William Allen White has the qualities that fit him to write about Woodrow Wilson entertainingly for his contemporaries, illuminatingly for posterity. He is versatile and perspicacious; he has a sense of humour and he is colossally industrious; he is sensitive and sensible, and has been disciplined in the art of verbal expression, by intuition and experience. He is a man of ideals and ideas; the former are realisable, the latter not persecutory; and he has a tender spot in his heart for the Irish.
Posterity and its spokesmen will render the verdict on Woodrow Wilson that will endure. I do not agree with Mr. White that his place in the history of the world will not be determined by his character. It will be determined by his character, not by his characteristics, just as George Washington’s was and just as Abraham Lincoln’s was. Nor do I agree that “the relation between character and fame is not of first importance” though I am aware that “many good men live and die unknown.” They do, indeed, but many good men have very little character. “Character” and “good” are not synonymous. A “good” man is a man who does not disobey the commandments nor transcend conventions. A man with “character” frequently does both. Woodrow Wilson did and I have no doubt George Washington did, despite the cherry tree story.
The greatest of all commandments is, “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.” If he had affectionate feeling for Dean West, President Hibben, Senator Lodge and others “too numerous to mention” he successfully concealed it. He was undoubtedly a truthful man, but he said he had written the preface to Dean West’s publicity brochure without reading it, and later, when it was shown that he had read it, he said he had written it good-naturedly and offhand, which was again at variance with the truth, for it carefully and lucidly expressed his attitude to the school. He told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that he never had seen the secret treaties, though there is documentary evidence to the contrary.
He had character: he was firm, fearless and free, and he had vision. He showed these qualities in Paris. In his vision it was revealed to him that from the sanguineous and agonising travail of the war a child had been born; that it did not resemble its parents; that many called it monster, others Bolshevism; and that it subscribed to none of our rules of bringing-up or behaviour. He saw that it was lusty, growing like the traditional weed, that it threatened to shut out our sunlight and our source. He realised that we must deal with communism, and gradually, day by day, the world is realising it. Woodrow Wilson was “good” enough, but unfortunately for him, for his peace of mind and happiness, he had “characteristics” and they fettered him.
Mr. White bears heavily on Woodrow Wilson’s ancestry, too heavily some will think, or too indiscriminatingly.
It may have been the Woodrow in him that told Colonel Harvey that his advocacy of him as a presidential candidate was injuring his prospects and it may have been the Wilson in him that charmed the “bawling mob, hot, red-faced, full of heavy food and too much rebellious liquor” which nominated him for Governor of New Jersey; but it was Woodrow Wilson that met the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the White House in June 1919, when he made the misstep that lamed him for his remaining mortal days, and dislodged his country from the saddle of world-leader, in which it seemed to be riding a winning race.
Mr. White would have us believe that Woodrow Wilson got his intellect and obstinacy from the Woodrows, his emotions and charm from the Wilsons. What did he get from Ann Adams, his lynx-eyed grandmother whose mouth dropped at the angles and who neither saw nor forgave a daughter after she married beyond her approbation? From her, I suppose, he got the capacity to treat Colonel House, his polar star for the ten years of his fruition, as though he were a Judas, and Joseph Tumulty, who served him with dog-like fidelity and intelligence from the beginning of his political career to its zenith and beyond, as though he were not only mangy but had rabies as well?
The chapter entitled “The Miracle of Heredity” might more appropriately and truthfully be labelled, “Teachings of Heredity Exemplified by the Appearance, Conduct and Career of Woodrow Wilson.” The author would have us believe that environment had much to do in conditioning his limitations. He writes:
“If only there could have been in his life some shanty-Irish critic with a penchant for assault and battery, some dear beloved sweetheart to show his notes around the playground, some low-minded friend to fasten upon him the nickname 'four eyes,’ calling brutal attention to his spectacles, or some other nickname in thinly veiled obscenity which would reveal a youthful weakness and so make him truckle to the baser nature of his gang that he might remove the black curse of his sobriquet—what a world we should have to-day!”
Alas, that I should disagree again with one who has given me hours of pleasure from which enduring admiration has developed! Woodrow Wilson would have been the same had he budded in Hoboken, flowered in Montmartre and fructified in Tahiti.