YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Gift of the Publishers THE PEACE-PRESIDENT THE PEACE-PRESIDENT A BRIEF APPRECIATION BY WILLIAM ARCHER \ NEW YORK HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 1919 Copyright, 1919, BT HENEY HOLT AND COMPANT THE QUINN i BODEN CO. PRE8I RAHWAY, N. J. NOTE For the early career of President Wilson, the chief authority is Mr. William B. Hale's " Woodrow Wilson: The Story of His Life" (1912). Ewcellent studies of his work as an educator and a statesman will be found in Mr. Henry J. Ford's " Woodrow Wilson: The Man and His Work " (1916), and (from the British point of view) in Mr. H. Wilson Harris's " President Wilson: His Problems and Policy " (1917). To all three books I am greatly indebted. W.A. INTRODUCTORY The United States of America have passed through two great crises of history — the crisis which gave them birth as an independent nation, and the crisis which decided that they were to remain for ever one and indivisible, and that negro slavery was no longer to be tolerated within their bounds. Each of these crises brought to the front a man, not only of lofty spiritual stature, but of the purest order of greatness. George Washington was not, per haps, what is accounted a man of genius. His powers were solid rather than dazzling. A splenetic Scotch sophist could, without manifest absurdity, sneer at him as merely " a good land- surveyor." But he had what the crisis de manded more than brilliancy of genius: he had greatness of character. Never was polity more fortunate than the United States in its founder and patron saint. Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, was a man of genius if ever there was one; yet what endears his name to his viii INTRODUCTORY countrymen, and to all lovers of freedom throughout the world, is not his genius but his sheer goodness. The rugged frontiersman, the Illinois country lawyer, was a nobleman in the highest sense of the word. The people of America were much wiser than they realized when they sent that long, lean, ungainly Westerner to the White House. Yet we cannot but believe that some sort of happy instinct guided the democracy in making so brilliant a selection. In August, 1914, a third great crisis found, as some of us believe, a third great man in the presidential chair of the United States. The issue in this crisis was an entirely new one; not whether the nation should be independent, not whether it should be indivisible, but whether it should attempt to hold aloof from the shaping of the world's future, in fancied inviolability, or should accept the share in that momentous task imposed on it at once by its strength and by its ideals. There was much that was specious, and much that carried the weight of high authority, to be said in favor of the former alternative. The question simply was whether America should realize that the world of to-day was an INTRODUCTORY ix entirely different world from that in which the tradition of aloofness was established, and that her national ideals of peace and democracy were as formidably menaced by events in Europe as though the Atlantic Ocean had been no broader than the Straits of Dover. The President in office when that crisis burst upon the world had been elected on wholly dif ferent issues. But once more fortune had marvelously favored the United States. He proved to be a man in whom the wii^om of patience was no less conspicuous than the wis dom of courage. So long as it seemed that American ideals might be safeguarded, and the future of the world secured, without the active participation of his country in the vast calamity of war, he held his hand, he disregarded the clamor of impatient spirits on either side of the ocean, and he awaited the time when either the skies should clear, or they should so darken that not even the most ostrich-like optimism could imagine the United States unthreatened by the tornado. Meanwhile the American people had, in a hotly-contested election, reaffirmed its belief that the man they had chosen in calmer times, and in view of simpler problems, was the strong X INTRODUCTORY man whose hand was required on the helm of the ship of state. The skies, as we know, did not clear — they grew ever more lowering — and as soon as the moment came when the interests of the nation and of the world manifestly demanded that counsels of patience should give place to coun sels of resolution, Woodrow Wilson spoke un hesitatingly the decisive word, and found a united people behind him. Is it premature to recognize in his whole course of action an ex ample of lofty and intrepid statesmanship, justly comparable with anything recorded of his two great predecessors? May not one even go further, and say that never did crisis in history find, or produce, a man more splendidly ade quate to the task imposed upon him? For the past two years, no living man has held a more conspicuous or a more responsible position than Mr. Wilson. All the world has hung upon his utterances; and to all lovers of freedom and justice — ^to all whose one consola tion in calamity has been the hope that the world would profit by the awful lesson — ^his utterances have been a constant source of in spiration and of confidence. His idealism, on INTRODUCTORY xi the one hand, has never faltered, while on the other hand his sane sense of the practical needs of the situation has never failed. To millions of people in allied, in neutral, and even in enemy countries, the knowledge that this strong, just man had his hand on the levers of state craft has given inexpressible reassurance. Since the great turn of fortune in July, 1918 — since the Landslide of Autocracy set in — Mr. Wilson's position has been unique and unpar- elleled. In virtue of the mandate of a great people: in virtue, too, of his own character and faculty: he has at more than one juncture been in very truth the arbiter of the destinies of the world. In the name of democracy, he has spoken the doom of empires. To this man of plain Scotch-Irish parentage, this son of an obscure Presbyterian minister, Hapsburgs and HohenzoUerns have come truckling for mercy, only to be told, calmly and sternly, that man kind has no longer any use for them. The wonderful, the incredible drama is a theme for an vEschylus or a Shakespeare. We, its living spectators, can find no adequate words for the emotion it excites in us. But the career and character of its protago- xii INTRODUCTORY nist we can and must study. Difficult though it be to see a contemporary in just perspective, this is a case in which the attempt must be made. The purpose of the following pages is to give, in the briefest compass, a sketch of the career and character of the man to whom we owe the inspiring spectacle of a great nation accepting, from motives of pure world-patriotism, the gravest responsibility which a people can take upon itself, and throwing its weight, at the decisive instant, into the most momentous war of the modern world. The earlier and less widely-known stages of the President's career have been more fully treated than the later, which are matters of recent history. Wherever it has seemed possi ble, Mr. Wilson has been left to tell his own story, through extracts from his writings and speeches. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAQE I. Youth and Early Manhood ... 1 II. The Man of Letters .... 9 III. Princeton 28 IV. New Jersey 39 V. The White House 49 VI. Mexico 73 VII. Into the War 82 VIIL Peace and the League of Nations . 109 Appendix 115 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD Thomas Woodrow Wilson — the " Thomas " seems soon to have been dropped by general con sent — was born at Staunton, Virginia, on De cember 28, 1856. His paternal grandfather, James Wilson, emigrated from Ulster in 1807, and married, in Philadelphia, Anne Adams, an Ulster girl who had been among his fellow- passengers. He went westward, about 1812, to Steubenville, Ohio, and there a son, Joseph Ruggles— the youngest of seven — was born to him in 1822. All the seven sons learned their father's trade, and became printers; but the transition from printing to journalism was easy, and James Wilson founded two papers, the Western Herald in Steubenville, and the Penn- 2 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT sylvania Advocate in Pittsburg, both of which remained in his possession till his death in 1857. His youngest son soon dropped the family trade in order to enter the Presbyterian ministry. Though licensed as a preacher, he at first de voted himself mainly to teaching, and in 1846 obtained a post in the Male Academy at his birthplace, Steubenville. There he met Miss Janet Woodrow, daughter of the Rev. Dr. Thomas Woodrow, a Scotch Presbyterian min ister, who had crossed the Border to Carlisle, where his family of eight were all born. From Cumberland they removed to Canada, and thence to Ohio. His daughter Janet was a pupil at the Steubenville Academy for Girls when she made the acquaintance of Joseph Wilson. They were married on June 7, 1849. The future President was their third child, but eldest son. Another son was born ten years later. Joseph Wilson seems to have been a man of varied attainments, for we find him acting at one time as " professor extraordinary " of rhetoric at one Southern college; shortly after wards as professor of chemistry and natural science at another; and later as professor of YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD 3 pastoral and evangelistic theology at a third. He also took pastoral charge of various churches. From 1858 to 1870 he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Augusta, Georgia; and it was in this town of some 15,000 people that the young Woodrow spent his child hood