history" said of him 
 that he had a great personality, but "personality 
 ends at the grave." He had not the genius to build 
 empires, nor had he the plodding industry and the 
 singleness of purpose that make a man of mediocre 
 abilities a successful administrator. "History is 
 achievement," this critic remarked, "and the im 
 mortal figures of history are the men who have 
 achieved, who did something, noble or infamous. It 
 was Mr. Roosevelt s misfortune that too many sub 
 jects too vividly interested him, and he scattered his 
 energies over a field so large that he merely scratched 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 25 
 
 the surface instead of plowing deep." There is per 
 haps much truth in this short summary. 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt, having been tried and having failed 
 to meet the test to the disappointment of the public, 
 the public, with characteristic illogicality, vented 
 upon Mr. Taft its displeasure. Mr. Taft believed 
 that under the administration of his predecessor there 
 had grown up a carelessness for the strict letter of the 
 law and the restrictions of the Constitution that 
 threatened stability and the safety of institutions ; 
 that the country had become dangerously radical 
 and it was his duty to restore the balance and uphold 
 the supremacy of the law. Unfortunately for Mr. 
 Taft s peace of mind and personal fortunes he failed 
 to understand that Mr. Roosevelt was symptomatic 
 of his time, and what to superficial observers seemed 
 the dangerous taint of radicalism, a passing social 
 fever that could be cured by the palliative treatment 
 of wise legislation, had now become chronic. 
 
 The evils that Mr. Cleveland with dignity and 
 courage corrected, and the agitation begun by Mr. 
 Bryan and kept alive by Mr. Roosevelt had given the 
 people if not a clearer at least a different under 
 standing of the relation that ought to exist between 
 them and government. For many years they had 
 looked upon politics as an intricate game in which 
 nominally they took the largest part and held the 
 trump cards, and although they played it and pretended 
 they knew what they were doing, in private they con- 
 
26 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 flf 
 
 fessed they knew nothing, that instead of being the 
 players they were merely marionettes with the strings 
 in the hands of a few men of skill or cunning. Their 
 eyes had been opened, and they saw that politics was 
 something more than a game in which the players 
 changed sides, and that government had a vital, a 
 more solemn meaning than the tax gatherer and the 
 policeman. They had long remained in ignorance of 
 the truth that the framework of society is political, 
 that their welfare, their comfort and their happiness 
 could not be dissociated from politics, that there 
 could be no advancement independent of government, 
 but only through the efforts of government. To the 
 faithful whose creed that the best governed country 
 is the least governed country, this was heretical, an 
 entirely wrong and irregular concept of government, 
 and shocking to the disciples of individualism, to 
 whom paternalism is a thing of reproach, who con 
 ceived the function of government to be merely to 
 impose taxes and punish the offender in the name of 
 society. 
 
 5 
 
 The Puritan made America what she is, and al 
 though the admixture of the blood of many foreign 
 races has diluted the strain of Puritanism its spirit 
 survives. To the Puritan his religion was not a 
 thing apart from life but the very essence of life; it 
 was not simply a religious code but a rule of conduct, 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 27 
 
 political as well as moral ; not a cloak to be worn only 
 on Sunday but the garb in which men worked as well 
 as played; they wore it joyously when no danger 
 threatened and wore it proudly when death was 
 faced. Without the grim power of expression of the 
 Puritan, but with the same grim determination, the 
 children of the Puritan were proving their heritage. 
 Unconsciously they were following in his footsteps, 
 like him they were vexed with doubts, like him they 
 were searching their souls, like him they were con 
 tinually asking why and wanting to have the great 
 mystery explained. It was not, however, the meaning 
 and mystery of death that appalled them, it was the 
 meaning and mystery of the inequalities, the injustice, 
 the brutality of life. The masses are often deluded 
 by words, but only for an instant, as progress is 
 reckoned, are they deluded by false principles. They 
 had been content to believe that poverty was as in 
 evitable as death, that misery was the wisdom of God 
 that might not be questioned, that suffering and hunger 
 had always been. The truth of these things they 
 doubted but could not deny, but they groped in 
 their blindness and dumb rage until the falsity of 
 what they had been told became clear. What had 
 been in their hearts but found no voice was voiced 
 for them. They were no longer content to accept 
 poverty, toil, suffering as their normal lot ; it was not 
 the visitation of God but the iniquity of man. What 
 man had done man could undo, and the weapon to 
 
28 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 flp 
 
 dethrone the oppressor, to liberate them, was politics. 
 The way of escape was through the government, 
 government that would do justice to all men, treat 
 all men with the same impartiality, make it impossible 
 for a few men to lord it over their fellows. 
 
 There was nothing surprising about this. It was 
 the same aspiration that the masses have always had, 
 the same resentment they have always shown; only 
 now the masses were more intelligent than they had 
 ever been, more cohesive, more readily responsive to 
 leadership and suggestion, better able to understand 
 the selfishness of those over them and to see that ref 
 ormation, to be real and lasting and to root out in 
 equality and injustice, must be built on the solid 
 foundation of truth and justice, and the fellowship 
 of man must be a living force. It would be mis 
 leading the reader to convey the impression that what 
 has been thus hastily sketched found its expression in 
 concrete form. Thought is born long before it be 
 comes articulate. Ideas exist, but not before they 
 are quickened into life is the world richer. What men 
 thought and believed they could not express, but they 
 could feel. There was ceaseless agitation and dis 
 cussion, vagrant thoughts floated to the surface like 
 bubbles from the unfathomed depth, some of them to 
 glitter for a moment in the sun and burst and disappear 
 into the void before they could be grasped by eager 
 hands. But other Noughts floated on the stream; 
 they carried the seed of life, they were fertilized by the 
 
AGITATION AND UNREST 29 
 
 contact of minds and bore their fruit. Men were 
 ready to try an experiment and to see whether their 
 theories were workable. 
 
 It has been thought advisable to give this brief 
 resum6 of the state of public opinion preceding Mr. 
 Wilson s entry into politics because many Americans 
 under the pressure of their own intimate affairs only 
 imperfectly realize the great intellectual revolution 
 of which they were a part; and to foreigners, now so 
 keenly interested in everything pertaining to America, 
 this insight into American social development may 
 not be unwelcome. It is necessary, moreover, be 
 cause it makes more comprehensible the difficulties 
 Mr. Wilson had to contend with and the reason he 
 was able to overcome them. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 IT was not surprising that Mr. Wilson should have 
 been selected as the Democratic candidate for the 
 Presidency. Men were looking for a champion rather 
 tlian a political leader in the ordinary use of that word ; 
 one who thought as they did, who shared with them 
 their aspirations and held the same ideals. The 
 division in the Republican party insured the election 
 of the Democratic candidate, unless the Democrats 
 were so foolish as to nominate a candidate who did not 
 have the confidence of the public, a species of political 
 folly of which they had more than once been guilty. 
 Victory was theirs if they displayed prudence and com 
 mon sense, and it was incumbent upon them to pass 
 over the claims of hack politicians and select a man 
 truly representative of the prevailing spirit, who 
 would antagonize neither the workingman distrustful 
 of promises never fulfilled, nor his employer fearful of 
 the radicalism of impractical theorists. 
 
 Mr. Wilson measured up to these requirements. As 
 Governor of New Jersey he had served his political 
 
 30 
 
THE MAN 31 
 
 novitiate. The governorship of a State, he had said, 
 "is very like a small presidency; or, rather, the presi 
 dency is very like a big governorship." When he was 
 elected Governor, his friends knew that he had been 
 put in training for the higher office. Mr. Wilson 
 must have known this himself, must of course have 
 had the natural and proper ambition to enter the 
 larger field of service and reach the Presidency. It 
 was as an unknown quantity he went to the Governor s 
 office in 1910 ; the nominations would not be made 
 until 1912, and he had two years, if he were the or 
 dinary politician, in which to build up his machine, to 
 steer the nice course between the rocks of radicalism 
 and the shoals of conservatism, so skillfully to trim his 
 sails that every passing breeze and every cross current 
 could be availed of to bring him to harbor. 
 
 If he entered the Governor s chair as the unknown 
 quantity politically, in those two years he stamped his 
 individuality upon the country, and put his impress 
 upon legislation. No one now need further to ques 
 tion who he was or what he stood for, the principles 
 he believed in or the rule of conduct he had adopted 
 for himself. He had shown that he was possessed of 
 a stubborn political courage that was at times some 
 what disconcerting to his more timid admirers who 
 could only see the impolicy of making enemies when 
 political adroitness required he should be making only 
 friends; forgetting that valuable as friends are to a 
 politician even more valuable are enemies judiciously 
 
32 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^j^ 
 
 selected. His honesty and his adherence to the 
 pledges he made before election alienated powerful 
 interests; his determination to be the representative 
 of the people instead of the spokesman of a party 
 angered hack politicians, who had won no battles by 
 those tactics. To them it was ingratitude and a 
 violation of the fundamental principle of politics that 
 to the victors belong the spoils of victory. It was 
 exactly what might have been predicted of an amateur 
 in politics, of the theoretical professor whose mind 
 still worked in the narrow confines of the classroom, 
 and to whom the legislature was only a larger faculty. 
 And Mr. Wilson had another fault that was annoying 
 to the party workers, each of them believing himself 
 to be a king maker in his own fief or barony and en 
 titled to the respect and deference that belong to 
 power and prominence. Vanity is the universal 
 quality, in men no less than in women; it is perhaps 
 stronger in the human race than any other passion or 
 emotion, and there is no class of men whose vanity is 
 greater than the politician s. He lives for it and on it. 
 Vanity is the impelling motive to make the majority 
 of men take to politics, and having tasted of it they 
 cannot forego it. Every man elected to high office, 
 every governor or senator or President, is never al 
 lowed to forget that he owes his election to the fidelity, 
 intelligence and industry of the particular politician 
 who at the moment is seeking his just reward for his 
 invaluable services, and he really believes, it becomes 
 
THE MAN 33 
 
 with him an obsession, that but for him the election 
 would have been lost. 
 
 Nothing more deeply wounds the sensitive soul of 
 the professional politician than to have his merits ig 
 nored. He not only wants to shine in the light of re 
 flected greatness, which is as pleasing to vanity as 
 admiration to a woman no longer young, but to capi 
 talize it and increase his importance by creating the 
 belief among his constituents and supporters of his 
 influence with the great. Men who thought Mr. 
 Wilson was under obligation to them, that to them he 
 owed his election and must show his gratitude and be 
 sensible of their political wisdom and judgment by 
 consulting them and being guided by their experience, 
 had their pride hurt and their vanity wounded when 
 they learned they had no influence with the Governor, 
 who did not consider they had any special claim upon 
 him. It was not they but the people to whom he 
 owed obligation; he had no duty except to himself 
 and the people. In Governor Wilson the chagrined 
 politicians found a man who was willing to take coun 
 sel when he sought it, and after listening often dis 
 regarded it; who was self-confident to the verge of 
 obstinacy; who, tyro though he was in politics, had 
 the political instinct to disregard the old formulas of 
 the textbooks and adopt methods of his own devising, 
 which generally proved to be correct; preferring to 
 grapple in solitude with his problems and unassisted 
 find their solution. It brought him the accusation of 
 
34 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 M 
 
 being too self-centered to become a great leader, too 
 distrustful of and too remote from the people to ap 
 peal to them or to hold their favor. Mortified vanity 
 found its explanation in the contempt the professional 
 has for the bungling amateur. Here was the theo 
 retical professor whose mind still worked in the nar 
 row confines of the classroom, and to whom the legis 
 lature was only a larger faculty. 
 
 We are to deal with a man who in his youth read the 
 Constitution of the United States and the political 
 history of his country and made a discovery. It is 
 the privilege of youth to make discoveries, to allow 
 their enthusiasm to carry them away, to believe with 
 all the fiery splendor of youth they have come to re 
 deem the world, and a few years later to have their 
 illusions humorously broken by experience. 
 
 We are to deal with a man who, having made his 
 discovery, never wavered and who thirty years later 
 was to be given the opportunity to make practical 
 application of his theories. He had the genius to see 
 that a political system with the respect of age, ac 
 cepted to carry out the purpose of its designers, had, 
 through sheer accident, become perverted, and in 
 stead of being the perfect instrument it was supposed 
 to be was in practice vicious. Seeing this he had the 
 courage to declare what he believed. Believing this 
 he had even the greater courage, when given power, 
 
THE MAN 35 
 
 to apply the remedy. It is not of consequence to 
 discuss whether his theory of government is right 
 or wrong, whether he read the Constitution correctly 
 and understood the purpose of the men who framed 
 it or distorted it to suit his own ideas; what is of 
 importance is intelligently to understand the prin 
 ciples which governed him. 
 
 Mr. Wilson believed that the framers of the Con 
 stitution had intended one thing and circumstances 
 had made it another. Bagehot showed that the "lit 
 erary theory" -the expression is Bagehot s of 
 the British Constitution was at variance with its 
 practical working. Mr. Wilson found that the nicely 
 adjusted theoretical checks and balances of the Amer 
 ican Constitution existed in fiction only, and that the 
 Government of the United States was a government 
 by Congressional Committee. The standing commit 
 tees of Congress had usurped not only the power of 
 Congress itself and become more powerful than their 
 creators, but they had also cheapened the importance 
 of the President and destroyed all sense of responsi 
 bility. It was that more than anything govern 
 ment by Congressional Committee without respon 
 sibility he regarded as vicious and subversive of 
 proper government. This is the thesis of "Con 
 gressional Government", set forth in a very remark 
 able way. Throughout the book he shows how the 
 intent of the makers of the Constitution had been 
 corrupted, and in his conclusion, summarizing what 
 
36 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Q^ 
 
 he has written, he says : "This is the defect to which, 
 it will be observed, I am constantly recurring; to 
 which I recur again and again because every examina 
 tion of the system, at whatsoever point begun, leads 
 inevitably to it as a central secret." He saw the 
 weakness of a system that destroyed responsibility, 
 and knew that efficient government was impossible 
 unless at its head was a responsible leader. "Nobody 
 stands sponsor for the policy of the government," he 
 writes. "A dozen men originate it; a dozen com 
 promises twist and alter it; a dozen offices whose 
 names are scarcely known outside of Washington put 
 it into execution." How was this disintegration which 
 destroyed responsibility to be corrected and the gov 
 ernment again to become integrated and responsibility 
 centered? Mr. Wilson had always been, and remains 
 to-day, a strong Hamiltonian. In a political system 
 so peculiar as that of the United States, clearly the 
 one person who was intended to have both power and 
 responsibility, who should have not only the right to 
 plan but also the duty to execute, was the President. 
 
 But of this power he had been robbed, and he was 
 now reduced to the level of a constitutional monarch 
 who reigned but did not rule. Turning to England 
 he saw there a system which made the Prime Min 
 ister the responsible executive, who originated and 
 carried out a policy, while in America, in normal 
 times, although theoretically the President had the 
 authority of the sovereign and his ministry, the Presi- 
 
THE MAN 37 
 
 dency, to use his own words, "is too silent and inactive, 
 too little a premiership and too much like a superin- 
 tendency", and Congress had the power that under a 
 constitutional form of government was the prerogative 
 of the ministry. It was not repugnant, in his opinion, 
 to democratic ideas to make Congress the fountain- 
 head of authority, even if it were a perversion of the 
 intent of the framers of the Constitution, provided 
 Congress in assuming authority also accepted re 
 sponsibility; the power, in short, that did not place 
 in separate hands "the right to plan from the duty to 
 execute"; but what to him was vicious and made 
 coherent government impossible was power so mi 
 nutely divided that responsibility for its exercise could 
 never be placed. 
 
 The Government of England is the Prime Minister, 
 who is not only the real Executive but is also the head 
 of his political party, and he remains the Executive 
 and retains his political primacy so long as he has the 
 support of his party and the country. His function 
 is to originate policies and to carry them out through 
 his majority in parliament, to coordinate and direct 
 the work of his associates ; for their ability and effi 
 ciency he is responsible; he is the final authority. 
 Mr. Wilson believed that the President ought properly 
 to occupy the same relation to the country and his 
 party; that the President must be invested with the 
 same power to carry out legislative policies that the 
 president of a business corporation has to supervise 
 
38 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 : 
 
 its affairs; that under a system of government re 
 sponsive to the will of the people statesmanship can 
 not be dissociated from party; and in language so 
 direct that it admits of no misinterpretation he gave 
 expression to this belief long before there was the 
 slightest thought in the public mind that he would be 
 called to the Presidency. 
 
 He did not propose to go outside of the Constitution 
 or to take any liberties with the charter ; the restric 
 tions imposed upon the President would be scrupu 
 lously observed, but as he read the Constitution and 
 peered into the thoughts of the men who made it, he 
 was able to convince himself that they intended one 
 thing and circumstances made another. "The Presi 
 dent of the United States," Mr. Wilson writes in "Con 
 stitutional Government in the United States", was 
 "intended by the makers of the Constitution to be a 
 reformed and standardized king, after the Whig model ; 
 and Congress was meant to be a reformed and properly 
 regulated Parliament." So much for intention, "but 
 both President and Congress have broken from the 
 model and adapted themselves to circumstances, after 
 a thoroughly American fashion partly because the 
 King and Parliament which the convention of 1787 
 intended to copy, with modifications, had no real 
 existence and were therefore largely theoretical." 
 And when theory that had no existence in fact was 
 succeeded by fact that would not yield to theory 
 President and Congress "were sure to undergo rapid 
 
THE MAN 39 
 
 alteration in one direction or another, and each has 
 taken its own course of change. It would be difficult 
 now to believe that the American President and the 
 English King, the American Congress and the English 
 Parliament, were originally of the same model and 
 intention if we did not clearly recollect the fact to 
 be so." 
 
 He had seen the weakness of a political system that 
 was the creature of accident rather than design and 
 stressed it. "This is the defect to which I am con 
 stantly recurring," he writes in "Congressional Gov 
 ernment", and that defect was that "nobody stands 
 sponsor for the policy of the government." Years of 
 reflection had not modified this judgment. "The 
 whole art of statesmanship," he wrote in 1907 in 
 "Constitutional Government", "is the art of bringing 
 the several parts of government into effective co 
 operation for the accomplishment of particular com 
 mon objects, and party objects at that." Here 
 Mr. Wilson has, in a few words, given us his political 
 creed. The remedy, in a word, for what he com 
 plained of was responsible party leadership. The 
 American Presidency should cease to be merely a 
 superin tendency and become a premiership. 
 
 3 
 
 We have only to examine his writings to see how 
 much Mr. Wilson deprecated the obscurity into which 
 the Presidency had fallen and how firm his conviction 
 
40 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 flH 
 
 that the President must not be merely the signer of 
 laws but also the maker of them, acting through his 
 party in Congress as the British Prime Minister does ; 
 that efficient government was impossible unless at its 
 head was a responsible leader, and in America that 
 leader must be the President. From 1865 to 1896, 
 he writes in "Constitutional Government", "no 
 President except Mr. Cleveland played a leading and 
 decisive part in the quiet drama of our national life. 
 Even Mr. Cleveland may be said to have owed his 
 great role in affairs rather to his own native force and 
 the confused politics of the time, than to any oppor 
 tunity of leadership naturally afforded him by a 
 system which had subordinated so many Presidents 
 before him to Congress." Always that, always a sys 
 tem inherently vicious that subordinated the Presi 
 dent to Congress ; always, it is easy to see, the long 
 ing that a man with force and many-sided character 
 would arise to destroy the system and again enthrone 
 the President supreme. Did Mr. Wilson, while writ 
 ing as a philosopher, publish his political creed and 
 see in himself the leader he waited for? We cannot 
 tell, but it is more than remarkable that to him should 
 have come the opportunity to destroy the system that 
 he so vigorously condemned. 
 
 But while Mr. Wilson saw the Presidency reduced 
 from its former high estate he also saw that given the 
 right man, a man of force, character and devotion, the 
 office could be restored to what he believed it ought 
 
THE MAN 41 
 
 to be; that, contrary to general belief, it was not the 
 office that made its incumbent great, but the in 
 cumbent who had it in his power to shed luster upon 
 the office; which perhaps explains why the Presi 
 dency has seemed so small when it was in the tem 
 porary occupation of some of the Presidents. Read 
 what Mr. Wilson has written and then see what he 
 has done, and it is as if writing always with the calm 
 air of philosophical detachment he is saying for all men 
 to hear : "This is the portrait of the perfect President ; 
 this is the President I shall be when I am given the 
 opportunity." Not once but a dozen times we are 
 given this insight. "The President is at liberty, both 
 in law and conscience, to be as big a man as he can," 
 he says, showing that neither the law nor his conscience 
 sets any limit upon the President s greatness. "The 
 personal force of the President is perfectly constitu 
 tional to any extent to which he chooses to exercise it," 
 we are told. The secret of successful government is 
 personality, an English writer has said, and assuredly 
 few men have so peculiarly impressed their personality 
 upon a government as Mr. Wilson. He knows the 
 power of the President if only the President has in him 
 the element of power. "He is the one person who 
 can form opinion by his own direct influence and act 
 upon the whole country at once;" and if he is "a 
 great person" and great as an orator then "he has the 
 ear of the nation as of course, and a great person may 
 use such an advantage greatly." Mr. Wilson has 
 
42 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ito 
 
 known how to use his advantage greatly. Let the 
 President "once win the admiration and confidence of 
 the country, and no other single force can withstand him, 
 no combination of forces will easily overpower him." 
 Many other quotations might be given, but are not these 
 enough to prove that Mr. Wilson had clearly defined 
 ideas of what the Presidency ought to be and that it 
 could be made as great as the great person who held it ? 
 Some of Mr. Wilson s predecessors have believed 
 that the President may with propriety recommend to 
 Congress such measures as he deems expedient as 
 the Constitution specifically requires him to do and 
 thus through Congress advise the country, but he may 
 not without being guilty of impropriety attempt to 
 lead ; to do so would be misfeasance, which would 
 properly merit the rebuke of Congress and the resent 
 ment of the country. That is not the view Mr. Wilson 
 takes, to whom the Presidency is more than a dis 
 embodied voice ; nor has he any fear that the country 
 resents the leadership of the President, but, on the con 
 trary, he is convinced the country welcomes it and looks 
 to the President for inspiration and guidance. The 
 people, he says, "have again and again, as often as they 
 were afforded the opportunity, manifested their satis 
 faction when he has boldly accepted the role of leader, 
 to which the peculiar origin and character of his author 
 ity entitle him. The Constitution bids him speak, and 
 times of stress and change must more and more thrust 
 upon him the attitude of originator of policies." 
 
THE MAN 43 
 
 And it is that, "the originator of policies", the 
 leader of his party, in other words, the President as 
 Premier, that Mr. Wilson conceives to be the real 
 function of the President. He is, it is true, the Execu 
 tive; he becomes such when he takes the oath of 
 office, as the Prime Minister of England is nominally 
 "one of the King s servants", but the President is 
 more than a mere executive, as the Prime Minister is 
 greater even than the servant of a king. Nor is it 
 necessary that the President shall attempt to hide his 
 leadership as some Presidents have done, or exercise 
 it furtively, or deny it while still exercising it. Mr. 
 Wilson, of course, is not the first President to assert 
 that by virtue of his office he is the political head of 
 his party, but this hegemony has not been stressed 
 for reasons that are a curious mixture of hypocrisy 
 and virtue. The public knows that the President is 
 a party man and a politician and has the interests of 
 his party at heart, yet the public would like to be 
 lieve that elevation to the Presidency has exalted 
 him, that it has purified him, and the politician of 
 yesterday, who is to-day the President, has risen 
 above the petty affairs of party and has ceased to 
 think of politics. Mr. Wilson would have the Presi 
 dent boldly avow his leadership ; more than that, Mr. 
 Wilson sees that it cannot be disguised because it is 
 self-evident and manifest. It is becoming more and 
 more true, he says, "as the business of the government 
 becomes more and more complex and extended, that 
 
44 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 I 
 
 the President is becoming more and more a political 
 and less and less an executive officer. His executive 
 powers are in commission, while his political powers 
 more and more center and accumulate upon him and 
 are in their very nature personal and inalienable." 
 The duty of a statesman, Mr. Wilson asserts, is to 
 "give the Government its best force and synthesis", 
 and "no one can play the leading part in such a mat 
 ter with more influence or propriety than the Presi 
 dent. If he have character, modesty, devotion and 
 insight, as well as force, he can bring the contending 
 elements of the system together into a great and 
 efficient body of common counsel." 
 
 Congress may try to subordinate the President, and 
 there have been times when the President has been 
 compelled to yield to Congress, but in certain emer 
 gencies the nature of his office will make the weakest 
 President more powerful than the most imperious Con 
 gress. The direction of foreign affairs being solely in 
 trusted to the President he can bend Congress to his 
 submission. Mr. Wilson, lifting the veil, saw the 
 dominant position the President must occupy in a 
 great international crisis involving the United States 
 or a war in which the United States was engaged. In 
 the preface to the fifteenth edition of "Congressional 
 Government", published in 1900, he writes: 
 
 "When foreign affairs play a prominent part in the 
 
THE MAN 45 
 
 politics and policies of a nation, its Executive must 
 of necessity be its guide; must utter every initial 
 judgment, take every first step of action, supply the 
 information upon which it is to act, suggest and in a 
 large measure control its conduct." This, it will be 
 recalled, was written after the close of war with Spain, 
 and the effect of that war upon America led Mr. 
 Wilson to say: "The President of the United States 
 is now, as of course, at the front of affairs, as no Presi 
 dent, except Lincoln, has been since the first quarter 
 of the nineteenth century, when the foreign relations 
 of the new nation had first to be adjusted. There is 
 no trouble now about getting the President s speeches 
 printed and read, every word. Upon his choice, his 
 character, his experience hang some of the most 
 weighty issues of the future. The government of de 
 pendencies must be largely in his hands. Interesting 
 things may come out of the change." He saw one of 
 the things to come out of the change, for in "Constitu 
 tional Government" a few years later he said : 
 
 "Our President must always, henceforth, be one of 
 the great powers of the world, whether he act greatly 
 or wisely or not, and the best statesman we can pro 
 duce will be needed to fill the office of Secretary of 
 State. We have but begun to see the presidential 
 office in this light ; but it is the light which will more 
 and more beat upon it, and more and more determine 
 its character and its effect upon the politics of the 
 nation. We can never hide our President again as 
 
46 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^1 
 a mere domestic officer. We can never again see him 
 
 the mere executive he was in the thirties and forties. 
 He must stand always at the front of our affairs, and 
 the office will be as big and as influential as the man 
 who occupies it." 
 
 There again the reference to the man making the 
 Presidency and not the Presidency making the man. 
 That thought was ever uppermost in Mr. Wilson s 
 mind, and it is certain no man ever came to the Presi 
 dency who was less awed by it than he. Most Presi 
 dents, as we gather from their correspondence and 
 biographers, in their humility, a humility perhaps some 
 times assumed as becomes the humble servant of the 
 people, were fearful because they were so insignificant 
 and the office was so vast; to Mr. Wilson it never 
 assumed the aspect of a tyrant. It did not terrify 
 him because it was a giant only in imagination. The 
 wand was in his hands. As he willed, the Presidency 
 had the stature and strength of a giant, of whom he 
 was always the master, or shrank into the insignificance 
 of a dwarf. 
 
 Believing that the correct function of the President 
 in the American political system was not alone that of 
 the political executive corresponding to the British 
 Prime Minister, whose power is derived from his party 
 and clothes him with responsible authority, it naturally 
 follows that Mr. Wilson should also regard the Presi- 
 
THE MAN 47 
 
 dent as the leader of his party. The whole art of 
 statesmanship, he declared, as we have already noted, 
 "is the art of bringing the several parts of the govern 
 ment into effective cooperation for the accomplish 
 ment of particular common objects, and party ob 
 jects at that." In other words, Mr. Wilson is a stout 
 party man, and because he believes in parties as 
 necessary to representative government he has often 
 been charged with "playing politics." The accusation 
 is both true and false. If it is to be understood in its 
 common acceptance, if it is meant to imply that for 
 the sake of mere partisan advantage Mr. Wilson is 
 willing to sacrifice principle or to resort to unworthy 
 methods to embarrass his political opponents, the 
 charge does him an injustice ; but it is perfectly true 
 that Mr. Wilson, being a Democrat, believes that the 
 government can be best administered by Democrats 
 and that political rewanjs properly belong to Demo 
 crats, who are entitled to the first consideration for 
 the sake of the party. Mr. Wilson has frankly said 
 so, and with equal frankness he has shown that it is 
 possible for a man to be a politician as well as a states 
 man, and while a statesman is a term of respect a 
 politician need not necessarily be a reproach. 
 
 In England, party leaders, Mr. Wilson writes in 
 "Constitutional Government", are "interchangeably 
 politicians and statesmen ", while in America "the 
 distinction we make between politicians and states 
 men is peculiarly our own." In other countries 
 
48 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 "where the words or their equivalents are used, the 
 statesman differs from the politician only in capacity 
 and in degree, and is distinguished as a public leader 
 only in being a greater figure on the same stage, whereas 
 with us politicians and statesmen differ in kind." He 
 explains that the politician "is a man who manages 
 the organs of the pajty outside the open field of gov 
 ernment", while the statesman "is the leader of public 
 opinion, the immediate director (under the politicians) 
 of executive or legislative policy, the diplomat, the 
 recognized public servant"; but clearly, in the better 
 sense, it is possible for a man to be both politician and 
 statesman, and evidently Mr. Wilson would not re 
 gard it as offensive to be called a politician. Because 
 a man is the President it does not debar him being the 
 political manager of his party. "The President may 
 also, if he will," Mr. Wilson declares, "stand within 
 the party councils and use the advantage of his power 
 and personal force to control its actual programs. 
 He may be both the leader of his party and the leader 
 of the nation, or he may be one or the other. If he 
 lead the nation, his party can hardly resist him. His 
 office is anything he has the sagacity and force to 
 make it." 
 
 Here, once more, Mr. Wilson gives utterance to his 
 dominant thought : it is the man who makes the office 
 great, and not the office that can make a little man great. 
 
 One may be sure that given the opportunity to 
 make the Presidency what he believed it ought to be, 
 
THE MAN 49 
 
 his inflexible will and purpose would force Congress 
 no less than the country to recognize in him not only 
 the leader of his party in the parliamentary sense but 
 also the leader of the nation ; that he was responsible 
 for its policies, that his duty, as he conceived it, was 
 first to plan and then to execute, that if he achieved 
 success or met with failure he, and he alone, was 
 entitled to be given credit in the one case or con 
 demned in the other. 
 
 Mr. Wilson must have wanted his position known, 
 he must have known, having spent all his life watch 
 ing minds at work, that no matter how often a man 
 says the same thing in a dynamic age it will attract 
 little attention unless he can create a dramatic back 
 ground and spectacular surroundings. And what 
 more dramatic background can a man ask than the 
 Presidency of the United States ! It was not with 
 out a spice of gentle malice with just sufficient sting to 
 prick and not draw blood, that in Staunton, Virginia, 
 on December 28, 1912, a few weeks after his election, 
 he said that people were now seeing "that in view of 
 the things that I have said since I was nominated, 
 which are exactly the same things I have said before 
 I was nominated, they are no longer afraid of me. 
 By which I draw this simple conclusion, that they did 
 not read the things that I said before I was nom 
 inated, and that after I was nominated it became 
 worth their while really to find out what I did actually 
 say." 
 
50 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4 
 
 Mr. Wilson took early occasion to say to the coun 
 try what he felt his position to be. Addressing Con 
 gress on June 23, 1913, only a little more than three 
 months after his inauguration, urging the passage of 
 a law to reform the banking and currency system, he 
 said: "I have come to you as the head of the Gov 
 ernment and the responsible leader of the party in 
 power." It was somewhat of a shock to the public 
 to hear the President boldly proclaim himself the 
 leader of his party and its political chieftain ; it sounded 
 curiously to American ears, accustomed as they had 
 been for long years to listening to the President sub 
 scribing to a self-denying ordnance renouncing politics 
 when he came to the Presidency and in the voice of 
 the miserable sinner penitently declaring himself to be 
 a lowly follower and the devoted servant of the people. 
 
 It was so startling, this assertion of leadership and 
 political primacy that it provoked discussion in the 
 press. "Is the President by virtue of his office the 
 leader of the American people?" one newspaper asked, 
 and it proceeded to ascertain the facts. It conceded 
 that in respect to legislation he undoubtedly is, for he 
 is required by the Constitution to make recommenda 
 tions to Congress, but having done that his duties and 
 responsibilities end. Having made his recommenda 
 tion, Congress, a coordinate body, over which the 
 President has no power of coercion or control, may ac 
 cept or reject his recommendation as it sees fit. It was 
 not intended that the President should be a leader; 
 
THE MAN 51 
 
 his true function is to be an adviser, and he must sub 
 mit gracefully when Congress, in the exercise of its 
 wisdom, rejects his advice. It is not necessary to 
 pursue the subject further, but it shows how little 
 prepared the country was to accept the doctrine of 
 the Presidency being a premiership, and how little 
 it understood Mr. Wilson. 
 
 In the following month he again proclaimed his 
 leadership. On the fourth of July, speaking at Gettys 
 burg, he said: "I have been chosen the leader of the 
 nation." It was a banal statement of an obvious fact 
 that needed no enunciation if he meant simply to in 
 form his audience that he was the titular head of the 
 nation, but we may be sure he had a deeper purpose 
 and that deliberately he sought to impress upon the 
 country his actual as well as his titular leadership. 
 But to the country the words passed without meaning. 
 
 Mr. Wilson has shown himself to be the "practical 
 politician" by not underestimating the value and 
 importance to be attached to the local offices. Poli 
 tics begins at the bottom, by exciting the enthusiasm 
 and even the selfishness of the great mass of electors, 
 many of whom are "party workers" and look for 
 party rewards. Mr. Wilson recognizes this as not 
 only natural but praiseworthy. "Local offices," he 
 says in "Constitutional Government", "are indis 
 pensable to party discipline as rewards of local fidelity, 
 as the visible and tangible objects of those who devote 
 their time and energy to party organization and under- 
 
52 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 01 
 take to see to it that the full strength of the party 
 
 vote is put forth when the several sections of the 
 party are called upon to unite for national purposes." 
 While not a machine politician he is still a believer in 
 the party machine, without which the party could 
 not exist. "Whatever their faults and abuses," he 
 holds, "party machines are absolutely necessary under 
 our existing electoral arrangements, and are neces 
 sary chiefly for keeping the several segments of parties 
 together. No party manager could piece local major 
 ities together and make up a national majority, if local 
 majorities were mustered upon non-partisan grounds. 
 No party manager can keep his lieutenants to their 
 business who has not control of local nominations." 
 
 6 
 
 A biographer must set forth if he can the materials 
 for the severest judgment on his subject, is the dictum 
 of Lord Charnwood, one of the most delightful of 
 modern biographers, whose severity is tempered by 
 the admiration he so frankly expresses for Lincoln. 
 Governed by that principle, the interpreter of Mr. 
 Wilson, desiring to do him only justice but mindful 
 of the honesty he owes to himself, will regret that 
 Mr. Wilson frequently permitted his zeal for party to 
 do what at times seemed to be the extreme of narrow 
 partisanship and lowered the dignity of his great office. 
 He would undoubtedly have silenced criticism had he 
 at the outbreak of the war reformed his Cabinet and 
 
THE MAN 53 
 
 brought to his side one or two of the foremost men in 
 the Republican party, and doing at once what cir 
 cumstances compelled him to do later, appointing 
 Republicans to offices created by the exigencies of the 
 war; and furthermore, in abstaining from using his 
 influence to promote the election to Congress of men 
 for party reasons. The future historian will un 
 doubtedly see in these things a weakness in an other 
 wise strong character, too much thought given to 
 politics when matters of greater moment should have 
 engrossed attention. But it must not be forgotten 
 that Mr. Wilson believed, and had not hesitated to 
 say, that government could be carried on only by 
 parties and not through coalition; the Anglo-Saxon 
 has a peculiar dislike of coalition governments; they 
 are as unpopular in England as they are in America, 
 and they have been resorted to only in times of the 
 greatest emergency. One of Mr. Wilson s objections 
 to government by Congressional Committee, as he 
 points out in "Congressional Government", is that 
 the diluted responsibility of the Committee is still 
 further attenuated by every Committee having a 
 minority representation ; and he contrasts that un 
 favorably with the English system, where the Cabinet 
 represents only the majority and the minority is de 
 prived of all voice, for the time being, in the manage 
 ment of the Government. 
 
 Mr. Wilson s refusal to dismiss members of his 
 Cabinet or other officials who incurred the displeasure 
 
54 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 A 
 of the public was put down to excessive stubbornness, 
 
 to a vanity that refused to acknowledge a mistake, to 
 an exaggerated belief in his own inerrancy that would 
 be childish were it not based on more solid founda 
 tion ; it was frequently explained and defended by his 
 friends, who asserted Mr. Wilson was better able to 
 know the capacity and qualifications of an official than 
 the public, misled by partisan attack or well-meaning 
 but mistaken zeal; but neither defense nor explana 
 tion satisfied the public, which, demanding a particu 
 lar head on a charger, was not to be appeased by being 
 told the day of execution was indefinitely postponed. 
 
 Yet Mr. Wilson s course, holding the views he does, 
 was entirely logical and not merely the exercise of ar 
 bitrary power or the desire of a man obstinately weak 
 determined to show his strength. On the theory of 
 the Presidency being a premiership and the applica 
 tion of that theory to the principle of the office, the 
 principle that in England makes the Prime Minister 
 responsible for the acts of his appointees and their 
 subordinates and in America would vest the Presi 
 dent with equal responsibility, the dismissal of an 
 official in response to public clamor was impossible 
 because it implied, and by acquiescence the President 
 admitted, a want of confidence in the Administration 
 and an interference with the prerogatives of the Presi 
 dent. In England it is always possible to test public 
 sentiment by bringing on an adverse vote in the House 
 of Commons, which the Prime Minister may chal- 
 
THE MAN 55 
 
 lenge or defy, but he knows his risk and that his resig 
 nation must follow as a matter of course in case of 
 defeat. In America the machinery is more compli 
 cated and functions with less celerity; the people 
 can express their confidence in the Administration or 
 withhold it by defeating the party of the Administra 
 tion at the mid-term Congressional elections, or by 
 electing the President if he is a candidate for reelection, 
 or defeating his party, if he does not aspire to be his 
 own successor ; but as in England, the President knows 
 his risk and knows the penalty he must pay when 
 ever he forfeits the confidence of the country. 
 
 Entirely consistent, Mr. Wilson, in the summer of 
 1918, opposed the reelection of those members of 
 Congress who had opposed his measures or policies, on 
 the ground that it was tantamount to a condemnation 
 of his Administration. He resorted to no subterfuge 
 in declaring his position. In a letter to a constituent 
 of Senator Vardaman, of Mississippi, who was a can 
 didate for reelection, the President wrote : 
 
 " Senator Vardaman has been conspicuous among 
 the Democrats of the Senate for his opposition to the 
 Administration. If the voters of Mississippi should 
 again choose him to represent them, I not only have 
 no right to object I would have no right in any way 
 to criticize them, but I should be obliged to accept 
 their action as a condemnation of my Administration, 
 and it is only right that they should know this before 
 they act." 
 
56 WOODltOW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4fc 
 
 In brief, then, if the Presidency is a premiership, it 
 is not the prerogative of the country to dismiss an 
 official, except the one responsible for all, the Presi 
 dent ; but it is the prerogative of the President to dis 
 miss any man who no longer satisfies him or who has 
 failed to meet a certain standard ; and the President 
 has exercised his prerogative more frequently than the 
 public is generally aware. The resignation of a mem 
 ber of the Cabinet "resignation" is the official 
 euphemism for dismissal is always made sensational 
 because the public pictures a "scene" between two 
 strong and passionate men, perhaps excited charges 
 of bad faith, of disloyalty, of overweening ambition 
 the possibilities are endless to imagination ; and no 
 less sensational is it when officials are unable to work 
 in harmony, when recrimination is bandied about, 
 and for the good of the service one, and sometimes both, 
 must be dismissed. Of the men below Cabinet rank 
 who have been allowed quietly to retire because they 
 did not measure up to expectations or created friction 
 the public has heard nothing, because Mr. Wilson 
 does not believe that mere administrative details are 
 properly reviewable at the bar of public opinion. 
 
 Whether Mr. Wilson s theory of the responsibilities 
 and duties of the Presidency is correct, whether the 
 framers of the Constitution intended that the Presi 
 dent should be a Premier rather than an Executive 
 
THE MAN 57 
 
 permitted to plan but denied the power to execute, 
 whether a system that satisfies the requirements of 
 British politics can be safely applied to American, in 
 the one case the Premier holding office at the pleasure 
 of the people while in the other the President s tenure 
 is fixed and he can be removed only by impeachment - 
 into these considerations it is unnecessary to enter. 
 Their discussion would be proper in a polemical work 
 dealing with opposing schools of government and 
 constitutional interpretation, but they have no place 
 in an attempt to interpret the character, motives and 
 guiding principles of Woodrow Wilson. Two things, 
 however, must be made clear to save the reader from 
 confusion. It has already been said that in every 
 thing Mr. Wilson wrote as a student, when his dis 
 cussion of the presidential powers was academic, and 
 everything he has done since coming to the Presidency 
 has been without wrench to the Constitution. He has 
 made no attempt to stretch the Constitution to meet 
 his own views ; he has not transcended the constitu 
 tional boundaries surrounding the Executive, or in 
 vaded the province of the Legislature or the Judiciary 
 as defined by the Constitution. This cannot be over 
 emphasized. 
 