and early boyhood. The great Civil War never came very near to the quiet household. It no doubt caused both perturbations and privations, but does not seem to have left any deep impression on the boy's mind. His ear liest memory, however, is of " two men meeting in the street outside his father's house, and one of them declaring ' Lincoln is elected, and there'll be war.' " The chief effect of the war upon Woodrow's personal fortunes was to retard the beginning of his education. It is scarcely credible that, in a literate household, a highly intelligent boy passed the age of nine before he was even able to read; but it is certain that until he was four teen the only school he attended was one opened in Augusta by one J. T. Derry, a Confederate veteran whose qualifications do not seem to have been of the highest. Meanwhile his taste for literature was fostered by the domestic habit 4 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT of reading aloud, which introduced him to the works of Scott and Dickens, among other authors. In 1870 the family removed to Columbia, South Carolina, where Woodrow went to the local academy. Three years later he entered Davidson College, North Carolina, but after a year's attendance his health temporarily broke down. His family had now removed to Wil mington, North Carolina, and there he spent a year of comparative rest, at the same time pre paring himself for entrance to Princeton Uni versity, where he matriculated in September, 1875. Up to this point, that is to say, until his nineteenth year, his whole life had been spent in the Southern States. His academic record at Princeton was credita ble but not brilliant. We are told that " his general average for the four years was 90.3," which may strike the uninitiated as rather good; but it is added that " he stood thirty -eighth in a graduating class of 106." His literary ability, , however, did not fail to make its mark, and he was for a year sole editor of the college maga zine, the Princetonian. He was reckoned among the best speakers in the Whig Hall de- YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD 5 bating club. On one occasion he was chosen to represent Whig Hall in a debate with an other society, on a subject to be picked at random from among a number thrown into a hat. The subject drawn was " Tariffs," and it should have been Wilson's part to plead the cause of Protection against Free Trade. But he would not, even as an academic exercise, i argue against his convictions. He retired from the debate, and the champion chosen in his place was defeated. This incident shows a remarkable earnestness in so young a man. Paradox — a deliberately insincere display of in tellectual adroitness — ^has usually irresistible at tractions for the clever undergraduate. Before he left coUege, Wilson contributed to the International Review a remarkable article on " Cabinet Government in the United States," which " contains in embryo much of his subse quent thinking and writing upon Government." Already he is concerned about the lack of an efficient connecting-link, in the American con stitution, between the legislative and the execu-i tive, and urges that such a link would be sup-" plied by a responsible Cabinet. The following passage was repeated almost word for word in 6 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT many of his campaign speeches during the Presidential Election of 1912 : Congress is a deliberative body in which there is little real deliberation; a legislature which legislates with no real discussion of its business. Our Govemment is practically carried on by irresponsible committees. Too few Americans take the trouble to inform them selves as to the methods of Congressional management; and as a consequence, not many have perceived that almost absolute power has fallen into the hands of men whose irresponsibility prevents the regulation of their conduct by the people from whom they derive their authority. Already the future President was deeply in terested in English political thought. He had read Chatham, Burke, Brougham, Macaulay and especially Bagehot, for whom his admira tion was unbounded. Moreover, through the running commentary in the Gentleman's Maga zine, he had familiarized himself with the par liamentary history of the sixties and seventies, when Gladstone and Disraeli were at the height of their fame. Already the bent of his mind was consciously and definitely political. The vital things of literature interested him pro foundly, but for antiquarianism he had neither YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD 7 taste nor time. He refused to compete for a prize of $125 which it was thought he might easily have won, because he found that it would i have involved a close study of the works of Ben ' Jonson. After taking his degree of A.B. in 1879, Wilson studied law for a year at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Here we find him delivering an oration on John Bright, and con tributing to the college magazine an article on Gladstone. His health again becoming unsatis factory, he spent a year at home, before entering upon the profession he had chosen, and estab lishing himself as a lawyer at Atlanta, Georgia. Fortunately, as we are now apt to think, he waited for clients in vain; and in 1883 he left Atlanta to enter upon a post-graduate course at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Here he obtained a fellowship in history, and, by means of a thesis on " Congressional Govern ment," the degree of Ph.D. In 1885 he joined the teaching staff of Bryn Mawr, a famous college for women, then newly established in the outskirts of Philadelphia, where he lectured on history and political economy. From 1888 to 1890 he held the Professorship of History in the 8 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut. In 1890 he returned to Princeton as Professor of Jurisprudence and Politics, and at Princeton he remained for twenty years. He had married in 1885 Miss Ellen Louise Axon, of Savannah, Georgia. This lady — whom he had thanked in more than one dedication for " gentle benefits which can neither be measured nor repaid " — died in August, 1914, just as the storm of war burst upon the world. In December, 1915, Mr. Wilson married Mrs. Norman Gait, formerly Miss Edith Boiling, of Wythesville, Virginia. II THE MAN OF LETTERS The years of his professorship at Princeton — before he entered upon the organizing and ad ministrative duties of a University President — were the chief years of Woodrow Wilson's literary activity. How significant, and how full of promise, that activity was, we have scarcely realized on this side of the Atlantic. His authorship falls into three branches: he is a writer upon political science, he is an his torian, and he is an essayist. In all three branches his work is full of character and vital ity. He brings to it a vigorous and compre hensive mind, fine literary culture, high ideals, and a broad, sympathetic humanity. He shows himself from the first an accomplished writer, trained in the only good school — that is to say, a loving study of the best models in the lan guage. Those of us who made our first ac- 9 10 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT quaintance with his style in reading diplomatic " notes " presumed to proceed from his pen, may have thought it somewhat cumbrous and conventional. No epithets could be less applica ble to his unofiicial and unfettered literary work. The inference is either that, in his diplomatic documents, some other hand actually held the pen, or that he was trammeled by the sense that in such communications anything hke indi viduality or lightness of touch would be out of place. His first book was the Johns Hopkins Uni versity thesis, " Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics," * published when he was twenty-eight. Seldom has so unromantic a theme inspired so readable a book. One learns from it not only the forms of the machinery which has grown up for expressing in practice the theories of the American Constitution, but also, by way of contrast, a good deal about the workings of the British parliamentary system. For Mr. Wilson is above everything a student of comparative politics, and never loses sight of the intimate relationship between American and * Called in the English edition (Constable, 1914), "A Study of the American Constitution." THE MAN OF LETTERS 11 British institutions. Of the actual style of the book, a few brief specimens must suffice: Hamilton and Jefferson did not draw apart because the one had been an ardent and the other only a luke warm friend of the Constitution, so much as because they were so different in natural bent and temper that they would have been like to disagree and come to drawn points wherever or however brought into contact. The one had inherited warm blood and a bold sagacity, while in the other a negative philosophy ran suitably through cool veins. They had not been meant for yoke fellows. How excellent an expression is that which I have italicized! There is a touch of Stevenson about it. The House sits, not for a serious discussion, but to sanction the conclusions of its Committees as rapidly as possible. It legislates in its committee-rooms ; not by the determinations of majorities, but by the resolu tions of especially-commissioned minorities; so that it is not far from the truth to say that Congress in session is Congress on public exhibition, whUe Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work. I know not how better to describe our form of govemment in a single phrase than by calling it a govemment by chairmen of the Standing Committees of Congress. This disintegrate ministry, as it figures 12 