 And while frequent reference has been made to Mr. 
 Wilson s belief that the British parliamentary system 
 is superior to the American system of Congressional 
 government, this must not lead the reader to think 
 that Mr. Wilson saw a merit in monarchical institu- 
 
58 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4|| 
 
 tions to the disparagement of republican. It was not 
 the monarchical institutions of England that com 
 mended themselves to him, but the system of popular 
 government; and above all, the system of integration 
 by which one man, the Prime Minister, was made 
 responsible for all that was done, instead of the disin 
 tegrating effect of numerous Congressional Committees 
 that enabled every man to escape his just responsibility. 
 Mr. Wilson had subjected the political systems of 
 the two English-speaking peoples to the laboratory 
 test. He had weighed, analyzed, measured, and the 
 reaction had met the test of his theoretic formula. 
 Long ago he had set up a model in his workshop, now 
 he was to determine whether his ideas were sound or 
 like the dream of the visionary inventor, theoretically 
 sound but practically impossible. The man who at 
 twenty-three saw the advantage of a system that cre 
 ated a Prime Minister as compared with the disad 
 vantage of a system that elected a President only to 
 make him silent and inactive, was now, fortified by 
 wisdom and experience, to come to his opportunity 
 to make the Presidency what his reason and his con 
 science taught him it ought to be. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ENIGMA 
 
 1 
 
 MR. WILSON matured early. At an age when char 
 acter is in the formative stage and minds are plastic, 
 his character had become fixed and his mind had reached 
 almost its full development. Two striking incidents 
 in his career before he reached thirty prove this the 
 publication of "Congressional Government" and the 
 abandonment of the law for pedagogy. It is not an 
 uncommon thing for men to begin life in one profession 
 and after a decent interval forsake it for another voca 
 tion, but such men have usually been unstable, with 
 out industry, naturally fond of change, or the creature 
 of circumstance beyond their control. None of these 
 reasons influenced Mr. Wilson. He had given proof of 
 his industry and tenacity, the love of reckless adven 
 ture was not in him, no sudden crisis had come into 
 his life. Deliberately and with a detached point of 
 view very remarkable he was able to appraise himself ; 
 he knew his own powers and limitations, the thing he 
 was best fitted for and that his heart was in. Other 
 men have drifted into the law or medicine, found it 
 disappointing or disheartening, but, too timid to begin 
 
 59 
 
60 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4fe 
 
 anew, have plugged along to failure. Mr. Wilson had 
 the courage to confess his mistake and to make a new 
 start. 
 
 "Congressional Government", to any one seeking 
 to understand and interpret Woodrow Wilson, will 
 repay careful reading. It is seldom that a youth of 
 twenty-three is the author of a work that lives and 
 becomes a classic, which in itself is sufficient to stamp 
 him as a man of whom much may be expected, but 
 the book is of still greater interest. Neither in style 
 nor treatment does it betray youth, its inexperience, 
 passions or prejudices. There is about it the sure 
 touch of the philosophical observer, who having rea 
 soned carefully and weighed dispassionately has reached 
 the certain ground of conviction. The confidence Mr. 
 Wilson had in his youth grew and strengthened with 
 his years. The characters of few public men have 
 so often been summed up in a single word, to no other 
 public man perhaps have so many men of diverse in 
 tellects applied the same word as a characterization. 
 Mr. Wilson s friends have said with an air of regret, 
 as if recognizing an immedicable weakness, as his 
 opponents have said with an air of finality, that he is 
 too "self -centered." What they mean is that he was 
 always sure of himself, that in him there were no doubts 
 or hesitations such as mark the ordinary man, nor did 
 he carefully balance with timidity the danger of action 
 against the safety of compromise. To a friend who 
 congratulated him on his judgment having been vin- 
 
THE ENIGMA 61 
 
 dicated, although at the time his course was unpopular, 
 Mr. Wilson replied: "I always try to keep my im 
 agination ahead of the facts." Imagination is as 
 priceless a gift to the statesman as it is to the poet, but 
 the poet does not need to curb his fancy with facts. 
 
 As the twig is bent the tree inclines, and the early 
 bent of Mr. Wilson s mind is palpable. In "Con 
 gressional Government" there is the same clear pres 
 entation of facts, the same terseness and lucidity that 
 distinguish Mr. Wilson s later writings and make them, 
 now that he has the whole world for audience, as full 
 of meaning to foreigners as his own people, and as 
 clear to the ignorant as to the lettered. 
 
 The confidence Mr. Wilson has always had in the 
 correctness of his own judgment since he entered public 
 life, and especially since he became President, is clearly 
 foreshadowed in his book. It would be conceit were 
 it not wisdom, and time has proved the answer. He 
 resorts to no doubts or qualifications, he does not 
 nicely trim to escape responsibility, nor seek to evade 
 for fear he is walking on unknown ground. He walks 
 boldly because he feels the ground firm beneath him; 
 having sifted through his mind facts which develop 
 their own conclusions he is sure of himself. The style 
 is the man, we have so often been told, and certainly 
 few men have so revealed themselves by their style as 
 he. The style as well as the man was formed when of 
 the experience of life he knew little except what he had 
 learned from himself. Experience and practice have 
 
62 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 fl| 
 
 given Mr. Wilson a greater command of his art, a more 
 rhythmical use of words, and, under the stress of emo 
 tion and since he has been addressing the world, he has 
 not scrupled to let the world see the emotions that 
 move him; but a close student of "Congressional 
 Government" and the state papers of the President 
 must see that they are from the same hand. The 
 identity is there, it extends to the dominating thought 
 as well as the idiosyncrasies of style from which no 
 writer escapes. 
 
 Mr. Wilson s literary critics have been pained by his 
 excessive fondness for the adjective "very" and have 
 pointed out to him that the modification of a noun does 
 not make for strength and is the one blemish on a style 
 nearly perfect; but Mr. Wilson, in that respect per 
 haps as perverse as one of his former pupils, disdains 
 the voice of counsel and persists in his literary sin. 
 So early was this habit formed that the seventh word 
 of "Congressional Government" is the "very" now so 
 familiar in the later addresses and state papers; so 
 wedded is Mr. Wilson to his adjective that he goes out 
 of his way to marry it to an adverb rather than forsake 
 it. In the preface to the fifteenth edition to "Con 
 gressional Government", written in 1900, Mr. Wilson 
 cannot resist the temptation of "very absolutely." 
 This idiosyncrasy, and every writer has it Conrad, 
 for instance, perhaps the greatest master of English 
 in our day, seemingly is unable to write a book without 
 the frequent use of "certitude", a word few modern 
 
THE ENIGMA 63 
 
 writers use would not be worth mentioning were 
 it not proof that Mr. Wilson has broadened with the 
 years, but he has not changed. 
 
 Indisputable evidence that President Wilson thinks 
 now as the student of twenty-three thought is to be 
 found in "Congressional Government", and it is evi 
 dence no less interesting to literature than it is to psy 
 chology. In "Congressional Government" Mr. Wil 
 son wrote: "There are voices in the air which cannot 
 be misunderstood." Addressing Congress on January 
 8, 1918, he elaborated the same figure: "There is, 
 moreover, a voice calling for these definitions of prin 
 ciple and of purpose which is, it seems to me, more 
 thrilling and more compelling than any of the moving, 
 voices with which the troubled air of the world is fillecl. 
 It is the voice of the Russian people." In the preface 
 to the fifteenth edition of " Congressional Government ", 
 Mr. Wilson wrote that its translation into French had 
 caused him for the first time since its publication to 
 read it, and it is doubtful if from that day to this he had 
 occasion to look into its pages, yet eighteen years later 
 we find him unconsciously using the thought of his 
 youth. That he should use it does not imply poverty 
 of imagination, what he had written must long since 
 have been forgotten, but while the words were effaced 
 the conviction was indelibly graven. All his life he 
 had heard the voices in the air. While others were 
 deaf he had listened to their message and understood. 
 It explains much. 
 
64 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Mr. Cleveland was the first Democratic President 
 to be elected since the close of the Civil War, and six 
 teen years must elapse before another Democrat was 
 to occupy the curule chair. The Democrats had been 
 handicapped by their slavish adherence to the past, 
 their exaggerated veneration for wise men long dead, 
 who because of their wisdom would have adjusted 
 themselves to modern conditions instead of obstinately 
 resisting them. It was frequently said of the Demo 
 cratic party that like a fine old family gone to seed, all 
 that was good was underground, while its descendants 
 lived on tradition and withered. It was this ancestor 
 worship, this clinging to outworn formulas, the mathe 
 matical splitting of constitutional hairs, that made 
 the country distrust the capacity of the Democratic 
 party for leadership and its inability and unwillingness 
 to keep pace with social development. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was a Democrat by birth, environment 
 and conviction; born in the South and nurtured on 
 the political principles of his section he held in venera 
 tion the great Democrats who had shaped the political 
 thought of the young Republic, but his days were not 
 spent in adoration of the dead or his nights in silent 
 meditation at the tomb. In the book which is no less 
 a confession of faith than it is an aspiration, to which 
 frequent reference has been made, "Congressional 
 Government", he shows how clear his vision is of the 
 future, he foresees the inevitable trend of political 
 
THE ENIGMA 65 
 
 sociology, and Democrat though he is the fear that the 
 hallowed dead may uneasily turn in their coffins does 
 not affright him. 
 
 "Unquestionably, the pressing problems of the pres 
 ent moment," he writes, "regard the regulation of our 
 vast systems of commerce and manufacture, the control 
 of giant corporations, the restraint of monopolies, the 
 perfection of fiscal arrangements, the facilitating of 
 economic exchanges, and many other like national 
 concerns, amongst which may possibly be numbered 
 the question of marriage and divorce ; and the greatest 
 of these problems do not fall within even the enlarged 
 sphere of the Federal Government ; some of them can 
 be embraced within its jurisdiction by no possible 
 stretch of construction, and the majority of them only 
 by wresting the Constitution to strange and as yet 
 unimagined uses. Still there is a distinct movement in 
 favor of national control of all questions of policy which 
 manifestly demand uniformity of treatment and power 
 of administration such as cannot be realized by the 
 separate, unconcerted action of the States ; and it 
 seems probable to many that, whether by constitutional 
 amendment, or by still further flights of construction 
 yet broader, they will at no very distant day be as 
 signed to the Federal Government." 
 
 Later he gave evidence that he had no sympathy 
 with those Democratic pundits whose over-refinement 
 of scruple made them the protectors of the Constitu 
 tion at the expense of the people. In " Constitutional 
 
66 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^i 
 
 Government" he says : " While we were once all con 
 stitutional lawyers, we are in these latter days apt to 
 be very impatient of literal and dogmatic interpreta 
 tions of constitutional principle"; and again in the 
 same book: "The Constitution of the United States 
 is not a mere lawyer s document : it is a vehicle of life, 
 and its spirit is always the spirit of the age. . . . Life 
 is always your last and most authoritative critic." 
 
 Nor did he subscribe to the sanctity which must 
 attach to the unwritten law of the Constitution. Mr. 
 Wilson delivered his first message to Congress in person 
 instead of communicating it in writing, which was the 
 custom followed by his predecessors for a hundred 
 years. To the public it was an innovation, and start 
 ling, typical of the contempt Mr. Wilson had shown for 
 other outworn customs; so revolutionary almost that 
 the public questioned whether he had not done some 
 thing that was in violation of the Constitution or at 
 least the law ; and while some of the close students of 
 history recalled that he had merely patterned after 
 the first two Presidents, Mr. Wilson vouchsafed nei 
 ther explanation nor excuse. Yet the student of Mr. 
 Wilson s works might have known that, secure in the 
 confidence of his own power over an audience and the 
 greater impression he could make, he would elect to 
 speak in person rather than through the mouth of a clerk. 
 
 Prior to the accession of George I, the King of Eng 
 land attended the meetings of the Cabinet, but George, 
 being a Hanoverian, who could not speak English, and 
 
THE ENIGMA 67 
 
 his Ministers not understanding German, he remained 
 away, and from that day to this no English sovereign 
 has been present at a Cabinet council. Citing this to 
 show how custom creates law Mr. Wilson writes in 
 "The State": 
 
 "A similar example of the interesting cases with 
 which men of our race establish and observe precedents 
 is to be found in the practice on the part of Presidents 
 of the United States sending written messages to Con 
 gress. Washington and John Adams addressed Con 
 gress in person on public affairs ; but Jefferson, the third 
 President, was not an easy speaker, and preferred to 
 send a written message. Subsequent Presidents fol 
 lowed his example as of course. Hence a sacred rule 
 of constitutional action!" 
 
 3 
 
 In New Jersey first and in Washington later, Mr. 
 Wilson was an enigma to those about him, whose busi 
 ness it was to try to understand him. He eluded them. 
 He presented the paradox of a man who neither hec 
 tored nor threatened, who did not use the bribe of 
 patronage or the appeal to party discipline, who was 
 fairly accessible and had a personal charm and mag 
 netism that was winning, and yet who had the repu 
 tation of holding himself aloof, of being too coldly 
 intellectual to be human, who cared as little for com 
 panionship as he valued counsel, who had a contempt 
 for politics and was the most successful politician of his 
 
68 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ttl 
 
 generation. In a speech delivered at Staunton, Vir 
 ginia, in December following his election, he had said 
 that "a man can keep his manners and still fight. 
 The nice thrust of the sword that is delivered with a 
 smile is more discouraging than the thrust that is de 
 livered with a scowl." More than one man had met 
 this nice thrust delivered with a sure hand and a smile, 
 but it did not lighten the victim s pain. 
 
 Then, and to forestall the next few years, he gave 
 birth to no myth ; no legend or stories clustered about 
 him. In Washington so little divinity does hedge the 
 President, so little removed is he from the men who 
 share with him the government, that the President s 
 philosophy or witticisms or satire are tossed lightly 
 about; but no one repeated what Mr. Wilson said to 
 him or what he said to Mr. Wilson that brought the 
 flashing reply. He remained as remote as a cloistered 
 monk ; to the great mass of the American people, pay 
 ing deference to him as their secular leader, he was as 
 inscrutable, as passionless almost, as the pontiff of 
 their spiritual allegiance. The men brought close to him 
 in an official relation transact their business and leave, 
 but they carry away no atmosphere, no personal touch ; 
 never is the baffling mask removed. Between him 
 and the people of direct contact there is none. The 
 contrast with former Presidents, freely accessible, 
 shaking hands with the curious but vitally interested, 
 is striking, extraordinarily so when one recalls Lincoln 
 during the darkest days of the Civil War, of whom it 
 
THE ENIGMA 69 
 
 has been said: "Literally crowds of people from all 
 parts of the North saw him, exchanged a sentence or 
 two, and carried home their impressions." 
 
 A strange and complex character, too subtle to be 
 plumbed by little minds, too unlike the traditional 
 concept of the President for the public to understand 
 him any better than did the politicians, who without 
 understanding had a vague feeling of disquiet that 
 here was their master, that in any conflict between him 
 and them they would be worsted. 
 
 Yet the riddle might not have been so difficult to 
 read had more study been given to the man as he re 
 vealed himself by his writings. In "Congressional 
 Government" he said: 
 
 "The best rulers are always those to whom great 
 power is intrusted in such a manner as to make them 
 feel that they will surely be abundantly honored and 
 recompensed for a just and patriotic use of it, and to 
 make them know that nothing can shield them from 
 full retribution for every abuse of it." 
 
 In an article in the Atlantic Monthly, March, 1897, 
 on "Mr. Cleveland as President", he had written that 
 to make a good President "a certain tough and stub 
 born fiber is necessary, which does not easily change, 
 which is unelastically strong"; and one could not 
 better sum up the character of Woodrow Wilson than 
 to say he has a certain tough and stubborn fiber, not 
 easily to be changed, and unelastically strong. In the 
 same year, on August 3, addressing the Virginia State 
 
70 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 . -^p 
 Bar Association at Hot Springs, Virginia, he described 
 
 in a few words the secret of successful government in 
 a great crisis, such as later he was to know, when he 
 said: "Successful governments have never been con 
 ducted safely in the midst of complex and critical 
 affairs except when guided by those who were respon 
 sible for carrying out and bringing to an issue great 
 measures they proposed; and the separation of the 
 right to plan from the duty to execute has always led 
 to blundering and inefficiency." No man has been 
 more severely condemned than Mr. Wilson for refusing 
 to share his powers, but long before he was intrusted 
 with power, when he had only his theoretical knowledge 
 to guide him, he was able to see the danger that menaced 
 and the confusion that would follow if the mind that 
 planned was not also the hand to execute. 
 
 It is worth incorporating here Mr. Wilson s pen pic 
 ture of the great leader, which has more than an im 
 personal interest when it is recalled how in his student 
 days at Johns Hopkins he prepared himself for public 
 oratory by a close study of the great English parlia 
 mentarians. In "Congressional Government", in one 
 of the few passages in which he gives his fancy play and 
 splashes color on his palette, he tells of the power of 
 oratory in Congress and says, "Men may be clever and 
 engaging speakers, such as are to be found, doubtless, 
 at half the bars of the country, without being equipped 
 even tolerably for any of the high duties of the states 
 man ; but men can scarcely be orators without that 
 
THE ENIGMA 71 
 
 force of character, that readiness of resource, that 
 clearness of vision, that grasp of intellect, that courage 
 of conviction, that earnestness of purpose, and that 
 instinct and capacity for leadership which are the eight 
 horses that draw the triumphal chariot of every leader 
 and ruler of free men." 
 
 It was the bitter complaint of members of Congress 
 and their satellite politicians, and to some extent it 
 was shared by th^_c^untry j _ that. Jlxe__new President 
 ^?-JL5i ore mas terful jind obstinate man than any of 
 his predecessors, with perhaps the exception of Jackson, 
 whose historical reputation they accepted without in 
 vestigation and with whom he was often compared ; but 
 the comparison with Lincoln is more appropriate, as 
 we shall see, although there could not be two men, in 
 many things, more unlike. Lincoln was a man of in 
 finite patience, of consummate political shrewdness, 
 of unyielding tenacity; he touched emotion with the 
 magic harp of speech ; he made war in a holy cause and 
 brought an unwilling people to welcome sacrifice in 
 the name of humanity. The parallel could not be the 
 more exact. 
 
 In some way which no one could explain but every 
 one had to acknowledge, Mr. Wilson had seized power 
 so completely that his own party in Congress had be 
 come merely a council to register his decrees, and the 
 opposition performed no other function but that of 
 muttering in futile rage. It was neither overwhelming 
 ambition nor the selfish vanity of power that made 
 
72 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 i 
 Mr. Wilson play this part. He brought to the Presidency 
 
 new ideas and nejv methods; the Presidency was to 
 cease to be merely a superintendency and to become a 
 premiership. It is amusing now as we look back, and 
 it will afford much material for the future historian, 
 that a great parliamentary revolution was in progress, 
 and no one suspected it, and only one man knew it. 
 A system that had come into existence by chance 
 rather than design, that Congress after Congress had 
 perpetuated, Mr. Wilson had determined to destroy, 
 did begin to destroy from the first day he entered the 
 White House, had struck at its foundation in the early 
 months of his power, and soon was to see it crumble 
 and leveled in the dust. More than one President 
 had tried to do and failed what Mr. Wilson succeeded 
 in accomplishing. Congress, jealous of its usurped 
 powers and unwilling to yield them, resisted any at 
 tempt on the part of the PresidenTtO regain his stolen 
 inheritance, and the struggle ended either in the presi 
 dential surrender or a break between the President 
 and his party in Congress, which was the fate of Mr. 
 Cleveland, also a masterful man. Lincoln narrowly 
 escaped the same fate. It was the same clash between 
 a President determined to assert leadership and a Con 
 gress no less determined to keep the President subor 
 dinate. "This was an able, energetic, and truly patri 
 otic Congress," says one of Lincoln s biographers, 
 "and must not be despised Ji or its reluctance to be 
 guided by Lincoln. But it was reluctant." 
 
THE ENIGMA 73 
 
 Congress went its way unsuspecting, and Mr. Wilson 
 worked. Like the Congress of Lincoln s day "they 
 grumbled and sneered"; just as their predecessors 
 complained that before they could legislate they had 
 to "ascertain the Royal pleasure", so now they de 
 nounced the man who had made them " rubber stamps ", 
 who called no party leaders in conference, who showed 
 no fear of Congress and treated Jt with little deference, 
 but who sent his measures down to Congress with the 
 calm assurance they would be enacted into laws. 
 Every other President coming into office has been 
 swamped with office seekers, with senators and rep 
 resentatives acting as office brokers for their constitu 
 ents; and Presidents have not considered that it 
 lowered their dignity to haggle over offices in return 
 for promises of legislative support, while members of 
 Congress have considered it part of their power to re 
 mind the President that unless they were given the offices 
 they sought for their clients he might expect opposition 
 when he submitted his legislative program for action. 
 
 Mr. Wilson gave little of his time to office brokerage. 
 He had avowed himself a party man ; statesmanship, 
 he had recorded, was the accomplishment of party 
 objects; but his imagination was too vivid and his 
 principles were too firmly established to resort to the 
 cheap trick of buying strength by the sale of offices. 
 The Democratic party was in power and Democrats 
 were naturally to be given preferment, but the days of 
 Walpole were gone. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY 
 
 THE policies of an administration are broadly fore 
 shadowed by the "platform" adopted at the nominat 
 ing convention on which the candidate for the Presi 
 dency stands ; the candidate s speech of acceptance 
 in reply to the formal notification of the committee 
 appointed to inform him of his nomination; and his 
 first official act as President, the announcement of the 
 members of his Cabinet. 
 
 A political platform has no legal validity ; it has 
 neither the force of statute nor the moral obligation 
 imposed upon an individual by his personal promise. 
 It is the compromise of many conflicting elements, 
 some of them governed by principle and others yielding 
 to expediency, who are relieved from personal respon 
 sibility because their identity is lost in the mass. But 
 a political platform is always to be regarded as the ex 
 pression of benevolent intention, of what the repre 
 sentatives of the people would like to do, and perhaps 
 intend to do if under the heat of emotion their enthu 
 siasm has not carried them too far; and it perhaps 
 more nearly typifies than any other document the be- 
 
 74 
 
A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY 75 
 
 lief men have at the moment of the things their fellow 
 men are thinking, their desires and unsatisfied longings ; 
 and puts in concrete form so as to make the strongest 
 appeal the crude ideas of the multitude. 
 
 The Democratic platform of _ 1912 was in harmony 
 with the new thoughts that were moving men and the 
 aspirations that made them see in a purified politics 
 a regenerative force. The tariff, according to Demo 
 cratic belief, had been perverted from its original pur 
 pose of providing for the necessary support of the gov 
 ernment and been made an instrument of oppression 
 and the means of intrenching monopoly, therefore it 
 was natural for the convention to demand that taxes 
 should be sufficient only for "the necessities of govern 
 ment honestly and economically administered"; that 
 the trusts and their beneficiaries should be vigorously 
 denounced ; that every movement in the direction of 
 social reform, equality and justice, such as the income 
 tax, the election of senators by the people, the publicity 
 of campaign contributions, the efficient control of rail 
 ways, the improvement of agriculture and other meas 
 ures for the general benefit should be strongly approved. 
 
 The platform of this year is noteworthy as showing 
 the current of thought, how much men were thinking 
 only of the things close to them, the things that were 
 to bring sweetness to life and help to lift the burden 
 the severity of taxation, the high cost of living, the 
 grasp of monopoly; and how little their thoughts 
 turned to things remote from them : international rela- 
 
76 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 jiflh 
 
 tions or the affairs of other peoples, which could not 
 in any way make for their own happiness or remedy 
 the injustice of which they complained. The platform 
 gives perfunctory approval to a navy "sufficient to 
 defend American policies ", but has no word to say of 
 the army ; it favors the exemption from tolls of Amer 
 ican ships in the coastwise trade passing through the 
 Panama Canal; it condemns "a policy of imperialism 
 and colonial exploitation in the Philippines, or else 
 where" and favors the independence of the islands; 
 and commends the action of Congress in having abro 
 gated the Russian commercial treaty because of 
 Russia s discrimination against American Jews. This 
 is the election manifesto of a non-militaristic, anti- 
 imperialistic party of social democracy and is in 
 marked contrast to former years, when foreign affairs 
 were an issue and parties must take firm ground or 
 risk losing votes. 
 
 Thus in 1892 the Republican platform expressed its 
 sympathy for home rule in Ireland ; in 1896 the Dem 
 ocrats championed the people of Cuba "in their heroic 
 struggle for liberty and independence"; and in the 
 same year the Republicans gave prominence to foreign 
 policy in "planks" too long to be quoted, but which 
 were vigorous and defiant. In 1900 the Democrats gave 
 more space to foreign affairs than their rivals. The 
 Democratic platform breathed new life into the Monroe 
 Doctrine, it condemned the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty 
 "as a surrender of American rights and interests not 
 
A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY 77 
 
 to be tolerated by the American people" ; it was equally 
 severe in disapproving the "ill concealed Republican 
 alliance with England"; it "viewed with indignation 
 the purpose of England to overwhelm with force the 
 South African republics"; and, heartily opposing 
 "militarism", avowed "this Republic has no place for 
 a vast military service and conscription"; an inter 
 esting political reminiscence in view of a Democratic 
 President and a Democratic Congress writing a con 
 scription act on the statute books. In the Republican 
 convention of that year were fewer fire-eaters than in 
 the opposing camp, although the Republicans were 
 equally zealous in proclaiming their undying faith in 
 the Monroe Doctrine ; they declared their belief in the 
 principle of civis Romanus sum by asserting it was 
 the duty of the American Government to protect its 
 citizens wherever they were placed in peril ; the for 
 eign policy of the Administration in Samoa and Hawaii 
 was approved, and hope expressed for a speedy ter 
 mination of the Boer War. Further quotations are 
 unnecessary, nor is it necessary minutely to inquire 
 whether these platform references to foreign affairs 
 were animated by principle or expediency. The pur 
 pose has been to show, and to prove, that in the past 
 the relations of America with the rest of the world in 
 fluenced political thought and action and had to be 
 reckoned with by the leaders of both political parties. 
 
 The Republican platform of 1912 was not dissimilar 
 to that of the Democrats in emphasizing "civil liberty 
 
78 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^P 
 
 and the rights of men" and in pledging the party "to 
 go forward with the solution of these new questions 
 which social, economic and political development have 
 brought into the forefront of the nation s interest"; 
 but the Republicans give even less space than their 
 opponents to foreign affairs. That international dis 
 putes may be settled by peaceful means and the ad 
 judication of an international court of justice is a pious 
 hope; approval is given to the action of Congress in 
 terminating the Russian treaty, and there is a mean 
 ingless reference to the Philippines. 
 I It was as a protest that the short-lived Progressive 
 party came into existence that year, and its platform 
 is that protest voiced: a "covenant with the people" 
 to "forge a new instrument of government." Taking, 
 as a matter of course, more advanced ground in social 
 legislation than either of the older parties, the platform 
 in a few lines dealt with only four international ques 
 tions : the immediate repeal of the Canadian Reci 
 procity Act ; freedom of the Panama Canal to American 
 ships in the coastwise trade; an international agree 
 ment for the limitation of naval forces; the protec 
 tion of the rights of American citizens. 
 
 It will thus be seen that foreign affairs were not in 
 the American picture in the year 1912, and that domes 
 tic matters monopolized attention exclusively. It 
 may be added here that in the campaign that followed 
 there was scarcely a reference either by the candidates 
 themselves, the other party chiefs or in the press to 
 
A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY 79 
 
 foreign policies, with the sole exception of "dollar diplo 
 macy ", a term coined by the Democrats to show their 
 reprobation of the support given by the Republican 
 Administration to American commerce and finance in 
 foreign countries, but especially in China and Latin 
 America. "Dollar diplomacy", however, was never 
 in any sense an issue of the campaign and was too re 
 mote to the masses either to interest them or to arouse 
 their passion ; it was used by the Democrats to throw 
 odium on the Republicans and to strengthen the Dem 
 ocratic belief that the Republican party was a party 
 of monopoly which used the government for its own 
 benefit. In a word, "dollar diplomacy" was only 
 another variant of tariff robbery and trust extortion. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was nominated in July, and on the 
 seventh of August, in accordance with custom, he was 
 notified of his nomination and delivered his speech of 
 acceptance. This speech, some ten thousand words 
 in length, is a reaffirmation, enlargement and interpre 
 tation of the platform. A platform, it has already been 
 said, has no legal existence and is simply a moral obli 
 gation voluntarily assumed by the party, and by the 
 candidate as a member of the party. The candidate s 
 speech of acceptance is not only a vow of fealty to his 
 party and the cause of which he has been constituted 
 the leader, but a solemn affirmation that he accepts 
 and considers himself morally bound to adhere to the 
 
80 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 |p 
 
 principles of his party as formulated in its plat 
 form. 
 
 Without reservation Mr. Wilson accepted the plat 
 form and showed the belief that was in him and his 
 duty as he should execute it if elected. As was to have 
 been expected, in the light of the platform, international 
 concerns do not press upon him for discussion, seemingly 
 they are not in his mind, and his whole attention is 
 given to those questions of domestic policy which, to 
 use his own words, make this plainly a new age. It 
 was, as he saw it, a new age, an age with new thoughts, 
 with men possessed of new beliefs and impatient of 
 the old tricks and cunning which had so often cheated 
 them. It was in that spirit he said: "We stand 
 in the presence of an awakened Nation ... a Nation 
 that has awakened to a sense of neglected ideals and 
 neglected duties; to the consciousness that the rank 
 and file of her people find life very hard to sustain." 
 What, he asked, did the platform mean? It meant 
 "to show that we know what the Nation is thinking 
 about, what it is most concerned about, what it wishes 
 corrected, and what it desires to see attempted that is 
 new and constructive and intended for its long future." 
 He discussed at length the tasks ahead : the tariff and 
 the trusts, laws to prevent financial confederacies, laws 
 to improve labor conditions, the development of the 
 American merchant mar ne ; but of the relations that 
 ought to mark the intercourse of America with her neigh 
 bors on this continent and the peoples of Europe or Asia 
 
A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY 81 
 
 not one word, because the things of the moment were 
 those interwoven into the social fabric of his own people. 
 
 A President no more than a Prime Minister or the 
 President of the Council in France is given a free hand 
 in the formation of his Cabinet. Political and geo 
 graphical considerations it was Lincoln who said 
 that if the twelve Apostles had again to be chosen the 
 principle of locality would determine their selection 
 motives of expediency or motives of policy, various 
 reasons, sometimes important and sometimes trivial, 
 bring one man into the Cabinet and cause the rejec 
 tion of another, yet, in the main, the composition of 
 the Cabinet, in America as in England and in France, 
 is a fairly good index not only of the character of the 
 President but also of the policy the Administration will 
 follow. It is curious that long after the last sentence 
 was written I should chance to run across Mr. Wilson s 
 own language which I unconsciously paraphrased. 
 In "Constitutional Government" he writes: 
 
 "Self-reliant men will regard their Cabinets as execu 
 tive councils ; men less self-reliant or more prudent will 
 regard them as also political councils, and will wish to 
 call into them men who have earned the confidence of 
 their party. The character of the Cabinet may be made 
 a nice index of the theory of the presidential office, as 
 well as of the President s theory of party government." 
 
 When Mr. Wilson formed his Cabinet the public 
 imagined that the same considerations that influenced 
 his predecessors governed him ; that the Cabinet rep- 
 
82 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^ 
 resented political expediency, the payment of political 
 
 debts and personal friendship, and it was difficult for 
 the public to classify the members. Mr. Wilson, 
 however, had confused the public not by following 
 precedent but by liberally construing his own theories. 
 Being a self-reliant man he regarded his Cabinet as 
 primarily an executive council ; he also saw the wisdom 
 of calling to his Cabinet some men who had the con 
 fidence of the party and understood the peculiarities 
 of the Congressional temperament; but there was not 
 a single member who owed his appointment to friend 
 ship or was there because the President wanted to 
 have at the board a companion to whom he could turn 
 as an intimate apart from the official relation. 
 
 Taken as a whole the Cabinet was neither remark 
 able for its strength nor disgraceful for its weakness; 
 it was fairly average, although it contained rather more 
 than the usual number of unknown or little known men, 
 but all of them were typical of what Mr. Wilson called 
 the new age. That he should make Mr. Bryan Secre 
 tary of State, and thereby constitute him his chief 
 official adviser and place him second in line to the suc 
 cession, was to be expected, for Mr. Bryan had a great 
 following and wielded an influence in the party, at that 
 time, hardly less than that of the President himself. 
 That he should appoint Mr. Garrison Secretary of War 
 and Mr. Daniels Secretary of the Navy was to convince 
 the country that he contemplated no policy of adventure 
 and looked forward to four years of harmonious rela- 
 
A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY 83 
 
 tions with all the world. For some reason not quite 
 clear the Secretary of War has always been a lawyer. 
 Mr. Garrison was an eminent lawyer, a man of high 
 character and standing, but practically unknown out 
 side of his State except to members of his profession, 
 and without political reputation; but he was not as 
 sociated in the public mind with militarism nor was he 
 the advocate of a powerful military establishment ; Mr. 
 Daniels had served his political apprenticeship and had 
 a wide political acquaintance, but he had held no im 
 portant place of trust and had been given no oppor 
 tunity to prove his capacity or to display his admin 
 istrative ability, and his devotion to Mr. Bryan, whose 
 political and social views he shared, created a prej 
 udice against him. Mr. Bryan was a professed be 
 liever in and lover of peace ; Mr. Daniels was known 
 to be equally firm in his love of peace and detestation 
 of war. In the first years of his administration, when 
 the country was at peace, Mr. Daniels was the victim 
 of his associations and a curious belief that the navy 
 was a school for social experiment, which is the one 
 thing the navy is not. With the outbreak of war 
 his ability and energy in bringing the navy to a war 
 footing made the country reverse its former unfavor 
 able opinion and earned him its respect and admiration. 
 
 Just as the candidate s speech of acceptance is a 
 pledge so the inaugural address of the new President 
 
84 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ijl 
 is a dedication. No President could deliver it unmoved, 
 
 no man, no matter how base or unworthy, but must 
 feel the solemnity of the simple but impressive cere 
 mony that has centered about him, the responsibility 
 that has become his, the destiny he holds, the faith 
 that millions of his countrymen have in him, the hopes 
 and ambitions he represents. He has sworn loyally 
 and well to defend and serve, and then he speaks, and 
 if ever a man should say what he believes and feels 
 and under the inspiration of the moment open his heart 
 he must. Some Presidents have been content to deal 
 in platitudes, some Presidents have spoken what men 
 long remembered, and one President spoke in deathless 
 words, but no President but what has revealed his 
 real character. 
 
 In his inaugural, the first of his great state papers, 
 Mr. Wilson rose to lofty heights, set out the program 
 it was his purpose Congress should follow, made ar 
 ticulate the things he believed, offered himself not as a 
 partisan rejoicing in the victory of his party but as a 
 leader to whom the cause of humanity was sacred. 
 Recounting the abuses that had crept into the body 
 politic and how "much fine gold has been corroded", 
 telling of things that were to be accomplished, a com 
 prehensive legislative program touching not only eco 
 nomic but also social conditions, he invited all men 
 to see what was in his heart and mind. "The firm 
 basis of government is justice, not pity," he said. 
 "This is the high enterprise of the new day: to lift 
 
A PLEDGE TO HUMANITY 85 
 
 everything that concerns our life as a Nation to the light 
 that shines from the hearthfire of every man s conscience 
 and vision of the right . . . And yet it will be no 
 cool process of mere science. The Nation has been 
 deeply stirred, stirred by a solemn passion, stirred by 
 the knowledge of wrong, of ideals lost, of Government 
 too often debauched and made an instrument of evil. 
 The feelings with which we face this new age of right 
 and opportunity sweep across our heart strings like 
 some air out of God s own presence, where justice and 
 mercy are reconciled and the judge and the brother are 
 one. . . . 
 
 "This is not a day of triumph ; it is a day of dedica 
 tion. Here muster, not the forces of party, but the 
 forces of humanity. Men s hearts wait upon us ; men s 
 lives hang in the balance ; men s hopes call upon us 
 to say what we will do. Who shall live up to the great 
 trust? Who dares fail to try? I summon all honest 
 men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men, to my side. 
 God helping me, I will not fail them, if they will but 
 counsel and sustain me." 
 
 In those places where it is the business of men to 
 appraise and weigh and formulate a judgment of rulers 
 and statesmen, in the chanceries of the world and in 
 the embassies and legations of the nations great and 
 small in Washington ; in newspaper offices in London 
 and Paris and Tokio, undoubtedly the assize had been 
 held and the verdict recorded. The character of Mr. 
 Wilson as the world then thought it knew it, a study 
 
86 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 of his writings and speeches, his oft repeated declara 
 tions that of the possessions of mankind justice was the 
 most precious, that wrongs which existed were to be 
 righted, his seemingly utter indifference to and igno 
 rance of foreign affairs, and the composition of his 
 Cabinet a Cabinet "which abounded in pacific 
 discretion " were the hostages he gave to the world 
 that under his guidance America would give no thought 
 to war or aggression, that no hope of conquest would 
 allure her, that in his dealings with other nations he 
 would be scrupulously governed by principles of jus 
 tice and morality. The statesmen who were even then 
 walking blindfold to the precipice of war must have 
 felt certain America would not disturb their fatuous 
 vision of peace. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 
 1 
 
 IT is ironical that the fame of the man who loved 
 peace rests on war. Mr. Wilson was no less a lover 
 of peace than his Democratic predecessor Madison - 
 and of him Mr. Wilson has written that he loved 
 peace, "and was willing to secure it by any slow process 
 of law or negotiation that promised to keep war at 
 arm s length." Mr. Wilson contemned war and to 
 him strife was abhorrent ; his thoughts were engrossed 
 with domestic problems and he had selected his 
 Cabinet "which was wanting in daemonic element" 
 as the instruments to deal with them ; he attached 
 so little importance to foreign affairs that he did not 
 consider it necessary to appoint a competent foreign 
 adviser, and yet with ironical perversity it was ordained 
 that from the first day of his Presidency international 
 relations should press heavily upon him. They run 
 through his Administration like a scarlet thread in a 
 monotonous web of dull gray. Had there been no 
 war Mr. Wilson s Administration would have been 
 memorable; in the first eighteen months of his 
 "Premiership" he brought his party to the enactment 
 
 87 
 
88 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 of legislation so extraordinary that had he done nothing 
 else it would have made of his Presidency an epoch in 
 American politics and foreshadowed what was to be 
 accomplished in the two and a half years still remain 
 ing. But his fame would have been uncertain for 
 many years, his legislation would have aroused bitter 
 political controversy ; and domestic policies are the 
 monotonous pattern of dull gray as compared with 
 the flaming thread of war. 
 
 From his Republican predecessor Mr. Wilson in 
 herited Mexico. It is unnecessary to go into details, 
 and even less necessary to discuss whether Mr. Taft, 
 by the recognition of Huerta, should have cleared 
 the way for Mr. Wilson. To Mr. Taft it seemed 
 proper that a matter of high policy affecting the inti 
 mate relations of the United States and its most 
 powerful southern neighbor ought to be determined 
 by the Administration fresh with the mandate of 
 the people rather than an Administration that had 
 forfeited the confidence of the people. It was the 
 question of recognition that confronted Mr. Wilson, 
 and one week after he came to the White House, on 
 March 11, 1913, he made his purpose known in a 
 statement which, in view of its importance as not only 
 defining his policy toward the republics of Latin 
 America but also his general foreign policy, the first 
 time he had made his foreign policy known, is given 
 in full : 
 
 "In view of questions which are naturally upper- 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 89 
 
 most in the public mind just now, the President 
 issues the following statement : 
 
 "One of the chief objects of my Administration will 
 be to cultivate the friendship and deserve the con 
 fidence of our sister republics of Central and South 
 America, and to promote in every proper and honor 
 able way the interests which are common to the 
 peoples of the two continents. I earnestly desire the 
 most cordial understanding and cooperation between 
 the peoples and leaders of America and, therefore, 
 deem it my duty to make this brief statement. 
 
 "Cooperation is possible only when supported at 
 every turn by the orderly processes of just govern 
 ment based upon law, not upon arbitrary or irregular 
 force. We hold, as I am sure all thoughtful leaders 
 of republican government everywhere hold, that just 
 government rests always upon the consent of the 
 governed, and that there can be no freedom without 
 order based upon law and upon* the public conscience 
 and approval. We shall look to make these principles 
 the basis of mutual intercourse, respect, and helpful 
 ness between our sister republics and ourselves. We 
 shall lend our influence of every kind to the realization 
 of these principles in fact and practice, knowing that 
 disorder, personal intrigue and defiance of constitu 
 tional rights weaken and discredit government and 
 injure none so much as the people who are unfortunate 
 enough to have their common life and their common 
 affairs so tainted and disturbed. We can have no 
 
90 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 flfe 
 
 sympathy with those who seek to seize the power of 
 government to advance their own personal interests or 
 ambition. We are the friends of peace, but we know 
 that there can be no lasting or stable peace in such 
 circumstances. As friends, therefore, we shall prefer 
 those who act in the interests of peace and honor, who 
 protect private rights and respect the restraints of 
 constitutional provision. Mutual respect seems to us 
 the indispensable foundation of friendship between 
 States, as between individuals. 
 
 "The United States has nothing to seek in Central 
 and South America, except the lasting interests of the 
 peoples of the two continents, the security of govern 
 ments intended for the people and for no special group 
 or interest, and the development of personal and trade 
 relationships between the two continents which shall 
 redound to the profit and advantage of both and inter 
 fere with the rights and liberties of neither. 
 
 "From these principles may be read so much of the 
 future policy of this government as it is necessary now 
 to forecast; and in the spirit of these principles I 
 may, I hope, be permitted with as much confidence as 
 earnestness to extend to the governments of all the 
 republics of America the hand of genuine disinterested 
 friendship and to pledge my own honor and the honor 
 of my colleagues to every enterprise of peace and 
 amity that a fortunate future may disclose." 
 
 Until minor things were submerged by the universal 
 chaos of the great war, Mexico was again and again 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 91 
 
 to threaten the peace of the United States and the 
 President s political future. It subjected him to 
 continued attack, he was accused of being cowardly 
 and weak in not making war on Mexico, in having no 
 policy, in vacillating when he ought to show firmness, 
 in paltering when honor demanded a clear-cut decision. 
 The Republicans eagerly seized upon his policy, or 
 rather absence of all policy, as they termed it, to 
 weaken his hold upon the country ; it was an issue in 
 the congressional elections of 1914 and again in the 
 presidential election two years later. Many members 
 of his own party were restive under this criticism 
 and would gladly have welcomed war with Mexico 
 because of the prestige an Administration gains from a 
 short and successful war and the outcome of the 
 war would not have been in doubt from the first day 
 and because of the dislike the people of the border 
 States have for the Mexicans. 
 
 Mr. Wilson knew of course this state of feeling. 
 It required only such diplomacy as the State Depart 
 ment could easily furnish so to shape matters that 
 Mexico would challenge the United States, which for 
 its own dignity and in defense of the national honor 
 must be met; and the country, irrespective of party, 
 would support the President, unwillingly forced to 
 chastise the insolent aggressor. Throughout, the atti 
 tude of Mexico was provocative, it afforded abundant 
 justification for a President seeking war and ambitious 
 for military glory ; and although twice in three years 
 
92 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 M 
 
 American troops entered Mexico and blood was shed, 
 after brief occupations they were withdrawn, the 
 President refusing to find a cause for war in the inci 
 dents that had made invasion necessary. 
 
 It does not have to be said that it was not cowardice 
 or the fear of consequences that deterred Mr. Wilson, 
 for he has given abundant evidence of his courage and 
 his determination when he believes his course to be 
 right, but it was in keeping with firmly founded prin 
 ciples and his code of morality to stand steadfast 
 before the strong, but not to play the bully and take 
 advantage of the weak. In "Division and Reunion", 
 discussing the settlement of the Oregon boundary and 
 the annexation of Texas, he had written: "With 
 England, which was strong, we were ready to com 
 pound differences ; from Mexico, which was weak, we 
 were disposed to snatch everything, conceding 
 nothing." He would not make it possible for the 
 historian of the future to cast that reproach upon his 
 Administration. 
 
 A week after the announcement of his Latin-Ameri 
 can policy Mr. Wilson found it necessary, on March 
 18, to declare his position in regard to American co 
 operation in the financial affairs of China; the "dollar 
 diplomacy" of the Taft Administration. American 
 bankers had been invited by a syndicate of British, 
 French, German, Russian and Japanese bankers to 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 93 
 
 participate in a loan to China, and the American 
 bankers, two days earlier, had called upon Secretary 
 Bryan to tell him they would not join the syndicate 
 unless expressly requested to do so by the Washing 
 ton Government. In this statement the President 
 said the request desired would not be made because 
 the Administration did not approve the conditions 
 of the loan or the implication of responsibility. That 
 responsibility "might conceivably go to the length in 
 some unhappy contingency of forcible interference in 
 the financial, and even the political, affairs" of China. 
 That would be obnoxious to the principles upon which 
 the American Government rests. Expressing the 
 desire of the Government of the United States to aid 
 the Chinese people in their development and to promote 
 the most extended and intimate trade relationships 
 with them, Mr. Wilson added: "This is the main 
 material interest of its citizens in the development of 
 China. Our interests are those of the open door a 
 door of friendship and mutual advantage. This is the 
 only door we care to enter." 
 
 Thus twice in the first two weeks after his in 
 auguration the man in whose thoughts domestic 
 affairs occupied the chief place had been compelled by 
 circumstances not of his seeking to turn from the 
 consideration of matters of domestic policy to i^ie 
 field of foreign relations and had laid down the basic 
 principles that would govern his conduct of external 
 affairs. 
 
94 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 (B 
 
 3 
 
 Two weeks later the President was faced with a 
 foreign question that had more threatening possi 
 bilities even than Mexico. The always smoldering 
 antagonism between the people of the Pacific Coast 
 and the Japanese had flamed anew by the introduction 
 into the California legislature of a bill prohibiting 
 the Japanese from owning or leasing lands. On April 
 4 the Japanese Ambassador brought to the attention 
 of the Secretary of State the pending legislation, 
 asserting that it was discriminatory and in violation 
 of treaty rights. The President appealed to the 
 Governor and legislature not to draw in question the 
 treaty obligations of the United States, but the appeal 
 failing Secretary Bryan went to California to use his 
 personal influence to prevent the passage of the ob 
 noxious legislation, in which he was unsuccessful. I 
 shall not follow further in detail a controversy which 
 dragged along into the following year and evoked 
 several sharp protests from the Japanese Government. 
 The President was placed in the awkward position of 
 desiring scrupulously to observe treaty obligations 
 and maintain international amity, but he was power 
 less to coerce California, the matter being strictly 
 within the purview of the State and not subject to the 
 interference or supervision of the Federal Government. 
 This the State Department explained, asserting also 
 that the legislation was not political, it was not to be 
 assumed that it was part of a general policy or indicated 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 95 
 
 unfriendliness, but was wholly economic. The corre 
 spondence is lacking in that clearness of expression 
 and directness of phrase that later were to distinguish 
 important communications nominally emanating from 
 the State Department but actually written in the 
 White House, and it is quite evident Mr. Bryan, with 
 the assistance of his subordinates, and not the Presi 
 dent, was the author of this correspondence. 
 
 The issue raised by Japan had not diverted Mr. 
 Bryan from vigorously pressing what was dearest to 
 him and had the fullest support of the President. Mr. 
 Bryan was a pacifist and so was Mr. Wilson when that 
 was not a term of obloquy ; Mr. Bryan had publicly 
 announced shortly after his assumption of office that 
 so long as he was Secretary of State the United States 
 would not engage in war, and he was determined to 
 remove all danger of war by the conclusion of a series 
 of arbitration treaties which would substitute peaceful 
 negotiation for the appeal to force. That was to be 
 his policy as Minister for Foreign Affairs, and he 
 believed it would establish his lasting fame. It 
 peculiarly appealed to a man living in the ultramon 
 tane kingdom of idealism seeking perfection, ignorant 
 of international affairs, European politics and knowl 
 edge of the world ; and he now espoused international 
 arbitration with the same passionate ardor that had 
 distinguished his championship of other issues largely 
 
96 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 40 
 materialistic but which he was able to invest with his 
 
 idealistic fancy. 
 
 On April 24 Mr. Bryan announced to the press that 
 the diplomatic corps had been informed of the Presi 
 dent s desire to conclude these treaties which were 
 "intended to supplement the arbitration treaties now 
 in existence and those that may be made hereafter." 
 Believing that these treaties would make war im 
 possible, Mr. Bryan concluded his statement by 
 saying : "But whether or not the proposed agreement 
 accomplishes as much as is hoped for it, it is at least a 
 step in the direction of universal peace, and I am 
 pleased to be the agent through whom the President 
 presents this proposition to the Powers represented 
 here." 
 
 With England there was a question pending, and 
 while it was not settled until the following year it can 
 be conveniently dealt with here. The Hay-Paunce- 
 fote Treaty, by which Great Britain abrogated the 
 Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and relinquished to the United 
 States the sole right to build and control a canal across 
 the isthmus, provided that it should be open to the 
 vessels of all nations on "terms of entire equality." 
 The Act of Congress providing for the management 
 and regulation of the canal exempted from the pay 
 ment of tolls American vessels engaged in the coast 
 wise trade, which Great Britain held was in violation 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 97 
 
 of the treaty and a discrimination in favor of American 
 shipping ; and a mild protest was lodged by the British 
 Government. Mr. Taft and the Congress declined to 
 accept this view, and contended that as only vessels 
 under the American flag were permitted to engage in 
 the coastwise trade the exemption was purely a matter 
 of domestic regulation and could not in any way be 
 injurious to British shipping, prohibited by law from 
 the coastwise trade and therefore not brought in 
 competition with American vessels. The question 
 had to some extent been made political; the British 
 claim was stoutly resisted by those members of Con 
 gress and others who had no liking for England, and 
 the platforms of the Democratic and Progressive 
 parties contained planks approving the canal being 
 made toll free to American vessels. 
 
 Mr. Wilson ought to have regarded this as sufficient, 
 and the party having spoken through its representa 
 tives he might very well have availed himself of the 
 legal maxim of stare decisis and made no further 
 effort to revitalize a contentious issue decently in 
 terred; but Mr. Wilson had read the treaty and the 
 law, he had formed his own opinion of the morality 
 involved, even if the letter of the law sustained his 
 own government, and was indisposed to permit a 
 lawyer s quibble to override a moral obligation. 
 
 Between his election in November and his in 
 auguration in the following March, when he still 
 exercised only the power of a private citizen but spoke 
 
98 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 p 
 
 with the authority of the designated leader of his 
 party and the President-elect, he made several attempts 
 to induce Congress to repeal the discriminating section 
 of the law, but without success. In a letter to Mr. 
 William L. Marbury, of Baltimore, the President 
 wrote that the exemption was a mistaken policy; 
 that it was economically unjust and in clear violation 
 of the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty. There is, of course, 
 he added, "much honest difference of opinion as to the 
 last point, as there is, no doubt, as to the others, but 
 it is at least debatable and if the promises we make in 
 such matters are debatable, I, for one, do not care to 
 debate them. I think the country would prefer to 
 let no question arise as to its whole-hearted purpose 
 to redeem its promises in the light of any reasonable 
 construction of them rather than debate a point of 
 honor." 
 
 On March 5, 1914, Mr. Wilson went before Congress 
 to urge the repeal of the exemption provision of the 
 Panama Canal Act. He said in part : 
 
 "Whatever may be our own differences of opinion 
 concerning this much debated measure, its meaning 
 is not debated outside of the United States. Every 
 where else the language of the treaty is given but one 
 interpretation, and that interpretation precludes the 
 exemption I am asking you to repeal. We consented 
 to the treaty ; its language we accepted, if we did not 
 originate ; and we are too big, too powerful, too self- 
 respecting a nation to interpret with too strained or 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 99 
 
 refined a reading the words of our own promises just 
 because we have power to give us leave to read them 
 as we please. The large thing to do is the only thing 
 that we can afford to do, a voluntary withdrawal 
 from a position everywhere questioned and mis 
 understood. We ought to reverse our action without 
 raising the question whether we were right or wrong, 
 and so once more deserve our reputation for generosity 
 and for the redemption of every obligation without 
 quibble or hesitation. 
 
 "I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy 
 of the Administration. I shall not know how to deal 
 with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer 
 consequence if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging 
 
 measure." 
 
 When Mr. Wilson was a candidate for the Presidency 
 it was urged against his nomination that having almost 
 no political experience he would in all probability be a 
 failure as President. More than once in the first 
 year of his Presidency he had confounded this proph 
 ecy, and in asking repeal he again displayed his 
 political leadership. He might have pressed it on the 
 merits of the case and argued in support of his con 
 tention, which would have given his opponents an 
 opportunity to rebut his arguments. Mr. Wilson 
 took broader ground. He put Congress in the position 
 of sustaining an action impugning the national honor 
 or reversing its action and protecting the honor of the 
 nation ; he appealed to morality ; and to bring to his 
 
100 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 support those men who might remain unmoved by 
 moral considerations urged expediency and the public 
 exigency. "Matters of even greater delicacy and 
 nearer consequence" had an ominous meaning, but 
 required no more precise definition. Japan was 
 firmly insisting upon her rights, and Japan was the 
 ally of England, as Congress knew. Mexico was 
 flaunting the United States, and England had great 
 commercial interests in Mexico. Not willingly would 
 Congress "knuckle down" to England, but the friend 
 ship of England in a time of stress was lightly bought 
 at the price of the canal tolls. 
 
 In securing repeal (Congress subsequently acted 
 upon Mr. Wilson s recommendation) Mr. Wilson 
 showed his power over Congress and his understand 
 ing of the temperament of his own people. Again and 
 again he was to show this almost psychic comprehen 
 sion, a comprehension that so frequently apparently 
 was intuition rather than ratiocination that he was 
 said to have an " uncanny" power of divination. Time 
 after time he did or failed to do the one thing that 
 at the moment seemed fatal, which subjected him to 
 the most violent criticism, to which he remained 
 indifferent, only later for these same critics grudgingly 
 to admit that what he did for which they had criticized 
 him, or failed to do which had provoked their denunci 
 ation, was correct. We need attribute to Mr. Wilson 
 no supernormal powers, no quality not possessed by 
 other men, except the rare quality of political leader- 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF lEADEftStflP 1,01 
 
 ship developed to an extraordinary degree. He had 
 the natural instinct of political leadership in the same 
 way that other men have a peculiar sense of color 
 or form. Mr. Wilson had said of himself that having 
 grasped his facts he kept his imagination ahead of the 
 facts. That is the master politician and is the secret 
 of political leadership : the power to grasp facts and 
 then to have the imagination to know when and how 
 to present them so that they shall stir the imagination 
 of the people. Abraham Lincoln had it, and it made 
 him the leader in a great crisis. Pitt had it when the 
 peril of the world was great. Woodrow Wilson has 
 it at a time of even greater peril. 
 
 At the opening of Congress, on the second of 
 December, 1913, Mr. Wilson delivered in person his 
 annual address. With the exception of Mexico the 
 pending controversies were not mentioned, but he 
 showed what he conceived ought to be the relation of 
 the United States to the rest of the world, which a few 
 months later was to take form in his message urging 
 the repeal of the Canal Act, by saying : 
 
 "There is only one possible standard by which to 
 determine controversies between the United States 
 and other nations, and that is compounded of these 
 two elements : Our own honor and our obligations to 
 the peace of the world. A test so compounded ought 
 easily to be made to govern both the establishment of 
 
102 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 new treaty obligations and the interpretation of those 
 already assumed." 
 
 That baseless fabric of the dream of universal peace 
 and good will and the brotherhood of nations was as 
 real to Mr. Wilson as it was to European statesmen 
 amusing themselves on the edge of the crater, and he 
 invited all the world to share with him his phantasm. 
 
 " The country, I am thankful to say, is at peace 
 with all the world," he told his audience, "and many 
 happy manifestations multiply about us of a growing 
 cordiality and sense of community of interest among 
 nations, foreshadowing an age of settled peace and 
 good will. More and more readily each decade do 
 the nations manifest the willingness to bind them 
 selves by solemn treaty to the processes of peace, the 
 processes of frankness and fair concession." The 
 United States had shown her sincere adherence to 
 the cause of international friendship by gaining "the 
 assent, in principle, of no less than thirty-one nations, 
 representing four fifths of the population of the world, 
 to the negotiation of treaties by which it shall be 
 agreed that whenever differences of interest or policy 
 arise which cannot be resolved by the ordinary pro 
 cesses of diplomacy they shall be publicly analyzed, 
 discussed, and reported upon by a tribunal chosen by 
 the parties before either nation determines its course 
 of action." 
 
 Referring to Mexico as the "one cloud upon our 
 horizon" and declaring that "there can be no certain 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 103 
 
 prospect of peace in America until General Huerta has 
 surrendered his usurped authority in Mexico ; until 
 it is understood on all hands, indeed, that such pre 
 tended governments will not be countenanced or 
 dealt with by the Government of the United States" ; 
 the President asserted that the United States was the 
 friend of constitutional government in America; 
 "more than that, America was its champion, because 
 in no other way can neighbors, to whom America 
 wishes in every way to make proof of friendship, work 
 out their own development in peace and liberty." Yet 
 the President contemplated no use of force against 
 Mexico, nor did he purpose to change his policy, 
 insistent as the public was on a more vigorous policy. 
 Mr. Wilson saw the power and prestige of Huerta 
 crumbling a little every day, and the collapse he 
 believed not to be far away. "We shall not, I believe, 
 be obliged to alter our policy of watchful waiting." 
 
 It will thus be seen how large a part foreign affairs 
 played in the first year of his Administration and with 
 what exactness Mr. Wilson charted his foreign policy. 
 He had given assurances to the world and reassured 
 his own people, to whom the thought of foreign adven 
 ture, aggression or military enterprise was abhorrent, 
 even although there was a strong sentiment in favor 
 of restoring order in Mexico and upholding the prin 
 ciple of republican government. In those twelve 
 months Mr. Wilson made several speeches, from which 
 only the briefest quotations can be made, whose 
 
104 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 tfp 
 
 keynote was duty and unselfish service. He impressed 
 upon the country and the world his desire for peace 
 and that the duty imposed upon the United States, 
 to use a phrase he coined later, was "to serve man 
 kind", altruistically and without hope of reward. 
 
 At Gettysburg on July 4, 1913, to the veterans of 
 the Grand Army and the Confederacy, he said : 
 "Come, let us be comrades and soldiers yet to serve 
 our fellow men in quiet counsel, where the blare of 
 trumpets is neither heard nor heeded and where the 
 things are done which make blessed the nations of the 
 world in peace and righteousness and love." Address 
 ing Congress on August 27, 1913, on relations with 
 Mexico, he said : "We shall yet prove to the Mexican 
 people that we know how to serve them without first 
 thinking how we shall serve ourselves." In a speech 
 in Philadelphia, October 25, 1913, he asked: "How 
 are you going to assist in some small part to give the 
 American people and, by example, the peoples of the 
 world more liberty, more happiness, more substantial 
 prosperity; and how are you going to make that 
 prosperity a common heritage instead of a selfish 
 possession?"^ At Mobile, Alabama, on October 27, 
 1913, Mr. Wilson, after affirming that it was im 
 possible for any nation to be the friend of another 
 except upon terms of equality and honor and that 
 "it is a very perilous thing to determine the foreign 
 policy of a nation in the terms of material interest", 
 declared "that the United States will never again seek 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 105 
 
 one additional foot of territory by conquest. She 
 will devote herself to showing that she knows how to 
 make honorable and fruitful use of the territory she 
 has, and she must regard it as one of the duties of 
 friendship to see that from no quarter are material 
 interests made superior to human liberty and national 
 opportunity." On April 30, 1914, Mr. Wilson asked 
 the permission of Congress to use the armed forces 
 of the country against Huerta to obtain recognition 
 of the rights and dignity of the United States, saying : 
 "We seek to maintain the dignity and authority of the 
 United States only because we wish always to keep our 
 great influence unimpaired for the uses of liberty, 
 both in the United States and wherever else it may be 
 employed for the benefit of mankind." 
 
 7 
 
 The legislation of the first seventeen months of Mr. 
 Wilson s Presidency, from the time of his inauguration 
 until Germany steeped the world in its long night of 
 misery and changed the whole relation of the life of 
 individuals as also of nations, must be dismissed in a 
 few sentences, important as it was to the social and 
 commercial future of the American people. 
 
 The Democratic party was pledged to a revision of 
 the tariff, and the policy of the party was in agreement 
 with Mr. Wilson s views and principles. Following the 
 custom of American legislation in giving to important 
 measures the names of the chairmen of the committees 
 
106 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 41 
 
 of the two houses having jurisdiction of the subject, 
 the Tariff Act of 1913 is popularly known as the 
 Simmons-Underwood Law, but for the truth of his 
 tory it ought to be called the Wilson Law. It was the 
 President who convened Congress without delay to 
 enact the legislation, it was the President who deter 
 mined the broad principles on which the bill should 
 be framed, and who had to encounter the opposition 
 of Mr. Underwood; for Mr. Wilson took more 
 advanced ground than Mr. Underwood in reducing 
 duties on raw materials. At every stage of the 
 measure Mr. Wilson was consulted, whenever there 
 was any difference of opinion between Mr. Wilson 
 and his party in Congress Mr. W r ilson prevailed. In 
 similar circumstances a British Premier would have 
 led his party in person in the House of Commons, and 
 upon his skill, his adroitness, his power over men and 
 the state of party discipline he either would have 
 carried his bill through and strengthened his hold over 
 his followers or been defeated and forced out of office. 
 Mr. Wilson led, but he was placed at the disadvan 
 tage of being denied the right to lead in person and hav 
 ing to exercise command at long range and through 
 deputies. He could not face his party, quiet dis 
 satisfaction in his own ranks or silence opposition, but 
 in all that he did he showed the genius of leadership. 
 When the bill was introduced it was predicted that it 
 would have very evil effects on the party, that it 
 would cause a breach that would destroy the Presi- 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 107 
 
 dent s authority; it was seriously questioned whether 
 a majority could be found for the bill. Cassandra 
 enjoyed her brief reign. Men with memories recalled 
 the shipwreck of administrations on the tariff rock, 
 and Cassandra gloomily prophesied that Mr. Wilson 
 would be the victim of his own folly. 
 
 Prophecy is an inexact science. The bill passed, 
 but it did not drive a wedge into the party ranks, and 
 Mr. Wilson was made stronger by this first test of his 
 power. It must be remembered that Mr. Wilson 
 came into the White House an unknown man almost 
 in the large field of national politics and with his 
 reputation as the leader of his party still to be made. 
 It is not improbable, one is inclined to think it is in 
 herently probable, that Mr. Wilson deliberately sought 
 the challenge and was willing to put to the test his 
 leadership so that the country should without un 
 necessary delay be given proof of it. Other Presidents 
 have considered it the part of prudence not to raise an 
 issue at the very beginning of their term, to conciliate, 
 leisurely to study the men whose opposition later 
 they may have to meet, to strengthen themselves with 
 the people, to intrench themselves behind a faction 
 so as to be able to count on support when the attack 
 must be made. Mr. Wilson adopted no circuitous 
 methods. He went directly to his objective, and with 
 the passage of the bill his party and the country at 
 large recognized in him a leader of remarkable quali 
 ties and the master of his party. 
 
108 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 v^n 
 
 In an even more remarkable degree Mr. Wilson 
 displayed his political leadership when he compelled 
 an unwilling Congress to reform the currency and 
 banking laws. With the passage by the House of the 
 tariff bill that body had nothing to occupy its attention 
 until the Senate acted, and members of the House 
 believed they were entitled to a well-earned holiday. 
 Not so the President, who knew the advantage of 
 position and how to use it. "I appeal to you with a 
 deep conviction of duty," he said to Congress. "I 
 believe that you share this conviction. I therefore 
 appeal to you with confidence." He could focus the 
 attention of the country upon the Senate, arguing the 
 tariff, and the House, discussing banking reform, 
 and this attention of the country has often proved a 
 spur to lagging legislators. Mr. Wilson s plan worked 
 admirably. ^Before the Senate passed the tariff bill 
 the banking bill had gone through the House with a 
 substantial majority, and the Senate, it was now 
 October, tired out by its labors, appealed to the 
 President for a brief respite by postponing the further 
 consideration of the banking bill until the meeting of 
 the regular session beginning the following December. 
 Mr. Wilson refused, and again he exhibited his political 
 skill. The bill, as he knew, would meet with bitter 
 opposition in the Senate; the Republicans, for party 
 reasons, were determined to defeat it if possible; 
 there was division among the Democrats. To post 
 pone consideration until December would be to play 
 
THE FIRST YEAR OF LEADERSHIP 109 
 
 into the hands of his opponents, who would find it 
 comparatively easy to block progress by bringing 
 forward appropriation and other bills having the right 
 of way. A stern taskmaster, Mr. Wilson kept the 
 Senate up to the collar, and it is fortunate he did so. 
 Had the new fiscal system not been in operation at 
 the beginning of the war it is doubtful whether the 
 United States could have withstood the shock brought 
 about by the derangement of the money markets of 
 all the world, and it is certain that but for the new 
 system the present Allies of the United States and the 
 United States herself would have found the burdens 
 imposed upon them in financing the war immeasurably 
 increased. 
 
 For seventeen months with admirable fortitude, 
 self-restraint, patience and the generosity of a strong 
 man who has compassion for weakness and instability 
 *and scorns to take advantage of his strength, Mr. 
 Wilson had resisted the temptation to make war on 
 Mexico, to gain popularity by military glory, to 
 break the peace of the world that he believed had 
 lastingly come to the world, to permit the destruction 
 of his great program of social reform by war and 
 all its after consequences. He was now to be con 
 fronted with events that were to require even greater 
 fortitude, even greater self-restraint; that would 
 impose upon his patience a trial that at times was 
 
110 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 QJI 
 
 crushing, that was to test to the limit not alone his 
 generosity and his justice but also his statesmanship 
 and his vision ; that was to subject him to reproach 
 and abuse, that disappointed his friends, perplexed 
 the unprejudiced and aroused the passionate hatred 
 of his opponents. No man was more maligned. 
 Seldom has any man s motives been so little under 
 stood or so cruelly distorted. Silent in the face of 
 criticism, uncomplaining and asking no vindication, 
 admitting few persons to share his companionship, 
 he worked and waited with a confidence born of 
 conviction that the course he followed would not bank 
 rupt his honor or that of the nation., 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 
 
 THE war fell like a blow on Europe, although talk 
 of war had been almost its daily diet for the last ten 
 years, and since 1904 there had been no session of 
 Parliament in which war with Germany had not been 
 openly discussed and regarded as inevitable by some 
 of the most influential English newspapers. British 
 naval and military preparations were made always 
 with the thought of Germany as the enemy. Across 
 the Channel there was the same mental attitude. 
 Both nations were firmly convinced there must come 
 a day when they would have either to yield to Ger 
 many or fight for their existence ; nevertheless in both 
 countries the pacifist element was strong, Socialists, 
 Internationalists, the men who love every other coun 
 try except their own ; the agents of Germany, who 
 were to be found in every rank of society ; Frenchmen 
 and Englishmen, who loudly proclaimed their loyalty 
 but were abetting Germany; Ministers of the Crown 
 in England and members of the Government in France, 
 some of them in the highest places, either allowed 
 
 111 
 
WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^p 
 
 themselves to be blinded or deliberately sought to be 
 tray their country for the advantage of Germany. 
 
 The same social forces that brought Mr. Wilson into 
 power did a few years earlier bring Mr. Asquith into 
 power. In England as in America there had been a 
 revolt of the masses against the classes ; just as in 
 America the people were resentful of the privileges pf 
 plutocracy, of class legislation, of favors extended to a 
 select few, so in England the laboring man, the artisan, 
 the great lower middle class were demanding their 
 "rights", and conscious of their power, determined to 
 exert it. Mr. Asquith s supporters were not only 
 "Liberals" in the party sense, but radicals, social re 
 formers, advanced thinkers ; and to them force or re 
 straint was intolerable. In economics they were free 
 traders, because, as they believed in their delusion, 
 free trade broke down the barriers between nations, 
 and internationalism was one of the cardinal articles 
 of their faith. They passionately advocated dis 
 armament, because great navies and huge standing 
 armies were a menace and a sure invitation to war, 
 and to them war was anathema. There was more 
 than a little leaven of idealism in all this; they were 
 as selfish and grasping as the "professional philanthro 
 pist. If instead of the people being taxed to build bat 
 tleships and maintain armies their millions were used 
 for the benefit of the people, for old-age pensions, work- 
 ingman s insurance and other social reforms that were 
 praiseworthy, and some of the fantastic schemes that 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 113 
 
 Utopia delights in, the people would be the gainers ; 
 especially if the rich were to be made to bear more 
 than their equitable burden of taxation. 
 
 Holding his commission under these terms, Mr. 
 Asquith was justified in enacting his program of 
 social legislation. He represented for the time being 
 the majority ; that majority had demanded certain 
 changes in the social fabric, and the reforms that en 
 ticed them he believed in. It was therefore not only 
 his duty but his desire so to shape the foreign policy 
 of his Administration as to remove the danger of war 
 with Germany, and as an earnest of good faith to re 
 duce to the lowest limits consistent with the national 
 safety military expenditures. The foreign policy of 
 his Administration, for which he was responsible but 
 which was carried out through his Foreign Secretary, 
 Sir Edward Grey, is a sorry story of that curse of 
 European diplomacy, treaty making in the dark. 
 There were the usual secret agreements, the exchange 
 of "confidential" letters, "private" conversations, 
 the customary network of intrigue and deceit binding 
 nations whose people were kept in ignorance and who, 
 when they asked inconvenient questions, were told it 
 would be unpatriotic to embarrass the government 
 merely to have their idle curiosity satisfied. The 
 whole story has since been told ; it is now history 
 and the world knows it, but it reflects little credit 
 upon the men on whom responsibility rests. 
 
 Almost to the very day of war this policy of beguil- 
 
114 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Ah 
 ing the people was followed, and scarcely a week passed 
 
 but what members of the Cabinet told English au 
 diences they had nothing to fear. A few months be 
 fore the war, Mr. Lloyd George, then the Chancellor 
 of the Exchequer, said: "This is the most favorable 
 moment in twenty years to overhaul our expenditures 
 on armaments." About the same time Lord Hal- 
 dane, the Lord Chancellor, the great authority in the 
 Cabinet on Germany, who had been sent by the Prime 
 Minister to Germany to see if an understanding could 
 not be reached so as to remove the danger of war 
 which every one feared, said : "Europe was an armed 
 camp, but an armed camp in which the indications 
 were that there was a far greater prospect of peace 
 than ever there was before." 
 
 That was the picture within a few months of the 
 declaration of war, but after the war had been in prog 
 ress two months, for the first time the truth was 
 told. Speaking at Cardiff, on October 2, 1914, Mr. 
 Asquith admitted that for two years at least he had 
 known that Germany was preparing to make her 
 war of conquest. The German Government, in 1912, 
 he said, "asked us to put it quite plainly they 
 asked us for a free hand so far as we were concerned 
 if, and when, they selected their opportunity, to over 
 bear and dominate the European world." 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 115 
 
 2 
 
 Thus if the war came as a staggering and unexpected 
 blow to the English people daily fed on the thought of 
 war, discussed by their politicians and made an issue 
 in party politics, Americans, to whom the thought of 
 war was very remote, who knew of the politics of 
 Europe only as they gleaned them from their news 
 papers, were amazed at the outbreak of the war. 
 It was incredible. Nowhere was war so detested 
 as in the United States; no people so profoundly 
 believed that peace ruled the world as did Americans. 
 A few men there were, it is true, wiser, a few students 
 of European politics who saw as clearly as the elect 
 in England or France and who were not deceived Hy 
 the sophisms of Ministers or the fable of the lion and 
 the lamb ; but to the great majority of Americans the 
 war that had so often been talked about and now had 
 come was unbelievable. 
 
 One of Mr. Wilson s biographers, a friend and ad 
 mirer, writing in 1916, when the United States was 
 neutral and the policy of the President was misunder 
 stood and it seemed necessary that his adherents should 
 interpret and defend it, offers this inadequate expla 
 nation : 
 
 " The outbreak of the European war was a most un 
 toward event for President Wilson. His thoughts and 
 his plans had been concerned with the domestic prob 
 lems of our politics and his Cabinet had been chosen 
 with a view to such occupations. The country was 
 
116 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 . 49 
 
 deeply in arrears as regards measures for adjusting 
 law and administration to existing business and social 
 needs, and he was in the first stages of a program of 
 reform quite enough to consume a presidential term, 
 when the explosion took place that shook the world. 
 Apparently nothing could have been more inoppor 
 tune." 
 
 "Inopportune!" What a perfect sense of propor 
 tion. Had Mr. Wilson s biographer been living at 
 the time of the Flood he would probably have de 
 scribed it as "annoying" and interfering with Mrs. 
 Noah s spring cleaning. 
 
 The truth is no head of a State was ever placed in a 
 more delicate position or one requiring greater tact, 
 skill and statesmanship than was Mr. Wilson at the 
 outbreak of the war. That his program of domestic 
 reform was in all probability wrecked (subsequent 
 legislation showed that he was able to salvage at least 
 a portion) was a consequence less serious than the 
 danger of division and disunion among his own people, 
 which was of all dangers the greatest, and immediately 
 forced itself upon Mr. Wilson. In all other countries 
 the cleavage was distinct ; the people were either pro- 
 Ally or pro-German; they hoped either for the su 
 premacy of Allied arms or the victory of Germany; 
 they either sympathized with democracy and con 
 stitutional liberty, as typified by Great Britain and 
 France, or they believed in autocracy and the rule 
 of force represented by Germany ; but in America, in 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 117 
 
 August, 1914, this solidarity of two opposing camps 
 did not exist. 
 
 Speaking broadly America was divided not into two 
 but four camps : One, Americans who because of 
 descent, affiliations, admiration for English institu 
 tions and her political system, her literature and her 
 contribution to the science of jurisprudence, on which 
 American law is founded, were the friends of Eng 
 land, her champions loyal and steadfast from the 
 first day of the war; to them the war was a conflict 
 between two opposing schools of civilization, and 
 they hoped for the triumph of the men of their own 
 blood and thought. 
 
 Two, Americans who because of the false teachings 
 of history, who from their childhood had been brought 
 up to believe that England was the bully among 
 nations, in whom old grudges still rankled or who had 
 personal scores to pay off against individual English 
 men, were anti-English and the supporters of Germany. 
 
 Three, Americans who were indifferent, whose at 
 titude can be summed up in the pithy sentence, "the 
 war is none of our business", and to whom the war 
 offered great business opportunities. To these Ameri 
 cans most distinctly the war was none of their busi 
 ness. The political principle that had been the 
 strength of America was now to be its weakness. 
 What had enabled America to develop as no other 
 nation and had created an intense spirit of confidence 
 and strength in Americans was their detachment 
 
118 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 41 
 from European politics. The Seven Years War, one 
 
 of the most momentous periods in history, which was 
 fought not only in Europe but in Asia and Africa, 
 which was to gain for England at the cost of France, 
 America as well as India, was to the English colonists 
 in America, President Wilson tells us, "only the 
 French and Indian War. Their own continent was 
 the seat of their thought." This extreme self -concen 
 tration, this centering of their thoughts on their own 
 continent, has always distinguished Americans ; it is 
 as marked in the American temperament to-day as it 
 was one hundred and fifty years ago, and while it has 
 given the American the pride he has in country, it has 
 produced localism and a certain inability to appraise 
 values. To those Americans unashamed because they 
 were indifferent Europe was at war, since, as their 
 histories taught them, war was the natural condition 
 of European nations, this war was no different from 
 any other; the great moral principle escaped them, 
 nor did they understand that it was a war not to save 
 dynasties or to gratify ambition but to save democracy 
 from perishing off the face of the earth. It therefore 
 accorded with their traditions and political teachings 
 to remain unmoved spectators of the "quarrel" and 
 continue to go about their own affairs. We shall see 
 later why they were blind and that in part, at least, 
 they are not to be held to blame. 
 
 Four, Germans, the so-called German-Americans, 
 the great majority of whom while pretending to be 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 119 
 
 loyal Americans and owing no allegiance to Germany 
 were at heart German and devoted to her interests ; 
 the Irish, Austrians, Turks and other subjects of the 
 Central Powers. These elements constituted a group 
 bitterly and openly hostile to England. 
 
 It is impossible of course to give exact figures when 
 no precise data are available and estimates must be 
 guesswork, but with such information as we have, 
 based on census statistics of nativity and immigra 
 tion, the speeches and votes of members of Congress, 
 newspaper utterances, known political and social con 
 ditions in various parts of the country, and other tests, 
 crude but fairly accurate, it is approximately correct 
 that the Americans in group one outnumbered those 
 in group two ; if to group two is added the third group, 
 the total would be heavily in excess of the first group ; 
 and the combined second, third and fourth groups 
 give a preponderant majority over group one. In 
 other words, at the outbreak of the war the friends 
 of England in America were submerged by lukewarm 
 opponents, the indifferent and the bitterly hostile. 
 There were in addition certain cross currents which 
 must enter into the calculation. The line of division, 
 curiously enough, was geographical as well as social 
 and intellectual, modified again by other currents. In 
 the large cities, notably in the East, due to intermar 
 riage and social intercourse, the leisure class and the 
 wealthy supported England, and joined with them were 
 the great bankers and important business men having 
 
120 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^ 
 intimate relations with English banks and firms; 
 
 but this influence was offset to a certain extent by 
 German bankers and merchants, to whom Berlin 
 and not London was the center of their thoughts. 
 Lawyers, doctors, clergymen, college professors, the 
 "intellectuals", in short, were, in the mass, pro- 
 English, because they did their own thinking and had 
 quickly decided that Germany was the aggressor; 
 moreover, the spiritual and intellectual bond linked 
 them to England, while Germany to them was alien. 
 In this class, however, the ranks were thinned by 
 those scientists, scholars, chemists and doctors who 
 had studied in Germany and had brought back with 
 them an exaggerated idea of German learning and 
 efficiency, who had been in the habit of looking to Ger 
 many rather than to England or France for discovery 
 and pure knowledge, and to whom the German was 
 still the good-natured, moral and honest companion of 
 his youth. American colleges had many German pro 
 fessors, who invited their students to share with them 
 their admiration for German Kultur and created a 
 German atmosphere ; English members of the faculty 
 were rare, and such as there were taught their subject 
 but made no attempt to turn their lecture halls into 
 centers of propaganda. 
 
 Thousands of Jews every year were driven forth 
 from Russia to find a haven with their coreligionists 
 in the congested districts of the large cities, there to 
 become naturalized and often to be a determining 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 121 
 
 factor in an election. With the memory of their 
 wrongs the American Jew, from the peddler who 
 slowly spelled his way through his Yiddish news 
 paper, to the great banker, forgot what England had 
 done for his race and remembered only the indignities 
 that Russia had put upon him, the massacres her of 
 ficials had instigated, the misery and degradation that 
 had been his, and he prayed that Russia might be de 
 feated and the faces of her rulers ground in the dust; 
 the influence of American Jewry, social, political and 
 financial, while not pro-German was, because of 
 Russia, indirectly anti-English. In the West, on the 
 Pacific Coast especially, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance 
 had always been unpopular and was regarded as a 
 menace to America, and that Alliance was to be one 
 of the reasons why the people of the Far West were 
 indifferent to a war that would still further increase 
 the prestige of Japan and make her more than ever to 
 be feared ; and they were able easily to persuade them 
 selves Allied success threatened their own security and 
 self-interest would be served by a German victory. 
 
 These were the passions war brought to America. 
 As she fought the battle of the spirit and watched men 
 dying for their salvation America was to find her soul, 
 and Mr. Wilson was to lead his people to righteousness. 
 
 And what of Mr. Wilson ? 
 
 Had the war taken place a few years earlier, when 
 
WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 m 
 
 Mr. Wilson was holding a chair at one of the uni 
 versities, no one can doubt that the day Germany 
 violated the neutrality of Belgium he would have 
 taken his place with the men of his own class and, 
 similar to the great majority of the "intellectuals", his 
 voice and his pen would have been one of the power 
 ful influences for right. His descent, his training, his 
 sympathies, his sense of morality and justice make this 
 certain. Mr. Wilson was not the political historian 
 of Europe, nor had he more than the average well- 
 educated man s knowledge of the great political move 
 ments of Europe in the past or that close familiarity 
 with contemporary diplomacy and the hidden forces 
 of international politics that is part of the training 
 of every European statesman who aspires to high 
 office his work had been in other directions but 
 as the student of the social and governmental systems 
 of Europe, and of England especially, his sympathies 
 must naturally align him with men of his own race 
 who had been the champions of liberty and political 
 freedom. His admiration for the political genius of 
 England had been frequently expressed ; it was the 
 English rather than the German system of education 
 that he believed was best suited for America. He had 
 spent numerous holidays in England, enjoying the 
 peaceful countryside on bicycle or on foot; English 
 men were his friends and he understood them ; he not 
 only spoke their language but he thought as they 
 did; but of Germans he had only the superficial 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 123 
 
 knowledge that is the common property of all men 
 of the world. 
 
 In 1914 Mr. Wilson was not a private person to give 
 free rein to his sympathies, to be swayed by his emo 
 tions or to yield to the impulse of championing a cause 
 that did not touch the interests of his own country. 
 Mr. Wilson was the President of the United States, 
 and as such he was charged with a solemn duty. 
 
 In his short life of the President published in 1916, 
 Professor Henry Jones Ford of Princeton University, 
 an old friend and associate, compares Mr. Wilson s 
 course with that of Washington in 1793, who was 
 termed perfidious, cowardly and ungrateful because he 
 remained neutral instead of going to the assistance of 
 France. Hamilton defended Washington s policy, and 
 Ford quotes Hamilton: "Rulers are only trustees for 
 the happiness and interest of their nation, and cannot, 
 consistently with their trust, follow the suggestions 
 of kindness and humanity towards others, to the 
 prejudice of their constituents." A selfish doctrine, it 
 may be said, but it is the doctrine that all nations 
 have learned. Half a century later an English states 
 man, in less stilted language, subscribed to the Hamil- 
 tonian doctrine. "The Foreign Secretary of this 
 country", Lord John Russell said in the course of the 
 "Don Pacifico" debate of 1850, "is the Minister not 
 of France, nor of Russia, nor of any other foreign 
 country, but of Great Britain alone, and he has to 
 think first and foremost of her interests." 
 
124 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 "If President Wilson had acted in a spirit of knight 
 errantry," Professor Ford writes, "he might have 
 avoided the reproaches now heaped upon him by 
 those who view the case through the medium of their 
 sympathies. What he did do was to make the welfare 
 of his own country the guide of his actions. . . . The 
 duties of trusteeship, whether public or private, are 
 confined to actual and definite obligations. All the 
 objections raised against Wilson s course apply quite 
 as fully to Washington s course, and the principle in 
 volved in both cases is the same the principle of 
 trusteeship. . . . That a larger, more generous view 
 of duty might have been taken is a position that is 
 logically tenable. But if the principle of trusteeship, 
 as adopted by Washington and formulated by Hamil 
 ton, is accepted as sound, then the course pursued by 
 Wilson must be approved, since its particulars, when 
 examined from this point of view, show conformity to 
 that principle." 
 
 This is a somewhat labored defense, frankly offered 
 as a defense at a time when it seemed imperative to 
 the friends of Mr. Wilson, for his own fame and to 
 justify their loyalty and trust, to defend him and 
 explain his policy; and of this defense and explana 
 tion there was necessity, for Mr. Wilson was under 
 stood neither at home nor abroad. His friends, with 
 the best intentions, did not help him, and he, too little 
 caring for fleeting judgment, was content to wait for 
 the matured and reasoned verdict of history. It is 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 125 
 
 unfortunate that Doctor Ford while stressing as the 
 animating motive of Mr. Wilson s policy the obliga 
 tions of a trustee, entirely neglects the higher motives 
 that influenced him. 
 
 It is true that his duty as revealed to him was clear 
 and that his first and chief obligation was to his own 
 country : to keep America at peace both at home 
 and abroad. The interests of America had been con 
 fided to his keeping ; he could best serve those interests 
 by peace. It was the same principle that had gov 
 erned him in his relations with Mexico, that had 
 brought him bitter censure, that had made his op 
 ponents accuse him of being such a coward lover of 
 peace that he would willingly barter the honor of the 
 nation and remain unmoved by the contempt of the 
 world. To some men there are things more terrible 
 than war, and to them war is so foul a thing they will 
 do everything in honor to avoid it. Mr. Wilson would 
 go to war, but not until there was no alternative. 
 