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT on the floor of the House of Representatives, has many peculiarities. One must take this passage in its full context in order quite to appreciate the admirable felicity of " disintegrate ministry." Some of the Committees are made up of strong men, the majority of them of weak men; and the weak are as influential as the strong. The country can get the counsel and guidance of its ablest representatives only upon one or two subjects; upon the rest it must be content with the impotent service of the feeble. Only a very small part of its important business can be done well ; the system provides for having the rest of it done miserably, and the whole of it taken together done at haphazard. Indirect taxes offend scarcely anybody. . . . They are very sly, and have at command a thousand successful disguises. . . . Very few of us taste the tariff in our sugar; and I suppose that even very thoughtful topers do not perceive the license-tax in their whisky. There is little wonder that financiers have always been nervous in dealing with direct but confident and free of hand in the laying of indirect taxes. Executive and legislature are separated by a hard and fast line, which sets them apart in what was meant to be independence, but has come to amount to isolation. THE MAN OF LETTERS 13 It is natural that orators should be the leaders of a self-governing people. Men may be clever and engaging speakers . . . without being equipped even tolerably for any of the high duties of the statesman; but men can scarcely be orators without that force of character, that readiness of resource, that clearness of vision, that grasp of inteUect, 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. Our English cousins have worked out for themselves a wonderfully perfect scheme of government by prac tically making their monarchy unmonarchical. They have made of it a republic steadied by a reverenced aristocracy, and pivoted upon a stable throne. . . . I think that a philosophical analysis of any successful and beneficent system of self-government will disclose the fact that its only effectual checks consist in a mix ture of elements, in a combination of seemingly contra dictory political principles; that the British govern ment is perfect in proportion as it is unmonarchical, and ours safe in proportion as it is undemocratic. " Congressional Government " was an essay in criticism rather than a work of systematic exposi tion, Mr. Wilson followed it up four years later (1889) with a much solider, though scarcely more valuable, contribution to political science. 14 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT This was entitled "The State : Elements of His torical and Practical Politics," and was, in fact, a text-book which had grown up out of the material collected for his Princeton lectures. It was a pioneer work, so far, at any rate, as the English language is concerned. " In preparing it," said Mr. Wilson in his preface, " I labored under the disadvantage of having no model. So far as I was able to ascertain, no text-book of like scope and purpose had hitherto been at tempted." Its all-embracing " scope " may be gathered from its table of contents: I. The Earliest Forms of Government. II. The Governments of Greece. III. The Government of Rome. IV. Roman Dominion and Roman Law. V. Teutonic Polity and Government during the Middle Ages. VI. The Government of France. VII. The Governments of Germany. VIII. The Governments of Switzerland, IX, The Dual Monarchies: Austria-Hungary; Sweden, Norway. X. The Government of Great Britain. XI. The Govemment of the United States. XIL Summary: Constitutional and Administrative Developments, THE MAN OF LETTERS 15 XIIL The Nature and Forms of Govemment. XIV. Law: its Nature and Development. XV. The Functions of Government. XVI, The Objects of Govemment. In view of this multiphcity of topics, it is scarcely surprising to find that the book runs to 1,536 paragraphs, and (in the English Edition) to 639 pages. In introducing the Enghsh edition of 1899, Mr. Oscar Browning wrote: Scholars well qualified to judge are of opinion that in coming years the interest now taken in Economics will be shared with Political Science. Whenever that Science is regarded not only as indispensable to an his torian, but as the very backbone to Historical Study, Mr. Wilson will be considered as the foremost, if not the first, of those who rendered possible an intelligent study of a department of Sociology, upon which the happiness and good government of the human race essentially depend. How little did Mr. Browning think, as he wrote these words, that the man whose theoretical work he thus appreciated, would be the executive leader of his hundred-million countrymen in a crisis in which the " happiness and good govern ment of the human race " were indeed the issue 16 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT at stake, and would lead them warily, judiciously, and yet resolutely, in the paths of far-seeing and disinterested world-citizenship. Mr. Wilson's chief work as a historian is his "History of the American People." It first appeared, in part at any rate, as a series of arti cles in Harper's Magazine, entitled " Colonies and Nation." In its final form — five large vol umes, profusely and excellently illustrated — it does for the United States what the illustrated edition of Green's " Short History " does for Britain. Mr. Wilson's style is as well adapted for narrative as for exposition. Despite its brev ity, the opening paragraph of his second chapter, " The Swarming of the English," is sufiicient to show that, no more than Macaulay, Froude or Green, does he forget that history, while it may or may not be a branch of science, is assuredly a branch of literature: It was the end of the month of April, 1607, when three small vessels entered the lonely capes of the Chesapeake, bringing the little company who were to make the first permanent English settlement in Amer ica, at Jamestown, in Virginia. Elizabeth was dead. The masterful Tudor monarchs had passed from the stage and James, the pedant king, was on the throne. THE MAN OF LETTERS 17 The " Age of the Stuarts " had come, with its sinister policies and sure tokens of revolution. Men then living were to see Charles lie dead upon the scaffold at White hall. After that would come Cromwell; and then the second Charles, " restored," would go his giddy way through a demoralizing reign, and leave his sullen brother to face another revolution. Is was to be an age of profound constitutional change, deeply signifi cant for all the English world ; and the colonies in America, notwithstanding their separate life and the breadth of the sea, were to feel all the deep stir of the fateful business. The revolution wrought at home might in crossing to them suffer a certain sea-change, but it would not lose its use or its strong flavor of principle. In 1893 Mr. Wilson contributed a volume on " Division and Reunion " — that is to say, on the Civil War, its causes and consequences — to a series of " Epochs of American History," It is a school or college manual, highly condensed and yet readable. Mr, Wilson's literary art, however, is nowhere seen to greater advantage than in his popular " Life of Washington," a truly fascinat ing book. Its narrative style is full of charm, and, while the personality of the hero stands out in due relief, the figures of the men who sur rounded him are delineated with a sure and vivid 18 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT touch. It is, perhaps, part of the secret of Mr. Wilson's success as a leader of men, that he has something of the dramatist's interest in individual human character. The book deserves to rank as a classic of historical biography, and ought to be much better known than it is on this side of the Atlantic. Apart from scattered magazine papers, Mr. Wilson's work as an essayist is contained in two volumes: " An Old Master " (1893) , and " Mere Literature" (1896). The former has unfor tunately not been accessible to me ; but the latter affords ample material for an estimate of his qualities as a writer of " mere literature." And they are very high qualities. A prominent char acteristic of his manner — not always a virtue, but seldom carried to such excess as to make it a vice — is the Emersonian habit of conveying thought by means of what may be called a run ning-fire of generalizations. Here is a passage chosen literally at random — a sors Wilsoniana — from an essay entitled: " The Author Himself ": Culture broadens and sweetens literature, but native sentiment and unmarred individuality create it. Not all mental power lies in the processes of thinking. THE MAN OF LETTERS 19 There is power also in passion, in personality, in simple, native, uncritical conviction, in unschooled feel ing. The power of science, of system is executive, not stimulative. I do not find that I derive inspiration, but only information, from the learned historians and analysts of liberty ; but from the sonneteers, the poets, who speak its spirit and its exalted purpose, and who, recking nothing of the historical method, obey only the high method of their own hearts — what may a man not gain of courage and confidence in the right way of politics ? From every page of these essays there breathes an intense love of literature and of the fine things! j of literature, the expressions of a broad and'l catholic humanity. Mr. Wilson has a great con tempt for the mere pedant; and for the mere ffisthete he has very small sympathy. His mind is steeped in the best traditions of his own lan guage. He speaks of Montaigne and of Montes quieu with high respect, but I do not remember that, in his hterary essays, he mentions