 His position was that of a trustee who must guard 
 the interests of his ward, but who must not, either in 
 law or ethics, do any action that, morally right, may 
 be attended by disastrous consequences. It was the 
 policy of caution, it was the policy of a statesman who 
 was not timid but was carefully feeling his ground, 
 who knew the difficulties he had to contend with and 
 the danger from any incautious step; but what one 
 likes to know is that while his countrymen were swayed 
 by sympathy, prejudice or material consideration, 
 
126 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 j} 
 
 from the very first day of the war Mr. Wilson saw 
 the moral issues involved, saw that the United States 
 was placed in a position of exceptional moral respon 
 sibility, and that to the United States had been given 
 an opportunity such as had rarely been afforded to a 
 nation to serve morality and mankind. 
 
 Mr. Wilson s belief was that even if his people 
 were united which they were not and sanctioned 
 war against Germany which they did not ; and to 
 have made war on England was unthinkable what 
 ever temporary advantage it might have been to 
 England and her Allies, ultimately they, and not they 
 alone but all civilization, would gain by the United 
 States maintaining her neutrality. In August, 1914, 
 the world was to learn the meaning of modern war, 
 of which it then was in complete ignorance ; to see 
 the complex structure of society disorganized and 
 the complicated industrial machinery of peace trans 
 formed into the mechanism of war; to see the whole 
 man power of nations mobilized to fight in the field 
 or to make it possible for armies to fight. No nation 
 then appreciated its strength ; of what it was capable ; 
 how much it could endure; its capacity to meet the 
 demands suddenly laid upon it. The potential power 
 of the United States the world knew as well as Amer 
 icans, but at that moment the thing that counted 
 was armies whose men were counted by the million ; 
 not raw recruits hastily whipped together, but trained 
 soldiers with experienced officers, equipped with guns 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 127 
 
 and all the other inventions of science for slaughter, 
 all those things that Germany had piled up for forty 
 years and of which England and France had such a 
 beggarly store and the United States was poverty- 
 stricken. Without an army and with no means of 
 creating one until the emergency was over for the 
 very magnitude of the conflict encouraged the general 
 belief that the war must be of short duration because 
 no nation could stand for more than a few months the 
 physical or financial strain of what use could be 
 the United States ? 
 
 The material power of the United States could not 
 be exerted, but its moral influence could be made a 
 force incapable of resistance. The time must come, 
 Mr. Wilson thought, by persuasive counsel it might 
 even be accelerated, when neither side would dare to 
 make the first overture for peace, but both sides would 
 gladly welcome the good offices of a disinterested 
 friend; and what nation was better fitted for that 
 role than the United States ? In Europe there was no 
 nation, because they were all linked to the belligerents 
 by dynastic or political ties, but the United States, 
 aloof from the politics of Europe, allied with no nation 
 but the friend of all, seeking neither territorial gains 
 nor political prestige, could, without risking suspicion 
 or exciting jealousy, at the opportune moment, play 
 the part of the mediator, and by appeal and moder 
 ation be the means of restoring peace. 
 
 Still another consideration had great weight with 
 
128 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^) 
 
 Mr. Wilson. Germany began the war by violating a 
 treaty and with shameless cynicism publicly an 
 nounced that when the law of nations came into con 
 flict with the law of necessity international law no 
 longer existed; and this was quickly followed by 
 other infractions of public law. The irresolution and 
 hesitating policy of the British Government in block 
 ading Germany without formally declaring a blockade, 
 its almost apologetic attitude for exercising the in 
 dubitable legal right of visit and search, the extension 
 of the list of absolute contraband to meet modern 
 conditions timidly done instead of being boldly pro 
 claimed, the weakness and vacillation of the Foreign 
 Office produced in the public mind the impression 
 that the rights of small nations were being ruthlessly 
 trampled upon, that the paper blockades and the Milan 
 decrees and the Orders in Council of the Napoleonic 
 wars, which so bitterly aroused American animosity, 
 were being revived, that the sanctions of public law 
 and public morality were cast aside, that England no 
 less than Germany was determined to substitute might 
 for right, and the world was in danger of reverting to 
 barbarism. 
 
 It was not easy for the public to understand the 
 merits of the issues raised or to pronounce judgment 
 on the legality of questions that divided bench and 
 bar. The partisans of both nations filled the news 
 papers with their arguments, and Germany, with more 
 adroitness than her opponent, muddied the waters by 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 129 
 
 academic discussion of international law that enlight 
 ened no one but only brought further confusion to a 
 public already puzzled and uncertain whether, in the 
 convenient formula, there was not "right on both 
 sides." Disputable points of international law the 
 common man did not attempt to pass upon, but he 
 believed he was competent to decide the broad prin 
 ciple of justice, and to him it seemed neither just nor 
 in keeping with strict neutrality that England could 
 buy whatever she wanted in the United States while 
 to Germany that privilege to many persons it was a 
 right rather than a privilege was denied. Strange as 
 it may seem now, yet it is nevertheless true that at 
 that time this advantage held by England produced a 
 certain reaction in favor of Germany and caused it to 
 be believed especially among the unthinking, the 
 opponents of England and the partisans of Ger 
 many that the Administration was unduly well 
 disposed toward England, that it was showing favor 
 itism instead of being impartial, and the law was con 
 strued to the detriment of Germany. England s 
 command of the sea made it appear as if Germany, 
 and not England and France and poor tortured Bel 
 gium, was the under dog, and the American love of 
 iair play and sympathy for the under dog fighting 
 against terrific odds and handicapped by the sham 
 neutrality of America created for Germany a sympa 
 thy which Americans now recognize was misplaced 
 and which they regret. Germany with some shrewd- 
 
130 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4p 
 
 ness played on cupidity by insidiously accusing Eng 
 land of preventing Americans from making the profits 
 that were always legitimate in war. Germany, her 
 agents let it be known, was anxious to buy at extrav 
 agant prices cotton, wheat, copper, practically every 
 thing that America had to sell, but England selfishly 
 stood in the way, in her hatred of Germany caring 
 nothing for the loss she brought to America or the 
 wealth of which she deprived her. 
 
 To Mr. Wilson, therefore, it seemed that circum 
 stances imposed upon him the duty of being the 
 champion and guardian of neutrality, and by defend 
 ing public law and protecting public morality he 
 would render to all the world, to belligerents no less 
 than neutrals, an inestimable service, that would be 
 as valuable in a time of stress as it would be in the 
 future when peace again reigned. The United States 
 was the most powerful of all the neutrals; the one 
 nation whose friendship, even at that time, all the 
 belligerents were anxious to retain; whose material 
 resources, if thrown into the struggle, might prove 
 the decisive factor; whose influence no nation could 
 affect to treat with contempt; whose voice must be 
 listened to when smaller nations could with safety be 
 ignored. 
 
 It was an error of judgment; frankly to be so re 
 corded, perhaps the sole instance when Mr. Wilson s 
 judgment was in error. Looking back now it is easy 
 enough to see, and still easier for the critic who plays 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 131 
 
 with his facts to say, that Mr. Wilson could have been 
 of greater service to mankind had he turned the thought 
 of his countrymen toward war instead of trying to 
 keep before them the thought of peace ; had he at the 
 first opportunity yielded to the pressure put upon 
 him, and had he done in 1915, when Germany gave 
 abundant cause for war, what he was to do two years 
 later ; had he, in short, begun to arm with the first 
 day of conflict. It is the easy thing to say, and also 
 the unworthy thing. There is no doubt Mr. Wilson 
 could have carried the country into war, for the power 
 of the President in foreign affairs is too great to be 
 withstood, and the traditions of the Presidency make 
 him the arbiter of war or peace, but he would have 
 driven an unwilling country into war instead of leading 
 a country resolved on war as the only escape from the 
 surrender of honor and the confession of cowardice ; 
 he would have made war with an army and not a 
 nation ; and war is no longer a combat of armies but 
 a conflict of nations and the massing of the spiritual 
 strength of peoples. It would have been a war against 
 Germany and a battle at home, not the actual clash 
 of arms, for revolt was not to be feared, but a long, 
 drawn-out struggle with those who did not believe 
 America was justified in going to war and who would 
 have hampered and obstructed the prosecution of the 
 war. Actually guilty of treason they might not have 
 been, but Mr. Wilson would have been embarrassed as 
 Lincoln was, whose task was made more difficult by 
 
132 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 
 the friends of the South in the North ; by political 
 
 opponents secretly in sympathy with the enemy who 
 would gladly have seen the North accept an incon 
 clusive peace and agree to a compromise so that the 
 Confederacy might be spared the humiliation of un 
 conditional surrender and save some vestige at least 
 of the institution to which she was wedded. 
 
 It is easy now to say that Mr. Wilson, no matter 
 how splendid his motives, was deficient in that one 
 quality without which no man can be a great states 
 man. A statesman must have imagination; it is 
 vision that raises him above the common level; and 
 Mr. Wilson, incapable of foretelling the future, was 
 no greater than the ordinary man. But had he done 
 so, had he been able in 1915 to see what 1917 was to 
 bring, he would have been the towering genius of his 
 time, a superman. To no European ruler or states 
 man or general, not even to the criminal who pro 
 voked the war or those about him, was knowledge 
 vouchsafed of the future. If Mr. Wilson was ignorant, 
 so were they, and their means of knowing was far 
 greater than his. It was the same reproach that 
 Lincoln had to bear, whose vision was so limited that 
 he was content to call for seventy -five thousand volun 
 teers to serve three months to subdue a rebellion that 
 was crushed only at the end of four years and taxed 
 the full resources of the North. To-day no one ac 
 cuses Lincoln of being a pacifist or not being a seer. 
 He has passed into immortality ; his error of judgment 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 133 
 
 has long been forgotten. What the historian of the 
 future will see is that Mr. Wilson knew the temper of 
 his people, knew that they were not ready to be led 
 to war, knew that the time to make tjpm sanction 
 war had not yet come. 
 
 4 
 
 It was in these circumstances that Mr. Wilson on 
 August 18, 1914, issued his much criticized exhorta 
 tion to his fellow countrymen to be neutral in thought 
 as well as in name, and in his address put in form the 
 motives which have been analyzed. Americans, the 
 President wrote, were bound in honor and affection to 
 think first of America and her interests, as any diver 
 sions among them "would be fatal to our peace of 
 mind, and might seriously stand in the way of the 
 proper performance of our duty as the one great nation 
 at peace, the one people holding itself ready to play a 
 part of impartial mediation, and speak the counsels 
 of peace and accommodation, not as a partisan, but 
 as a friend. 
 
 "The United States must be neutral in fact as well 
 as in name during these days that are to try men s 
 souls. We must be impartial in thought as well as in 
 action ; must put a curb upon our sentiments as well 
 as upon every transaction that might be construed as 
 a preference of one party to the struggle before another. 
 
 "My thought is of America. I am speaking, I 
 feel sure, the earnest wish and purpose of every 
 
134 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 thoughtful American, that this great country of ours, 
 which is, of course, the first in our thoughts and in 
 our hearts, should show herself in this time of peculiar 
 trial a nation fit beyond others to exhibit the fine poise 
 of undisturbed judgment, the dignity of self-control, 
 the efficiency of dispassionate action; a nation that 
 neither sits in judgment upon others nor is disturbed 
 in her own counsels, and which keeps herself fit and 
 free to do what is honest and disinterested and truly 
 serviceable for the peace of the world. 
 
 "Shall we not resolve to put upon ourselves the 
 restraint which will bring to our people the happiness 
 and the great and lasting influence for peace we covet 
 for them?" 
 
 Few things Mr. Wilson had done unloosed such a 
 furious storm. To those persons who were the pas 
 sionate champions of the Allied cause, to whom in the 
 first two weeks of the war the German had revealed 
 himself the beast he is, to whom the meaning of the 
 war had never been obscured, who knew that this was 
 a death struggle of civilization against savagery, Mr. 
 Wilson s words of quiet counsel and his appeal to self 
 ish interest was a bribe to sell their honor for a mess 
 of rotten pottage. Bitterly they resented it and deeply 
 they felt their humiliation. America, too intent upon 
 her own ungenerous comfort, thinking only of her own 
 sordid gain, was eternally disgraced. 
 
 Indignation still seething was increased when Mr. 
 Wilson sent to the German Emperor a benevolent 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 135 
 
 expression of neutrality, and to an official Belgian dele 
 gation expressed the pious hope that the war would 
 soon be over, but sedulously refrained from any ex 
 pression that would reveal his sympathies. The 
 German Emperor early began his monstrous cam 
 paign of lies when he cabled to the President that the 
 British and French armies were using dum-dum 
 bullets in violation of the Hague Convention. On 
 September 16 Mr. Wilson s reply was made public. 
 "I am honored," he wrote, "that you should have 
 turned to me for an impartial judgment as the repre 
 sentative of a people truly disinterested as respects 
 the present war and truly desirous of knowing and 
 accepting the truth. . . . Presently, I pray God very 
 soon, this war will be over. The day of accounting 
 will then come when, I take it for granted, the nations 
 of Europe will assemble to determine a settlement." 
 The President felt sure that "where wrongs have 
 been committed their consequences and the relative 
 responsibility involved will be assessed," and he held 
 it would be unwise and inconsistent with neutrality 
 for a single Government to express a final judgment. 
 "I feel sure that such a reservation of judgment until 
 the end of the war, when all its events and circum 
 stances can be seen in their entirety and in their true 
 relation, will commend itself to you as a true expres 
 sion of sincere neutrality." 
 
 On the same day, to a Belgian Commission, sent 
 by their Government to bring to the notice of the 
 
136 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 A 
 
 American Government the atrocities and the violations 
 of the laws of war of which Germany had been guilty, 
 Mr. Wilson used practically the same language. Ex 
 pressing his pleasure at receiving the representatives 
 of a people for whom the people of the United States 
 had strong friendship and admiration, declaring that 
 the American people "love justice, seek the true paths 
 of progress, and have a passionate regard for the rights 
 of humanity", Mr. Wilson gave to the men pleading 
 the cause of a martyred country, who had put into his 
 hands the report of a judicial committee telling of 
 women ravished and men mutilated and cities burned 
 to the ground, only the cold comfort of patience; he 
 could offer them nothing warmer than the same pious 
 hope expressed to the German Emperor that the war 
 would soon be over and bring its day of reckoning. He 
 said : 
 
 "Presently, I pray God very soon, this war will be 
 over. The day of accounting will then come, when, 
 I take it for granted, the nations of Europe will as 
 semble to determine a settlement. Where w T rongs 
 have been committed their consequences and the rel 
 ative responsibility involved will be assessed. . . . 
 
 "It would be unwise, it would be premature for a 
 single Government, however fortunately separated 
 from the present struggle, it would be inconsistent 
 with the neutral position of any nation, which like 
 this has no part in the contest, to form or express a 
 final judgment." 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 137 
 
 While the attack was still being furiously delivered 
 Mr. Wilson was to receive support from an unexpected 
 quarter. Second only to Mr. Wilson in the strength 
 of his following, Mr. Roosevelt, despite his defeat, 
 still remained the idol of his adherents, who looked to 
 him not only for political guidance but moral inspi 
 ration. No two men were more unlike ; it would be 
 impossible, one would say, for them ever to think alike 
 or to see eye to eye, yet perhaps for the first and last 
 time in their lives they were in harmony; and Mr. 
 Roosevelt s approval of the President s course was 
 undoubtedly a potent influence in quieting the demand 
 for war and convincing the country of the wisdom of 
 Mr. Wilson s policy in maintaining neutrality. It 
 was the more surprising because the public associated 
 Mr. Roosevelt with prompt and vigorous action, to 
 whom temporizing was hateful; who was not afraid 
 to use force when weakness was folly; whose love of 
 justice was so compelling that he dare not compromise 
 with wrong; whose instinctive sense of morality 
 made him always do what was right. Thousands of 
 Americans, hundreds of thousands in the aggregate, 
 were with open minds waiting for a sign, waiting to 
 have some one with sufficient authority and in whom 
 they had confidence show them their duty; whether 
 a duty higher than personal sympathy demanded 
 that the American people should hold the scales of 
 judgment level between the wrongdoer and his victim, 
 or the Germans were to be encouraged to believe 
 
138 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 4p 
 
 that "Americans were as neutral between right and 
 wrong as Pontius." Mr. Roosevelt was to lead them. 
 
 Mr. Wilson had received the Belgian Commission on 
 September 16, 1914, and dispassionately dismissed 
 them. One week later, while the press of the country 
 was bitterly denouncing or vehemently defending Mr. 
 Wilson, an article by Mr. Roosevelt entitled "The 
 World War; Its Tragedies and Its Lessons" was pub 
 lished in the New York Outlook. Mr. Wilson had 
 carefully abstained from showing any partiality and 
 had steered the safe course of judicial impassivity ; 
 Mr. Roosevelt championed Germany, he defended 
 the supreme law of necessity, flatly declared that it 
 was not the business of the United States to interfere 
 in the affairs of Belgium, and that the highest interests 
 of the United States required the maintenance of 
 neutrality ; in that respect fully sustaining the position 
 of the President, and like him justifying neutrality be 
 cause of the opportunity it would afford the United 
 States to be the peacemaker. 
 
 "Our country," Mr. Roosevelt wrote, "stands well- 
 nigh alone among the great civilized Powers in being 
 unshaken by the present world-wide war. All of us 
 on this continent ought to appreciate how fortunate 
 we are that we of the Western World have been free 
 from the working of the causes which have produced 
 the bitter and vindictive hatred among the great mili 
 tary Powers of the Old World. We owe this immu 
 nity primarily to the policies grouped together under 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 139 
 
 the title of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doc 
 trine is as vital to the interests of this hemisphere as 
 it has ever been. . . . We must . . . stand ready to 
 act as an instrument for the achievement of a just 
 peace if or when the opportunity arises." 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt was greatly impressed with Ger 
 many s military efficiency and gave his approval to 
 the very thing all the world is now pledged to destroy, 
 German militarism. "As for her wonderful effi 
 ciency," he wrote, "her equipment, the foresight 
 and decision of her General Staff, her instantaneous 
 action, her indomitable persistence there can be 
 nothing but the praise and admiration due to a stern, 
 virile, and masterful people, a people entitled to 
 hearty respect for their patriotism and farseeing self- 
 devotion." 
 
 Germany s justification for the violation of Belgian 
 neutrality Mr. Roosevelt condoned: "Of course, if 
 there is any meaning to the words right and wrong 
 in international matters, the act was wrong. The 
 men who shape German policy take the ground that 
 in matters of vital national moment there are no such 
 things as abstract right and wrong, and that when a 
 great nation is struggling for its existence it can no 
 more consider the rights of neutral powers than it 
 can consider the rights of its own citizens as these 
 rights are construed in times of peace, and that every 
 thing must bend before the supreme law of national 
 preservation. Whatever we may think of the moral- 
 
140 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Aft 
 
 ity of this plea, it is certain that almost all great na 
 tions have in times past again and again acted in 
 accordance with it. England s conduct toward Den 
 mark in the Napoleonic wars, and the conduct of both 
 England and France toward us during the same wars, 
 admit only of this species of justification; and with 
 less excuse the same is true of our conduct toward 
 Spain and Florida nearly a century ago. I wish it 
 explicitly understood that I am not at this time pass 
 ing judgment one way or the other upon Germany for 
 what she did to Belgium. ... I am merely calling 
 attention to what has actually been done in Belgium, 
 in accordance with what the Germans unquestionably 
 sincerely believe to be the course of conduct necessi 
 tated by Germany s struggle for life." 
 
 It was not the first time in history innocent people 
 had been made to suffer, and the descendants of 
 Germans and Irish in the United States could salve 
 their consciences by the recollection that whatever 
 Belgium was enduring, even greater had been the 
 misery of their forefathers, Mr. Roosevelt told them. 
 "They [the Belgians] are suffering somewhat as my 
 own German ancestors suffered when Turenne ravaged 
 the Palatinate, somewhat as my Irish ancestors suf 
 fered in the struggles that attended the conquests and 
 reconquests of Ireland in the days of Cromwell and 
 William. The suffering is by no means as great, but 
 it is very great. ... It is neither necessary nor at 
 the present time possible to sift from the charges, 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 141 
 
 countercharges, and denials the exact facts as to the 
 acts alleged to have been committed in various 
 places. . . . 
 
 "I think, at any rate I hope, I have rendered it 
 plain that I am not now criticizing, that I am not pass 
 ing judgment one way or the other, upon Germany s 
 action. I admire and respect the German people. 
 I am proud of the German blood in my veins. When 
 a nation feels that the issue of a contest in which, 
 from whatever reason, it finds itself engaged will be 
 national life or death, it is inevitable that it should 
 act so as to save itself from death and to perpetuate 
 its life. . . . The rights and wrongs of these cases 
 where nations violate the rules of abstract morality in 
 order to meet their own vital needs can be precisely 
 determined only when all the facts are known and 
 when men s blood is cool." 
 
 Belgium, Mr. Roosevelt bluntly said, was no con 
 cern of the United States and it would be the height 
 of folly were the United States to make the wrongs of 
 Belgium her own. "A deputation of Belgians," he 
 wrote, "has arrived in this country to invoke our 
 assistance in the time of their dreadful need. What 
 action our Government can or will take I know not. 
 It has been announced that no action can be taken 
 that will interfere with our entire neutrality. It is 
 certainly eminently desirable that we should remain 
 entirely neutral, and nothing but urgent need would 
 warrant breaking our neutrality and taking sides one 
 
142 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 tfi 
 
 way or the other. Our first duty is to hold ourselves 
 ready to do whatever the changing circumstances 
 demand in order to protect our own interests in the 
 present and in the future. . . . Neutrality may be 
 of prime necessity in order to preserve our own in 
 terests, to maintain peace in so much of the world as 
 is not affected by the war, and to conserve our influ 
 ence for helping toward the reestablishment of gen 
 eral peace when the time comes; for if any outside 
 Power is able at such time to be the medium for bring 
 ing peace, it is more likely to be the United States than 
 any other. . . . 
 
 "Of course it would be folly to jump into the gulf 
 ourselves to no good purpose; and very probably 
 nothing that we could have done would have helped 
 Belgium. We have not the smallest responsibility 
 for what has befallen her, and I am sure the sympathy 
 of this country for the suffering of the men, women 
 and children of Belgium is very real. Nevertheless, 
 the sympathy is compatible with full acknowledg 
 ment of the unwisdom of our uttering a single word 
 of official protest unless we are prepared to make that 
 protest effective; and only the clearest and most 
 urgent national duty would ever justify us in deviat 
 ing from our rule of neutrality and non-interference." 
 
 Mr. Wilson s refusal to utter "a single word of 
 official protest" was deeply resented in England and 
 France, and in those neutral countries then not even 
 remotely affected by the war the almost callous in- 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 143 
 
 difference of America to German infamies created a 
 painful impression that was not to be eradicated for 
 nearly four years. The most powerful of all the neu 
 trals, one of the greatest and most powerful of the 
 nations of the earth, geographically and politically so 
 situated that it could without fear of consequences 
 be the world s spokesman, a nation that had always 
 prided itself upon its love of humanity and justice and 
 detested cruelty and wrongdoing, was content in this 
 supreme crisis to be dumb, by its silence to condone 
 the crimes of Germany ; from crucified Belgium in her 
 agony, seeking not assistance but the spiritual strength 
 of sympathy, to turn aside with the measured words 
 of official negation. 
 
 If Mr. Wilson was oppressed by doubt as to the 
 correctness of his course or was sensitive to foreign 
 criticism and as a sensitive man he must have 
 winced under the attacks that while seemingly justi 
 fied were made without a knowledge of all the cir 
 cumstances Mr. Roosevelt s unexpected defense 
 must have reassured him and brought the conviction 
 that he had put in words what the great majority of 
 Americans believed. Neither political nor personal 
 consideration, as Mr. Wilson well knew, actuated Mr. 
 Roosevelt. Politically Mr. Roosevelt belonged to the 
 opposing party (and two years later was to try un 
 successfully to secure the nomination for the Presi 
 dency against Mr. Wilson), nor, as sometimes happens 
 with political opponents, in their private relations 
 
144 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^1 
 
 were they friends, each admiring the other because of 
 common interests and the respect each had for the 
 character of the other. Mr. Wilson knew that Mr. 
 Roosevelt had expressed his honest conviction, that he 
 was moved by no purpose other than to keep his 
 country out of war and to be "the medium for bring 
 ing peace" ; that the duty of the United States, as Mr. 
 Roosevelt saw it, was to protect her own interests, - 
 in all this agreeing absolutely with Mr. Wilson, who 
 had done only what Mr. Roosevelt would have done 
 under like circumstances ; what Mr. Roosevelt would 
 have done had Germany violated her treaties and 
 ravaged Belgium in 1907, when he was President and 
 it would have been incumbent upon him to receive 
 the Belgian Commission and say in effect what Mr. 
 Wilson said seven years later. 
 
 In his openly expressed admiration and respect for 
 the German people, his tribute to their military effi 
 ciency, foresight and self-denial, his extenuation of 
 the violation of international law and his plea that 
 as Germany was fighting for her national existence 
 against overwhelming odds her infraction of public or 
 private morality must be regarded as a comparatively 
 venial offense, Mr. Wilson further knew that Mr. 
 Roosevelt, who as a private person had the right to 
 say what he felt, who was a man of intense conviction 
 and seldom retracted a judgment, was saying boldly 
 and courageously what he sincerely believed and 
 wanted the country to know so as to color its decision. 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 145 
 
 Mr. Wilson s course was in no sense dictated, or 
 even influenced, by Mr. Roosevelt, because Mr. Wil 
 son reached his conclusion and announced it a week 
 before Mr. Roosevelt s article in the Outlook appeared, 
 yet it must have brought satisfaction to Mr. Wilson, 
 as Mr. Roosevelt, perhaps more than any other man, 
 was the voice of the "common people", the great 
 mass. What they thought, he so frequently said that 
 he came to be regarded as vox populi. If, therefore, 
 he could find excuse for Germany s conduct, if what 
 Germany had done was no worse than what England 
 and France had done, if he refused to sit in judgment 
 on Germany, and inferentially asserted that Germany 
 had a valid defense for the crimes of which she was 
 alleged to be guilty, and, perhaps more important than 
 all, that Germany was engaged not in a war of ag 
 gression and conquest but was forced into "a struggle 
 for life", then it was certain that millions of Ameri 
 cans agreed with him and would be more than ever 
 convinced there "was right on both sides", that it 
 would be folly to be the partisan of either, and that 
 self-interest required the maintenance of that strict 
 neutrality which Mr. Wilson had advised and Mr. 
 Roosevelt had so unreservedly approved. 
 
 It is not easy to measure the influence of any man 
 when that influence is exercised unofficially. Pre 
 cisely how great the influence^ of Mr. Roosevelt was in 
 these early months of the war when America was be 
 wildered, when she had not yet found herself and 
 
146 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^p 
 
 was groping through the fog of controversy and self 
 ishness, seeking the path of duty, it is impossible to tell ; 
 but it must be believed that Mr. Roosevelt, next to 
 the President, was the most potent force to keep the 
 United States neutral, to persuade the American people 
 that self-interest demanded they abstain from war, to 
 soften the abhorrence caused by/<jermany s bombing 
 of hospitals, the desecration of the Red Cross, the 
 murder of civilians, the burning and sacking of towns, 
 the defilement of young girls, the mutilation of sol 
 diers, and all the other outrages that ought to have 
 set America aflame and in the name of humanity have 
 united America in a protest that even Germany in 
 her contemptuous brutality would not have dared 
 disregards That America was not united, that the 
 holy fire of indignation was smothered, is not surprising 
 in view of what has been told. Many months were 
 to pass and many events were to happen before the 
 counsel of prudence of September, 1914, was to be 
 rejected and men were to give unselfish service and 
 devotion to a great cause. 
 
 5 
 
 Mr. Wilson did not believe that the United States 
 would be compelled to take up arms. He believed 
 that the United States would be able to maintain 
 friendly relations with all the belligerents and to serve 
 them as no other nation could, and the only way this 
 service could be rendered was to give no encourage- 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 147 
 
 ment to those Americans who demanded war, but 
 through the force of suggestion and his appeal to in 
 tellect and emotion to keep before the public always 
 the benefit to come from keeping the peace, and to 
 make peace possible by harmonizing the racial jeal 
 ousies and sympathies of his own people. But he 
 viewed war as a possibility, remote, it is true, but 
 still a possibility, and never to be dismissed as im 
 possible. He was placed in a position of extreme 
 difficulty. He could by making preparations, if not 
 for war at least for defense, do the very thing he was 
 anxious above all things to avoid, and w r hat was then 
 merely a possibility would become more than a proba 
 bility. Any military measures he might have taken 
 would immediately have aroused the distrust and 
 suspicion of both belligerents, uncertain whether 
 the United States was to be counted as an enemy or 
 an ally ; and at home, to the partisans of England and 
 Germany, there could be only one meaning : the 
 President was getting ready for war ; both sides would 
 have been certain he was their ally, and the effect 
 would have been deplorable. This is based on the 
 assumption, of course, that Congress and the country 
 would have given the President carte blanche in money 
 and legislation to bring the military forces up to the 
 required strength and provide them with the guns, 
 munitions and other articles in which they were totally 
 deficient, asking neither accounting for the money 
 expended nor explanation of the policy he intended to 
 
148 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 A| 
 
 pursue ; or that Congress and the country would have 
 made it clear to Germany that when the United States 
 was ready it would declare war. 
 
 This is an unwarranted assumption. Certainly 
 neither in 1914, nor in 1915, nor in 1916 would Congress 
 have given the President the unlimited power that 
 later he was to possess ; nor would the country have 
 sanctioned it even had Congress been willing to grant 
 it. Had Mr. Wilson asked for money and authority 
 to be used at his discretion and without rendering an 
 explicit statement of what he proposed to do, his 
 request would have been refused. Of that there can 
 be no doubt. Neither Congress nor the country was 
 in a mood for war nor for anything being done pro 
 vocative of war. No less unwarranted is the assump 
 tion that at any time between August, 1914, and 
 April, 1917, Mr. Wilson, had he been, as his oppo 
 nents asserted, a more resolute and determined man, 
 less wedded to his exaggerated love of peace, able to 
 reach a quick decision instead of cautiously weighing 
 and always postponing action, could have made war 
 on Germany with a united country behind him. The 
 proof that Mr. Wilson was powerless is to be found 
 not only in the temper of the country, repeatedly ex 
 hibited, but also in the votes of Congress, where in 
 both parties the adherents of Germany were numerous 
 and actively hostile. More than once efforts were 
 made to redress England s advantage of sea power 
 legitimately exercised by a dishonest revision of in- 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 149 
 
 ternational law for the benefit of Germany, which, in 
 effect, would have changed the status of the United 
 States from neutrality to covert alliance with Ger 
 many; and the Administration was only saved from 
 the most serious consequences by a narrow margin. 
 Up to the very eve of war these conditions continued. 
 War was declared against Germany on April 6, 1917, 
 yet on the previous fourth of March, when Mr. Wilson 
 made a last effort to avert war by declaring a state of 
 armed neutrality against Germany, there were enough 
 senators openly disloyal and undisguisedly the pro 
 tectors of Germany to prevent the passage of the 
 resolution. The declaration of war against Germany 
 was resisted in both Houses of Congress, and in both 
 Houses an opposition vote was recorded; likewise 
 conscription was opposed and an attempt made to 
 defeat the necessary legislation. It is quite true that 
 at no time between August, 1914, and April, 1917, 
 could a resolution declaring war against England 
 have been adopted, but it is equally true that, until 
 Germany actually forced war upon the United States, 
 a declaration of war against Germany would have met 
 the same end. To assume otherwise is either dis 
 honesty or ignorance. 
 
 Mr. Wilson, in short, acted precisely as Lincoln did 
 in 1861, and Lincoln was denounced by the extremists 
 for shilly-shallying, for talking, for being afraid to act 
 and giving encouragement to the South by his ex 
 cessive caution, when had he been a real leader of men 
 
150 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 I 
 he would have made war on twenty-four hours notice. 
 
 Lincoln had to do then what Mr. Wilson had to do half 
 a century later. Lincoln was less concerned about his 
 military strength than he was about his political 
 solidarity ; armies he knew could be raised, but with 
 out united political support the armies would be 
 struck with paralysis; and Lincoln waited, with in 
 finite patience he waited, submitting to unmerited 
 abuse, never petulant or resentful; playing a part 
 so admirable and yet so wise that even the men near 
 est to him did not appreciate his skill and tact and 
 purpose; always shaping the thoughts of his people 
 in the right direction until, certain at last the people 
 were behind him, he struck. Under similar circum 
 stances Mr. Wilson (who has been a close student of 
 Lincoln and his political methods) had the same dif 
 ficult part to play, but Lincoln s task was light com 
 pared to Mr. Wilson s. With Lincoln the period of 
 suspense was a few months, with Wilson it was mul 
 tiplied tenfold ; Lincoln had to contend only with the 
 South and the dissidents of the North ; Wilson had to 
 reckon with a foreign-born population nearly three 
 times that of the South, and the avowed and secret 
 sympathizers of Germany and the enemies of Eng 
 land in Congress and in every class of society in every 
 State of the Union. Of that period in his country s 
 history Mr. Wilson had written and it sums up in 
 a few words the precise mental attitude of his coun 
 trymen more than half a century later: "Policy had 
 
AMERICA AT THE OUTBREAK OF WAR 151 
 
 to carry the people with it ; had to await the awaken 
 ing of the national idea into full consciousness ; and 
 this first pause of doubt and reflection did but render 
 the ultimate outcome the more certain." 
 
 That Mr. Wilson from the first saw the great moral 
 issue of the war has been made plain ; that he saw the 
 necessity of also making his people see the war not as 
 affecting their material interests but as a question of 
 morals we cannot doubt. Often he must have pon 
 dered the question and asked himself as he kept his 
 vigil whether the thing that was clear to him could be 
 made equally plain to his people ; what he must do to 
 bring to them understanding.^ 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "Too PROUD TO FIGHT" 
 1 
 
 SELDOM does one nation know another, and perhaps 
 there were no two nations whose people had so little 
 comprehension of the other as the English and the 
 Americans until the war made them companions in 
 arms and broke down all barriers. It was because no 
 barriers were supposed to exist and they enjoyed the 
 advantage of a common tongue that, paradoxically, 
 raised the greatest barrier. Few Englishmen know a 
 foreign language, and not knowing it they do not 
 pretend to know the country; even if they speak the 
 language they do not presume to know the country 
 after visiting it for a few weeks. On both sides of 
 the Atlantic this obstacle to intercourse was removed ; 
 customs were substantially the same, methods were not 
 so different that they were "foreign", consequently 
 neither American nor Englishman believed he had 
 anything to learn. In England and America men who 
 made a special study of foreign countries, who patiently 
 learned their history and institutions and by ob 
 servation and experience knew the temper of their 
 peoples, were treated with the respect knowledge 
 
 152 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 153 
 
 commands ; but in England and America the American 
 or English specialist was regarded with suspicion and 
 looked upon with distrust. The Englishman, the 
 student of America, who was not blind to the faults 
 of America and yet fair enough to recognize her merits, 
 was, in the opinion of his countrymen, an unsafe 
 mentor and an unreliable guide because he had become 
 too "Americanized" and was more American than the 
 Americans. The American in similar circumstances 
 lost caste at home. He was that most despised of 
 all beings, "un-American"; he was out of touch with 
 his own country, and his former robust nationality 
 had become corrupted and was now epicene. One 
 has only to recall the contumely suffered by American 
 ambassadors to England to find proof of what used 
 to be the American attitude. Mr. Bayard was cen 
 sured by the House of Representatives for having 
 told the truth; Mr. Lowell was frequently attacked; 
 and even at a time so recent as the McKinley Adminis 
 tration, Mr. Hay was criticized because he was able 
 to admire England without betraying his own country. 
 In 1861 when the North was fighting in defense of 
 human liberty and to vindicate a great political 
 principle, Americans were indignant because English 
 men apparently cared nothing about the moral issues 
 involved, which Americans believed ought to appeal 
 to them with peculiar force, but were interested in 
 the war only as it enabled them to make money or 
 curtail profits. This was perhaps harsh judgment, 
 
154 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 dp 
 
 but natural. Motley, writing to the Duke of Argyll, 
 in June, 1861, said: "The Americans would have 
 scorned material aid. But they did expect sym 
 pathy. They thought that some voice in high places 
 would have been lifted up to say, We are sorry for 
 your trials ; we are compelled to look on with folded 
 arms, but your cause is noble. Our hearts are with 
 you. You are right in resolving upon two things - 
 first to prevent the further extension of the system of 
 African slavery, which you had the constitutional 
 power of doing; and secondly to maintain your 
 nationality, your unity, which is all that saves you 
 from anarchy and barbarism/ Instead of all this 
 there came denunciation of the wickedness of civil 
 war as if the war had not been forced upon the 
 Government." Lowell in "The Biglow Papers" put 
 the same thought in doggerel when he wrote : 
 
 "We know we ve got a cause, John, . 
 
 That s honest, just and true ; 
 We thought t would win applause, John, 
 
 Ef nowheres else, from you." 
 
 And John was told that his mark was on the guns 
 supplied to the Confederacy and all he cared about 
 was his ten per cent. 
 
 It was now England who complained that Brother 
 Jonathan s mark was on the cotton and meats and 
 other things going to her enemy, and that all that 
 Brother Jonathan cared about was profits of four 
 hundred or five hundred per cent, Brother Jonathan s 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 155 
 
 ideas having considerably expanded since the late un 
 pleasantness. Thousands of Englishmen, without 
 exaggeration one may say the whole British Empire, 
 felt as Motley did. England was not asking for 
 material assistance, but she did expect sympathy. 
 She knew her cause was just, she knew that the war 
 was not of her seeking but had been forced upon her, 
 she knew that she was fighting the battle of civilization 
 and that the outcome of that battle would determine 
 the future of America no less than that of England ; 
 that if England were to be enslaved and autocracy to 
 rule the world America would lose her liberty and no 
 longer enjoy the freedom for which she had fought. 
 England hoped that some voice in high places would 
 be lifted up, that despite official neutrality, the neces 
 sity of which she recognized, there would be men to 
 give her the grasp of friendship and the comforting 
 word of encouragement, to bid her be of good cheer 
 and remember that the heart of America was with 
 her. There were men in America who did this, just 
 as Bright and Cobden half a century earlier had 
 recognized that the North was right, had longed for 
 its success and had not hesitated to say so; but 
 Englishmen as a whole were selfish and indifferent, 
 their newspapers caricatured and abused Mr. Lincoln, 
 and Americans, with bitterness in their hearts, were 
 compelled to read the same glorification of the South 
 and its defense that Englishmen read in Mr. Roose 
 velt s Outlook article praising Germany for provoking 
 
156 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 ^ft 
 
 war, for her militarism and justifying her violation of 
 international law. 
 
 England was placed at a further disadvantage, 
 partly through her own density and incomprehension 
 of American temperament, partly through the ironic 
 accident of a vicious system. It has been said before, 
 and it cannot be too often repeated, that to the Amer 
 ican people as a whole the war was not their affair; 
 it concerned neither their interests, their honor nor 
 their national security, and that when Mr. Roosevelt 
 said : "we have not the smallest responsibility for what 
 has befallen" Belgium he put in words the dominant 
 thought. It was a European and not an American war, 
 and by no circumstance could America be drawn into 
 it. That the war would be brought to America, that 
 America would have to fight to defend her interests, 
 that Germany would force war upon her as she had 
 forced it upon England and France (and it must never 
 be forgotten that Americans were not sure that Ger 
 many was the aggressor or that the guilt could not be 
 in equal measure apportioned among all the belliger 
 ents), was to Americans impossible and inconceivable. 
 Those Americans who knew the merits of the issue, 
 who speculated even at that time whether America 
 could remain unscathed, were few. 
 
 England had a good "case", but unfortunately it 
 was not properly presented. Almost immediately 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 157 
 
 following the outbreak of the war the American press 
 was deluged with the outpourings of English writers, 
 the majority known in America as writers of fiction 
 or clever essayists, but with no pretensions to a knowl 
 edge of politics, international law or history. Eng 
 land, Americans were told, was fighting as much for 
 America as she was for herself, for which Americans 
 ought to feel properly thankful. Americans could 
 not see this, nor could they be made to believe it. 
 Forming judgment from the information they 
 possessed, they refused to accept biased statements 
 that England was inspired by altruism, or that she was 
 safeguarding America any more than she was protecting 
 Peru. England was fighting in her own defense, which 
 was legitimate and for which no American blamed 
 her ; but it was impertinent for Englishmen to remind 
 America of an obligation she did not recognize, and 
 naturally it was resented. In short, the effect of this 
 badly organized propaganda, which was carried on 
 without method or system and in ignorance of the 
 temper of America, did very great harm ; and the 
 irritation it aroused was not allayed by the English 
 taunt that all America cared for was to make profits 
 by trading with the enemy ; especially when it was 
 known to Americans that England went into the war 
 blithely declaring "business as usual"; and one of 
 the leading Liberal newspapers of England opposed 
 the war on the ground that if she remained neutral 
 England could engage in the very profitable business 
 
158 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 . 40t 
 
 of selling munitions and other supplies to both 
 belligerents. 
 
 A system that appoints men without the slightest 
 regard for their fitness to cope with unanticipated 
 conditions had sent to Washington in the year before 
 the war as the diplomatic representative of Great 
 Britain, when all that was required of a diplomatist 
 to be successful was to be amiable and pay his social 
 debts with punctilious exactitude, a man of many 
 brilliant parts, witty, talented, likeable; who with 
 equal facility wrote poetry that was touched with fire 
 and coined epigrams that seared like fire, which he 
 scattered with spendthrift prodigality; but who 
 temperamentally and for other causes was quite un- 
 suited for a post requiring the greatest tact, patience 
 and good temper; who must be firm without giving 
 offence and be able generously to yield when compliance 
 is wisdom ; who ought to have been sympathetic and 
 able to understand the difficulties and the many deli 
 cate and complex problems which the Administration 
 had to face. The stage was well set for tragedy. 
 