any other French authors. Though his work in political science shows that he is familiar with German, Lessing is, I think, the only German classic to whom he refers. His deep literary piety, if one may so phrase it, speaks in a hundred passages — 20 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT notably in the conclusion of the essay from which " Mere Literature " takes its title. If this free people to which we belong is to keep its fine spirit, its perfect temper amidst affairs, its high courage in the face of difficulties, its wise temperate- ness and wide-eyed hope, it must continue to drink deep and often from the old wells of English undefiled, quaff the keen tonic of its best ideals, keep its blood warm with all the great utterances of exalted purpose and pure principle of which its matchless literature is full. The great spirits of the past must command us in the tasks of the future. Mere literature will keep us pure and keep us strong. Even though it puzzle or alto gether escape scientific method, it may keep our horizon clear for us, and our eyes glad to look bravely forth upon the world. Listen, again, to the thought inspired in him by this (and another) passage from Burke: " We cannot, I fear, falsify the pedigree of this fierce people (the American colonists) and per suade them that they are not sprung from a nation in whose veins the blood of freedom circu lates. The language in which they would hear you tell them this tale would detect the imposi tion ; your speech would betray you. An English man is the unfittest person on earth to argue THE MAN OF LETTERS 21 another Englishman into slavery." This is Mr. Wilson's comment: Does not your blood stir at these passages ? And is it not because, besides loving what is nobly written, you feel that every word strikes toward the heart of things that have made your blood what it has proved to be in the history of our race? It does not seem to be on record that Mr. Wilson ever ventured across the frontiers of meter ; but, if he is not a poet, it is certainly not for lack of imagination. The last essay in " Mere Literature," entitled " The Course of American History," presents a nobly imaginative picture of the conquest of the continent. Selection is diffi cult, because of the fine coherence of the process of thought which runs through the paper; but the following passages may convey some taste of its quality : The passes of the eastem mountains were the arteries of the nation's life. The real breath of our growth and manhood came into our nostrils when first, like Gov ernor Spotswood and that gallant company of Vir ginian gentlemen that rode with him in the far year, 1716, the Knights of the Order of the Golden Horse shoe, our pioneers stood upon the ridges of the eastem 22 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT hills and looked down upon those reaches of the con tinent where lay the paths of the westward migration. There, upon the courses of the distant rivers that gleamed before them in the sun, down the further slopes of the hills beyond, out upon the broad fields that lay upon the fertile banks of the " Father of Waters," up the long tilt of the continent to the vast hills that looked out upon the Pacific — there were the regions in which, joining with people from every race and clime under the sun, they were to make the great compounded nation whose liberty and mighty works of peace were to cause all the world to stand at gaze. How finely touched, again, is this picture of the breed of men by whom the conquest was accomplished : A roughened race embrowned in the sun, hardened in manner by a coarse life of change and danger, loving the rude woods and the crack of the rifle, living to begin something new every day, striking with the broad and open hand, delicate in nothing but the touch on the trigger, leaving cities in its track as if by accident rather than by design, settling again to the steady ways of a fixed life only when it must: such was the American people whose achievement it was to be to take possession of their continent from end to end ere their national govemment was a single century old. The paper ends with a fine tribute to Lincoln. No one has spoken more worthily than Woodrow THE MAN OF LETTERS 23 Wilson of his two great predecessors in the presi dential chair. It is not in this essay, however, but in an earlier one, that he says of Lincoln: " To the Eastern politicians he seemed like an accident ; but to history he must seem like a providence." Some of Mr. Wilson's most characteristic work is to be found in his occasional papers and addresses. One of the most thoughtful of his essays is entitled : " When a Man comes to Him-) j self," or, in other words, realizes his predestinatq / place and function in the world. The following is Mr. Wilson's ingenious variation on a theme as old as the Forest of Arden: " All the world's a stage " : A man is the part he plays among his fellows. He is not isolated; he cannot be. . . . Some play with a certain natural passion ; an unstudied directness, with out grace, without modulation, with no study of the masters, or consciousness of the pervading spirit of the plot ; others give all their thought to their costume and think only of the audience ; a few act as those who have mastered the secrets of a serious art, with deliberate subordination of themselves to the great end and motive of the play, spending themselves like good serv ants, indulging no wilfulness, obtruding no eccentricity, lending heart and tone and gesture to the perfect prog- 24 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT ress of the action. These have " found themselves," and have all the ease of a perfect adjustment. An essay " On Being Human " is full of preg nant passages. " It is certainly human," says our author, " to mind your neighbor's business as well as your own. Gossips are only sociolo gists upon a mean and petty scale." And again: " Is it because we are better at being common scolds than at being wise advisers that we prefer httle reforms to big ones? " Many good things have been said about books and reading: indeed, whole anthologies have been composed of them; but none of the anthologies contains anything better than this : You devour a book meant to be read, not becausei you would fiU yourself or have an anxious care to bq nourished, but because it contains such stuff as it makes the mind hungry to look upon. Neither do you read it to kill time, but to lengthen time, rather adding to it its natural usury by living the more abundantly while it lasts, joining another's life and thought to your own. Here, again, is a passage which touches the very root of the evils from which the world of to day is suffering : THE MAN OF LETTERS 25 We do not want our poetry from grammarians, nor our tales from philologists, nor our history from theo rists. . . . Neither do we want our political economy from, tradesmen nor our statesmanship from mere poli ticians, but from those who see more and care for more than these men see or care for. If in this passage Mr. Wilson hints at the type of statesman which the world, to its sorrow, has so plentifully bred in these latter days, he also gives us, in the following character of " the truly human man," an outline of the qualities in which healing may be found : This is our conception of the truly human man; a man in whom there is a just balance of faculties, a catholic sympathy — no brawler, no fanatic, no pRari- see; not too credulous in hope, not too desperate in purpose; warm, but not hasty; ardent, and full of definite power, but not running about to be pleased and deceived by every new thing. To some people this may seem a prosaic and pedestrian ideal of character. There are men and women (they have, no doubt, their uses in the world) in whose eyes not to be a fanatic is to be a philistine, and who despise nothing so much as the Horatian conception of the justtim 26 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT ac tenacem propositi virum. But the driving power of the world does not come from fanati cism, even if its inspiration be good. It may have the momentary value of a stimulant, helpful in a great crisis, even if its help has to be paid for by subsequent reaction. But it is calm and resolute reason that does the lasting things, while impa tient idealism exhausts itself in untimely strivings and vain denunciations. To borrow an illustra tion from President Wilson himself, it was not the passionate abolitionism of William Lloyd Garrison that abolished slavery — it was the im perturbable wisdom of Abraham Lincoln. I have not, in this short study, attempted any critical estimate of President Wilson's place in American literature. My object has been simply to show that, whatever else he may be, he is a man of letters to the finger-tips — a man steeped in literary traditions, and possessed of fine literary J gifts. He can make political science readable to [the layman (no small achievement, by the way), and he can make history fascinating without imparting to it the cheap over-coloring of fiction or the hectic fervor of partisanship. This aspect of his genius is not sufficiently recognized either here or in his own country. His administrative THE MAN OF LETTERS 27 achievements, both in education and politics, and I U his fame as a statesman, have eclipsed his repute [ ' as an author. But there can be little doubt that if U he had not abandoned the contemplative for the active life, he would have taken a high place among contemporary writers of the English lan guage; and, even as it is, it ought not to be for gotten that this great President is at the same time an accomplished and attractive man of letters. Ill PRINCETON It was as President of Princeton that Mr. Wilson was first enabled to give proof of that force of character and executive abihty which, ten years later, made him President of the United States. An American University offers far more opportunity than an English University, com posed of separate and practically autonomous colleges, for an individual will to impress itself upon the educational and social policy of the whole institution. His twelve years of work as a professor had enabled Mr. Wilson to form very decided views as to the defects of the existing system. He approached his new task in the spirit of a genial but resolute reformer, both on the educational and on the social side. The educa tional part of his programme he carried out with brilliant success ; on the social side he encountered difiiculties which he very nearly overcame, but which ultimately proved insuperable. 38 PRINCETON 29 There had for some time been a tendency in American Universities to allow their undergrad uates undue latitude in the choice of their subjects of study. They were too readily permitted to follow the line of least resistance, and either to obey the dictates of immature taste (more rightly to be termed fancy), or to specialize too soon on " bread-studies," as distinct from the less obvi ously remunerative branches of study which are essential to mental discipline and general culture. To this abuse of the " elective " system Mr, Wil-| son offered a determined opposition, which pro-j duced excellent results at Princeton, and has had great influence in other universities. He insisted on the necessity of a certain amount of " drill " as the basis of all sound education. In an address to Princeton alumni, delivered in New York soon after he entered upon office, he said : There are different sorts of subjects in a curriculum, let me remind you; there are drill subjects, which I suppose are mild forms of torture, but to which every man must submit. So far as my own experience is concerned, the natural carnal man never desires to leam mathematics. . . . There are some drill sub jects which are just as necessary as measles in order to make a man a grown-up person ; he must have gone 30 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT through those things in order to qualify himself for the experiences of life; he must have crucified his wiU. . . . That I believe is necessary for the salvation of his soul. But while in this passage he laid down a sound principle as to the function of education in gen eral, it was in his Inaugural Address at Prince ton (October 25th, 1902) that he propounded his ideal of university education in particular : There are two ways of preparing a young man for his life-work. One is to give him the skill and special knowledge which will make a good tool, an excellent bread-wining tool of him ; and for thousands of young men that way must be followed. It is a good way. It is honorable. It is indispensable. But it is not for the college, and it never can be for the college. The [college should seek to make the men whom it receives I something more than excellent servants of a trade or skilled practitioners of a profession. It should give them elasticity of faculty and breadth of vision, so that ("they shall have a surplus of mind to expend, not upon their profession only, for its liberalization and enlarge ment, but also upon the broader interests which lie about them, in the spheres in which they are to be, not bread-winners merely, but citizens as well, and in their own hearts, where they are to grow to the stature of real nobility. It is this free capital of mind the world PRINCETON 31 most stands in need of — this free capital that awaits investment in undertakings, spiritual as weU as material, which advance the race and help all men to a better hfe. " Free capital of mind ! " Could there be a better definition of the ideal product of university training? It was with this ideal in view that the! new President set about his re-organization of the/ Princeton curriculum. He made it impossible for a young man, before his aptitudes had been put to any real test, before even his tastes had got beyond the stage of mere boyish whim, to choose a " soft job " and make that his chief, or his only, academic interest. The system he intro duced is known as that of " group electives." During the student's first two years, his choice is limited to certain strictly-prescribed groups of studies, while in the remainder of the four years' course a certain latitude of selection is allowed, so as to leave ample room for the development of individuality. The change had a markedly invig orating effect upon the whole atmosphere of the University, Before his advent, moreover, it had been too much the practice to convey information by mere formal lectures, which the student might or might 32 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT not attend, and from which, even if present in the body, he might very easily be absent in the spirit. The uidustrious student took voluminous notes, the idle student tried, when examinations time approached, to borrow the notes of his industri ous comrade. It is the experience of many students, where the lecture system prevails, that the time spent in the class-room is largely wasted, and that there is much more profit in reading the professor's authorities than in listening to the professor. Mr. Wilson so modified this rather somnolent system as to bring the mind of the teacher and the pupil into more active and stimu lating contact. Even so early as 1894, he had shown, in an article contributed to the Forum, that this reform was in his mind. He then wrote : The serious practical question is: How are all the men of a University to be made to read English litera ture widely and inteUigently .'' For it is reading, not set lectures, that will prepare a soil for culture: the inside of books, and not talk about them : though there must be the latter also to serve as a chart and guide to the reading. The difficulty is not in reality very great. A considerable number of young tutors, serv ing their novitiate for full university appointments, might easily enough effect an organization of the men that would secure reading. Taking them in groups of PRINCETON 33 manageable numbers, suggesting the reading of each group, and by frequent interviews and quizzes [oral examinations] seeing that it was actually done . . . they could not only get the required tasks performed, but relieve them of the hateful appearance of being tasks, and cheer and enrich the whole life of the University, This passage contained the germ of the " pre ceptorial system " which Mr, Wilson succeeded in establishing. It combined some of the features ( of the English tutorial system and of the German j Seminar. The result was a very marked raising I of the intellectual standard of the university. The mere drone was practically eliminated, and real keenness of interest in things of the mind was most effectually promoted. It can scarcely be doubted, too, — though in this field results are less easily measured — that Mr. Wilson's influence did something to check the tendency of American education (under German influence) to concentrate attention on the mere mint and cummin of scholarship, to the exclusion of its spirit and essence. The first essay in his book " Mere Literature " is for the most part a protest against this tendency. The ironic humor of the following passage cannot disguise 34 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT the fact that the author is very much in earnest. If you are to promote the study of great litera ture, he says, you must have a heart to feel with the great writers, " an eye to see what they see, lan imagination to keep them company, a pulse to experience their delights." But if you have none of these things, you may make shift to do without them. You may count the words they use, instead, note the changes of phrase they make in successive revisions, put their rhythm into a scale of feet, run their allusions — particularly their female al lusions — to cover, detect them irt their previous reading. Or, if none of these things please you, or you find the big authors difficult or dull, you may drag to light aU the minor writers of their time, who are easy to under stand. By setting an example in such methods, you render great services in certain directions. You make the higher degrees of our Universities available for the large number of respectable men who can count, and measure, and search diligently ; and that may prove no small matter. You divert attention from thought, which is not always easy to get at, and fix attention upon language, as upon a curious mechanism, which can be perceived with the bodily eye, and which is worthy to be studied for its own sake, quite apart from any thing it may mean. You encourage the examination of forms, grammatical and metrical, which can be quite accurately determined and quite exhaustively cata- PRINCETON 36 logued. You bring all the visible phenomena of writ ing to light and into ordered system. You go further, and show how to make careful literal identification of stories somewhere told, ill and without art, with the same stories told over again by the masters, well and with the transfiguring effect of genius. You thus broaden the area of science ; for you rescue the con crete phenomena of the expression of thought — the necessary syllabification which accompanies it, the in evitable juxtaposition of words, the constant use of particles, the habitual display of roots, the inveterate repetition of names, the recurrent employment of mean ings heard or read— from their confusion with the otherwise unclassifiable manifestations of what had hitherto been