 At the outbreak of the war the British Navy~con- 
 tained the German fleet, which ceased to be a danger 
 and became only the textbook menace of a fleet in 
 being; and very soon Great Britain was to drive the 
 German merchant marine off the seas and hold their 
 undisputed possession. It was this control of ocean- 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 159 
 
 borne commerce and the power legitimately exercised 
 to prevent contraband from reaching the enemy that 
 brought England in sharp conflict with the United 
 States in the opening months of the war and increased 
 the feeling in the United States against England. 
 
 From the standpoint of selfish interest this was 
 natural. Dependent upon foreign countries for raw 
 materials vital to the prosecution of the war and with 
 the seas closed to her own flag, Germany attempted to 
 obtain what she required through neutrals, and as her 
 needs were great she gladly offered to pay practically 
 any price demanded. Not since the American Civil 
 War had blockade running become so profitable. The 
 profits were enormous and the risk was not great; at 
 the worst the loss of cargo, sometimes of vessel as well 
 as cargo ; but the conveyance of contraband, while a 
 violation of international law, was not a crime, the 
 men engaged in it knew their lives were not forfeit 
 when captured, and the profits were so great that ship 
 owners could afford to take long chances. To Ameri 
 cans who had things to sell that Germany was anxious 
 to buy, who knew that England and her Allies were 
 buying in America and every other country whatever 
 they needed, it seemed unfair and harmful; it de 
 prived them of the profits to which they believed they 
 were properly entitled, by being prevented from trad 
 ing with Germany. At that time German propa 
 ganda was insidious ; it was carried on not without 
 ability and did very great harm because the British 
 
160 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 t 
 
 Government took no measures to offset it and it was 
 not incumbent on the United States to interfere. 
 All that was required of the United States was to hold 
 the ring and see that no foul blows were struck con 
 trary to the rules of neutrality. 
 
 Mr. Wilson s position was to become increasingly 
 difficult. He had seen that the war was not a contest 
 of arms but a moral struggle; he hoped that this 
 enlightenment might be brought to his own people, and 
 he knew that if he was to make them see eye to eye with 
 him, above all things his course must be strictly correct ; 
 he must be as impartial as th6 judgment of God ; not 
 by a hair s breadth must he swerve from the straight 
 line or show the slightest favoritism. To do other 
 wise would be to lose his hold, to risk the imputation 
 that instead of being the just judge he was the unfair 
 partisan. His strength was to be his seeming weak 
 ness ; that weakness the public so eagerly ascribed to 
 him, the timidity that made him continually balance 
 and strike an even score by charging one offense 
 against another, that indecision that was always to 
 prevent action when the course of action was so clearly 
 mapped. It was perhaps a natural criticism when the 
 motives that guided Mr. Wilson were not known and 
 could not be revealed ; it was the same charge brought 
 against Lincoln, accused of inconsistency, of a weak 
 ness for compromising between right and wrong, and 
 roundly abused for it by a public that always freely 
 said what it thought. Nevertheless Mr. Wilson was 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 161 
 
 compelled to keep silent because his only hope of suc 
 cess lay in the nation being converted without knowing 
 that the forces of conversion were at work. For Mr. 
 Wilson boldly to have proclaimed : "I come as a mis 
 sionary among you to be the means whereby you may be 
 converted and embrace the true faith" would have been 
 to invite scorn and defiance and defeat his purpose. 
 But it was as a missionary he labored, and his converts 
 were to be an entire people. 
 
 Controversies with Germany were from the begin 
 ning of a more serious nature than with Great Britain 
 and were ultimately to lead to war, for with Germany 
 they concerned the taking of life while with Great 
 Britain they concerned merely the taking of or inter 
 ference with property ; but, curiously enough, it was 
 not the criminal actions of Germany but the alleged 
 illegal acts of England that aroused the deepest feeling 
 in the United States. That the historian of the future, 
 when all the evidence is presented and can be im 
 partially reviewed, will exonerate England of illegality 
 and bear generous tribute to her excessive moderation 
 and forbearance no one can doubt, but the American 
 people were not in a historical mood and were com 
 pelled to form judgment on imperfect knowledge. 
 What they knew was that their vessels were being 
 held up and searched and their cargoes were frequently 
 seized and confiscated after trial in an English prize 
 court, which it was natural for them, ignorant of the 
 practice of international law, to regard as partial 
 
162 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Ojf 
 
 and always ready to stretch the law and facts in 
 favor of the British Government. The agents of 
 Germany, tireless, unscrupulous, with unlimited means 
 at their command to influence public opinion, adroitly 
 fostered the discontent by dwelling on the arbitrary 
 acts of England and contrasting the course of England 
 and Germany. When Germany bombed hospitals 
 or sunk an English ship, which was denied or con 
 veniently disposed of as an incident of war, it 
 brought no loss to Americans, but when England 
 seized a rich cargo Americans suffered a heavy financial 
 loss ; and while Germany was longing to pour her 
 wealth into America through the purchase of Ameri 
 can goods England was the dog in the manger who 
 barred the way, not because she might have to go 
 without, as there was enough for both, but out of pure 
 selfishness. She wanted to punish Germany, and she 
 was envious of America s good fortune ; she begrudged 
 the money America was making and dreaded the 
 future when America would be a keener trade rival. 
 It is not surprising that many Americans should have 
 honestly believed that England s course was less 
 honorable than Germany s, and that it was Eng 
 land and not Germany with whom eventually they 
 might have to reckon. 
 
 Because of the policy he was pursuing, furthermore 
 because of the duty he believed was imposed upon 
 the United States to champion and protect the rights 
 of neutrals and safeguard the accepted principles 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 163 
 
 of international law, Mr. Wilson felt it incumbent 
 upon him to bring to the attention of the British 
 Government what his legal advisers, whose vision 
 was then limited by claiming the rights neutrals are 
 always insistent upon in time of war, asserted to 
 be infractions of the code of nations. The exchange 
 of notes began in the early days of the war and con 
 tinued with little cessation during the next two years. 
 On December 26, 1914, Mr. Bryan, as Secretary of 
 State, found it necessary to send a long dispatch to 
 the British Government, couched in a friendly tone 
 but firmly stating the American position; the condi 
 tion of American foreign trade having become "so 
 serious as to require a candid statement of the views 
 of this Government in order that the British Govern 
 ment may be fully informed as to the attitude of the 
 United States toward the policy which has been pur 
 sued by the British authorities during the present 
 war." The commerce of nonbelligerents, Mr. Bryan 
 asserted, ought not to be interfered with by bellig 
 erents unless that interference was imperatively 
 necessary for national safety. Disavowing any selfish 
 desire to gain undue commercial advantage, the 
 American Government was reluctantly forced to the 
 conclusion that the British policy toward neutral 
 ships and cargoes "exceeds the manifest necessity 
 of a belligerent and constitutes restrictions upon the 
 rights of American citizens upon the high seas which 
 are not justified by the rules of international law or 
 
164 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 tffe 
 
 required under the principle of self-preservation." 
 The situation created was, Mr. Bryan represented, a 
 critical one to the commercial interests of the United 
 States, suffering because their products were denied 
 access to long established neutral European markets, 
 and he relied upon the British sense of justice to remove 
 the difficulties and obstacles placed in the way of 
 American commerce. 
 
 "In conclusion," Mr. Bryan wrote, "it should be 
 impressed upon His Majesty s Government that the 
 present condition of American trade with the neutral 
 European countries is such that, if it does not improve, 
 it may arouse a feeling contrary to that which has so 
 long existed between the American and British peoples. 
 Already it is becoming more and more the subject of 
 public criticism and complaint. There is an increasing 
 belief, doubtless not entirely unjustified, that the 
 present British policy toward American trade is 
 responsible for the depression in certain industries 
 which depend upon European markets. The atten 
 tion of the British Government is called to this possible 
 result of their present policy to show how widespread 
 the effect is upon the industrial life of the United 
 States and to emphasize the importance of removing 
 the cause of complaint." 
 
 The effect this dispatch produced upon the English 
 mind can be easily imagined. Any doubt existing 
 that the interest the United States had in the war was 
 measured by its profits was now dispelled. 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 165 
 
 4 
 
 On the seventh of May, 1915, the Lusitania was 
 torpedoed. Before that Germany had committed 
 more atrocious crimes, since then the atrocities of 
 which Germany has been guilty make the sinking of 
 the Lusitania trivial, but nothing that Germany has 
 done so profoundly affected the moral sense of the 
 entire world. In America there went up a cry for 
 vengeance ; many persons who had conscientiously 
 obeyed the President s injunction to be neutral in 
 thought and action now openly proclaimed their 
 detestation of Germany and felt that the United States 
 must, to preserve her own self-respect and dignity 
 and in vindication of the rights of humanity, declare 
 war on Germany. But the President remained un 
 moved. He sat in the White House a solitary and 
 lonely figure (Mrs. Wilson had died two days after 
 England declared war), listening to the growing storm; 
 listening and pondering and waiting. He knew of 
 the mounting excitement, he knew that nothing 
 would be more gratifying to the men who had been 
 the partisans of England from the first than the 
 uniting of their country with England and France in 
 the war against Germany; he knew that the torpedo 
 fired by a German submarine commander had become a 
 powerful agent in bringing the moral issue home to 
 the nation; he knew he had but to speak, and the 
 indifferent and the apathetic would be quickened 
 and they would join in the demand for war; but he 
 
166 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 also knew, and perhaps no man knew it so well as he, 
 that the destruction of the Lusitania had not united 
 his people. There were still two camps, the partisans 
 of Germany had not been converted ; Americans who 
 believed the war was none of their affair were shaken, 
 but not convinced. And he knew that to go to war 
 with a divided country was impossible. Moreover 
 he had not abandoned hope that the United States 
 could be kept out of the war; and while from the 
 depths of the Atlantic the dead of the Lusitania 
 besought him that they be not forgotten, and he 
 was resolved that never should they be forgotten 
 and in the fullness of time their murder should be 
 expiated, 1 he still cherished the faith that policy might 
 so shape events that the toll of American life would 
 not have to be increased. 
 
 Some days before the Lusitania had been sent to the 
 bottom Mr. Wilson had accepted an invitation to address 
 a meeting of newly naturalized citizens in Philadelphia 
 on the evening of May 10. It was known of course 
 that the Government of the United States could not 
 permit such a gross violation of international law as the 
 sinking of the Lusitania and the murder of its citizens 
 to go unnoticed, and the public eagerly awaited the 
 President s action, speculating whether it would be 
 such a vigorous demand on Germany for reparation 
 
 1 See the President s speech delivered at the Metropolitan Opera House, 
 New York, September 27, 1918: "Our brothers from many lands, as well 
 as our own murdered dead under the sea, were calling to us, and we re 
 sponded, fiercely and of course." 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 167 
 
 and assurances that the crime would not be repeated 
 that, virtually, it would be an ultimatum and force 
 the United States into the war on the side of the Allies, 
 or whether Mr. Wilson would be content to engage in a 
 diplomatic duel with Germany. Mr. Wilson gave no 
 sign. In accordance with his custom at a time of crisis 
 he withdrew from practically all contact with his offi 
 cial advisers or public men ; isolated and aloof, per 
 haps seeking spiritual guidance, as Lincoln did more 
 than once and Robert E. Lee is known to have spent 
 the night in prayer before his duty was revealed to 
 him that his allegiance was to his State and not to his 
 Government, Mr. Wilson took counsel of himself 
 but none other, and the people believed he would 
 reveal himself in the forthcoming speech. 
 
 For a man so well balanced and mentally so nicely 
 poised as Mr. Wilson, who keeps himself well under 
 restraint and thinks with such clearness that his 
 thoughts are always translated into the simplest 
 and most direct language, it is curious that more than 
 once he has lapsed into the same "blazing indiscre 
 tions" that gave the late Lord Salisbury his reputa 
 tion. In asking Congress to repeal the exemption 
 clause of the Panama Canal Act Mr. Wilson, it will 
 be recalled, said : "I ask this of you in support of the 
 foreign policy of the Administration. I shall not 
 know how to deal with other matters of even greater 
 delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant 
 it to me in ungrudging measure;" and in view of the 
 
168 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 strained relations then existing with Mexico and Japan, 
 Congress and the country naturally concluded that 
 the situation was even more critical than they sus 
 pected, and patriotism demanded instant submission 
 to the President s demand. Had Mr. Wilson a less 
 direct and more tortuous mind, "thinking tortuous 
 thoughts, naught honest, but all roundabout", did 
 he delight in seeming frankness to conceal subtle 
 designs, one might believe that he deliberately used 
 words susceptible of more than one interpretation, 
 but that theory can be dismissed without further 
 question. Some months after Mr. Wilson made his 
 address to Congress he said that his words on that 
 occasion had been misunderstood ; and his explanation 
 throws an illuminating light on his character. At 
 that time Mr. Wilson received the Washington corre 
 spondents twice a week and in the course of informal 
 conversation told them such things as he considered 
 it advisable for them to know; these conversations 
 were not published verbatim, but a stenographic report 
 was taken and filed in the White House archives. 
 With the consent of the President the report was pub 
 lished that clarified the misunderstanding. Mr. Wilson 
 said that in using the language he did when asking 
 Congress to repeal the exemption clause he was not 
 thinking of any situation immediately critical, but 
 what he had in mind was a situation that might arise 
 in the future, that might be more critical and more 
 delicate than that which confronted him at the time 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 169 
 
 he spoke, and the shameful position in which the 
 United States would be placed if the world believed 
 that the United States made treaties, accepted in 
 good faith by other nations, and then construed them 
 to suit her own convenience or advantage. It was, in 
 short, an appeal to Congress not to consider material 
 gain but to respect a moral obligation, so to act toward 
 the world that the United States need suffer no loss of 
 self-respect or feel the reproach of the world believing 
 that the United States would gladly sacrifice its honor 
 to secure an unworthy bargain. More than once Mr. 
 Wilson was to do this same thing; to think in larger 
 terms of the future while the public was thinking in 
 the smaller things of the present, and thereby to 
 confuse and anger the public ; and now he was about 
 to do it even more dramatically, with its attendant 
 consequences of greater confusion and more lasting 
 and deep-seated anger. 
 
 Mr. Wilson prepared his speech before the news of 
 the sinking of the Lusitania reached him; segregated, 
 he still had means of knowing the temper of the 
 country, and he must have known with what intense 
 anxiety the world awaited his deliverance and the 
 construction that would be put on his every word. 
 The speech as written was not changed. He repeated 
 what he had said many times since his election ; he dwelt 
 upon the mission of America to humanize the world, 
 its duty to set an example of peace to the world ; he 
 pictured America created to unite men and to elevate 
 
170 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 mankind, dwelling especially, as applicable to his 
 audience, on the obligation of every man to dedicate 
 himself to America and to leave all other countries 
 behind, and then he astonished every one and amazed 
 the country no less than the entire world by saying : 
 
 "The example of America must be a special example. 
 The example of America must be the example not 
 merely of peace because it will not fight, but of peace 
 because peace is the healing and elevating influence 
 of the world and strife is not. There is such a thing 
 as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a 
 thing as a nation being so right that it does not need 
 to convince others by force that it is right." 
 
 That was the only reference to the thing that en 
 grossed all men. The President s speech was pub 
 lished in full in the leading newspapers, but that 
 sentence - - "there is such a thing as a man being too 
 proud to fight" stripped of its context, was singled 
 out; it was flung on telegraph wires and cables to the 
 far corners of the earth, and it was accepted by the 
 world as the President s reply to Germany. Germany 
 had sunk the Lusitania, Germany had murdered Ameri 
 can men and women and little children, and America, 
 speaking through her President, could find no word of 
 scorn or condemnation for the guilty, no pity for the 
 dead, no promise they should be avenged ; it could 
 feel no generous prompting of passion, but was con 
 tent proudly to glory in her cowardice. 
 
 Bitterly attacked in his own country, lampooned, 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 171 
 
 satirized and jeered at abroad, any other man 
 temperamentally different would have offered ex 
 planation or defense, or at least through his friends 
 sought to soften the harsh judgment of the world 
 and make it plain that what he said and the inter 
 pretation given to it did him an injustice. Mr. Wilson 
 did nothing. With what might very well have been 
 thought the superb indifference of disdain, with what 
 the public might very well believe w r as utter contempt 
 for what it said or thought or believed, but which, 
 in fact, was an extraordinary exhibition of courage 
 and self-control, Mr. Wilson dismissed the matter 
 as if it were too trivial to require further attention. 
 He had unlimited confidence, it was a confidence 
 almost fatalistic, in the ultimate triumph of right and 
 reason and the victory of morality in the long struggle. 
 Lincoln, we are told, as an advocate of the abolition 
 of slavery and prohibition saw that they could not 
 be hastened, that they could be safely agitated but 
 must not be prematurely pressed, and it was wisdom 
 to wait until "in God s own time they will be organized 
 into law and thus be woven into the fabric of our 
 institutions." Mr. Wilson had the more difficult 
 task not to crystallize moral sentiment into law, which 
 is the foundation on which all law rests, for in a free 
 country law is simply the concrete expression of moral 
 ity, but to weld passion, prejudice and self-interest 
 into a great moral renunciation. 
 
 There is a curious thing in connection with the 
 
172 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 President s use of the phrase "too proud to fight" 
 which is worth mention and is of interest to the psy 
 chologist. Mr. Wilson is a Southerner by birth, 
 descent and tradition, and although all his life from 
 early manhood has been lived in the North, heredity 
 is ineradicable. To the Southerner, especially the 
 Southerner of the generation of Mr. Wilson s child 
 hood, "proud" has a different meaning and is used 
 in a different sense than it is by the Northerner. Men 
 of the North seldom talk about their pride; men of 
 the South frequently do, and they mean not pride in 
 the Shaksperian sense, but in the same sense that 
 the American of the North or the Englishman does 
 self-respect. A Southerner will say, "I am too proud 
 to do it," a Northerner or an Englishman would say, 
 "My self-respect will not allow it." It was un 
 doubtedly in that sense Mr. Wilson, subconsciously 
 reacting to his Southern heritage, used "proud", 
 meaning that there are occasions when a nation, no 
 matter how great the temptation, must not fight, 
 just as an individual, to save his own self-respect, 
 must not engage in a brawl. 
 
 It will not be necessary critically to consider the 
 long correspondence that passed between the American 
 and German Governments, but the sinking of the 
 Lusitania brought the first break in Mr. Wilson s 
 Cabinet and led to the resignation of Mr. Bryan on 
 the following eighth of June. "In a country of com 
 plex foreign relations," says Bagehot, "it would mostly 
 
"TOO PROUD TO FIGHT" 173 
 
 happen that the first and most critical year of every 
 war would be managed by a peace Premier," and Mr. 
 Wilson in this first critical year found himself burdened 
 with a peace Secretary of State. Mr. Bryan was 
 no greater lover of peace than Mr. Wilson ; both men 
 were pacifists as the term had been used in the days 
 when statesmen loudly denied their love of militarism 
 and asked support because of their attachment to 
 peace ; both men detested war and to them hate among 
 nations was criminal and an offense against the Christ 
 they served, but there was a marked difference be 
 tween the statesmanship of Mr. Wilson and Mr. 
 Bryan and his duty as each conceived it. On the 
 common platform of peace they could meet, but Mr. 
 Bryan would stick to his platform and expose himself 
 to bullets, refusing to fire a shot in his own protection, 
 while Mr. Wilson knew when the time had come to 
 leave the platform and pick up the weapon at hand 
 that even the most zealous pacifist may not despise 
 if he is not to permit his principles to become folly. 
 Under no circumstances could Mr. Bryan be made 
 to fight ; Mr. Wilson was trying to avoid being forced 
 to fight, but he would not run from it. Mr. Bryan s 
 position in the Cabinet of Mr. Wilson became im 
 possible, and he resigned to be succeeded by Mr. 
 Robert Lansing. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE EVANGELIST 
 
 EVENTS were rapidly bringing about a situation to 
 cause Mr. Wilson the gravest concern. The sinking 
 of the Lusitania and other vessels by Germany, the 
 never-ceasing friction with England because of her 
 alleged interference with the rights of American 
 and neutral commerce, the horror and detestation 
 Americans had for Germany because of her crimes 
 on land and sea and the way in which she made 
 war in defiance of all moral and international law; 
 the growing solidification of the American people into 
 the partisans of England or Germany; the efforts 
 almost without concealment of Germans in America 
 to fight for Germany in the United States by destroy 
 ing factories having British Government contracts, 
 sinking ships, equipping expeditions and in numerous 
 other criminal ways attempting to violate the neu 
 trality of the United States, made the observance of 
 neutrality increasingly "difficult. 
 
 The contempt in which the Administration was held 
 by those Americans who from the beginning had been the 
 supporters of England and since the sinking of the 
 
 174 
 
THE EVANGELIST 175 
 
 Lusitania with growing bitterness and violence de 
 nounced the President for not having declared war ; the 
 temper of Congress, where in both parties England was 
 defended and defamed and Germany was protected 
 and attacked; the vehemence of the press, which 
 had ceased to be neutral and was either the outspoken 
 champion of England or equally without disguise up 
 held the cause of Germany, or, too cowardly to take 
 a positive stand and risk losing advertisers or offend 
 ing subscribers, professed impartiality by alternately 
 attributing responsibility for the war to both belliger 
 ents, or tried to curry favor with both sides by express 
 ing no views and holding no opinions showed the dan 
 gerous state of public sentiment. Mr. Wilson still hoped 
 neutrality could be maintained, but while the Govern 
 ment continued to be officially neutral, the country, 
 Mr. Wilson well knew, had ceased to be neutral either 
 in thought or action. 
 
 It was not sufficient to allow time to shape destiny, 
 patiently to wait in the hope that an awakened con 
 science would make men no longer content to palter 
 with morality. Passionate resentment on the one side 
 was met with lethargic indifference on the other, and 
 to the great mass of Americans the war still remained 
 none of their business. Better than any other man 
 Mr. Wilson knew the temperament of his own people, 
 the springs that moved them, the ideals they cherished, 
 and he had sufficient confidence in the correctness of 
 his appraisement of their character to believe that if 
 
176 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 he could make them see that the whole character 
 of the war had changed, that he himself saw it in a 
 new light, that it was no longer a war as the world 
 hitherto had always thought about war, to satisfy the 
 ambition of kings, or to appease national pride, or to 
 gain by conquest what could not be gained in any 
 other way, but it was a war of principle, a war that 
 threatened freedom and imperiled liberty and the 
 democracy that was the foundation of American in 
 stitutions, the American people would no more hesi 
 tate, but would be as resolute for war and gladly make 
 whatever sacrifice was necessary in supporting the 
 Allied cause as, at the beginning of their history, they 
 had fought against royal tyranny and legislative op 
 pression, and, in the following century, again had taken 
 up arms in defense of human liberty and to maintain 
 the principle of their political unity. This they must 
 be made to see, not only to see but to feel ; before they 
 would draw the sword, in them must be the spirit of 
 the crusader; they must be made to fight for an idea 
 no less than an ideal and in a spirit of knight errantry 
 go forth to battle. 
 
 It was no easy thing to do. In his dispatch to the 
 British Government in December, 1914, Mr. Bryan 
 had stressed British interference with neutral trade 
 and the heavy financial loss to American interests. 
 Immediately following the outbreak of the war Amer 
 ican bankers and merchants, heavily indebted to 
 England, were required to make provision to meet 
 
THE EVANGELIST 177 
 
 their obligations, normal trade between America and 
 England was dislocated, business between America 
 and neutrals came virtually to a standstill, commerce 
 between America and Germany and Austria practi 
 cally ceased; sterling exchange went to a prohibitive 
 price, the commerce of the whole world was in con 
 fusion ; in America men were uncertain as to the 
 future, it was a time for caution, business came al 
 most to a halt until the skies lifted; it looked as if 
 America was in for a bad time and was facing hard 
 ship and distress. But this period of semi-panic and 
 fear lasted only a short time and the skies soon lifted. 
 It was not long before the British Government began 
 to place huge contracts in the United States, and a 
 few months later Great Britain, France and Russia 
 were buying on an enormous scale, recklessly and 
 stupidly bidding against each, buying without any 
 regard to system or value but in their desperation and 
 haste willingly paying almost any price demanded, 
 their needs being largely in excess of the supply. The 
 whole world was looking to America. Not only were 
 the belligerents supplementing their inadequate means 
 of production with the resources of the new world, 
 buying not alone munitions but foodstuffs and raw 
 materials, but the neutrals, their normal channels 
 closed to them, were compelled to turn to America, 
 purchasing on their own account or acting as the 
 agents of Germany, engaged in a trade so profitable 
 that there was no haggling about price, and whatever 
 
178 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 the conscience of Americans permitted them to ask 
 was paid without demur. It is not a figure of speech 
 touched with the fancy of rhetoric, but as matter of 
 fact as the subject itself, that a golden stream flowed 
 across the Atlantic and gave new life and strength not 
 alone to the factories and industrial plants of America 
 but also to her agriculture, her mines, her forests 
 and her railways. The effect was quickly seen. The 
 surplus of unemployed labor was turned into a scarcity 
 of skilled workingmen, wages and prices rapidly ad 
 vanced, speculation in "war babies" was rampant, 
 huge fortunes were made overnight and a new crop of 
 millionaires blossomed; America was enjoying pros 
 perity such as before she had never known. To de 
 part slightly from chronology and anticipate events, 
 from early in 1915 and throughout the whole of 1916 
 America played in the Pactolian sands. England, 
 France and Russia, and later Italy, were not only 
 buying in the United States but also borrowing, en 
 riching bankers with handsome commissions and 
 paying heavy interest for the money advanced, which 
 was used not to pay their own nationals but paid to 
 American manufacturers and workingmen for mu 
 nitions and supplies ; and when they had drained 
 themselves of their gold they sent back to the United 
 States American stocks and bonds, either to be sold 
 or to be used as collateral to sustain their credit. 
 From being a debtor nation at the beginning of the war 
 the whole world was now creditor to the United States. 
 
THE EVANGELIST 179 
 
 Never perhaps had there been such extravagance, 
 such luxury, such lavish expenditure, such light- 
 heartedness, such a feverish craving for amusement. 
 The public was obsessed with the craze for enjoy 
 ment in the glare of publicity and measured pleasure 
 by its cost. In all the large cities the cabaret and the 
 expensive and garish restaurant, with dancing as 
 much a matter of course as the food, were nightly 
 crowded until the early hours of the morning, and as 
 the evenings were not long enough to satisfy the 
 dancing mania, tea dances were introduced and be 
 came equally the fashion. Women accustomed to 
 pay extravagantly for dresses and furs were aghast 
 
 at the prices now asked, but they paid without ques- 
 
 
 
 tion, for money was plentiful and must be spent. In 
 some of the large Western cities at Christmas, always 
 a time when the pocketbook is freely opened, jewelers 
 advertised lavishly that "this is a diamond year" 
 and "now is the time to buy jewelry", and the public 
 spent fabulous sums for jewels and other presents. 
 The opera and the theaters were never so well patron 
 ized. At no time had the rich and the fashionable 
 entertained so freely, or with so little restraint indulged 
 their caprices or taste in providing their friends costly 
 food and drink. Nor was it only the idle rich and 
 the fashionable of the large cities, always a class by 
 themselves, who went this pace. They set the pace, 
 it is true, but all classes of society were quick to imi 
 tate them. The normally staid and dull middle-aged 
 
180 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 man of the middle class learned to dance and took 
 his feverish pleasure at the less 7pre ten tious cabaret, 
 the pert little stenographer and her "boy" danced 
 like all the rest of them ; the munition workers of the 
 great industrial centers, making extraordinarily high 
 wages, were buying expensive clothes and having 
 luxuries hitherto longed for but never believed possible 
 to be possessed; the Western farmer, with a market 
 practically at his own price for wheat and horses 
 and cattle, was rich as never before ; the cotton planter 
 of the South in a few months went from poverty to 
 affluence. In every part of the country the same 
 story was repeated ; money was being made quickly 
 and spent freely. 
 
 Indifferent as Americans might be to the war they 
 were not indifferent to what the war meant to them. 
 So long as the war lasted money must come to America, 
 whose great profits would continue if America remained 
 neutral, but the position would be changed if she 
 abandoned her neutrality and became a belligerent. 
 Distinctly then the war was very much a matter of 
 business, and it would be folly, it would show very 
 poor business sense, to dam up the golden stream by 
 taking part in a war in Europe whose outcome could 
 not in any way touch America. Whether Germany 
 won or was defeated America would not be affected. 
 The only statesmanship the public understood was 
 peace with war profits. 
 
THE EVANGELIST 181 
 
 X 
 
 Mr. Wilson was now to become the evangelist. He 
 was to have the whole world as his congregation. He 
 was to be sneered at, derided, defamed, but he was 
 not to be swerved. He entered now upon a new phase 
 of his career, more striking than any previous period 
 of his life. He went about preaching his new gospel ; 
 he began deliberately to preacji the doctrine of moral 
 ity, his words often falling on negligent ears, but to 
 preach it without avowing his purpose, rather, in fact, 
 trying to conceal it; by indirection to convey sug 
 gestion; to lead by precept rather than by argu 
 ment; to repeat and constantly to repeat "the same 
 theme, frequently to weary his audience by his per 
 sistence, but by his singleness of design to provoke 
 discussion, to stir sluggish thought, to force his ad 
 herents to defense and to invite the attack of his 
 opponents; but always to compel the people, uncon 
 sciously, often unwillingly, to question the moral mean 
 ing of the war, and thus to make them see, as he in 
 tended they should see, the war in a new aspect. 
 
 He became the greatest propagandist the modern 
 world has known, displaying extraordinary skill and 
 dexterity and cunning, using that word not in its 
 corrupted acceptance but in its original meaning. 
 He was a gentle zealot; with words of love and for 
 bearance on his lips he came to bring peace and com 
 fort and not to unloose the flaming sword. There 
 was no fire in his words, rarely flights of eloquence in 
 
182 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 what he said. He spoke with simplicity and direct 
 ness, using only the short and everyday words that 
 every great teacher and leader of men has known 
 how to use so that a profound thought or a great 
 moral precept can be made sensible to men of little 
 intelligence. His language was the plain speech of 
 the masses, but it was like steel striking on steel in a 
 vaulted chamber, to echo and reverberate and fill the 
 lambent air with the beating pulses of a note that 
 was quiet but never silent. 
 
 Between the day of the sinking of the Lusitania 
 and the day he went before Congress to ask for a 
 declaration of war against Germany Mr. Wilson de 
 livered many addresses, some of them seemingly re 
 mote from the war and having no connection with it, 
 but whenever he spoke he appealed to the American 
 pebple to cast selfishness aside and with no expecta 
 tion of reward and only the consciousness of service 
 as their reward help to bind the wounds of a stricken 
 world. The limitations of space will permit only a 
 few brief quotations taken at random, but these are 
 sufficient to show how Mr. Wilson was molding Ameri 
 can thought and making it impossible for Americans 
 to avoid thinking about the one subject from which 
 there could be no escape. Thus in an address at 
 Indianapolis on January 8, 1915, he said: "May we 
 not look forward to the time when we shall be called 
 blessed among the nations because we succored the 
 nations of the world in their time of distress and dis- 
 
THE EVANGELIST 183 
 
 may? I for one pray God that that solemn hour 
 may come, and I know the solidity of character, and 
 I know the exaltation of hope, I know the high prin 
 ciple with which the American people will respond to 
 the call of the world for this service, and I thank 
 God that those who believe in America, who try to 
 serve her people, are likely to be also what America 
 herself from the first intended to be, the servant of 
 mankind." In a brief address to the Methodist 
 Episcopal Conference in Washington on March 25, 
 1915, the President said : "So I look upon you in the 
 present circumstances as a great part of the stabilizer 
 of the nation." Explaining the functions of the re 
 cently invented aeroplane stabilizer to determine the 
 plane upon which the machine is to move, the Presi 
 dent said: "Something like that is the function of 
 the great moral forces of the world to act as stab 
 ilizers even when we go up in the air. . . . The Pres 
 ident is what the American nation sustains, and if it 
 does not sustain him, then his power is contemptible 
 and insignificant. If I can speak for you and rep 
 resent you and in some sense hand on the moral forces 
 that you represent, then I am indeed powerful; if 
 I cannot, then I am indeed weak. . . . This is a coun 
 cil of peace, not to form plans of peace, for it is not our 
 privilege to form such, but to proclaim the single su 
 preme plan of peace, the relation of our Lord and 
 Saviour, Jesus Christ." 
 
 Mr. Wilson had publicly proclaimed his spiritual 
 
184 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 guidance. It was not the first time that he had in 
 voked the favor of the Almighty, and more than once 
 it had been asked whether to Mr. Wilson religion was 
 simply a conventionality or part of his life. Men 
 who know him best and have been given opportuni 
 ties to form a judgment, say that Mr. Wilson is deeply 
 religious. He is, says one observer, a Scotch Presby 
 terian, a Cromwellian, but with none of the austerity 
 of the Covenanter ; in him the fanaticism of his for 
 bears has been softened and made gentle; he sees 
 that existence is a perfectly ordered scheme. Less 
 concerned about dogma or doctrine than the true 
 spirit of Christianity, for between life and doctrine, 
 Mr. Wilson said in one of his addresses, there is no real 
 antithesis; a man "lives upon a doctrine, upon a 
 principle, upon an idea"; unconcerned about creeds 
 and tolerant of formularies, the Supreme Being is not 
 terrible and vengeful, always demanding retribution, 
 but a loving Father, kind, forbearing, generous. Mr. 
 Wilson, says this same observer, is that rare person in 
 politics whose existence has often been denied, a 
 Christian and a gentleman ; and he adds another in 
 timate touch worth recording. Mr. Wilson is, what 
 few persons imagine, a shy man, sensitive to the ex 
 treme, and it is this shyness and sensitiveness that 
 have given him his undeserved reputation for cold 
 ness and aloofness, in delighting to keep the public 
 at arm s length and neither desiring nor making friends. 
 It is not that he is unresponsive, but he has the timid- 
 
THE EVANGELIST 185 
 
 ity of the shy, almost diffident man who must always 
 struggle against his reserve and is constitutionally 
 incapable of letting his real feelings or emotions be 
 seen except by the very few enjoying a peculiarly 
 intimate association. 
 
 When in April, 1914, Mr. Wilson determined that 
 he had no alternative except to seize Vera Cruz he 
 called a meeting of his Cabinet. In effect he was 
 about to make war on Mexico, and although it would 
 have been a petty war as the world to-day has been 
 taught war, then it loomed large as war; the step 
 Mr. Wilson was about to take was portentous and 
 its solemnity impressed him. Having explained what 
 he proposed to do, he said to the men sitting around 
 the table, with quiet earnestness and with a sincerity 
 no one could doubt, that if any of them still believed 
 in the efficacy of prayer he hoped they would think 
 very solemnly over this matter. Probably the only 
 member of the Cabinet who was not startled was Mr. 
 Bryan, who always consistently endeavored to shape 
 his life according to the teachings of his Master, but 
 to the other members, more worldly although religious, 
 this dramatic reminder, but without a suggestion of 
 theatricalism, that man was merely an instrument 
 in the hands of God, produced a profound impression 
 and convinced them that the President had not taken 
 this momentous decision without having first narrowly 
 searched his conscience, and his spirit had been strength 
 ened by the conviction he was committing no trespass. 
 
186 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 3 
 
 On the eighth of April, 1915, Mr. Wilson welcomed 
 the annual Conference of the Maryland Methodist 
 Protestant Church assembled in Washington, and 
 although his address was extremely brief, he struck 
 even a deeper note than in his address before the 
 Methodist Episcopal Conference. It would seem, he 
 said, as if great, blind material forces had been re 
 leased which had long been held in restraint, and yet 
 underneath could be seen the strong impulses of great 
 ideals. It would be impossible for men to go through 
 what men are going through on the great battlefields 
 of Europe and struggle through the present dark night 
 of their terrible struggle if it were not that they saw, 
 or thought that they saw, the broadening of light 
 where the morning should come up and believed that 
 they were standing each on his side of the contest for 
 some eternal principle of right. 
 
 " Then all about them, all about us, there sits the 
 silent, waiting tribunal which is going to utter the 
 ultimate judgment upon this struggle, the great tri 
 bunal of the opinion of the world ; and I fancy that 
 I see, I hope that I see, I pray that it may be that I 
 do truly see, great spiritual forces lying waiting for 
 the outcome of this thing to assert themselves, and 
 asserting themselves even now, to enlighten our judg 
 ment and steady our spirits." We wish to see certain 
 things triumph, the President said, but why do we 
 wish to see them triumph, and what is there in them 
 
THE EVANGELIST 187 
 
 for the lasting benefit of mankind ? " For we are 
 not in this world to amuse ourselves with its af 
 fairs. We are here to push the whole sluggish mass 
 forward in some particular direction, and unless you 
 know the direction in which you want to go your force 
 is of no avail. 
 
 "Do you love righteousness? is what each one of 
 us ought to ask himself, and if you love righteousness, 
 are you ready to translate righteousness into action 
 and be ashamed and afraid before no man? It seems 
 to me, therefore, that it is worth suggesting to you 
 that you are not sitting here merely to transact the 
 business and express the ideals of a great church, as 
 represented in the State of Maryland, but you are 
 here also as part of the assize of humanity, to remind 
 yourselves of the things that are permanent and 
 eternal which, if we do not translate into action, we 
 have failed in the fundamental things of our lives." 
 
 At Arlington Cemetery, on May 31, 1915, the Pres 
 ident said: "We live in our visions. We live in the 
 things that we see. We live, and the hope abounds 
 in us as we live, in the things that we purpose. Let 
 us go away from this place renewed in our devotion to 
 daily duty and to those ideals which keep a nation 
 young, keep it noble, keep it rich in enterprise and 
 achievement; make it to lead the nations of the 
 world in those things that make for hope and for the 
 benefit of mankind." 
 
 Speaking at the Annual Encampment of the Grand 
 
188 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Army of the Republic, in Washington, on September 
 28, 1915, Mr. Wilson said: "But for my own part I 
 would not be proud of the extraordinary physical de 
 velopment of this country, of its extraordinary de 
 velopment in material wealth and financial power, did 
 I not believe that the people of the United States 
 wished all of this power devoted to ideal ends. There 
 have been other nations as rich as we; there have 
 been other nations as powerful ; there have been 
 other nations as spirited; but I hope that we shall 
 never forget that we created this nation, not to serve 
 ourselves but to serve mankind." 
 
 Twice during 1915 Mr. Wilson addressed in Wash 
 ington the Daughters of the American Revolution. 
 On the first occasion, April 19, he said, "We are in 
 terested in the United States, politically speaking, in 
 nothing but human liberty." Warning his audience 
 against forming judgment based on impulse or preju 
 dice, the President continued: "We cannot afford 
 to sympathize with anybody or anything except the 
 passing generations of human beings. America for 
 gets what she was born for when she does exactly the 
 way every other nation does when she loses her 
 recollection of her main object, as sometimes nations 
 do and sometimes perhaps she herself has done, in 
 pursuing some immediate and transitory object. . . . 
 I ask you to rally to the cause which is dearer in my 
 estimation than any other cause, and that is the 
 cause of righteousness as ministered to by those who 
 
THE EVANGELIST 189 
 
 hold their minds quiet and judge according to prin 
 ciple. . . . We should ultimately wish to be justified 
 by our own consciences and by the standards of our 
 own national life." 
 
 On the second time, on October 11, 1915, Mr. Wilson 
 said: "Neutrality is a negative word. It is a word 
 that does not express what America ought to feel. 
 America has a heart, and that heart throbs with all 
 sorts of intense sympathies, but America has schooled 
 its heart to love the things that America believes in, 
 and it ought to devote itself only to the things that 
 America believes in, and, believing that America 
 stands apart in its ideals, it ought not to allow itself 
 to be drawn, so far as its heart is concerned, into any 
 body s quarrel. Not because it does not understand 
 the quarrel, not because it does not in its head assess 
 the merits of the controversy, but because America 
 has promised the world to stand apart and maintain 
 certain principles of action which are grounded in law 
 and justice. We are not trying to keep out of trouble ; 
 we are trying to preserve the foundations upon which 
 peace can be rebuilt. Peace can be rebuilt only upon 
 the ancient and accepted principles of international 
 law, only upon the things which remind nations of 
 their duties to each other, and deeper than that, of 
 their duties to mankind and humanity. 
 
 "America has a great cause which is not confined to 
 the American continent. It is the cause of humanity 
 itself. I do not mean in anything I say even to imply 
 
190 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 a judgment upon any nation or upon any policy, for 
 my object here this afternoon is not to sit in judgment 
 upon anybody but ourselves as to challenge you to 
 assist all of us who are trying to make America con 
 scious of nothing so much as her own principles and 
 duty." 
 
 "The extraordinary circumstances of such a time 
 have done much to quicken our national consciousness 
 and deepen and confirm our confidence in the prin 
 ciples of peace and freedom by which we have always 
 sought to be guided," Thanksgiving Proclamation, 
 1915. 
 
 At Columbus, Ohio, on December 10, 1915, the 
 President said: "I believe that thoughtful men of 
 every country and of every sort will insist that, when 
 we get peace again, we shall have guarantees that it 
 will remain, and that the instrumentalities of justice 
 will be exalted above the instrumentalities of force. 
 I believe that ... if America preserves her poise, 
 preserves her self-possession, preserves her attitude of 
 friendliness toward all the world, she may have the 
 privilege, whether in one form or another, of being the 
 mediating influence by which these things may be 
 induced." 
 
 At the Manhattan Club, New York City, on No 
 vember 4, 1915, the President said: "We shall, I 
 confidently believe, never again take another foot of 
 territory by conquest. We shall never in any cir 
 cumstances seek to make an independent people sub- 
 
THE EVANGELIST 191 
 
 ject to our dominion ; because we believe, we pas 
 sionately believe, in the right of every people to choose 
 their own allegiance and be free of masters altogether. 
 . . . The mission of America in the world is essen 
 tially a mission of peace and good will among men." 
 