accepted, without critical examination, under the lump term " literature," simply for the pleas ure and spiritual edification to be got from it. The writer of these delightful pages would assuredly lend no countenance to the dry-as-dust conception of scholarship which seeks to choke out its human and spiritual essence. Having successfully introduced a new spirit into the educational side of the institution con fided to his charge, Mr. Wilson, at the end of his fifth year of office, felt that the time had come to attempt the social changes demanded by his truly democratic ideals. His predecessor in the 36 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT office of President had declared it impossible that Princeton should be other than a college for rich men's sons, and it had been described as "the most charming Country Club in America." Its peculiar feature among American universities was the club-houses which formed the centers of social intercourse for the senior students. Twelve of these luxurious and exclusive establishments stood in their spacious grounds close to the Uni versity buildings. Only third and fourth year students could belong to them; but to secure entrance became the burning ambition of " fresh men " and " sophomores " — an ambition far more potent than the desire for distinction in scholar ship, or even in games. The system involved a great deal of harmful wear-and-tear of mental tissue, and led to bitter heart-burnings and crush ing disappointments. Moreover, it established a sort of plutocratic standard in the life of the University — a form of snobbery which ought to have been repulsive to sound American sentiment, and was highly repulsive to Mr. Wilson. He felt that the way to break it down was not to attack the clubs directly, but to establish a new order of residential halls or hostels, in which " men should be so distributed that rich and poor, elder and PRINCETON 37 younger, would be thrown together," Such hos tels for freshmen and sophomores had already been successfully introduced in connection with the " preceptorial " system; and Mr. Wilson now proposed tp extend to senior men the benefits, as he conceived them, of this form of collegiate hfe. His proposal was accepted by the Trustees of the University, only one dissenting; but when it was made public it met with a storm of opposi tion. American universities are largely depend ent for funds upon the liberality of their ex- students or " alumni " ; the affections of the alumni of Princeton were rooted in the Club system; and it was found that an attack upon it would so gravely impair the financial prospects of the institution that the Trustees were forced to withdraw their consent to the President's scheme. In another, somewhat similar, episode, the power of the purse succeeded in baffling Mr. Wilson's idealism. The University lacked ac commodation for post-graduate courses, and a lady bequeathed to it a sum of a quarter of a million dollars (£50,000) for the establishment of a Graduate School. A " Dean " was appoint"'^ for the as yet unborn institution, and proceeded to draw up proposals for " an ornate and luxu- 38 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT rious school, severed both in situation and in mental atmosphere from the rest of Princeton," which Mr. Wilson strongly disapproved. While the matter was in suspense, another bequest, this time of half a million dollars, was made to the Graduate School. It was saddled, however, with two conditions — first, that another half -million dollars should be raised from other sources, and second that the scheme of the aristocratically- minded Dean should be accepted. Mr. Wilson was immovable in his principles, and succeeded in working up the Trustees to such a point of heroism that (though the supplementary half- miUion was already promised) they had fully determined to renounce the whole million rather than sanction what they felt to be, educationally and socially, a false move. This would have been a great triumph to set off against the defeat in the Battle of the Clubs. But alas! at the decisive moment, a third bequest was announced, this time of three million dollars, on condition that the disputed scheme should be carried into effect Such an argument was more than human nature could resist, and the Trustees pocketed at once their principles — or, rather, Mr. Wilson's — and the £600,000. IV NEW JERSEY The first book which Woodrow Wilson pub hshed was, as we have seen, " Congressional Government : A Study of the American Consti tution." It reached its twenty-fourth edition in 1912. " In American literature," says Mr. Ford, " it occupies a place like that of Bagehot's treat ise in English literature." The various professor ships and lectureships he had held were all con cerned with subjects germane to the public life of the nation. He had lectured on history, poht ical science, political economy, jurisprudence and constitutional law; and in deahng with all these subjects he had shown penetrating insight, a rare grasp of mind, and a high, yet thoroughly prac tical, idealism. He was, moreover, a highly- trained and effective public speaker; and his Presidency of Princeton had shown him to pos sess the gifts of an efficient administrator and a 39 40 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT born leader of men. Such a combination of quali ties clearly designated him to play a conspicuous part on the political stage; but, though he had delivered many occasional addresses on political subjects, he had not, until 1910, gone down into the arena and taken part in any political campaign. His courageous and enterprising policy as head of one of the three leading Universities of the seaboard states had made for him a national reputation; but it was inevitable that he should be best known in the state in which the university is situated, only some ten miles from the state capital, Trenton. In the summer of 1910, the Democrats of that state, looking about for a can didate whose character and record would assure their success in the approaching election for the Governorship, fixed their choice on the President of Princeton. He had taken no step whatever to secure nomination; but when he was caUed upon to declare whether he would accept it if offered, he returned this straightforward answer: I need not say that I am in no sense a candidate for the nomination, and that 1 would not, under any cir cumstances, do anything to obtain it. My present NEW JERSEY 41 duties and responsibilities are such as would satisfy any man desirous of rendering public service. They cer tainly satisfy me, and I do not wish to draw away from them. But my wish does not constitute my duty, and, if it should turn out to be true, as so many well-informed persons have assured me they believe it will, that it is the wish and hope of a decided majority of the thought ful Democrats of the state, that I should consent to accept the party's nomination for the great office of Governor, I should deem it my duty, as well as an honor and a privilege, to do so. His strength as a candidate was shown by the fact that, when the Democratic State Convention met in September, he was nominated on the first ballot ; and he carried the election, in November;, not, indeed, by a majority of the whole votes, but by a " plurality " of nearly 50,000 over the can didate who stood next to him. The wire-pullers of the Democratic party in New Jersey had accepted Mr. Wilson as a "strong" candidate — that is to say, one likely to appeal to the individual voter — but also, per haps, in the hope that, being new to the activities^ of political life, he would prove a weak and easily-/ managed Governor. Of this illusion, if they in-f 42 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT deed cherished it, they were quickly disabused. The democratic " boss " was a gentleman of whose record Mr. Wilson had no high opinion, and, in agreemg to stand for the Governorship, he had stipulated that this politician should not figure on the same " ticket " as candidate for the position of United States Senator from New Jersey. The nomination for that position had accordingly fallen to a Mr. Martine. The elec tion, however, had given the Democrats a major ity of twenty-one in the two houses of the state legislature, by whom the United States senators are elected; and seeing this, the "boss," Mr. Smith, determined to offer himself as candidate for the senatorship, nothing doubting that his obedient henchmen would ignore the popular election and give him their votes. This was not only an autocratic overriding of party discipline, but a breach of an honorable understanding. Had Mr. Wilson permitted it to pass, he would practically have joined the ranks of the boss's henchmen. He did not permit it to pass. He gave Mr. Smith forty-eight hours to withdraw his candidature, with the intimation that if this were not done, he would publicly denounce him. The boss ignored the ultimatum, and the Gov- NEW JERSEY 43 ernor executed his threat. He did not go to the party wire-pullers, he went direct to the people, and at a series of public meetings, exposed the iniquity of the manoeuver with such effect that, when the legislature met, Mr. Martine was duly sent to Washington, and the boss, his power broken, was left out in the cold. The Governor of an American state stands to the legislature in very much the relation of the President to Congress. Even in his first book on the American Constitution, Mr. Wilson had de plored the complete separation between the executive and the legislative function on which the Constitution insists. It was his frequently- repeated opinion that " the separation of the right to plan from the duty to execute has always led to blundering and inefficiency," He had also freely criticized the system whereby almost all bills are referred to departmental committees of the various legislatures, often to be heard of no more. Practically the whole legislative function is thus delegated to these committees,, who sit in private and of whose proceedings no record is available. When they report a bill to the House, discussion of it is reduced to a minimum, and the merits of a measure are seldom or never pubhcly 44 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT thrashed out.