 In New York, May 17, 1915 : "The interesting and 
 inspiring thing about America is that she asks noth 
 ing for herself except what she has a right to ask for 
 humanity itself. It is not pretension on our part to 
 say that we are privileged to stand for what every 
 nation would wish to stand for and speaking for those 
 things which all humanity must desire . . . solemn 
 evidence that the force of America is the force of moral 
 principle, that there is not anything else that she 
 loves and that there is not anything else for which she 
 will contend." 
 
 Before the Associated Press in New York, on April 
 20, 1915, Mr. Wilson elaborated the position of and 
 the duty imposed upon his country. "We have roll 
 ing between us and those bitter days across the water 
 three thousand miles of cool and silent ocean. Our 
 atmosphere is not yet charged with those disturbing 
 elements which must be felt and must permeate ever^ 
 nation of Europe. Therefore, is it not likely that the 
 nations of the world will some day turn to us for the 
 cooler assessment of the elements engaged?" Dis 
 claiming any intention to sit in judgment, because 
 no nation is fit to sit in judgment on any other, the 
 time must inevitably come when "we shall some 
 
192 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 day have to assist in reconstructing the processes of 
 peace." The position of America made her more 
 and more the mediating nation of the world, "and we 
 must have our judgments prepared and our spirits 
 chastened against the coming of that day." The 
 duty of America was "to think of America before we 
 think of Europe, in order that America may be fit to 
 be Europe s friend when the day of tested friend 
 ship comes. The test of friendship is not now sympa 
 thy with the one side or the other, but getting ready 
 to help both sides when the struggle is over." 
 
 The basis of neutrality as Mr. Wilson defined it 
 "is not indifference; it is not self-interest. The 
 basis of neutrality is sympathy for mankind. It is 
 fairness, it is good will at bottom. It is impartiality 
 of spirit and of judgment. ... I am interested in 
 neutrality because there is something so much greater 
 to do than fight, because there is something, there is 
 a distinction waiting for this nation that no nation 
 has ever yet got. That is the distinction of absolute 
 self-control and self-mastery. ... I covet for America 
 this splendid courage of reserve moral force. . . . We 
 are trustees for what I venture to say is the greatest 
 heritage that any nation ever had, the love of justice 
 and righteousness and human liberty. For, funda 
 mentally, these are the things to which America is 
 addicted and to which she is devoted." 
 
 "There marches that great host which has brought 
 us to the present day ; the host that has never forgot- 
 
THE EVANGELIST 193 
 
 ten the vision which it saw at the birth of the nation ; 
 the host which always responds to the dictates of 
 humanity and of liberty." "Flag Day", Washing 
 ton, June 14, 1915. 
 
 "America is great in the world, not as she is a suc 
 cessful government merely, but as she is the successful 
 embodiment of a great ideal of unselfish citizenship. 
 That is what makes the world feel America draw it 
 like a lodestone. . . . That is the light that shines 
 from America. God grant that it may always shine." 
 Speech before the Federal Council of Churches of 
 Christ in America, at Columbus, Ohio, December 11, 
 1915. 
 
 The accusation of inconsistency has frequently been 
 brought against Mr. Wilson ; he has been charged 
 with holding principles so lightly that they yield 
 easily to the pressure of popular demand; that, in 
 short, statesmanship, as he views it, is opportunism 
 reduced to a science. Opportunism, in its larger 
 sense, can be base and disgraceful, or it can be the 
 rarest self-control and the wisest statesmanship. One 
 of his biographers has said of Lincoln that it is cer 
 tain he trained himself to be a great student of the 
 fitting opportunity. Whether Mr. Wilson consciously, 
 with deliberate intent, trained himself with a similar 
 purpose it is impossible to say, but his whole public 
 life is proof that he knew when and how to use his 
 
194 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 opportunity to accomplish a great purpose, and that 
 his seeming inconsistency, of which we have more than 
 one instance, was intellectual pliability, the honesty 
 and courage to admit an error and to feel no shame 
 in candidly confessing it. 
 
 When Congress met in December, 1914, the war 
 then having been waging for four months, many men 
 were seriously disturbed about the defenseless posi 
 tion of the United States and believed national secur 
 ity demanded that immediate action be taken to 
 increase the military and naval forces, which had the 
 vigorous support of some of the most influential news 
 papers of the country. Addressing Congress on the 
 eighth of December, Mr. Wilson, then not desiring 
 to give any encouragement to the thought of America 
 being in danger of becoming a belligerent, with as near 
 a display of heat as he had shown in any of his utter 
 ances up to that time, forcibly denied that military 
 preparation was necessary or that the slightest danger 
 confronted America. Frankly admitting that the 
 country was not prepared for war and that if it were 
 necessary to resist attack the means would be found 
 without compulsory military service, he said : 
 
 "Allow me to speak with great plainness and direct 
 ness upon this great matter and to avow my con 
 victions with deep earnestness. I have tried to know 
 what America is, what her people think, what they 
 are, what they most cherish and hold dear. I hope 
 that some of their finer passions are in my own heart, 
 
THE EVANGELIST 195 
 
 -some of the great conceptions and desires which 
 gave birth to this Government and which have made 
 the voice of this people a voice of peace and hope and 
 liberty among the peoples of the world, and that, 
 speaking my own thoughts, I shall, at least in part, 
 speak theirs also, however faintly and inadequately, 
 upon this vital matter. 
 
 "We are at peace with all the world. No one who 
 speaks counsel based on fact or drawn from a just and 
 candid interpretation of realities can say that there is 
 reason to fear that from any quarter our independence 
 or the integrity of our territory is threatened. Dread 
 of the power of any other nation we are incapable of. 
 We are not jealous of rivalry in the fields of commerce 
 or of any other peaceful achievement. We mean to 
 live our own lives as we will ; but we mean also to 
 let live. We are, indeed, a true friend of all the na 
 tions of the world, because we threaten none, covet 
 the possessions of none, desire the overthrow of none. 
 Our friendship can be accepted and is accepted with 
 out reservation, because \t> is offered* in a spirit and 
 for a purpose which no one need ever question or sus 
 pect. Therein lies our greatness. We are the cham 
 pions of peace and of concord. And we should be very 
 jealous of this distinction which we have sought to 
 earn. Just now we should be particularly jealous of 
 it, because it is our dearest present hope that this char 
 acter and reputation may presently, in God s provi 
 dence, bring us an opportunity such as has seldom 
 
196 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 been vouchsafed any nation, to counsel and obtain 
 peace in the world and reconciliation and healing 
 settlement of many a matter that has cooled and in 
 terrupted the friendship of nations. This is the time 
 above all others when we should wish and resolve 
 to keep our strength by self-possession, our influence 
 by preserving our ancient principles of action. * 
 
 The traditional military policy of America was to 
 rely upon its militia, its citizen soldiery ; more than 
 that would be a reversal of the whole history and 
 character of American policy. To do more than that, 
 Mr. Wilson asserted, would mean "that we had lost 
 our self-possession, that we had been thrown off our 
 balance by a war with which we have nothing to do, 
 whose causes cannot touch us, whose very existence 
 affords us opportunities of friendship and disinterested 
 service which should make us ashamed of any thought 
 of hostility or fearful preparation for trouble." A 
 powerful navy America had always had and would 
 continue to have, "but who shall tell us what sort 
 of navy to build?" Mr. Wilson asked, and when will 
 the experts be right? 
 
 The policy of America, Mr. Wilson said in conclu 
 sion, "will not be for an occasion. It will be con 
 ceived as a permanent and settled thing, which we 
 will pursue at all seasons, without haste and after a 
 fashion perfectly consistent with the peace of the world, 
 the abiding friendship of States, and the unhampered 
 freedom of all with whom we have to deal. Let there 
 
THE EVANGELIST 197 
 
 be no misconception. The country has been misin 
 formed. We have not been negligent of national de 
 fense. We are not unmindful of the great responsibility 
 resting upon us. We shall learn and profit by the 
 lesson of every experience and every new circumstance ; 
 and what is needed will be adequately done." 
 
 Yet fourteen months later he was to recant, publicly 
 and without qualification, making no attempt to 
 soften his abjuration but honestly admitting he had 
 been mistaken and was now anxious to make profes 
 sion of his repentance. Addressing the Railway 
 Business Association in New York, on January 27, 
 1916, Mr. Wilson insisted that America desired above 
 all things peace and that he shared that profound 
 love for peace. "I have sought to maintain peace 
 against very great and sometimes very unfair odds. 
 I have had many a time to use every power that was 
 in me to prevent such a catastrophe as war coming 
 upon this country," but the conditions required that 
 consideration be given to defense, and he added : 
 " Perhaps when you learned, as I dare say you did 
 learn beforehand, that I was expecting to address 
 you on the subject of preparedness, you recalled the 
 address which I made to Congress something more 
 than a year ago, in which I said that this question 
 of military preparedness was not a pressing question. 
 But more than a year has gone by since then, and I 
 would be ashamed if I had not learned something in 
 fourteen months. The minute I stop changing my 
 
198 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 mind with the change of all the circumstances of the 
 world, I will be a back number." 
 
 Having thus handsomely confessed his error Mr. 
 Wilson took the public still further into his confidence 
 and explained why he had reversed himself in an 
 other matter. The Republicans had agitated the 
 creation of a Commission of experts to study the tariff 
 so as to take the tariff out of politics, but Mr. Wilson 
 had opposed this. He told his audience: "There is 
 another thing about which I have changed my mind. 
 A year ago I was not in favor of a tariff board, and I 
 will tell you why." At that time, he said, the only 
 purpose of the tariff board was to keep alive an un 
 profitable controversy and to disturb business, but now 
 there was going on in the world an economic revolu 
 tion : no man had the elements of that revolution 
 clearly in his mind, and the business of legislation with 
 regard to international trade could not be undertaken 
 until the facts were known, which was a study prop 
 erly to be made by experts. The Republicans hailed 
 this volte face with cynical delight and, to use Mr. 
 Wilson s own phrase, as "there is a great deal more 
 opinion vocal in this world than is consistent with 
 logic", satirically suggested they would gladly furnish 
 their opponents with the ideas of which they were 
 barren. Mr. Wilson was not unduly disturbed. To 
 him consistency was less important than circum 
 stance. 
 
THE EVANGELIST 199 
 
 5 
 
 Mr. Wilson was going through an evolution, forced 
 by circumstance. He was meeting his opportunity 
 as strong men do, strong enough to keep an open mind, 
 without pride of opinion to see events in their reality 
 and understand their meaning. He was able now to 
 see the war in a new aspect, that whatever it might 
 have been at the beginning and whatever its causes 
 were at the outset, it had ceased to be a war between 
 nations but had now become another phase of the 
 age-long struggle between liberty and despotism, be 
 tween freedom and slavery, between progress and 
 reaction. In an address made at the banquet of the 
 League to Enforce Peace, in Washington on May 27, 
 1916, Mr. Wilson said of the war: "With its causes 
 and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure 
 fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst 
 forth we are not interested to search for or explore," 
 and it was another of those phrases that perhaps would 
 have been as well left unsaid, or if it must be said 
 to have been amplified. To the public it seemed cal 
 lous that the President should say America was not 
 concerned in the causes of the war, and the President 
 was criticized for saying it, because at that time the 
 causes of the war, that is to say, its responsibility, was 
 discussed with fierce zeal by the partisans of the 
 Allies and Germany. If Germany provoked the war 
 and was the wrongdoer, surely no American could be 
 in sympathy with Germany ; but if Germany was not 
 
200 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 the aggressor, if her opponents were equally determined 
 on war, then neither side could expect American sym 
 pathy on the ground of resisting unwarranted attack. 
 To Mr. Wilson this argument was futile. It was 
 labor wasted in flogging a dead horse. To search the 
 past, to rake over the bones of history long crumbled 
 to dust was idle, it might amuse children but was 
 no occupation for grown men. What was clear to 
 Mr. Wilson, what ought to be equally clear to his 
 audience, as he believed, was not to spend time in seek 
 ing the original causes of the war but to understand the 
 great cause that the war had become. That was the 
 all-important and all-sufficient thing, because when 
 men understood not what brought on the war but 
 that the war was to vindicate morality and save the 
 world, America would no longer doubt. The more 
 one understands the way in which Mr. Wilson s mind 
 works, the more closely he is studied, the more logical 
 he reveals himself. With an engaging frankness that 
 is rare in public men, Mr. Wilson constantly throws 
 a light upon himself and takes the public into his 
 confidence, if they have the intelligence to understand 
 the significance of an almost parenthetical sentence. 
 Thus in his speech at the Metropolitan Opera House 
 in New York, on September 27, 1918, he said : "I have 
 responded gladly and with a resolution that has grown 
 warmer and more confident as the issues have grown 
 clearer and clearer." Amplify the thought back of the 
 words and it would be that at one time the remote causes 
 
THE EVANGELIST 201 
 
 of the war were obscure and they did not touch Mr. 
 Wilson, but as that obscurity lifted and the issues stood 
 forth terrible in what they threatened, majestic in what 
 they offered, they appealed so irresistibly to him that 
 he not only made them his own but became their 
 champion. 
 
 Mr. Wilson, to return to midsummer of 1915, had 
 not become a militant, but he was ceasing to be a 
 pacifist, he was taking a new view of force, because in 
 a world rent asunder by war he had the wisdom to see 
 that the nation unarmed was in peril. He had sources 
 of information denied the public, but what he knew 
 could not be revealed, and his knowledge caused him 
 constant anxiety. In his speech before the Railway 
 Business Association he said, "I cannot tell you what 
 the international relations of this country will be to 
 morrow, and I use the word literally ; and I would not 
 dare to keep silent and let the country suppose that 
 to-morrow was certain to be as bright as to-day." More 
 than once about this time he used similar language 
 and showed the fear that lay heavy upon him. The 
 policy of Germany, her utter disregard of neutral 
 rights, her violation of international law, her manifold 
 and revolting crimes, the contempt with which the 
 German Government treated America and either 
 sneered at American remonstrance or attempted to 
 bully, caused Mr. Wilson to fear the time must come 
 when it would be impossible to maintain neutrality. 
 His patience was sorely taxed, yet the more he was 
 
202 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 challenged, the greater the provocation, the more 
 resolutely he labored to prevent war so that all Amer 
 icans should "draw together for the successful prose 
 cution of peace", a distinction, he said, "I covet for 
 America." But he still had to meet the same diffi 
 culty that had faced him from the outset. Sentiment 
 was undoubtedly turning against Germany; in the 
 Atlantic deeps the Lusitania was a shrine to which the 
 thoughts of Americans turned in loving pity or glow 
 ing resentment that flamed anew at the report of every 
 fresh German atrocity ; the cries of the victims of 
 German lust clutched at America s heart ; but Amer 
 ica still remained spiritually divided, in thought two 
 nations ; the demand for war was opposed by the 
 demand for peace; selfishness, ignorance and coward 
 ice had not been eradicated ; and millions of men 
 and women, perverted by a strained construction of 
 morality, soothed their consciences by no longer affect 
 ing neutrality, even they felt the shame of pre 
 tended indifference in the presence of a world crucified, 
 - but cloaked self-interest and prejudice in pretended 
 patriotism, and vociferously declared themselves to be 
 "not pro- Ally or pro-German, but pro-American." 
 
 Mr. Wilson had not succeeded in converting his 
 countrymen, but the seeds of conversion were sown, 
 and in the fullness of time would come to a rich har 
 vest. Had Mr. Wilson died in 1915 or been defeated 
 in the following year, history, blind to aspiration and 
 recording only achievement, would have judged him 
 
THE EVANGELIST 203 
 
 not by aspiration but by accomplishment, not by what 
 he had hoped to do but by what he had failed to do ; 
 and history would have written the verdict, seemingly 
 a just one, that as a statesman he utterly failed, that 
 given an opportunity such as had been given to few 
 men, certainly to no other American President, he 
 was unable to grasp it because of temperamental or 
 other deficiencies. 
 
 In those two years and until Mr. Wilson led the 
 country to war superficial judgment would have said 
 that pursuing the policy of timidity, endeavoring to 
 displease no one and to retain the good will of every 
 one, he suffered the usual fate of the man who attempts 
 to ride two horses. Apparently he had alienated his 
 friends and made his opponents still more embittered ; 
 men who were neither friends nor enemies but who 
 were tolerant and disposed to give him the benefit of 
 every doubt were puzzled and disturbed. His posi 
 tion was peculiar, unlike that of any modern head of 
 a state or the leader of a great political party. 
 
 His course had given great offense. The Germanic 
 party, meaning by that the Germans of Germany and 
 the Germans in America as well as their avowed and 
 secret supporters and sympathizers, were more con 
 vinced than ever that Mr. Wilson s official neutrality 
 simply concealed his Ally sympathies ; that profess 
 ing friendship for all the world and perpetually talk 
 ing peace, secretly he detested Germany and had 
 friendship only for the Allies. The Germanic party 
 
204 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 hated Mr. Wilson and constantly intrigued against 
 him. 
 
 The Allies, both in their own countries and in 
 America, and their adherents and champions, no less 
 bitterly disliked him. He balanced too nicely. He 
 paltered with Germany and he nagged England. 
 Germany murdered and he protested ; England opened 
 the mails and he threatened. He preached humanity, 
 but to the plea of humanity in its distress he was deaf. 
 The world was dying, and the only consolation he 
 could offer were the measured words of a peaceful 
 America making cerements for a dead world. 
 
 It has often been a disputable question whether 
 public opinion in America is formed by the relatively 
 small intellectual class at the top which influences the 
 great mass below, or whether the mass is the force 
 that creates what the intellectuals formulate. That 
 question need not be further pursued, but it is quite 
 certain that in America from 1914 to the beginning 
 of 1917 the intellectuals, the editors of newspapers, 
 every man who by voice or pen was able to influence 
 the thought of his fellow man in the interest of the 
 Allies, saw in Mr. Wilson s course only cowardice, and 
 to them delay was dishonesty. Intellect does not 
 suffer gladly to be told what it knows, it is intolerant 
 of unnecessary information and resents its infliction. 
 Mr. Wilson s iteration and reiteration of duty, hu 
 manity, peace, liberty, altruism, service, to them 
 these were words merely, high-sounding but empty 
 
THE EVANGELIST 205 
 
 words, words to tickle the ears of the mass because 
 they sounded well but had no meaning. To the in 
 tellectuals the causes of the war were no more obscure 
 than the duty of the United States was in doubt; 
 right and justice were so plain they needed no guide, 
 but what they failed to take into consideration was the 
 sluggish mind of the mass. The mass still remained in 
 ignorance, its only interest in the war still remained 
 that of self-interest ; the moral meaning of the war 
 was beyond them. The mass had to be patiently told 
 and taught; told and taught so often in the same 
 words that at last they would be made to see. 
 
 This is what Mr. Wilson was doing, slowly, it is 
 true, but very surely. Every speech he made pro 
 voked excited discussion, and discussion, even if ex 
 cited and angry and often ignorant and malicious, 
 was education. You cannot keep on talking about 
 morality, and have newspapers and public men 
 ridicule morality, without the people beginning to 
 question the meaning of morality and to ask what 
 concern they have in international morality. Mr. Wil 
 son, it was said, uttered nothing but pretty platitudes, 
 he floated in the higher realms of idealism, he was 
 vague and academic; but to stagnant thought he / 
 gave an impulse. He was doing in his own way and 
 to meet the requirements of the American temper 
 ament what Peter the Hermit did when he preached 
 his crusade, what men in every age and every tongue 
 have done who placed themselves at the head of a 
 
206 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 great movement to bring the mass against their will 
 to see the beauty of life redeemed by sacrifice and 
 devotion to a principle. What he said could not be 
 drowned by ridicule or dismissed lightly or be forgot 
 ten, because subconsciously it stirred the spirit and 
 . / set a chord vibrating. The American is a composite 
 of altruism and materialism, of idealism and the 
 practical, of balance and emotion, as responsive as 
 the tuning fork to the note. Avid for pleasure and 
 feverish in its pursuit, men and women were thinking ; 
 they were dissatisfied, angry, impatient, as much with 
 themselves as with Mr. Wilson because he pricked 
 conscience; they felt something stirring within them, 
 they were irritated because the thing would not be 
 quiet, but they were thinking. That much Mr. 
 Wilson had done. He made them think. / 
 
 They would perhaps have thought more vocally, 
 and perhaps instead of thinking they would have 
 been simply vocal, had Mr. Wilson been a man of 
 passion who fired men with his own heat. In one of 
 his speeches Mr. Wilson said three thousand miles 
 of "cool and silent ocean" separated America from 
 Europe, and to many Americans Mr. Wilson was as 
 cool and unruffled as the measureless ocean. What 
 men longed for was a leader who blazed, who at times 
 flamed with the righteous wrath that ought to have 
 consumed him, who, if for a moment only, would cast 
 aside the armor of office and reveal himself a human 
 being, willing to do a wrong in a righteous cause. 
 
THE EVANGELIST 207 
 
 They wanted evidence, palpable, substantial, obvious, 
 that the man was human and not simply an intellect, 
 they would have rejoiced had his brain unleashed his 
 heart and cold calculation given place to the fine and 
 generous emotion to make him disregard consequences 
 for the sake of right. But he was, to his fellow men, 
 too well regulated, too much a master of himself, too 
 well disciplined to give way to the honest passions 
 that lend a dignity to ordinary men. 
 
 Mr. Wilson now, as had happened before and was to 
 happen again, was misunderstood, and the qualities 
 that ought to have won him the admiration of his 
 countrymen were used to his disadvantage. It was \f 
 not a tepid disposition and the over-refinement of cal 
 culation that held him back and made him master of 
 himself, it was the quality of greatness that made him 
 patient and able to resist desire and be content to wait 
 until the moment came to strike. Mr. Wilson had been 
 deeply moved by the crimes of Germany and felt the 
 same indignation that every other humane and civilized 
 person did, but he would not permit his personal 
 feelings to sway his official actions. The gossip that 
 clusters about a President, much of it trivial and some 
 of it valuable as a revelation of character and often 
 more important than posthumous judgment, Mr. Wil 
 son, as it has been previously remarked, has escaped, 
 but one incident, the authenticity of which is estab 
 lished, is interesting as showing how little the Amer 
 ican people really understood their President. 
 
208 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 It was a tacit agreement among the members of the 
 President s family that while they were privileged to 
 discuss the war among themselves they would not 
 discuss it in his presence. Entering a room one day 
 in which members of the family were seated, the lively 
 conversation as the door opened was followed by an 
 embarrassed silence. Mr. Wilson looked at the group 
 quizzically and said: "I know what you were talking 
 about; you were talking about the war. In five 
 minutes I could get just as excited as all the rest of 
 you, but that s one reason why one person at least 
 must keep his head and remain sane." 
 
 6 
 
 Beginning in the end of 1915 and in the early 
 months of the following year Mr. Wilson made many 
 speeches similar to that he delivered before the Rail 
 way Business Association advocating an adequate 
 army and navy. Mr. Wilson had not wavered in his 
 conviction that the United States ought to remain 
 neutral, that as a neutral she could be of greater 
 service to mankind than as a belligerent, that, as 
 he said in the third annual address to Congress 
 on December 7, 1915: "It was necessary, if a uni 
 versal catastrophe was to be avoided, that a limit 
 should be set to the sweep of destructive war and 
 that some part of the great family of nations 
 should keep the processes of peace alive, if only 
 to prevent collective economic ruin and the break- 
 
THE EVANGELIST 209 
 
 down throughout the world of the industries 
 by which its populations are fed and sustained"; 
 but circumstance was again compelling action. Ger 
 many had to be considered in the light of a foe, de 
 termined apparently to provoke the United States, 
 and seemingly indifferent to what the United States 
 might do. In all his speeches Mr. Wilson never 
 omitted to stress the altruistic mission of the United 
 States or the things for which she was striving, but he 
 coupled with that the necessity of the country making 
 itself ready to resist attack. Thus at Cleveland, 
 Ohio, on January 29, 1916, he said and this speech 
 is typical of the others delivered at that time: "We 
 are peculiar in this, that from the first we have dedi 
 cated our force to the service of justice and righteous 
 ness and peace ... do you not see that if I am to 
 guard the honor of the nation, I am not protecting it 
 against itself, for we are not going to do anything to 
 stain the honor of our own country. I am protecting 
 it against things that I cannot control, the action of 
 others. And where the action of others may bring us 
 I cannot foretell. You may count upon my heart 
 and resolution to keep you out of the war, but you 
 must be ready if it is necessary that I should main 
 tain your honor." In a word, Mr. Wilson was turning 
 the thought of the country to realize that it might be 
 forced to go to war. He was destroying the fatuous 
 ness which made so many Americans believe that 
 come what might the United States was in no danger 
 
210 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 and by some mysterious providence could be spared 
 the experience of every other nation; that it was too 
 formidable to be attacked and too powerful to need 
 defense. War, he made men see, must now be re 
 garded not as a distant possibility but as something 
 that an untoward event might any day bring very 
 near ; but if war came it would be a war not for con 
 quest or aggression or to satisfy an unworthy ambi 
 tion, but in defense of honor and those ideals which 
 America had always sustained. 
 
 Still another motive moved Mr. Wilson. He had 
 a Congress that was pacifist, that was cowed by the 
 political strength of the Germanic party, too indif 
 ferent to national interests to dare the antagonism of 
 the electorate hostile to Mr. Wilson and the formidable 
 peace-at-any-price voters. It is true there were many 
 courageous and far-seeing men in Congress who, ir 
 respective of party or personal feelings, were ready 
 loyally to support the President and carry through his 
 recommendations, but it is also true, and numerous 
 votes proved it, that in both parties were men 
 either openly or covertly opposing legislation directed 
 against Germany. Mr. Wilson knew that to reach 
 these members of Congress he must first quicken the 
 country, and one of his purposes in appealing to the 
 people was to start a back fire. In every speech he 
 told his audience, varying his words but not the sub 
 stance, that he knew of the necessities of the case but 
 they must "stand back of the executive authorities of 
 
THE EVANGELIST 
 
 the United States in urging upon those who make our 
 laws as early and effective action as possible." 
 
 The year before had seen a vacancy created in the 
 Cabinet by the enforced resignation of Mr. Bryan; 
 this year was to see another break when Mr. Garrison, 
 on February 10, surrendered his portfolio as Secre 
 tary of War, owing to an irreconcilable conflict of 
 opinion with the President regarding the method to 
 increase the army. Mr. Garrison s force and character 
 and his advocacy of a complete reorganization of the 
 military establishment had favorably impressed the 
 "big army" men as the first step toward the United 
 States declaring war on Germany, but they saw in his 
 resignation confirmation of their fears that the Presi 
 dent had no intention of making war. 
 
V 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 AMERICA IN THE WAR 
 1 
 
 MR. WILSON S renomination for the Presidency in 
 1916 was a foregone conclusion, but his election 
 was uncertain, and the possibility of defeat weighed 
 heavily upon him. It was with no feeling of wounded 
 personal ambition Mr. Wilson contemplated defeat, 
 but he feared his half-finished work would be left un 
 completed, and he foresaw the difficulties that would 
 follow the election of a Republican President and the 
 dangerous political situation that would be brought 
 about. 
 
 The Democratic -majority in Congress was opposed 
 to war. There were Democrats in both Houses who 
 were openly for war, to whom Mr. Wilson s policy 
 of restraint and caution was distasteful, who were no 
 less impatient than the Republicans at Mr. Wilson s 
 inaction and who in private were as critical as their 
 opponents; but the party, as a whole, was satisfied 
 with the policy of neutrality and determined vigorously 
 to resist a declaration of war against Germany ; on 
 more than one occasion some of its members had 
 attempted to secure the enactment of legislation in 
 
 212 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 213 
 
 the interest of Germany and seriously detrimental 
 to the Allies. It was only by the exercise of all his 
 power as the party leader and the President that Mr. 
 Wilson was able to defeat this attempted legislation, 
 but his majority was always uncomfortably close. 
 
 The Republicans had been bitterly critical of Mr. 
 Wilson s Mexican policy, and while not explicitly 
 demanding war against Mexico, they had judged Mr. 
 Wilson guilty of incompetence and shamefully weak 
 in his submission to Mexico; and to them Mexico 
 seemed to offer an issue to appeal to the country. 
 They were now in the same position as their 
 antagonists, they were not united for or against war; 
 Republicans had voted with Democrats to secure 
 the passage of the legislation which Mr. Wilson must 
 at any cost prevent, but, speaking broadly, the 
 Republicans were the war party, and it was a declara 
 tion of war they wanted against Germany, for in 1916 
 the leaders of the Republican party were strongly 
 pro-Ally. It would require too long and detailed an 
 examination of American political and social conditions 
 to explain this, and it would not in any way throw 
 light on the character and work of Mr. Wilson; but 
 the result was the war had become a question of 
 internal politics. Having made the war a political 
 issue, the Republicans, if they came into power, 
 would be committed to war against Germany, and the 
 Democrats, opposed to war and smarting under 
 defeat, looking upon the Republican championship 
 
214 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 of war as merely a crafty political trick to win the 
 election, would have offered a practically solid front 
 against the dominant party s war measures. Perhaps 
 the Democrats, in opposition, would not have gone 
 to the extreme lengths of preventing war, and war, 
 as we know now but, with the possible exception of 
 Mr. Wilson, nobody knew then, was bound to come; 
 but it was obvious to every one, to Mr. Wilson it was 
 clearer than to any one else, that the great principle 
 at stake and the material interests of the United 
 States would be in jeopardy were the Democratic 
 party to be defeated at the forthcoming election. 
 And it must be remembered Mr. Wilson had not 
 abandoned hope that war could be averted. It was a 
 slender hope, for after the sinking of the Sussex in 
 April, 1916, the breaking point had been almost 
 reached, but Germany had once more given pledges, 
 and without being unduly optimistic, Mr. Wilson 
 might believe Germany would see the folly of dragging 
 the United States to war. 
 
 In 1912 the campaign was fought on domestic 
 issues, and the American people went to the polls to 
 vote for the candidate who promised the social reforms 
 they demanded, no thought of foreign affairs being 
 in their minds. In 1916 the foreign policy of the 
 Administration, Mexico and the war, was, in effect, 
 the only issue before the American people. The war 
 had brought such confusion to America that the well- 
 established bases of political calculations were worth- 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 215 
 
 less. The Germans longed for the defeat of Mr. 
 Wilson, yet they felt by no means certain that the 
 election of Mr. Hughes would not throw America 
 into the war, and, much as they hated Mr. Wilson, 
 they were shrewd enough to see that they would 
 gain nothing by his defeat if with the incoming of the 
 Republicans the United States ceased to be neutral. 
 The general knowledge of the attitude of the Germans 
 and the hope of the German Government that the 
 Democrats would lose the election, brought to Mr. 
 Wilson s support Americans whose patriotism was 
 stronger than their partisanship ; who resented a for 
 eign element under the dictation of a foreign govern 
 ment attempting to punish the President for defending 
 American rights. But the deciding factor unquestion 
 ably was the strong sentiment, irrespective of party, in 
 favor of peace, which was crystallized into the cam 
 paign cry perhaps the most effective any candidate 
 ever had, and all the more effective because it was 
 spontaneous and not manufactured- "He kept us 
 out of war." 
 
 Twice Mr. Wilson had been tempted, and twice he 
 had resisted. Mexico and military glory were dangled 
 before his eyes and he turned his back upon them. 
 To win the fame that is the possession of every war 
 President was his if he cared to take it, and he would 
 not. The man that twice had given these hostages to 
 his peaceful desires was safer at the head of affairs 
 at a time so critical than an unknown man, the candi- 
 
216 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 date of a party whose leaders were shouting for war. 
 Exalted unselfishness and the most despicable selfish 
 ness were again leagued in a common cause. Good 
 men and women, to whom the very thought of war 
 was dreadful, voted for Mr. Wilson because he had 
 kept the country out of war, and to them nothing 
 was more horrible than the slaughter of war. Western 
 farmers voted for Mr. Wilson because he had kept the 
 country out of war, and by keeping the country out 
 of war Mr. Wilson had indirectly been the means of 
 adding enormously to the price of every bushel of 
 wheat, every horse, every bullock their farms pro 
 duced. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was elected by a popular plurality of 
 581,000 votes and a majority of twenty-three votes in 
 the electoral college, but these figures while statistically 
 correct are deceptive. The election, in fact, was 
 extremely close, and the balance between the two 
 parties almost microscopic. The total vote cast was 
 18,529,406. Mr. Wilson s plurality was only a trifle 
 more than three per cent, but even this meager margin 
 does not tell how narrowly Mr. Wilson missed defeat. 
 The whole number of votes in the electoral college 
 was 531, 266 votes were necessary to a choice, Mr. 
 Wilson receiving 277 and Mr. Hughes 254. California 
 has thirteen votes in the electoral college, and Mr. 
 Wilson carried California by the slender margin of 
 3773 votes in a total vote of 999,968; a fractional 
 change in the vote would have given Mr. Hughes the 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 217 
 
 Presidency by a majority of one electoral vote. Several 
 other states were almost as close. Without the 
 eighteen votes of Missouri in the electoral college 
 Mr. Wilson was defeated, yet he had an excess of 
 less than four per cent of the aggregate vote. Without 
 the ten votes of Kansas Mr. Wilson could not have 
 been elected, but his majority was a fraction less than 
 six per cent of the whole. Even more remarkable 
 was the Minnesota vote, where in a total of 387,378 
 votes Mr. Hughes carried the State by only 396 votes. 
 These figures justified the partisans of both candidates 
 before election in counting upon victory and prove 
 both candidates were warranted in fearing defeat. 
 
 The five months that passed between his nomination 
 in June and his election in November were perhaps 
 the most trying time of Mr. Wilson s public life. Mr. 
 Wilson was President, would remain President until 
 the following March, but it is a weakness of the 
 American political system that if the President is 
 the party s candidate for reelection he is shackled 
 between nomination and election, and ceases almost 
 to have any influence after election if he is defeated. 
 Mr. Wilson was in somewhat the same position that 
 Lincoln was in the summer of 1864, who believed he 
 was to be defeated at the coming November election, 
 who knew that the election of McClellan meant the 
 ending of the war not by victory of the North and 
 
218 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 the extirpation of slavery and the vindication of the 
 principle of political unity, but by a compromise 
 which would settle nothing and leave conditions ripe 
 for another conflict. " Seldom in history was so much 
 staked upon a popular vote. I suppose never in 
 history," Emerson wrote after the election; and now 
 as we look back we can see how much was staked on 
 that vote of the American people in November, 1916. 
 
 Earlier in the year, on April 18, Mr. Wilson sent 
 to the German Government a note on the sinking of 
 the cross-Channel French steamer Sussex, which he de 
 clared was "one of the most terrible examples of 
 the inhumanity of submarine warfare as the com 
 manders of German vessels are conducting it"; and 
 he notified Germany that "unless the Imperial Govern 
 ment should now immediately declare and effect an 
 abandonment of its present methods of submarine 
 warfare against passenger and freight carrying vessels, 
 the Government of the United States can have no 
 choice but to sever diplomatic relations with the 
 German Government altogether." On the following 
 day the President went before Congress and repeated 
 in substance, in some passages textually, his note to 
 Germany. 
 
 Germany gave assurances that she would change 
 her methods of submarine warfare and would not 
 attack unarmed merchant vessels without warning, 
 and between May, 1916, and the end of January, 
 1917, she made some pretense of observing her obli- 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 219 
 
 gallon ; not with strict honesty, because the German 
 cannot be honest, but with seeming desire to respect 
 her pledge ; which convinced Americans Germany 
 had yielded to Mr. Wilson and was anxious not to 
 add the United States to her foes. But as the summer 
 waned Mr. Wilson knew to the contrary ; he knew that 
 Germany had again lied to gain time, that submarines 
 were being built to the full extent of German facilities, 
 and the only reason Germany appeared to be submissive 
 was that she was not then ready to defy the United 
 States. When that time came, when she felt herself 
 strong enough to defy the United States as she had 
 defied the rest of the world, the campaign of murder 
 would be resumed, American vessels would be de 
 stroyed and American lives taken, and then, slightly 
 to paraphrase Mr. Wilson s words used in another 
 connection, "not gently, with ceremonious intro 
 duction, but suddenly and at once", America would 
 be brought squarely to face the issue. 
 
 In his address formally accepting his nomination, on 
 September 2, Mr. Wilson showed what was in his 
 mind but, as he likes to do, by periphrase rather than 
 direct statement. "In foreign affairs," he said, 
 "we have been guided by principles clearly conceived 
 and consistently lived up to. Perhaps they have not 
 been fully comprehended because they have hitherto 
 governed international affairs only in theory, not in 
 practice. They are simple, obvious, easily stated, 
 and fundamental to American ideals. 
 
220 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 "We have been neutral not only because it was the 
 fixed and traditional policy of the United States to 
 stand aloof from the politics of Europe and because we 
 had had no part either of action or of policy in the 
 influences which brought on the present war, but also 
 because it was manifestly our duty to prevent, if it 
 were possible, the indefinite extension of the fires of 
 hate and desolation kindled by that terrible conflict 
 and seek to serve mankind by reserving our strength 
 and our resources for the anxious and difficult day of 
 restoration and healing which must follow, when peace 
 will have to build its house anew. 
 
 "The rights of our own citizens of course became 
 involved : that was inevitable. Where they did this 
 was our guiding principle : that property rights can 
 be vindicated by claims for damages when the war is 
 over, and no modern nation can decline to arbitrate 
 such claims ; but the fundamental rights of humanity 
 cannot be. The loss of life is irreparable. Neither 
 can a direct violation of a nation s sovereignty await 
 vindication in suits for damages. The nation that 
 violates these essential rights must expect to be 
 checked and called to account by direct challenge and 
 resistance. It at once makes the quarrel in part our 
 own. These are plain principles and we have never 
 lost sight of them or departed from them, whatever 
 the stress or perplexity of circumstance or the provo 
 cation to hasty resentment. The record is clear and 
 consistent throughout and stands distinct and definite 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 
 
 for every one to judge who wishes to know the truth 
 about it." 
 
 This was warning to Germany that if she challenged 
 the challenge would be met. To the country it was 
 notice that if Germany resumed her campaign of 
 murder on the high seas American neutrality would 
 cease. Mr. Wilson took notice of German intrigues 
 in America and flung down the gauntlet. "I am the 
 candidate of a party," he said, "but I am above all 
 things else an American citizen. I neither seek the 
 favor nor fear the displeasure of that small alien 
 element amongst us which puts loyalty to any foreign 
 power before loyalty to the United States." 
 
 Referring to Mexico, because he was defending his 
 Mexican as well as his European policy, Mr. Wilson 
 said: "So long as the power of recognition rests with 
 me the Government* of the United States will refuse to 
 extend the hand of welcome to any one who obtains 
 power in a sister republic by treachery and violence. 
 I declared that to be the policy of the Administration 
 within three weeks after I assumed the Presidency. I 
 here again vow it. I am more interested in the 
 fortunes of oppressed men and pitiful women and 
 children than in any property rights whatever. Mis 
 takes I have no doubt made in this perplexing business, 
 but not in purpose or object." 
 
 In concluding he said he looked forward to the day 
 when "America shall strive to stir the world without 
 irritating it or drawing it on to new antagonisms, when 
 
222 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 the nations with which we deal shall at last come to 
 see upon what deep foundations of humanity and 
 justice our passion for peace rests, and when all man 
 kind shall look upon our great people with a new 
 sentiment of admiration, friendly rivalry and real 
 affection, as upon a people who, though keen to suc 
 ceed, seeks always to be at once generous and just 
 and to whom humanity is dearer than profit or selfish 
 power." 
 
 Throughout the summer Mr. Wilson continued to 
 make speeches, on every occasion stressing the desire 
 of the country for peace but equally stressing moral 
 duty. Before the New York Press Club, on June 30, 
 he said he was constantly in receipt of letters from 
 unknown men and humble women and the one prayer 
 in all these letters was : "Mr. President, do not allow 
 anybody to persuade you that the people of this 
 country want war with anybody," and he added : 
 "I am for the time being the spokesman of such people, 
 gentlemen. I have not read history without observing 
 that the greatest forces in the world and the only 
 permanent forces are the moral forces. . . . 
 
 "I am willing, no matter what my personal fortunes 
 may be, to play for the verdict of mankind. Person 
 ally, it will be a matter of indifference to me what the 
 verdict on the seventh of November is, provided I 
 feel any degree of confidence that when a later jury 
 sits I shall get their judgment in my favor. Not in 
 my favor personally what difference does that 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 223 
 
 make ? but in my favor as an honest and con 
 scientious spokesman of a great nation." 
 
 Addressing a Citizenship Convention in Washing 
 ton, July 13, the President said: "America was in 
 tended to be a spirit among the nations of the world, 
 and it is the purpose of conferences like this to find out 
 the best way to introduce the newcomers to this spirit, 
 and by that very interest in them to enhance and purify 
 in ourselves the thing that ought to make America 
 great and not only ought to make her great, but ought 
 to make her exhibit a spirit unlike any other nation in 
 the world. . . . No man has ever risen to the real 
 stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that 
 it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve 
 himself. . . . This process of Americanization is 
 going to be a process of purification, a process of rededi- 
 cation to the things which America represents and is 
 proud to represent. And it takes a great deal more 
 courage and steadfastness, my fellow citizens, to 
 represent ideal things than to represent anything else." 
 
 On the fourth of September Mr. Wilson accepted 
 on behalf of the nation the Lincoln Memorial, built 
 on the site of the log cabin in which Lincoln was born. 
 Although Mr. Wilson commands the world as his 
 audience he is not a great stylist, he has none of that 
 marvelous use of the simplest words that gave dis 
 tinction to everything that Lincoln wrote and made 
 his Gettysburg Address immortal and his Second 
 Inaugural a classic ; his short letters, of which he has 
 
WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 written many, are banal, commonplace even, con 
 trasted with the sentiment and diction of Lincoln s 
 living letter to Mrs. Bixby, for instance; but Mr. 
 Wilson s strength is his sincerity, his profound belief 
 in the things he says, the expression of his idealism, 
 which, like his religion, is not a garment but the very 
 fiber of his being. He is the voice of mankind crying 
 in the wilderness. He speaks for the silent mass, 
 silent but thinking, who cannot speak for itself. He 
 says what men believe. He has made idealism real. 
 In all that Mr. Wilson has written the Lincoln Ad 
 dress, as literature, will undoubtedly rank first. It 
 has a quality found in nothing else from his pen; it 
 has style, sentiment, imagination; it is as if the 
 spirit of Lincoln had touched his disciple and guided 
 him. "This is a place alike of mystery and reassur 
 ance", is a sentence from the Address. The mystery 
 remains. 
 