* There is, however, one constitu tional provision which enables a Governor (or a President) of energetic character and strong convictions to exercise a very real influence on legislation. He is empowered, and indeed in structed, to give information to the " legislative body as to the state of the commonwealth, and to recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." It is thus evidently within the rights of the head of the Executive to urge, though not to impose, his views upon the legislature ; and Mr. Wilson was both by theory and by temperament inclined to make the fullest use of this prerogative. . From the moment of his entry upon office, he made it clear that the legislature of New Jersey had no King Log to deal with. He had an- [ nounced a programme of sweeping reform, and ' he applied himself vigorously to securing its exe cution. His first great measure was an attack upon the system which left nominations for polit ical office (or in other words, the composition of the party " ticket ") in the hands of bosses work- * Readers who wish to obtain an insight into the workings of American state politics (which are practically national politics in miniature) may be referred to Mr. Winston Churchill's excellent novels, "Coniston" and "Mr. Crewe's Career." NEW JERSEY 45 ing through carefully packed and manipulated delegations. A bill introducing, or rather reviv ing, the system of " direct Primaries "—-that is, the nomination of party candidates by direct popular vote — was carried in spite of the most formidable opposition, entirely in virtue of the fenergy and resolution with which the Governor threw himself into the breach in its defense. Other measures of no less importance followed: an Employers' Liability Act; a Corrupt Prac tices Act of a drastic nature ; and an act establish ing a Public Utilities Commission for the control of all companies enjoying exceptional privileges (or " franchises ") in view of services to be ren dered to the community. The importance of this measure is apparent when we consider that in America almost all public services in connection with transit, lighting, water supply, telephones, etc., are in the handjs of private companies, whose natural tendency is to take wide views of their privileges and narrow views of their duties. Their constant efforts to influence the legislature were a source of much " scheming, lobbying, intrigu ing " — and corruption. The Commission — a small body to which responsibility can easily be brought home — relieves the legislature of a func- 46 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT tion which it is iU fitted to perform, controls, in the interests of the pubhc, the operations and the charges of the companies, and at the same time, in the interests of the shareholders, keeps an eye on their finances. Mr. Wilson proved, in short, during his brief term as Governor, that he was no mere theorist I f in politics, but an eminently practical man, with j a remarkable gift for getting things done. Dur ing the Presidential campaign of 1912, he him self gave an account of his stewardship in New Jersey, which may be summarized as follows : I had no merit as a candidate for Governor, except that I said what I really thought, and the compliment that the people paid me was in believing that I meant . what I said. Unless they had believed in the Governor whom they then elected, unless they had trusted him deeply and altogether, he could have done absolutely nothing. . . . The things that have happened in New Jersey since 1910 have happened because the seed was planted in the fine fertile soil of confidence, of trust, of renewed hope. The moment the forces in New Jersey that had resisted reform realized that the people were backing new men who meant what they said, they realized that they dared not resist them. It was not the personal force of the new officials ; but it was the moral strength NEW JERSEY 47 of their backing that accomplished the extraordinary result. And what was accomplished.? Mere justice to classes that had not been treated justly before. Every school boy in the state of New Jersey, if he cared to look into the matter, could comprehend the fact that the laws applying to laboring men, with respect to compensation when they were hurt in their various employments, had originated at a time when society was organized very differently from the way in which it is organized now, and that because the law had not been changed, the courts were obliged to go blindly on administering laws which were cruelly unsuitable to existing conditions. . . . Nobody seriously debated the circumstances ; everybody knew that the law was antiquated and im possible; everybody knew that justice waited to be done. Very well, then, why wasn't it done.'' There was another thing that we wanted to do: we wanted to regulate our public service corporations so that we could get the proper service from them, and on reasonable terms. That had been done elsewhere, and where it had been done, it had proved just as much for the benefit of the corporations themselves as for the benefit of the people. We were not trying to do any thing novel in New Jersey; we were simply trying to adopt there a tested measure of public justice. We adopted it. Has anybody gone bankrupt since ? Does anybody now doubt that it was just as much for the benefit of the public service corporations as for the people of the state? 48 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT Then there was another thing that we modestly de sired. We wanted fair elections ; we did not want can didates to buy themselves into office. That seemed reasonable, so we adopted a law, unique in one par ticular: that if you bought an office, you didn't get it. I admit that is contrary to all commercial principles, but I think it is pretty good political doctrine. . . . We adopted a Corrupt Practices Act, and an Elec tion Act, which every man predicted was not going to work, but which did work — to the emancipation of the voters of New Jersey. All these things are now commonplaces with us. We (like the laws that we have passed, and no man ventures to suggest any material change in them. Why didn't j we get them long ago.? What hindered us.? Why, we had a closed Government ; not an open Government. It did not belong to us. It was managed by little groups of men, whose names we knew, but whom somehow we didn't seem able to dislodge. When we elected men pledged to dislodge them, they only went into partner ship with them. Apparently what was necessary was to call in an amateur who knew so little about the game that he supposed that he was expected to do what he had promised to do. The intervention of this simple-minded " ama teur " in the politics of the world may one day be recognized as no less conspicuously benefi cent than it was in the politics of New Jersey. V THE WHITE HOUSE It was perhaps the accident of his birth and upbringing in the South that originally made Woodrow Wilson a Democrat rather than a Republican. At all events, a Democrat he had been from his boyhood upwards. We have seen that, as an undergraduate, he declined to assume the Republican colors, and to champion a pro tective tariff, even in the mimic warfare of a debating-club. But there can be no doubt that he was temperamentally a Democrat in more than a merely technical and party sense. He,\ believed profoundly in government by the people in the widest sense of the word — ^not in govern-j j ment by the privileged classes, and still less ipf i government by gangs, cabals and conspiracies. What may have been in the first instance an acci dental bias, had ripened, through study and thought, into a deep and settled conviction. Hav- 49 60 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT ing made a searching examination of afl forms of human government, he had come to the deliberate conclusion that, when a people has arrived at a certain stage of political intelligence, it is best governed by persons elected to give effect to its predominant wiU. No one knew better than he the difficulty of securing even an approximately accurate expression of that will; no one knew bet ter the abuses to which popular government is exposed. But he felt that the worst abuses of democracy were less noxious and more corrigible (than the abuses of other forms of govemment, (and he remained unswervingly loyal to the Amer ican Idea. It was the task of his pohtical career I to secure for that Idea an ever fuller and purer expression in the national hfe. The original distinction between the Repub lican and the Democratic parties concerned the respective rights of the Central or Federal Gov ernment and the Governments of the individual states. The Republicans insisted on, and wished to extend, the powers of the President and Con gress, the Democrats insisted on the principle of state sovereignty, and were jealous of all en croachments. The Civil War was a tragically intransigeant assertion of state rights, including THE WHITE HOUSE 51 the right of secession from the Union, The South failed in the great argument, and no reasonable Southerner now regrets the failure. Neverthe less the South remains solidly Democratic, and the principle of state rights remains an official plank in the party platform. But it is no longer the central plank. Of late years the most promi nent article in the Democratic creed has been the principle that import duties should be imposed for revenue only, and not for protection of manu factures. Under cover of the protective tariff, a great system of monopolies had grown up, which Woodrow Wilson and his party believed to be in every way injurious to the true interests of the people. It was on that issue that the Presidential election of 1912 was fought. The presidency of Mr, Taft had been a disap pointment. Though an able and an honest man, he was too acquiescent. He lacked the energy and initiative demanded by the conjuncture of affairs. Reform was in the air : the only questiori was as to the principles which should guide it. In! the three-cornered contest which ultimately took shape, Mr, Taft and the orthodox Republicans stood for an easy-going conservatism, which Mr./ Wilson described as " do-nothingism " or " sit-/ 52 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT ting still for fear something should happen;" Mr. Roosevelt and the dissident, or, as they called themselves. Progressive Republicans, stood for reform on conservatives lines ; while Mr. Wilson sand the Democrats stood for what was considered radical reform, though its radicalism, as we shall see, was of no very alarming type. The principles for which Mr. Wilson con tended may be best studied in his campaign speeches, a selection from which has been pubhshed under the title of " The New Free dom." In the first place, let us take an utterance in which the speaker nails the colors of Democracy to his mast, proclaiming himself a Democrat not merely in the technical but in the most funda mental sense: The utility, the vitality, the fruitage of life does not come from the top to the bottom; it comes, like the natural growth of a great tree, from the soil, up through the trunk into the branches to the foliage and the fruit. The great struggling unknown masses of the men who are at the base of everything are the dy- |namic force that is lifting the levels of society. A nation is as great, and only as great, as her rank and file. THE WHITE HOUSE 53 A hostile critic might say that such a paradox savored not so much of the democrat as of the demagogue, and recommend Mr. Wilson to read Ibsen's " Enemy of the People." But, rightly interpreted, the saying is profoundly true. The champions of things as they were, and notably of the high tariff and all that followed in its train, pointed to the " prosperity " which had accom panied the organization of " big business." This was Mr. Wilson's reply. He meant that no amount of statistical prosperity is worth any thing to a nation if it is purchased at the cost I of human worth and human freedom. No nation! deserves to be called " great " in which the mass of the people is led captive by organized and self- seeking interests. Towards the end of the speech he returned to the theme in the following passage : Nothing living can blossom into fruitage unless through nourishing stalks deep-planted in the common soil. The rose is merely the evidence of the vitality of the root; and the real source of its beauty; the very blush that it wears upon its tender cheek, comes from those silent sources of life that lie hidden in the chem istry of the soil. Up from that soil, up from the silent bosom of the earth, rise the currents of life and energy. Up from the common soul, up from the quiet heart of 54 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT the people, rise joyously to-day streams of hope and determination bound to renew the face of t^e earth in glory. In another place, Mr. Wilson thus defined his conception of that bent of the popular will which he was seeking a mandate to carry into action. We are in a temper to reconstruct economic society, as we were once in a temper to reconstruct political society, and political society may itself undergo a radical modification in the process. I doubt if any age was ever more conscious of its task or more unani mously desirous of radical and extended changes in its economic and political practice. We stand in the presence of a revolution — not a bloody revolution, America is not given to the spiUing of blood — ^but a silent revolution, whereby America will insist upon recovering in practice those ideals which she has always professed, a Government devoted to the general interest, and not to special interests. What, then, was the precise evil which Mr. Wilson pledged himself to combat? He defined it as follows : The facts of the situation amount to this: That a comparatively small number of men control the raw material of this country; that a comparatively small THE WHITE HOUSE 55 number of men control the water-powers that can be- made useful for the economical production of the! energy to drive our machinery ; that that same number of men largely control the railroads ; that by agree ments handed around among themselves, they control prices, and that that same group of men control the larger credits of the country. In another place he enlarged upon this indictment : Who have been consulted when important measures of government, like tariff acts, and currency acts, and railroad acts, were under consideration? The people whom the tariff chiefly affects, the people for whom the currency is supposed to exist, the people who pay the duties and ride on the railroads? Oht no. What do they know about such matters? The gentlemen whose ideas have been sought are the big manufacturers, the bankers, and the heads of the great railroad com binations. The masters of the Govemment of the United States are the combined capitalists and manu facturers of the United States. It is written over every intimate page of the records of Congress; it is written all through the history of conferences at the White House, that the suggestions of economic policy in this country have come from one source, not from many sources ; the benevolent guardians, the kind- hearted trustees, who have taken the troubles of gov emment off our hands have become so conspicuous that 56 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT almost anybody can write out a list of them. They have become so conspicuous that their names are men tioned upon almost every political platform. The men who have undertaken the interesting job of taking care of us do not force us to requite them with anonymously directed gratitude. We know them by name. At the same time Mr. Wilson was always scrupulous in asserting that he was not attacking individuals : I want to record my protest against any discussion of this matter which would seem to indicate that there are bodies of our fellow-citizens who are trying to grind us down and do us injustice. There are some men of that sort. I don't know how they sleep o' nights, but there are men of that kind. Thank God, they are not numerous. The truth is, we are all caught in a great economic system which is heartless. The danger of the situation, as Mr. Wilson saw it, lay in the fact expressed in the old saying that a corporation " has neither a body to be kicked nor a soul to be damned." The law, framed in and for a time when " big business " in the modern sense was as yet scarcely dreamt of, and when a nation's rights in the national re sources of its territory were very imperfectly THE WHITE HOUSE 57 recognized, was quite inadequate to deahng with the new situation which had arisen, both in re gard to the relations between employers and em ployed, and to the development of the potential wealth of the coimtry. On the latter point Mr. Wilson said : Then there is the question of conservation. What is our fear about conservation? The hands that are being stretched out to monopolize our forests, to pre vent the use of our great power-producing streams, the hands that are being stretched into the bowels of the earth to take possession of the great riches that lie hidden in Alaska and elsewhere in the incomparable domain of the United States, are the hands of monopoly. Are these men to continue to stand at the elbow of Govemment, and tell us how we are to save ourselves — from themselves? You cannot settle the question of conservation while monopoly is close to the ears of those who govern. And the question of conservation is a^ great deal bigger than the question of saving our forests and our mineral resources and our waters ; it is! as big as the life and happiness and strength and elas ticity and hope of our people. In a later speech he drove home the same point with still greater emphasis. What would our forests be worth without vigorous/' and intelligent men to make use of them? Why should 58 THE PEACE-PRESIDENT we conserve our natural resources, unless we can by the magic of industry transmute them into the wealth of the world? What transmutes them into that wealth, if not the skill and the touch of the men who go dally to their toil, and who constitute the great body of the American people? What I am interested in is having [the Government of the United States more concerned about human rights than about property rights. Prop erty is an instrument of humanity; humanity isn't an instrument of property. And yet when you see some men riding their great industries as if they were driving a car of juggernaut, not looking to see what multitudes prostrate themselves before the car and lose their lives in the crushing effect of their industry, you wonder how long men are going to be permitted to think more of their machinery than they think of their men. And how did Mr. Wilson propose to set about the remedying of these abuses ? In the first place, *'*5PX>t Vis' "Vrf".