 The Address should be read, not alone for the pleas 
 ure it will give to every lover of noble thoughts made 
 beautiful by beautifully phrased English, but because 
 we may accept one portion of it as an intimate self- 
 revelation. I have said in a previous chapter that Mr. 
 Wilson has been a close student of Lincoln s methods, 
 and it is interesting to hear from Mr. Wilson himself : 
 " I have read many biographies of Lincoln ; I have 
 sought out with the greatest interest the many inti 
 mate stories that are told of him, the narratives of 
 near-by friends, the sketches at close quarters, in 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 
 
 which those who had the privilege of being associated 
 with him have tried to depict for us the very man 
 himself in his habit as he lived ; but I have nowhere 
 found a real intimate of Lincoln s." The impression 
 he received, Mr. Wilson said, was that no one "had 
 in fact penetrated to the heart of his mystery, or 
 that any man could penetrate to the heart of it. That 
 brooding spirit had no real familiars. I get the im 
 pression that it never spoke out in complete self- 
 revelation, and that it could not reveal itself completely 
 to any one." Mr. Wilson is no brooding spirit, but 
 do not those few lines deeply etched give us the por 
 trait of the artist? Lincoln revealed himself through 
 what he said and wrote and did ; so has Mr. Wilson, 
 and yet one feels about Mr. Wilson as he felt about 
 Lincoln : he comprehended men without fully com 
 muning with them ; that in spite of all his genial efforts 
 at comradeship his spirit dwelt apart, saw its visions 
 of duty where no man looked on. "There is a very 
 holy and very terrible isolation," the President said, 
 "for the conscience of every man who seeks to read 
 the destiny in affairs for others as well as for himself, 
 for a nation as well as for individuals. That privacy 
 no man can intrude upon. That lonely search of the 
 spirit for the right perhaps no man can assist. This 
 strange child of the cabin kept company with invisible 
 things, was born into no intimacy but that of its own 
 silently assembling and deploying thoughts." 
 
226 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 3 
 
 Reelected, Mr. Wilson now felt himself free to act. 
 The country was not yet ready for war, but it was fast 
 reaching that point when it needed only to be told war 
 was unavoidable to accept the decision. "The whole 
 art and practice of government consists, not in moving 
 individuals, but in moving masses," Mr. Wilson said 
 in one of his speeches during the summer. The mass 
 was now moving. Mr. Gerard, the American 
 ambassador to Berlin, who had kept his head under 
 the most trying circumstances and with marked 
 intelligence forecast the future, had fully informed 
 Mr. Wilson what to expect. The moving mass was 
 soon to act. 
 
 On December 12 Germany proposed a discussion of 
 peace, which the Allies rejected. On December 18 
 the President sent a note to all the belligerents suggest 
 ing that they state their views "as to the terms upon 
 which the war might be concluded and the arrange 
 ments which would be deemed satisfactory as a 
 guaranty against its renewal or the kindling of any 
 similar conflict in the future as would make it possible 
 frankly to compare them." The suggestion was 
 received with respect, but it led to no practical results. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was now to make the last effort to bring 
 about peace and keep his own country at peace, be 
 cause he knew Germany was bending every effort to 
 renew her unrestricted submarine warfare and the 
 time could be measured when Germany would feel 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 227 
 
 her weapon was strong enough to make her indifferent 
 to the remonstrance of the United States. On January 
 22, 1917, Mr. Wilson addressed the Senate on what 
 should be the essential terms of peace. His chief 
 proposition was the necessity of the formation of a 
 league of nations to guarantee peace and justice 
 throughout the world, to which the United States must 
 adhere. It was in this address Mr. Wilson used the 
 phrase "it must be a peace without victory." "Vic 
 tory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor s 
 terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be 
 accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable 
 sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a 
 bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, 
 not permanently, but only as upon quicksand." 
 
 To the Allies this was not pleasant reading. For 
 more than two years and a half they had been fighting 
 against overwhelming odds, they had fought not an 
 honorable foe who redeemed the ghastly business of 
 war by his chivalry, but an enemy whose savagery 
 disgraced the savage, whose unspeakable crimes made 
 civilization tremble, who had committed infamies 
 that only a nation perverted and degenerate could 
 conceive or execute. Yet the high courage of the 
 Allies had not wavered. They were sustained by the 
 strength of the spirit. In the beginning, with bare 
 hands, they had beaten back the advancing hordes, 
 savages, but armed with all the devices of science 
 corrupted to torture and kill. Through long and 
 
228 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 weary months they had fought and died, but their 
 resolve could not be killed. They were prepared to 
 die, to give their lives if need be to the cause which 
 made the humblest in their ranks a hero, but they 
 would not surrender or cravenly accept a compromise 
 peace that would leave Germany the victor and en 
 courage her again to plunge the world in despair. 
 
 But this, Allied opinion believed, Mr. Wilson pro 
 posed. A peace without victory, a peace that should 
 enable Germany to escape her just punishment, that 
 should leave her unscathed while she had left Belgium 
 in ruins, and to France, fighting only in self-defense, 
 brought desolation, could not be entertained. It 
 would be contrary not only to every tradition of the 
 Anglo-Saxon race and blood but it would have been 
 an admission of defeat, a confession of cowardice, the 
 recognition that the world acknowledged only force, 
 that morality no longer existed and only might pre 
 vailed. 
 
 Mr. Wilson s appeal was moving, he urged it with 
 all his force and eloquence and sincerity, but it did not 
 touch the hearts of the Allied peoples, suffering, weary, 
 weighted under their heavy load of sorrow, but grim 
 and determined, their iron wills unbroken. " Perhaps," 
 Mr. Wilson said to the Senate, "I am the only person 
 in high authority amongst all the peoples of the world 
 who is at liberty to speak and hold nothing back. I 
 am speaking as an individual, and yet I am speaking 
 also, of course, as the responsible head of a great 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 
 
 government, and I feel confident that I have said what 
 the people of the United States would wish me to say. 
 May I not add that I hope and believe that I am in 
 effect speaking for liberals and friends of humanity 
 in every nation and of every program of liberty? I 
 would fain believe that I am speaking for the silent 
 mass of mankind everywhere who have as yet had no 
 place or opportunity to speak their real hearts out 
 concerning the death and ruin they see to have come 
 already upon the persons and the homes they hold 
 most dear." 
 
 More than one consideration makes this perhaps 
 the most important of all of Mr. Wilson s pre-war 
 addresses. In broad terms he proposed to all the 
 belligerents "peace without victory", which would 
 apply equally to the Entente as to Germany and her 
 allies, but, in fact, it was the last opportunity to Ger 
 many to escape being crushed. If the United States 
 came into the war, and no statesman whose sources 
 of information were as complete as Mr. Wilson s 
 could doubt how events were being shaped, never 
 again would Germany be offered peace without vic 
 tory. Once the United States drew the sword she 
 would not sheathe it until her sword had been the 
 means of winning peace with victory. Mr. Wilson s 
 profound knowledge of the psychology of his own 
 people was not needed to establish this. The American 
 people would not go to war, but they could be forced 
 into war ; engaged in war they would go through with 
 
230 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 it ; they would fight for victory and exact the victor s 
 terms. Half measures would satisfy no one; the 
 magnitude of the war, the sacrifices that the war 
 would demand, the dramatic seizure of the imagination 
 - for the first time in history an American army fight 
 ing on the soil of Europe against a European nation ; 
 the moral no less than the material support that 
 America was to give to England and France; the 
 reaction on the American by the companionship of 
 arms with Englishmen and Frenchmen ; the sym 
 pathy which would fill the American when he knew 
 what Englishmen and Frenchmen had suffered in 
 those years when he lived in security and comfort and 
 coined their misery into profit ; regret and a chivalrous 
 desire to atone by works ; the feeling of hate he would 
 have for Germany when he saw what Germany had 
 done and the anguish she had caused, Mr. Wilson 
 would have been devoid of imagination and his vision 
 blinded had he not known that with the landing of the 
 first American soldier in France the hearts of the 
 American people would be steeled to peace with vic 
 tory, and their resolution would be unshakable to make 
 Germany know the meaning of the victor s terms. 
 
 The Address of January 22 has caused more dis 
 cussion than anything Mr. Wilson has said or done. 
 On its face it is so inconsistent with all that Mr. 
 Wilson said before that day or was to say or do so 
 soon after that day that it is irreconcilable with pre 
 cept or performance. Yet not by a shade does it 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 
 
 vary from the consistent policy Mr. Wilson pursued 
 from the outset, nor does it depart by a hair s breadth 
 from the morality he had so constantly preached and 
 was so anxious to have accepted; he was as logical 
 then as he had been from the first day of the war. 
 
 Mr. Wilson has been accused of inconsistency, of 
 being wool when he ought to be iron ; the policy of 
 opportunism, in short, which was precisely the same 
 accusation brought against Lincoln. In 1862 Lin 
 coln caused a tremendous storm by writing to Horace 
 Greeley : "If I could save the Union without freeing 
 any slave I would do it ; and if I could save it by free 
 ing all the slaves I would do it ; and if I could save it 
 by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also 
 do that." Lincoln s opponents could feel they were 
 in honesty warranted in saying that he was wavering ; 
 that he was willing to free the slaves or compromise 
 with slavery; that he was uncertain when he ought 
 to have been resolute. But in that same letter he 
 also said: "What I do about slavery and the colored 
 race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union ; 
 and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe 
 it would help to save the Union. I shall do less when 
 ever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, 
 and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more 
 will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when 
 shown to be errors, and I shall adopt new views so 
 fast as they shall appear to be true views." 
 
 Mr. Wilson could very well have spoken in the 
 
WILSON* : AX INTHBPRETATION 
 
 of Lincoln ; Eke Lincoln he could have said 
 be would uaujtl dims when shown to IK errors; be 
 vuald ailmiC new HK,u vbui they were shown to be 
 correct views; like Lincoln he could have said he 
 would do less or more JMJUUnfing as he believed it 
 would hurt or help the moral cause so dear and near 
 to IB bent. 
 
 The foundation of Mr. WHsoo s policy is morality. 
 
 ~ - . , . -.- ...,. ... ... _ 
 
 nas oeen TanMi. ucioie, it. nas oeen emptiasixm, 
 
 and it cannot be avuimnbi iad if the man is to be 
 understood, for the policy is the man. His critics call 
 it KjeabsDL. HI> oppffii^yi tj sav it is tnc TinDcac^ 
 tical, dogmatic man forced by accident into a place 
 lor which be is unfitted. One may call it idealism, 
 one nay describe Mr. Wilson as the unpractical maTu 
 bat the fact remains tint his policy from the first 
 day be entered Ike White House has been dictated by 
 morality, ft was morality that governed IDS Iflriiran 
 policy; it was ililj that would not permit him 
 to countenance American fyaninrrff t^%ig their pound 
 of flesh fpiMi China, it was morality that made him 
 ask lor the repeal of the Panama, Canal tofls exemp- 
 
 : -:.- i-.~: ; - -- -.--:. - _ ~. . -:- ..-;. - : _- 
 
 poo him TTl a ^lj and self -restraint and 
 It was sauraitj, again, fiat dictated Ac 
 Address off January 2. 
 
 The war bad gone on lor thirty months. It had 
 
 to drown the world it 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 233 
 
 blood; it had brought nothing, only devastation, 
 destruction, desolation. Germany had not won, but 
 could the Allies win? Mr. Wilson is not a military 
 man, it is one of the elements of his strength that 
 he knows his own limitations and does not pretend to 
 knowledge he does not possess, but taking counsel 
 from the men whose opinion was valuable, it is not 
 surprising that at times he should have believed the 
 Allied task was hopeless. There were men about 
 Mr. Wilson, able men and unprejudiced, who knew 
 the elements and could give them their proper value, 
 who doubted whether Germany could be decisively 
 defeated, who felt sure she could not be starved or 
 broken financially. The war might continue another 
 thirty months, another thirty months of horror and 
 death, to end in a peace by the compromise of ex 
 haustion or a victor s peace that would leave Europe a 
 charnel house and her peoples mad in their despair. 
 
 Was it worth it? Was there not something better 
 worth while? Did it not offer promise of richer 
 reward for the future security and happiness of the 
 world? The old morality like the old diplomacy, 
 wars for greed, to satisfy dynastic ambition, to crush 
 weaker nations; secret treaties, the intrigues of dis 
 honest or ambitious statesmen, the jealousies and 
 rivalries of parties trading on the fear of foreign attack ; 
 these things were to Mr. Wilson abhorrent, immoral, 
 unrighteous. These things a European statesman 
 brought up in the traditions of European statecraft 
 
234 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 would perhaps have said had always been, must 
 always be; they were inevitable. To Mr. Wilson, 
 viewing not only history but life from the detachment 
 of America, his traditions being not the statecraft of 
 Europe but the democracy of America, believing in 
 democracy and the consent of the governed, that these 
 things had been was no reason that they should con 
 tinue; they were not inevitable. In an age priding 
 itself on its morality the relations between nations 
 should be governed by the same code of morality as 
 between individuals. 
 
 We see now why Mr. Wilson addressed the Senate 
 on the twenty-second of January. The rule of law 
 and morality could not be put into operation unless it 
 had the sanction of the United States, more than that, 
 unless the United States was prepared physically to 
 make it operative. It was the bold thing that Mr. 
 Wilson proposed, the idealistic thing, but also the 
 moral thing. He was proposing nothing less than the 
 abandonment by the United States of her traditional 
 policy, that she should emerge from her isolation and 
 become a partner in a European league, not, as he said, 
 to create a new balance of power, for with the balance 
 of power he had no concern, but a community of 
 power; not to help to create new organized rivalries, 
 but an organized common peace. 
 
 The address has further importance because it was 
 Mr. Wilson s last effort to save the world from the 
 terrors that were on it, and because it proves that up to 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 235 
 
 the last moment, up to the time when Germany made 
 war upon the United States, Mr. Wilson was still 
 ardently desirous of peace and trying to find a means 
 of accommodation between Germany and her enemies. 
 It will be of interest to the historian and the future 
 biographer of Mr. Wilson. His fame, it has before 
 been remarked, would be different to what it now is 
 had he died in 1915 or been defeated in 1916; he 
 would occupy a different place in history if the Ad 
 dress to the Senate of January 22, 1917, had been his 
 last official utterance on the war ; for the historian, 
 ignorant of Mr. Wilson s motives, would believe that 
 he was so anxious for peace he was willing to subscribe 
 to a peace that rewarded the oppressor, the violator 
 of treaties and the mocker of law and morality. In 
 his address to the Railroad Business Association, on 
 January 27, 1916, using colloquial speech, Mr. Wilson 
 said, "The minute I stop changing my mind with the 
 change of all the circumstances of the world, I will 
 be a back number." It is Mr. Wilson s strength that 
 he has not been ashamed to change his mind as condi 
 tions made change necessary, and it is because he is 
 able to change with changing circumstance that he has 
 not become a back number but has remained in the 
 front rank of the statesmen of the world, frequently in 
 advance of them and to lead them; to inspire the 
 thought of all nations; not to beckon peoples but 
 boldly to go forward, confident they will follow. On 
 January 22 he was the spokesman of peace, a few 
 
236 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 months later he was to be the spokesman of war, as 
 little desirous of war then as he had always been, but 
 forced by the stimulus of circumstance to be for war 
 as in the past he had labored to mold circumstance 
 to avert war. 
 
 On January 31 Germany announced the long- 
 expected renewal of the submarine war by virtually 
 closing the seas to all neutral vessels. On receipt of 
 what was in effect an ultimatum to the United States 
 Mr. Wilson immediately severed diplomatic relations 
 with Germany. On the third of February he addressed 
 Congress, informing that body of the action he had 
 taken and adding that he did not believe Germany 
 would enforce her threat to sink American ships in 
 the war zone, but if his hope proved unfounded he 
 would ask Congress for the necessary authority to take 
 measures of protection. 
 
 On February 26 Mr. Wilson again addressed Con 
 gress. He asked for authority to declare a state of 
 armed neutrality existing against Germany, to arm 
 merchant ships, and to employ any other instrumen 
 talities or methods necessary to protect American lives 
 and ships ; and the grant of a sufficient credit to pro 
 vide adequate means of protection. "I hope," the 
 President said, "that I need give no further proofs 
 and assurances than I have already given throughout 
 nearly three years of anxious patience that I am the 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 237 
 
 friend of peace and mean to preserve it for America 
 so long as I am able. I am not now proposing or con 
 templating war or any steps that need lead to it. ... 
 I believe that the people will be willing to trust me to 
 act with restraint, with prudence, and the true spirit 
 of amity and good faith that they have themselves 
 displayed throughout these trying months." 
 
 Mr. Wilson said that doubtless under his constitu 
 tional duties and powers he had the authority for 
 which he asked, "but I prefer, in the present cir 
 cumstances, not to act upon general implication. I 
 wish to feel that the authority and the power of the 
 Congress are behind me in whatever it may become 
 necessary for me to do." His purpose was plain. 
 Congress must by positive action show whether it 
 would defend the interests of the United States or 
 shield Germany. 
 
 The term of the Congress would expire by con 
 stitutional limitation on the following fourth of March, 
 so that little time was left for discussion if the authority 
 the President asked for was to be granted by the exist 
 ing Congress. A bill conferring the necessary power 
 was quickly passed by the House by a vote of 403 to 
 14, but in the Senate action was defeated by the 
 opposition of eleven men, who, under the rules of the 
 Senate permitting unlimited debate, were able to 
 prevent a vote being reached before final adjourn 
 ment. Although the protectors of Germany had, 
 for the moment, defeated the President, Mr. Wilson 
 
238 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 had also been given unmistakable proof of the temper 
 of the country as represented by Congress. In the 
 House the majority was overwhelming, in the Senate 
 the majority would have been equally impressive 
 had a vote been taken. Mr. Wilson now had nothing 
 more to fear. The time of doubt and suspense was 
 over. Discussion had ceased. The time for action 
 had come. 
 
 On the fifth of March Mr. Wilson delivered his 
 second inaugural. War was in the thought of every 
 man, it was seen to be inevitable, and Mr. Wilson 
 expressed what every man was thinking. Warning 
 his audience that the United States might be drawn 
 into the war, he said : "We desire neither conquest nor 
 advantage. We wish nothing that can be had only at 
 the cost of another people. We have always professed 
 unselfish purpose and we covet the opportunity to 
 prove that our professions are sincere." He urged 
 unity- "an America united in feeling, in purpose, 
 and in its vision of duty, of opportunity, and of service. 
 . . . United alike in the conception of our duty and 
 in the high resolve to perform it in the face of all men, 
 let us dedicate ourselves to the great task to which 
 we must now set our hand. For myself I beg your 
 tolerance, your countenance, and your united aid." 
 
 Mr. Wilson had issued his proclamation convening 
 Congress in extra session, and on the evening of its 
 first day, on April second, he asked for a declaration 
 of war against Germany, saying : "There is one choice 
 
AMERICA IN THE WAR 239 
 
 we cannot make, we are incapable of making; we 
 will not choose the path of submission and suffer the 
 most sacred rights of our nation and our people to be 
 ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we 
 now array ourselves are no common wrongs : they 
 cut to the very roots of human life." In asking this, 
 however, Mr. Wilson emphasized the necessity of 
 making very clear to all the world the motives and 
 objects of America. They were to vindicate the prin 
 ciples of peace and justice as against selfish and auto 
 cratic power and to set up amongst the really free and 
 self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of 
 purpose and of action as would henceforth insure the 
 observance of those principles. "It is a fearful 
 thing," he said in conclusion, "to lead this great, 
 peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and 
 disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be 
 in the balance. But the right is more precious than 
 peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have 
 always carried nearest our hearts, for democracy, for 
 the right of those who submit to authority to have a 
 voice in their own governments, for the rights and 
 liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of 
 right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring 
 peace and safety to all nations and make the world 
 itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our 
 lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and 
 everything that we have, with the pride of those who 
 know that the day has come when America is privileged 
 
240 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 to spend her blood and her might for the principles that 
 gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she 
 has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other." 
 The last word had been spoken. America was at 
 war. Mr. Wilson had ceased to be the protagonist of 
 peace and had become the War President,, 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE WAR PRESIDENT 
 
 1 
 
 MR. WILSON had not preached in vain. The day 
 of conversion had come. His position before the 
 country was stronger because of the long and patient 
 efforts he had made to save peace. The people who 
 voted for him because he kept the country out of war, 
 who were willing to do anything to avert war, now that 
 Mr. Wilson asked for war could not refuse. The im 
 pulse was too strong. They were convinced that no 
 other course was possible, and it was their duty to be 
 as loyal and zealous in their support of the War 
 President as before they had sustained him endeavor 
 ing to keep peace. 
 
 They had argued about morality, they had scoffed 
 at morality, the war was none of their business, but 
 really it had always been their business and deep in 
 their hearts they felt it, but it was not until Mr. 
 Wilson made plain what their hearts felt that they 
 knew. 
 
 This transformation did not come overnight. The 
 mental attitude of a people is not to be changed 
 
 241 
 
WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 between sundown and daybreak; even cataclysmic 
 causes do not produce such a sudden reversal. For 
 three years the American people had talked peace 
 and been encouraged to believe come what might they 
 must remain at peace ; the seduction of peace was not 
 easily to be resisted. At the beginning they were 
 bewildered, somewhat dazed by what they had done; 
 not quite comprehending all that it meant, the scope 
 of war not apparent; the war was still far away from 
 them and touching neither their lives nor their happi 
 ness. The country was committed to war, but dis 
 cussion had not entirely ceased. The fifty votes 
 cast against the war resolution in the House of Rep 
 resentatives, whose members are supposed to be very 
 close to the people and correctly to interpret their 
 feelings, might be accepted as proof that a strong 
 sentiment existed against war and the unity for which 
 the President had appealed was to be denied him; 
 that the thing most to be feared was to be realized, 
 and he was to lead a divided nation to war. Yet the 
 negative vote in the House was an appearance greater 
 than the reality. It was the last effort of Germany 
 intrenched in America, soon to be driven out and 
 utterly routed. At heart America was sound. No 
 people ever went to war with more unselfish motives 
 or with less to gain ; it was in the spirit of the crusader 
 America went to war : to succor humanity and relieve 
 the oppressed. Even Americans themselves did not 
 at first realize the spirit that moved them, it was a 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 243 
 
 spirit so fine, so wonderful, so far removed from the 
 sordid things of the market place and the practical 
 things of life, it was the spirit of the mystic rather 
 than the materialist, that Americans failed to under 
 stand this new meaning of life. But the meaning was 
 soon to come to them, and with understanding was 
 the resolve to carry the arms of America for the 
 freedom of the world. For this concept of duty, this 
 dedication to service and sacrifice, the moral teachings 
 and preachments of Mr. Wilson, before the war and 
 after America entered the war, were the moving cause. 
 
 He had taught, and was to continue to teach, not 
 alone his own people but the whole world the meaning 
 of democracy. Even to Americans and to the more 
 advanced nations of Europe, England and France 
 especially, democracy was a somewhat intangible 
 thing. To Mr. Wilson it was very real. It was 
 accepted as a matter of course by Americans, who, 
 having known nothing else, politically and socially, 
 took it as much a matter of course as the air they 
 breathed ; it was theirs by right inherent. 
 
 Mr. Wilson gave them a shibboleth, and in giving it 
 to them he gave them something more than a phrase ; 
 and a coiner of a phrase has the ear of the world. He 
 gave them something to cling to. "To make the world 
 safe for democracy" was splendid, but powerless to 
 move mountains unless there was faith. Again it 
 was one of those idealistic conceptions without meaning 
 to the practical, that was scoffed at and made sport 
 
244 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 j| 
 
 of because it was a magnificent generality that led 
 nowhere. While Germany was ravaging Europe and 
 all the world was taught that only force could save 
 civilization, Mr. Wilson would redeem the world with 
 a principle of political philosophy. In a world dis 
 traught by war and fearful of its horrors, Mr. Wilson s 
 remote philosophical detachment was to the average 
 man exasperating; it was a mistaken attempt to sub 
 stitute academic and dispassionate discussion for 
 strength; moreover, it seemed as foolish and con 
 temptible as if a man seeing his neighbor s house on 
 fire were to retire to his study and by the light of the 
 burning building, undisturbed by the cries for help, 
 calmly write a treatise on how to make houses safe 
 from fire. 
 
 Mr. Wilson made democracy have a vital meaning 
 to the peoples of the world. The purpose the civilized 
 nations were striving for, he continually emphasized, 
 was to make the world safe for democracy ; democracy 
 thus ceased to be a theoretic principle, even a polity, 
 and became a principle of life and a moral code. To 
 the far corners of the earth he brought democracy, 
 and he made men question and ask what was this 
 thing big enough and spiritual enough that a nation, 
 unthreatened by invasion and safe from attack, 
 voluntarily should draw the sword to sustain it. 
 Imagination was powerfully seized. Peoples with 
 ideas and thoughts deep rooted in the soil of autocracy 
 and a paternal feudalism, to whom democracy as a 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 245 
 
 philosophy or a polity had no meaning, who were 
 intellectually incapable of grasping the concept of a 
 state of society in which social and political equality 
 existed, to whom democracy was as meaningless as an 
 untranslatable word in a foreign tongue, were, never 
 theless, stirred and moved by the great spiritual force 
 Mr. Wilson unloosed. The America that was had 
 ceased to be, and in her place was a new America; 
 an America that had cast off the old ideas and stood 
 before the world the champion of a new morality, 
 inviting all the world to join with her to secure the 
 morality of the world. 
 
 Mr. Wilson gave to men a new hope and to man 
 kind a fresh impulse. In the twentieth century he 
 made America the same example and inspiration she 
 had been in the eighteenth when men with faith, but 
 still fearful, waited the result of their audacious experi 
 ment. To his countrymen he gave not only a shib 
 boleth but, what was of far greater importance, a cause. 
 They scoffed at first, but mockery gave way to ques 
 tioning, and with questioning came comprehension. 
 To make the world safe for democracy was no longer 
 idealism but an aspiration as sublime as it was prac 
 tical; it would rid the world of the terrors that beset 
 it, and it was to justify the nation in taking up arms. 
 Democracy heard the call and responded, and oppressed 
 peoples everywhere prayed for the success of its 
 arms so that they might be liberated by democracy. 
 
 Often Mr. Wilson has been accused of excessive 
 
246 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 deliberation, but he has repeatedly given proof of the 
 power of immediate decision when action is imperative. 
 Again he was to show his understanding of the Amer 
 ican temperament and to confirm that he possessed 
 his leadership by right of intellect and force of char 
 acter. The question that called for instant decision 
 was whether the armies to be raised by the United 
 States were to be composed of volunteers or conscrip 
 tion was to be enforced. Conscription, compulsory 
 military service, is foreign to American ideas; obli 
 gatory military duty is as obnoxious to the American 
 as to the Englishman, it is an infringement on personal 
 liberty and that freedom of action so dear to democratic 
 peoples whose boast is their right to dispose of them 
 selves as they please. The men who had voted against 
 war, who were serving Germany while sitting in the 
 American Congress, saw in the question a further 
 opportunity to prevent the United States from exert 
 ing its full strength. Volunteers in large numbers 
 could of course be obtained, of that there was no 
 doubt ;, patriotism, the adventurous spirit of youth, 
 detestation of Germany, would send men to the colors ; 
 but the war would be carried on by classes and not by 
 the whole nation, and it was essential that the nation 
 should be enlisted and spiritually mobilized so that 
 the war, a thing then remote, physically three thou 
 sand miles from the hearthstone of America, should be 
 brought home to every fireside, and men and women, 
 rich and poor, learned and unlettered, should touch 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 247 
 
 elbows and in the companionship of their hearts be 
 one. 
 
 In his Address to Congress asking for a declaration 
 of war Mr. Wilson recommended that the men needed 
 for the increase of the armed forces of the United 
 States should be "chosen upon the principle of uni 
 versal liability to service", and as soon as opposition to 
 conscription developed in Congress all his authority 
 was exerted to secure the passage of the necessary 
 legislation. He was staking much upon his judgment. 
 Defeat of the measure would have been notice to 
 Germany that the forces she controlled in America 
 were more powerful than the President, and that 
 America, while dragged into war against its will by 
 the President, at heart was opposed to the war and 
 would be only lukewarm in its prosecution. The men 
 of cool habit, and there are always such in high places 
 in a time of crisis, were fearful that the country would 
 resist the enforced taking of its young men for the 
 army, and they recalled with the joy of disaster that 
 the timid always enjoy, the draft riots of the Civil 
 War. These dire forebodings only fortified the con 
 fidence Mr. Wilson had in the correctness of his judg 
 ment and the necessity and justice of the measure he 
 advocated. Not without opposition Congress sanc 
 tioned conscription, and the country, instead of resist 
 ing it, agreed with the President that it was the only 
 equitable and democratic way to create the armies of 
 democracy. 
 
248 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 2 
 
 The events of the three years when the United 
 States was a neutral have a certain perspective, 
 exasperatingly flat, it is true, to the historical student 
 who longs to know facts which will be the privilege 
 of coming generations, but a perspective with depth 
 and strength compared with the events of the past 
 year, too near, too close at hand, to be judged with 
 veracity. Yet there is background enough to throw 
 into relief Mr. Wilson s work, in part, as the War 
 Executive. He has played a dual role. He has been 
 the American Prime Minister and the Chief of the 
 American War Cabinet, and he has also been the moral 
 leader of the Allied world. 
 
 When America declared war Mr. Wilson resolved 
 on three things as the principles to govern him. His 
 torically America declared war on Germany, actually 
 it was Germany that forced America to go to war ; 
 but now that America was at war Mr. Wilson was 
 determined that all the strength, all the resources, 
 all the power and energy and intelligence that America 
 controlled should be thrown into the conflict to bring 
 about the defeat of Germany. Mr. Wilson had 
 begun as a pacifist, and he had no regrets ; now he was 
 the leader of a peaceful nation driven into war, and to 
 revert to peace war must be made relentlessly, without 
 hesitation or thought of consequences, until the world 
 need no longer fear the menace of German militarism. 
 
 He was determined there should be no civilian inter- 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 249 
 
 ference with the military authority. In every war 
 in which the United States has engaged, from the war 
 of the Revolution to the war with Spain, the sudden 
 increase of the army has compelled the hasty appoint 
 ment of officers, many of whom secured their com 
 missions because of their political influence rather 
 than their military qualifications. The scandal of the 
 "political general" should not be repeated in this 
 war. The nucleus of the military organization would 
 be the regular army, exactly as the cadres of the new 
 regiments would be the veterans of barracks and field. 
 Mr. Wilson did not know whether he had at hand a 
 military genius, whether he had any man sufficiently 
 versed in the tactics of modern warfare and with the 
 requisite ability to take command of an army that 
 must eventually rank with those of Allies and enemies, 
 but he knew that if men trained in the profession of 
 arms, who had given their lives to the study of their 
 profession, who were not without actual experience of 
 war, limited although it had been, were not fit to com 
 mand, it was not likely he would discover a hidden 
 genius among politicians or men with political influence. 
 He must work with the material he had, perhaps at 
 first to find it unsatisfactory, perhaps to be compelled 
 to change and again to change, as other nations had ; 
 but to maintain the morale of the army and sustain 
 the confidence of the country the men selected would 
 be given their opportunity and not be hampered or 
 embarrassed by political control. 
 
250 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Mr. Wilson steadfastly adhered to this policy. More 
 than once he was offered the temptation to gain the 
 fleeting approval of his critics and opponents by the 
 appointment of popular "heroes" who understood the 
 publicity agent s art of appealing to the public by a 
 sensational trick. This was especially so in the early 
 months of the war, when the people were told much 
 of what was being done and going to be done, but of 
 actual accomplishment they could see little ; and the 
 irresponsible individual who had an impossible scheme 
 was sure to secure his audience, impatient because 
 Germany was not yet suing for peace. No encourage 
 ment was given by Mr. Wilson to individuals seeking 
 only their own advancement or to grandiose plans that 
 concealed personal ambition. The Conscription Law 
 had been passed, but that did not prevent ardent 
 patriots temporarily retired from politics from offer 
 ing to supplement the lagging efforts of the Govern 
 ment. Mr. Wilson was content to proceed in an 
 orderly, systematic way, relying on men and methods 
 whose efficiency was established rather than to trust 
 to untried experiments or untested men. The success 
 of the American army in France, the ability with which 
 it has been transported, fed and supplied, the courage 
 and discipline of its men and the skill of its commanders, 
 which have earned for officers and men the high 
 commendation and admiration of their British and 
 French brothers in arms, would seem amply to vindi 
 cate Mr. Wilson s policy. 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 251 
 
 Mr. Wilson was equally determined that there 
 should be no scandal, dishonesty or graft in connection 
 with the war if high purpose, a proper system and wise 
 precautions could foil the thief and the profiteer. In 
 every war in which America has engaged, from the war 
 of the Revolution to the war with Spain, the scandal 
 of the dishonest and corrupt contractor and the in 
 competence of quartermasters and commissaries has 
 been the shame of America. So far as the public has 
 knowledge this war has been singularly free from 
 maladministration and malversation. Mistakes have 
 doubtless been made, it would be surprising if 
 they had not been, money has been spent foolishly, 
 unfit men have been appointed, especially in the first 
 days when things had to be done without proper 
 organization and time was more important than any 
 thing else; but taking the large view, the way in 
 which the machinery of a standing army of a few 
 thousand men was expanded to meet the needs of 
 armies of millions is a tribute to the American genius 
 for organization and the wisdom of the directing head. 
 
 3 
 
 In a time of peace the American political system is 
 less responsive to popular will and less democratic 
 than the British or the French; for the President 
 may forfeit the confidence of the country thirty days 
 after he assumes office and, unless he has been guilty of 
 an illegal act, he can count with certainty on enjoying 
 
WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 the remaining three years and eleven months of his 
 term; but a British Prime Minister or a French 
 Premier who no longer has the confidence of the coun 
 try knows that long before thirty days have passed he 
 will be out of office. In a time of war this fixed tenure 
 of the President has its advantages. Prime Ministers 
 and Premiers must respect their parliamentary 
 majorities and beware of their minorities ; they must 
 win victories in the field and fight electoral battles at 
 home; they may defeat the enemy and yet have to 
 compromise with their political opponents. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was secure. Congress might withhold 
 its support, but it could not curtail his power or reduce 
 his authority; his Cabinet was of his own making 
 and could be reformed only with his consent. Eng 
 land and France had seen changes of government to 
 secure the proper adjustment between a government 
 created for peace and a government charged with 
 war, Cabinets had been split and broken and re 
 organized, and the process had brought strange politi 
 cal bedfellows. America was responsive to the re 
 action of England and France. If coalition govern 
 ments were necessary in those countries to win the 
 war, was it not equally obvious that the President 
 must now disregard the narrowness of party and call 
 into council his erstwhile opponents ? As is so often 
 the case self-interest was wrapped up in the napkin 
 of virtue. The Republicans, and who shall blame 
 them ? wanted a share of the credit in winning the 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 253 
 
 war, they wanted to share with the Democrats the 
 honor and glory of executive responsibility; they 
 wanted, looking to the future when politics would no 
 longer be extinguished but would again flame, to be 
 able to ask from the country that recognition to which 
 they would be entitled for having brought victory to 
 American arms. The only way they could secure what 
 they coveted was by inducing Mr. Wilson to reform 
 his Cabinet and give them certain portfolios. 
 
 Mr. Wilson would not consent, nor is it surprising. 
 We have seen what his theory of government is, he 
 has himself told us that he does not believe in divided 
 responsibility, he has criticized government by Con 
 gressional Committee, and he has given it as his firm 
 conviction that in the same person there must reside 
 the power to plan as well as the power to execute. If 
 these were his beliefs in time of peace, when a division 
 of authority might do harm but could not cause irrep 
 arable injury, it was certain that his conviction would 
 be strengthened tenfold in time of war when divided 
 councils or delay in the execution of the plan would 
 be fatal. More than ever was it necessary that the 
 President should be the Prime Minister, that he should 
 originate policy and be able to carry it out. It was a 
 policy to antagonize his opponents, to subject him to 
 the criticism of overweening vanity and an over 
 powering belief in his superior wisdom, but with a 
 strength of purpose that was irresistible, with an in 
 flexible will that was stubbornness in its unyielding 
 
254 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 resistance to attack, argument or the promptings of 
 expediency Mr. Wilson remained obdurate. 
 
 He had perfect trust in the loyalty and devotion 
 of his Cabinet, he did not wish to risk the danger 
 that might conceivably result from taking into his 
 Cabinet men not of his own selection but who were 
 forced upon him by his opponents, even if temporarily 
 they had ceased to be political foes. Circumstances 
 compelled Lincoln to do that, and we know what he 
 suffered. "Did Stan ton tell you I was a damned fool ? 
 Then I expect I must be one, for he is almost always 
 right and generally says what he means," said Lin 
 coln of his Secretary of War in that careless manner 
 that was so often to confuse his contemporaries. But 
 we have Lincoln the master of his Cabinet, as he 
 always was when mastery was required, reading to 
 them this memorandum on the fourteenth of July, 
 1864: 
 
 "I must myself be the judge how long to retain in 
 and when to remove any of you from his position. It 
 would greatly pain me to discover any of you endeavor 
 ing to procure another s removal, or in any way to 
 prejudice him before the public. Such endeavor would 
 be a wrong to me, and, much worse, a wrong to the 
 country. My wish is that on this subject no remark 
 be made nor question asked by any of you, here or 
 elsewhere, now or hereafter." 
 
 There is nothing in Mr. Wilson s career, there is 
 nothing in what he has said or done, that will make us 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 255 
 
 believe he held the same view of himself that Lord 
 Chatham did: "I am sure that I can save this coun 
 try, and that nobody else can"; there is perhaps in 
 him the same self-confidence that was abundantly 
 justified which made the younger Pitt Prime Minister 
 of England at twenty-four : "I place much dependence 
 on my new colleagues; I place still more dependence 
 upon myself." 
 
 From the inception of his Administration Mr. 
 Wilson had given the members of his Cabinet a free 
 rein in the management of the affairs of their depart 
 ments. Policy was his, to be retained in his own 
 hands ; administration was theirs ; and perhaps no 
 President had less interfered with his subordinates, 
 or hampered them by the appointment of their sub 
 ordinates, than he. He held his Secretaries responsible 
 for the work intrusted to them ; they must select the 
 tools for the work to be done, and he would not ask 
 them to work with unsuitable tools. His tempera 
 ment made him dislike office brokerage; the time of 
 the President was too valuable to be given to passing 
 upon the claims of men to petty office when there were 
 larger and more important things to tax his attention. 
 It was a policy not to endear him to Senators and 
 Congressmen having constituents to placate or to 
 reward, or to the party workers who felt their im 
 portance required that they should be afforded an 
 
256 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 opportunity to present their special claims to the 
 President in person rather than to submit them to a 
 member of the Cabinet; but it was the policy of a 
 man big enough to deal only with big things and to be 
 indifferent to the inconsequential. 
 
 With the outbreak of war Mr. Wilson saw the 
 necessity even more rigidly to leave the Cabinet free 
 and unhampered to carry out the policy which he 
 broadly mapped out, and this, of course, applied 
 especially to the two fighting branches, the War and 
 Navy Departments. Mr. Wilson affected no knowl 
 edge of military affairs and made no pretense to 
 being a master of strategy. He had none of that 
 childish vanity attributed by a contemporary French 
 man to Thiers. Speaking once of a man raised to a 
 high function, Thiers said: "He is no more suited 
 for that office than I am to be a druggist; and yet," 
 he added, catching himself up, "I do know chemistry." 
 Whatever knowledge Mr. Wilson had of chemistry 
 he would not feel himself qualified to compound pre 
 scriptions ; he might have turned over the leaves of a 
 work on tactics, but he was too humble and too con 
 scious of his own limitations to flatter himself that 
 having looked on the cover of a book he knew its 
 contents better than the author. 
 
 Lincoln was well-nigh pestered to death by the crowds 
 of applicants who thronged the offices and corridors 
 of the White House, who interrupted him in his 
 work and intercepted him in his walks to prefer their 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 257 
 
 requests; which Lincoln, always patient, always 
 holding his sympathies unchecked, disposed of seriously 
 or humorously as the case might be ; as he did when 
 he wrote to Stan ton : "I personally wish Jacob Freese, 
 of New Jersey, to be appointed colonel for a colored 
 regiment, and this regardless of whether he can tell 
 the exact shade of Julius Caesar s hair." Lincoln, 
 too, largely was his own Chief of the Staff, trying to 
 spur on the lagging McClellan and cautioning Burn- 
 side not to break himself on Lee s stone wall, until 
 he found Grant and Sherman and had confidence in 
 them. And Lincoln, in his desire to do no man 
 injustice, so scrupulous that he leaned backward, 
 would not remove an incompetent general who was a 
 Democrat, and more than once appointed men to high 
 command to satisfy a political demand. 
 
 The White House has been a place of quiet thought. 
 It has been a place of consultation, but not a market 
 place for political hucksters. No Governors of States 
 have come post-haste to Washington to urge the 
 appointment of this man to command a brigade be 
 cause of his services in the last election, or the obvious 
 wisdom of giving that man a division because of the 
 strength he could furnish the party in the next cam 
 paign. The politician has rarely seen the President; 
 if his business was legitimate he took it to the War 
 Department, the Navy Department, the Treasury, 
 wherever it belonged. Men seeking commissions, 
 not as generals but in the lower ranks, earnest and 
 
258 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 patriotic men, willing to serve without recompense 
 and to make their sacrifice, have been given their 
 opportunity without having to bring political indorse 
 ment, for the system works without favoritism and 
 the door has been thrown open wide. 
 
 Mr. Wilson has not dictated the operations of the 
 field, he has left that to the men whose business it is ; 
 but when questions of policy, as distinguished from 
 technical detail, were to be decided he has acted ; 
 and on one occasion at least he disregarded his pro 
 fessional advisers, who while not stoutly opposed were, 
 for military reasons, reluctant to sanction the pro 
 posal. 
 
 In the early summer of 1918 the American army 
 then in France was not ready to take the field as a 
 separate organization, although many of its units had 
 been sufficiently trained to make them a powerful 
 fighting force. The British and French armies were 
 hard pressed, Germany apparently had launched the 
 drive that was to carry her to Paris, the Channel ports 
 and victory. The British and French Governments 
 asked that the American troops be brigaded with 
 their own to reinforce their depleted ranks. The War 
 Department, working on a matured and compre 
 hensive program, was indisposed to accede to this 
 request, believing that the American army fighting 
 as an army under its own Commander-in-Chief and 
 its divisional and corps commanders would, for psy 
 chological no less than military reasons, be more 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 259 
 
 formidable and render greater service to the Allied 
 cause if held intact instead of being split up, even if 
 the assistance which the British and French so urgently 
 needed were delayed. 
 
 It was a question, it will be seen, that while in 
 essence military was nevertheless one of judgment, 
 vision and knowledge of American temperament. It 
 was doubtless true that Americans would feel greater 
 pride in being led by their own commanders and 
 fighting as an independent army and retaining their 
 own national identity than they would as auxiliaries 
 merely to foreign armies; every military man knows 
 that a composite force is rarely as effective as an army 
 of a single nationality ; in the case of American troops 
 brigaded with the French there was the further draw 
 back of language and methods. These were con 
 siderations properly to have weight with the General 
 Staff, who dare not make a mistake at the beginning, 
 and a mistake then would have been a blow to American 
 morale that might have been irreparable. Mr. Wilson 
 weighed these considerations with his customary cau 
 tion and concluded that whatever might be gained by 
 delay would be lost if delay enabled the Germans to 
 go forward in their drive; conceding that a certain 
 risk had to be taken, it was a risk justified by the cir 
 cumstances ; it was not one of those gambles which even 
 success would not condone, but a legitimate risk of war. 
 
 A still greater test of statesmanship and the large 
 vision, and there is no real statesmanship without 
 
260 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 
 
 vision, was the decision regarding the sending of 
 Allied troops to Siberia to support the Czecho-Slovaks. 
 Mr. Wilson was not required to decide a purely Amer 
 ican question, but he was sitting in an international 
 council whose members were not entirely agreed as 
 to their course of action, and again he held the casting 
 vote. It is for the historian of the future to write 
 this chapter ; all that can be said now is that Mr. Wilson 
 was confronted with a situation of extreme complex 
 ity which required the most delicate management to 
 avoid friction and arousing enmity and do harm to the 
 common cause. He was required to compose and 
 reconcile, to use persuasion and to remain firm; to 
 seek advice and to reject it ; to display tact and modera 
 tion. Mr. Wilson was again subjected to criticism, 
 the delay in reaching a decision was not understood; 
 once more he was accused of hesitating, of weighing 
 too narrowly where a man of boldness and a steady 
 mind would have been oppressed with no doubts; 
 but history, calmly reviewing all the facts, will say 
 his policy was correct. 
 
 Mr. Wilson saw the necessity of unified military 
 command, which had been discussed by the Allied 
 Governments but never progressed beyond the realm 
 of discussion. Here again it was not so much a 
 military question as one of sound judgment, and the 
 position of the United States enabled it to cast the 
 deciding vote. Had Mr. Wilson taken the narrow 
 view, had he felt it humiliation to place an American 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 261 
 
 Commander-in-Chief under the orders of a foreign 
 Generalissimo, had he wanted to magnify the impor 
 tance of the United States, he would have offered 
 cooperation but rejected subordination; and one 
 trembles to think what would have happened had 
 Foch not been given supreme command. 
 
 Mr. Wilson had brought the American people to 
 sanction war because he had made the war to them a 
 moral cause. "It is as startling as it is touching," 
 he said in one of his earlier speeches, "to see how 
 whenever you touch a principle you touch the hearts 
 of the people of the United States. They listen to 
 your debates of policy, they determine which party 
 they prefer in power, they choose and prefer as ordinary 
 men; but their real affection, their real force, their 
 real irresistible momentum, is for the ideas which men 
 embody." But although the country was at war Mr. 
 Wilson s work was not completed. He had been the 
 evangelist, he still must remain the exhorter and the 
 preacher; suffering and sacrifice and sorrow were to 
 be endured, and the people must be heartened by the 
 knowledge that they were fighting not for themselves, 
 but for the morality of the world ; when their spirit 
 flagged they would be sustained and made strong again 
 by the thought that theirs was no selfish purpose but 
 they were giving themselves freely and with royal 
 splendor to serve humanity. 
 
262 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 But it was not only the morality of to-day that made 
 its appeal to Mr. Wilson, which he was able to make 
 his own people share, but the morality of the long 
 future ; and morality such as never before had entered 
 into political calculations. The war in which the 
 United States greatly against her will was forced to 
 take part was to be the means, he hoped, to league 
 peoples in friendship, to bring nations to deal more 
 altruistically with one another, to unite men in a 
 spiritual brotherhood, to reconcile the jealousies and 
 soften the rivalries that kept the world excited and 
 ever fearing war ; but above all, to establish covenants 
 of justice that should be faithfully kept, and with 
 liberality. Had the United States not entered the 
 war it is highly probable, it is almost a certainty, 
 that when the treaty of peace came to be written that 
 combination of stupidity, selfishness and immorality 
 known as European diplomacy would again come into 
 its own and crown sacrifice and reward heroism with 
 the mockery of a peace bought by trickery and bargain. 
 It was the thing that Mr. Wilson declared should not 
 be, that could not be, because the war had become a 
 war of ideals and there could be no surrender of ideals. 
 
 Addressing Congress on February 11, 1918, the 
 President said: "The method the German Chan 
 cellor proposes is the method of the Congress of Vienna. 
 We cannot and will not return to that. What is at 
 stake now is the peace of the world. What we are 
 striving for is a new international order based upon the 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 263 
 
 broad and universal principles of right and justice, - 
 no mere peace of shreds and patches. Is it possible 
 that Count von Hertling does not see that, does not 
 grasp it, is in fact living in his thoughts in a world 
 dead and gone?" Mr. Wilson was living in a new 
 world ; in a world of a new spirit. 
 
 The speeches and state papers of Mr. Wilson since 
 the American declaration of war form a remarkable 
 series which have affected America no less than the 
 rest of the world ; they have influenced Allied Govern 
 ments and peoples in the same way that they have the 
 American people; because of their force, lucidity, 
 high purpose and exposition of the aims of the Allies, 
 which are the aims of an enlightened civilization, so 
 cogently expressed, with such depth of feeling and 
 sincerity, Mr. Wilson has become the spokesman of 
 the nations at war with Germany. 
 
 On April 15, 1917, the President appealed to the 
 nation to put its whole strength into the war, "the 
 grim and terrible war for democracy and human 
 rights." At the dedication of the Red Cross building 
 in Washington, on May 12, he said: "The heart of 
 the country is in this war because it could not have gone 
 into it if it had not first believed that here was an 
 opportunity to express the character of the United 
 States. We have gone in with no special grievance 
 of our own, because we have always said that we were 
 the friends and servants of mankind. We look for no 
 profit. We look for no advantage. We will accept 
 
264 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 no advantage out of this war. We go because we 
 believe that the very principles upon which the Ameri 
 can Republic was founded are now at stake and must 
 be vindicated." In proclaiming the Draft Act, May 
 18, the President said: "The day here named is the 
 time upon which all shall present themselves for 
 assignment to their tasks. It is for that reason des 
 tined to be remembered as one of the most conspicuous 
 moments in our history. It is nothing less than the day 
 upon which the manhood of the country shall step for 
 ward in one solid rank in defense of the ideals to which 
 this nation is consecrated. It is important to those 
 ideals no less than to the pride of this generation in mani 
 festing its devotion to them, that there be no gaps in 
 the ranks. . . . The stern sacrifice that is before 
 us urges that it be carried in all our hearts as a great 
 day of patriotic devotion and obligation, when the 
 duty shall lie upon every man, whether he is himself 
 to be registered or not, to see to it that the name of 
 every male person of the designated ages is written on 
 these lists of honor." 
 
 Mr. Roosevelt had been anxious to raise a volunteer 
 division and be commissioned its commander. He had 
 offered his services to the War Department, which 
 had not been able to accept them. The Conscription 
 Law gave the President permissive authority to raise 
 volunteer regiments, outside the draft age limits, the 
 purpose of Congress being to provide a command 
 for Mr. Roosevelt. At the time of signing the bill 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 265 
 
 Mr. Wilson issued a statement in which he declared 
 he would not raise volunteer regiments, that the 
 responsibility for the successful conduct of the war 
 rested upon him, and he would not allow himself to 
 be governed by political considerations. He said : "It 
 would be very agreeable to me to pay Mr. Roosevelt 
 this compliment and the Allies the compliment of 
 sending to their aid one of our most distinguished 
 public men, an ex-President, who has rendered many 
 conspicuous public services and proved his gallantry 
 in many striking ways. Politically, too, it would, no 
 doubt, have a very fine effect and make a profound 
 impression. 
 
 "But this is not the time or the occasion for com 
 pliment or for any action not calculated to contribute 
 to the immediate success of the war. The business 
 now in hand is undramatic, practical and of scientific 
 definiteness and precision. I shall act with regard to 
 it at every step and in every particular under expert 
 and professional advice from both sides of the 
 water. . . . 
 
 "The responsibility for the successful conduct of 
 our own part in this great war rests upon me. I could 
 not escape it if I would. I am too much interested in 
 the cause we are fighting for to be interested in any 
 thing else but success. The issues involved are too 
 immense for me to take into consideration anything 
 whatever except the best, most effective, most imme 
 diate means of military action. ... I should be deeply 
 
266 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 to blame should I do otherwise, whatever the argument 
 of policy, for a personal gratification or advantage." 
 
 At Arlington Cemetery, on Memorial Day, May 30, 
 Mr. Wilson said the opportunity had come for America 
 to show the principles which she professed and by 
 pouring out her blood and treasure to vindicate those 
 principles. " There are times when words seem empty 
 and only action seems great. Such a time has come, 
 and in the providence of God America will once more 
 have an opportunity to show to the world that she was 
 born to serve mankind." 
 
 Addressing the grizzled veterans of the Confederacy 
 at their reunion in Washington on June 5, Mr. Wilson 
 dwelt upon the mystery of God s purpose. "Many 
 men, I know, particularly of your own generation, 
 have wondered at some of the dealings of Providence, 
 but the wise heart never questions the dealings of 
 Providence, because the great -long plan as it unfolds 
 has a majesty about it and a definiteness of purpose, 
 an elevation of ideal, which we were incapable of con 
 ceiving as we tried to work things out with our own 
 short sight and weak strength. And now that we see 
 ourselves a nation united, powerful, great in spirit 
 and in purpose, we know the great ends which God 
 in his mysterious Providence wrought through our 
 instrumentality, because at the heart of the men of 
 the North and of the South there was the same love 
 of self-government and of liberty, and now we are to 
 be an instrument in the hands of God to see that 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 267 
 
 liberty is made secure for mankind. At the day of 
 our greatest division there was one common passion 
 among us, and that was the passion for human free 
 dom. We did not know that God was working out in 
 his own way the method by which we should best 
 serve human freedom. . . . 
 
 "We have prospered with a sort of heedless and 
 irresponsible prosperity. Now we are going to lay 
 all our wealth, if necessary, and spend all our blood, 
 if need be, to show that we were not accumulating 
 that wealth selfishly, but were accumulating it for 
 the service of mankind." 
 
 At a Flag Day celebration in the shadow of the 
 Washington Monument, on June 14, the President 
 departed from his usual custom of speaking in general 
 ities and specifically indicted Germany. The United 
 States, Mr. Wilson said, had been forced into war 
 because the extraordinary insults and aggressions of 
 Germany left no self-respecting choice but to take up 
 arms in defense of the rights of a free people and of 
 its honor as a sovereign government. Germany had 
 sought to corrupt the American people, to spread sedi 
 tion among them, to incite Mexico to take up arms 
 against America and to draw Japan into a hostile 
 alliance. Telling how Germany had plotted and in 
 trigued to carry out her ambition of Mittel Europa, how 
 in every country the forces of German corruption were 
 at work, Mr. Wilson continued : 
 
 "The great fact that stands out above all the rest is 
 
268 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 that this is a People s War, a war for freedom and jus 
 tice and self-government amongst all the nations of the 
 world, a war to make the world safe for the peoples who 
 live upon it and have made it their own, the German 
 peoples themselves included; and that with us rests 
 the choice to break through all these hypocrisies and 
 patent cheats and masks of brute force and help set 
 the world free. . . . 
 
 "For us there is but one choice. We have made it. 
 Woe be to the man or group of men that seeks to stand 
 in our way in this day of high resolution when every 
 principle we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made 
 secure for the salvation of the nations. We are 
 ready to plead at the bar of history, and our flag shall 
 wear a new luster. Once more we shall make good 
 with our lives and fortunes the great faith to which 
 we were born, and a new glory shall shine in the face 
 of our people." 
 
 In August the Pope addressed an appeal to the 
 belligerents making certain suggestions as the basis 
 for a just and durable peace. The President s reply, 
 under date of August 27, and bearing the signature of 
 Secretary Lansing, declared the Pope s proposals to 
 be unacceptable because of the impossibility of rely 
 ing on the word of the German Government. The 
 United States had suffered intolerable wrongs, yet it 
 sought no material advantage of any kind; it sought 
 a peace based upon justice and fairness and the common 
 rights of mankind, Mr. Wilson asserted. 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 269 
 
 In declining an invitation to address the American 
 Alliance for Labor and Democracy at Minneapolis, 
 the President, on September 2, wrote to Mr. Samuel 
 Gompers, the President of the American Federation 
 of Labor and the Chairman of the Alliance : "No one 
 who is not blind can fail to see that the battle line of 
 democracy for America stretches to-day from the 
 fields of Flanders to every house and workshop where 
 toiling, upward-striving men and women are counting 
 the treasures of right and justice and liberty which are 
 being threatened by our present enemies." 
 
 Let us turn for a moment from these weighty matters 
 to a letter couched in lighter vein. The President is 
 an ardent lover of the theater ; it is his only form of 
 relaxation, and from the beginning of his Adminis 
 tration Washington has seen him at the theater two 
 and three times a week. He greatly liked a play, and 
 he wrote to the star, Miss Carlisle perhaps he has 
 written other similar letters but this is the only one 
 that has been given publicity: "I am going to take 
 the liberty of telling you how much pleasure you and 
 your associates gave Mrs. Wilson and me the other 
 evening in the admirable presentation of The Country 
 Cousin. We particularly admired the simplicity, 
 sincerity and dignity with which you played your own 
 very interesting part. May I not congratulate you 
 on doing admirably well a thing that was thoroughly 
 worth doing? The play is delightful, and you played 
 the chief part in making it so." 
 
270 WOODROW WILSON : AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Space will permit only limited reference to other 
 important state papers. In his Thanksgiving proc 
 lamation of November the President said: "We have 
 been given the opportunity to serve mankind as we 
 once served ourselves in the great day of our Declara 
 tion of Independence, by taking up arms against a 
 tyranny that threatened to master and debase men 
 everywhere and joining with other free peoples in 
 demanding for all the nations of the world what we 
 then demanded and obtained for ourselves." Address 
 ing the American Federation of Labor at Buffalo, on 
 November 12, Mr. Wilson explained Germany s dream 
 of Mittel Europa, declared "we must stand together 
 night and day until this job is finished," and showed 
 his scorn of the pacifists by saying: "What I am 
 opposed to is not the feeling of the pacifists, but their 
 stupidity. My heart is with them, but my mind has a 
 contempt for them. I want peace, but I know how to 
 get it, and they do not." 
 
 In asking Congress on December 4 to declare war 
 against Austria the President said: "Our present 
 and immediate task is to win the war, and nothing 
 shall turn us aside from it until it is accomplished. 
 Every power and resource we possess, whether of men, 
 or money or of materials, is being devoted and will 
 continue to be devoted to that purpose until it is 
 achieved"; but he reiterated what he had so often 
 said before, that America was asking nothing for 
 herself, attempting no injustice, crying for no venge- 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 271 
 
 ance. "Justice and equality of rights can be had only 
 at a great price. We are seeking permanent, not 
 temporary, foundations for the peace of the world and 
 must seek them candidly and fearlessly. As always, 
 the right will prove to be the expedient." 
 
 On January 8, 1918, in an Address before the two 
 Houses of Congress, Mr. Wilson laid down the four 
 teen fundamental propositions on which peace should 
 be concluded. "An evident principle," he asserted, 
 "runs through the whole program I have outlined. 
 It is the principle of justice to all peoples and nationali 
 ties, and their right to live on equal terms of liberty 
 and safety with one another, whether they be strong 
 or weak. 
 
 "Unless this principle be made its foundation no 
 part of the structure of international justice can stand. 
 The people of the United States could act upon no 
 other principle ; and to the vindication of this principle 
 they are ready to devote their lives, their honor and 
 everything that they possess. The moral climax of 
 this, the culminating and final war for human liberty, 
 has come, and they are ready to put their own strength, 
 their own highest purpose, their own integrity and 
 devotion to the test." 
 
 The German Chancellor and the Austrian Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs having traversed Mr. Wilson s 
 program for securing an enduring and just peace, 
 Mr. Wilson on February 11 again addressed Congress, 
 and after analyzing the rejoinders and stating anew 
 
272 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 the principles which in the future must govern inter 
 national relations, concluded: "I have spoken thus 
 only that the whole world may know the true spirit of 
 America that men everywhere may know that our 
 passion for justice and self-government is no mere 
 passion of words, but a passion which once set in 
 action must be satisfied. The power of the United 
 States is a menace to no nation or people. It will 
 never be used in aggression or for the aggrandizement 
 of any selfish interest of our own. It springs out of 
 freedom and is for the service of freedom." 
 
 Other notable Addresses of the year were delivered 
 at Baltimore on April 6, in New York on May 18, at 
 Mount Vernon on July 4 and again in New York on 
 September 27. On every occasion Mr. Wilson affirmed 
 the implacable purpose of the United States to use 
 "force, force to the utmost, force without stint or 
 limit" so as "to make the world safe for democracy." 
 
 6 
 
 What was the effect of Mr. Wilson s continual and 
 continued iteration of the unselfishness of the United 
 States and its use of force only to "make Right the 
 law of the world and cast every selfish dominion down 
 in the dust"? 
 
 It had this effect : It made the war a Holy War. 
 Mr. Wilson had called it a People s War, which it was ; 
 but it was more than that. It was a war in which 
 a nation had dedicated itself to righteousness. It 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 273 
 
 offered everything and asked for nothing. The his 
 tory of the world offers no parallel. At the beginning 
 it was frequently asked: "Why are we fighting?" 
 "What are we fighting for?" The answer for states 
 men would have been: "You are fighting to defend 
 yourselves against Germany ; German victory means 
 that your turn will come next, and then it will be too 
 late, because then you will be powerless " ; which 
 would have been the stimulus of fear; or statesmen 
 might have said : "You are fighting because Germany 
 has committed insults and outrages, which you must 
 submit to because you are weak or resent because you 
 are strong and proud," which would have stimulated 
 courage and implanted a desire for revenge ; and either 
 would have been sufficient to arouse patriotism and to 
 inflame the latent primitive passion of a virile race to 
 fight when in danger or in vindication of insult. 
 
 Mr. Wilson made a richer appeal. To fight in 
 defense of his own country is duty, to fight for a 
 principle is altruism ; and altruism, if it be in the heart 
 of a man, is a more sustaining thing than the cold 
 response to the obligation of duty, fine as is duty well 
 done. To send an army of millions three thousand 
 miles across the seas for no gain, for no recompense 
 in territory or indemnity, not even to cancel a debt 
 of friendship long overdue, but to defend an abstract 
 cause, was as Quixotic an adventure as the world had 
 known ; so visionary that a practical people might well 
 ask more substantial reward for their sacrifice. 
 
274 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Yet this is what Mr. Wilson did. Again and again 
 he said to his people that they were to cross the seas 
 in their strength not as the avenger but as the pro 
 tector, not to profit but to spend, not to compete but 
 to serve, not to conquer but to restore. Time after 
 time he told them they should hope for nothing except 
 sacrifice, they could expect nothing except suffering, 
 their only consolation must be the approval of their 
 own consciences; that alone must be their guerdon. 
 They were to lay down their lives for countries of 
 which they had never heard, for nations for whom they 
 never cared, for peoples who meant little to them, 
 fighting about matters that touched them not at all; 
 and this they were to do so that peoples whose keepers 
 they were not might enjoy the liberty that was theirs. 
 They were to do battle under the banner of renuncia 
 tion, their oriflamme was to be the crusader s cross of 
 humility and generosity. It was the maddest thing 
 ever proposed by a serious statesman, a thing so mad 
 that men believed the President in his visionary idealism 
 was cooling enthusiasm and stifling a glorious fervor 
 that needed only encouragement to glow like molten 
 metal in the furnace of patriotism. 
 
 Yet Mr. Wilson persisted. He preached his theme 
 with variations, but it was always the same theme; 
 always the leitmotif was disinterestedness, fealty to the 
 right, the duty of America free to bring freedom to the 
 oppressed and the enslaved. If it was idealism Mr. 
 Wilson lifted men to his own exaltation. If at first he 
 
THE WAR PRESIDENT 275 
 
 spoke over the heads of the multitude they grew in spir 
 itual stature and reached his own level, on their faces a 
 new light shining. He quickened the spirit, he made 
 men ask what was this morality of which he continually 
 spoke ; he made men search their hearts and ask them 
 selves how true it was that America by her birthright of 
 freedom held freedom in trust for the oppressed and 
 was now under solemn pledge to redeem her trust. 
 To the war-weary peoples of the Allied countries his 
 words were an elixir. It brought to them not only 
 new life but a new hope. They could not falter now, 
 for the most powerful of all nations was marching her 
 legions that mankind might be saved, willing to die that 
 justice might live. 
 
 These speeches of Mr. Wilson were attuned to a 
 world-wide audience ; wherever there were men, there 
 was his audience. He was never didactic, seldom 
 argumentative; he was homiletical, hortative, the 
 preacher taking as his text the simple virtues, morality, 
 justice, right; assuming as of course his congregation 
 believed in their canons and needed only to have 
 them expounded for their faith to remain unshaken. 
 He never ceased to appeal, and yet to his audience he 
 seemed less to appeal than to point the way which men 
 for their own salvation must travel. 
 
 On the body of a young American soldier dead on 
 the battlefield of France, a correspondent reports, 
 was found a card with these words : "America stands 
 for freedom and justice and is always ready to give the 
 
276 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 lives of her citizens that all the world may be freed from 
 tyranny and live in peace and happiness." 
 
 The words were printed by hand. They were un 
 dated and unsigned. Who wrote them no one will 
 know. There on the battlefield of France they were 
 the echo of the President s words. They were the 
 effect of the President s preaching. They had made 
 one man know his soul. They answered the question : 
 "Why is America fighting?" 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 
 1 
 
 IN the foregoing pages an attempt has been made 
 to interpret Mr. Wilson as he has revealed himself 
 through those things by which it is possible for the 
 world to assess the character and motives of their 
 governors his speeches, writings and actions, which 
 are the elements forming his policy ; and by his policy^ 
 alone can a statesman be judged. Yet there are cer 
 tain aspects of his character which a man does not 
 always reveal in what he says or writes; sometimes 
 he consciously tries to conceal them, sometimes he is 
 not conscious of them, and this lacuna can be bridged 
 by the observations of men who have been given the 
 opportunity to form a correct judgment. Briefly, in 
 conclusion, these sidelights will supplement the inter 
 pretation. 
 
 In the gossip of Washington, and gossip is not 
 to be sneered at when it is taken for what it is worth ; 
 not the veracities of history, but the lightly formed 
 impressions of the events of the day, more than 
 once it has been said with fervor the country was 
 indeed fortunate that Mr. Wilson was not "temper- 
 
 277 
 
278 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 amenta!"; that in a time of crisis there sat in the 
 White House a quiet, retiring, almost emotionless 
 man, too impassive to be in danger of doing a hasty 
 or ill-considered action. 
 
 " Temper amental" is a vague and inexact term, but 
 taking it at its current meaning, it perhaps better fits 
 Mr. Wilson than any other word, which shows how 
 , popular opinion is formed and how easily it can be 
 mistaken. He is a man of extreme temperament, but 
 he has trained himself to self-control. He is naturally 
 a reticent man, and reticence is a habit that grows. 
 He is the antithesis of what is popularly known as a 
 "good mixer." Some men there are with the good 
 fortune to be at home in any company, who fit in 
 easily in any circle. Mr. Wilson cannot, and never 
 could. It is not only that he is shy, as has before 
 been mentioned, which is a barrier to good fellow 
 ship, but he is naturally a serious man, although 
 he does not take himself too seriously, which has 
 made him somewhat impatient of the trivial ; but he 
 knows how to relax and to balance the serious things 
 of life with the light. He can laugh at a limerick and 
 enjoy a vaudeville performance at the right time; 
 and with him there is a time for all things. He is a 
 meditative man. Habits once formed are not easily 
 broken. He early formed the habit of thinking and 
 studentship, and when he came to the White House he 
 did not change. He might, had he cared for it, done 
 as other Presidents, made the White House the social 
 
HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 279 
 
 center, brought men and women about his table, found 
 relaxation in their companionship and as host, or a 
 much sought after guest, taken all that life in that 
 respect could give him. But Mr. Wilson, for the 
 reasons already given, takes no enjoyment in what is 
 conventionally known as "society." Not forming 
 friendships readily, those chance acquaintanceships 
 which some men so delight in do not appeal to him. 
 The idle chatter of idle women, and of men, too, does 
 not interest him. He is no recluse, but he finds no 
 pleasure in eating many dishes at a crowded table, 
 whether in his own home or that of another. To him 
 it seems artificial, foolish, a waste of valuable time. 
 His contentment is in the family circle. 
 
 Mr. Wilson has not changed. The Princeton under 
 graduate was the President that was to be, but he has 
 broadened, grown, developed with his years. He has 
 grown fast in the last five years. Intellectually his 
 stature is greater than when he entered the White 
 House. He came to the White House with a certain 
 provincialism, a certain narrowness of view that was 
 the price he paid for the life he led. There is nothing 
 more dwarfing than community life, whether it be the 
 community of the cloister, the college, or the barracks. 
 Men become too self-centered, too immersed in their 
 own specialty ; their eyes do not rise above their books 
 or their breviaries ; in the seclusion of their detached 
 calm they lose a certain contact with the world; and 
 men must be of the world, even if they cease to be 
 
280 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 worldly. There is always an irrepressible conflict 
 between the business man and the academician; the 
 business man has a contempt for the professional 
 mind because it is as unpractical as that of a child; 
 the professor scorns the highly developed practicality 
 of the man of affairs. Mr. Wilson came to the White 
 House with the prejudice of his class. 
 
 All life is either growth or stagnation and decay. 
 Some men reach their growth, whatever it may be, 
 and stop, and the world is full of men who give prom 
 ise in their young manhood and never arrive; other 
 men never stop growing so long as life lasts. Mr. 
 Wilson has not changed, because men do not change 
 after they reach a certain age, especially when they are 
 cast in a rigid mold and are of strong fiber, but his 
 mental horizon has widened, his outlook on life is 
 larger, his perception of things and men, of the mo 
 tives that animate men, of the things that are the con 
 flicting forces in life, is keener and yet softened ; more 
 just, one would say, and also more generous. The 
 responsibilities of his high office have not aged him or 
 magnified in his own eyes his own importance ; but his 
 sense of humor and his humility would save him 
 from that. 
 
 A man who has known him for twenty years, and 
 there are few men who can claim a friendship of twenty 
 years standing with Mr. Wilson, says he finds him 
 younger, more witty, more alert, but also more cer 
 tain of himself, with a greater grasp of affairs; his 
 
HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 281 
 
 mind, always quick, is now even quicker than in the 
 past. And this man adds, curiously enough, that 
 although he has known the President for twenty 
 years he does not feel that he knows him. He baf 
 fles men. Yet another man, who has not known the 
 President for twenty years but has been brought in 
 very close contact with him during the last few years, 
 declares that of all men Mr. Wilson is the least subtle. 
 There is nothing subtle about him, but he is a straight 
 thinker ; and straight thinking is so rare, this author 
 ity says, it mystifies. Most men, he adds, do not 
 think; the few who think have muddy thoughts. 
 Mr. Wilson thinks straight and his thoughts are clear. 
 He is not a superman, my authority goes on. En 
 dowed with a naturally good brain, he has developed 
 it by reading and study and observation. His strength^ 
 is his character. He has convictions A There are 
 things about him one might wish could be changed; 
 that would be different if he were the superman instead 
 of being what he is, the clay of common humanity. 
 One might wish that he was not always quite so cer 
 tain of himself, that at times he would have doubts > 
 and fears; that he might temper certitude with in 
 decision. One might wish that he was more accessible, 
 that he would consult more freely, that he would lis 
 ten to suggestion, even if he rejected it. And one * 
 especially wishes that he were a better judge of char 
 acter and had that instinct, rare, but possessed by 
 some men and a gift priceless to those in authority, 
 
282 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 to judge men. The President is not a good judge of 
 men. There are about him men who have done him 
 great harm, but there is a certain stubbornness and 
 defiance of opposition in the President s character 
 that makes him stick to men and blinds him to their 
 faults, even though he knows they serve him badly 
 and he must be the victim of their incompetence. 
 
 Mr. Wilson has described himself as having a "one- 
 track mind", but it might be more appropriately said 
 that he has a "compartment mind." He has the 
 faculty of concentration, of complete absorption in 
 the thing in hand to the exclusion of all else. His 
 mind works in compartments. Figuratively he reaches 
 out and opens a compartment in his brain as a system 
 atic man opens a drawer to get a paper, who has his 
 papers so precisely arranged that he gets it without 
 any lost motion, and then closes the drawer, indifferent 
 to the rest of its contents, even forgetting them until 
 the time again comes for their use. 
 
 It is in the same way that Mr. Wilson s brain func 
 tions. He does one thing at a time, and until that 
 thing is finished he is oblivious to the hundred other 
 things each in their proper compartment and to be 
 reached in their regular order. He does not scatter 
 in his work, his thinking or his writing. He is sys 
 tematic, painstaking, exact. It is this faculty of 
 concentration that enables him to work intensively 
 
HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 283 
 
 and then to relax. When the compartments are 
 closed the labor of the day is over. 
 
 Mr. Wilson s aloofness and isolation has been the 
 topic of Washington discussion from almost the first 
 day he entered the White House. Washington does x 
 not take kindly to a hermit President. The White 
 House is the Mecca of the socially ambitious and the 
 politically aspiring, and it was not in accord with 
 tradition for its doors to be barred. The contrast 
 was all the greater because of Mr. Wilson s imme 
 diate predecessors. Mr. Roosevelt had a naive curi 
 osity that could only be satisfied by coming in con 
 tact with the men he admired or who interested him ; 
 there was seldom a meal at which he did not have a 
 guest, rarely a day in which he did not receive some 
 man distinguished or celebrated, American or foreign, 
 not merely in his official capacity as the President 
 and to utter a few formal words of perfunctory welcome, 
 but to talk as man to man and to discuss the par 
 ticular subject, poetry or pugilism, as the case might 
 be, that made his visitor s fame. Mr. Taft was hos 
 pitality itself. He enjoyed having his friends about 
 him ; he liked to forget the cares of office in the com 
 panionship of his intimates, to listen to them and to 
 add his own comment or criticism. 
 
 The closed gates of the White House are symbolic. 
 To Washington they symbolize the President. The 
 White House seems a place of inscrutable mystery, a 
 mystery as great as the President himself. What 
 
284 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 goes on behind its jealously guarded portals no one 
 knows. Seldom does the President ask any one to 
 break bread with him. The temple of Janus has been 
 opened, but the White House has been more than 
 ever impenetrably sealed. Foreign Missions have 
 come to Washington and their members have been 
 entertained at the White House; less the President 
 could not do; but to no one else, outside of a very 
 small circle, do the doors swing open. Even with the 
 members of the Cabinet there is almost no social inter 
 course. They transact their business with him, they 
 see him as necessity or occasion demands, but inti 
 macy does not exist. Mr. Wilson, after five years in the 
 searchlight of a hundred million curious and inquisi 
 tive people, remains as remote, as unknown, as elu 
 sive a personality as if he belonged to another sphere. 
 His few, his very few, intimates may know him, but 
 his own people and the world at large do not. 
 
 A certain analogy between the late Lord Salisbury 
 and President Wilson in their common addiction to 
 "blazing indiscretion" has already been noted; that 
 analogy may be pursued a little further. Lord Salis 
 bury likewise courted privacy. When he was at the 
 Foreign Office it was a grievance that no one was able 
 to see him ; Ministers came from the four quarters of 
 the earth expecting to talk to him at length, only to 
 be told that they could put what they cared to say in 
 writing. Most men place more importance on the 
 spoken word than on the written. Most men prefer 
 
HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 285 
 
 to deal with their associates face to face, and to regard 
 a few minutes conversation as more satisfactory than 
 letters running to pages. Lord Salisbury did not. Mr. 
 Wilson does not. Officials have come to Washington 
 anticipating the things they would tell the President, 
 the questions he would naturally ask, the interest he 
 would show. They have either not "seen him at all or 
 been dismissed briefly. They have departed wondering. 
 In his noteworthy biography of Lincoln, Lord 
 Charnwood has said that the members of Lincoln s 
 Cabinet thought of the Administration as his Ad 
 ministration, and that one member told his friends 
 that there was but one vote in the Cabinet, the Presi 
 dent s; yet, Charnwood explains, Lincoln deferred 
 to his Cabinet, recognizing when he wanted advice 
 and when he did not, sometimes yielding to them, 
 but taking grave steps without advice from them or 
 any one else. What the members of Mr. Wilson s 
 Cabinet think of him we shall know when their diaries 
 and letters are published, or rather our children 
 will know, but what little we know to-day leads us 
 to believe that Mr. Wilson has profoundly impressed 
 his Cabinet. It is proper, of course, that the members 
 of a Cabinet should believe in their Chief (which all 
 of Lincoln s Cabinet did not at all times, it may be 
 added), but between the necessities of official loyalty \ 
 and personal attachment is a wide gulf; and it is all 
 the more remarkable this strong admiration should >f 
 exist in view of the coldly official relations between 
 
286 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 the President and his advisers. But his strength, his 
 purpose and his sincerity have made their mark on 
 them, and, nearer to him than the public, they see in 
 Mr. Wilson qualities of which the public is unaware. 
 
 It is unlikely that the future biographer will be 
 able to say, as the biographer of Lincoln has, that 
 Mr. Wilson deferred to his Cabinet or yielded to it. 
 He has sometimes taken advice, but infrequently ; it 
 is doubtful if he ever permitted his own judgment or 
 his own conclusions to be swayed by the remonstrances 
 or arguments of his Cabinet. The position of the 
 American Cabinet is unlike that of the Cabinets of 
 England or France, whose members, while subject to 
 the control of the Prime Minister, and who in the end 
 must either sustain his policy or surrender their port 
 folios, still feel they have the right to discuss and 
 argue with him, to point out to him the weakness or 
 the impolicy of his proposed course of action. Mem 
 bers of the American Cabinet do not argue with the 
 President, although they may argue among them 
 selves. The President sits as a moderator, to hear 
 the evidence presented, to compose the divergent 
 views of its members, but not to have his own decision 
 submitted to their judgment. The classic story of 
 Grant and his Cabinet more than one President has 
 told ; and doubtless more than one President has 
 remembered it even if he did not tell it. 
 
 On one occasion, according to the tradition, Grant 
 found himself solidly opposed by his Cabinet. Cab- 
 
HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 287 
 
 inet questions are of course never voted on, but on 
 this occasion Grant polled the members. They all 
 answered in the negative. " There are seven votes in 
 the negative," Grant calmly announced, "and one, the 
 President, in the affirmative. The affirmative has it." 
 
 Yet Mr. Wilson, according to credible authority, 
 will listen and be influenced when he is convinced that 
 facts are submitted of which he was ignorant. It is 
 well that the distinction should be clearly understood 
 between policy and administration. Policy is convic- 
 tion, the setting in motion of forces with the hope 
 that certain consequences will ensue, although often 
 in their dsedalian progress the results may be different 
 from the hope anticipated. Administration is the 
 execution of the policy, the shaping of the forces lib 
 erated by policy so as to make them effective. Re 
 solved on a certain line of policy, convinced that a 
 certain thing must be done, as the individual must 
 determine for himself his own conduct and abide the 
 consequences, Mr. Wilson, solely responsible for pol 
 icy, could not share his responsibility with the mem 
 bers of his Cabinet or with anyone. A weak man, a 
 man uncertain of himself, knowing he mistrusted 
 himself, would look for support, would cling with des 
 peration to the fictitious strength given him by a 
 dominating or persuasive member of his Cabinet, would 
 yield and become stubborn, finally to act not as he 
 purposed but as he had been swayed by the last or 
 most ingenious appeal. 
 
288 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 Whatever other charge may be brought against 
 Mr. Wilson, it cannot be truthfully charged that he 
 has shirked his responsibility or tried to share it. 
 He has never sought to shield himself behind his Cab 
 inet or the leaders of his party. *He has demanded 
 responsibility and accepted it. He has fought stub 
 bornly against having it diminished. Like the aero 
 plane and the submarine, the War Cabinet is a cre 
 ation of modern war. Lincoln did not have a War 
 Cabinet any more than Pitt did; but Lincoln had his 
 War Committee of the Congress as Pitt had his Par 
 liament. In the early days of the war an attempt was 
 made to saddle the President with a War Committee 
 of Congress which should have power to supervise 
 the conduct and expenditures of the war. Mr. Wilson 
 at once made it known that if the pending bill reached 
 him he would immediately veto it. Such a Com 
 mittee, he wrote to a member of his party in the 
 House, would "render my task of conducting the 
 war practically impossible." The constant super 
 vision of executive action "would amount to nothing 
 less than assumption on the part of the legislative 
 body of the executive work of the Administration." 
 Recalling the War Committee of Lincoln s day, which 
 "was the cause of constant and distressing harass 
 ment and rendered Mr. Lincoln s task all but impos 
 sible", the President pointedly observed, "The re 
 sponsibility rests upon the Administration." 
 
 Here, once more, Mr. Wilson has stated with the 
 
HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 289 
 
 utmost candor his view of the function of the pres 
 idential office. The task of conducting the war is 
 his. It is not the task of the Cabinet, not even that 
 of the Congress. The responsibility rests upon the Ad 
 ministration, and the Administration is the President.* 
 The power of the President cannot be abridged any x 
 more than his duty can be divided. The result is 
 that to-day Mr. Wilson s power is greater than that 
 of any other man. He is his own Prime Minister. 
 He is his own War Cabinet. He is by the terms of 
 the Constitution Commander-in- Chief of the Army 
 and the Navy. And perhaps it would not be false to 
 say that Mr. Wilson knows his power. ^ 
 
 Despite this great power centered in his hands there 
 is abundant testimony that Mr. Wilson has not abused 
 it and that he has not considered it beneath his dig 
 nity to seek advice on subjects outside of his own 
 knowledge and to defer to the superior knowledge of 
 men speaking with authority. Mr. Wilson makes no 
 claim to being a master of finance, but without being 
 either a theoretical or practical financier he could see 
 the necessity of reforming the antiquated banking and 
 currency system, and he drove Congress forward to 
 the work. The broad plan was policy, the details 
 were administration; and Mr. Wilson had no false 
 modesty in seeking expert advice and being guided 
 by the men in whose integrity and knowledge he re 
 posed confidence. 
 
290 WOODROW WILSON: AN INTERPRETATION 
 
 3 
 
 Mr. Wilson, it was said in a previous chapter, once 
 remarked to a friend, "I always try to keep my vision 
 ahead of the facts," and the man to whom he said it 
 offers this comment and explanation: "By a process 
 cf elimination Mr. Wilson sees the bearing certain 
 facts will have on a given situation and the effect they 
 will produce, and when the facts have produced their 
 results he is prepared to meet them. That is ascrib 
 ing to him genius, at least an encompassing vision. It 
 explains his aversion to seeing people and conferring 
 with them, which has been accepted as an indication 
 of both strength and weakness in a complex character 
 - strength because of his self-reliance, weakness be 
 cause he is intolerant of opposition and wants every 
 one to agree with him and does not like to be con 
 vinced that he is wrong ; but the truth is he does not 
 want to have his vision clouded or his confidence 
 in his own conclusions shaken. He knows that most 
 men reach their conclusions on superficial judgment 
 and without giving due weight to the facts ; he knows, 
 moreover, that men are unconsciously influenced by 
 what we call public opinion, and public opinion is 
 usually valueless when exact knowledge is required ; 
 and facts it too frequently scorns. Mr. Wilson keeps 
 himself cloistered pondering the facts. There is some 
 thing almost uncanny in the man, in his seclusion, 
 his ear deliberately closed to suggestion, sifting and 
 sorting his facts, working on them as a mathematician 
 
HISTORY AND THE VERDICT 
 
 would the factors of an equation ; balancing, rejecting, 
 eliminating; building up combinations and destroying 
 them; until at last the answer works out, he proves 
 it by his own applied rule, and is certain it is correct. 
 It is one of the mysteries of the man, and I frankly 
 confess that to me the man is a mystery." 
 
 Does Mr. Wilson ever give a thought to these specu 
 lations of his fellow men? One is inclined to think 
 not, and his concern, if he have any, is that of Cicero s 
 to Atticus : "What would history be saying of me 
 600 years hence? And that is a thing I fear much 
 more than the petty gossip of those who are alive to 
 day." It is because he is willing to play for the ver 
 dict of history that Mr. Wilson thinks, in the words 
 of one of his speeches, "It is service that dignifies, and 
 service only"; that the kings of mankind are those 
 who have won their own elevation to the throne "by 
 thinking for their fellow men in terms of humanity 
 and of unselfishness." 
 
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