If one can say there is a disappointing chapter in the book it is one entitled “The Development of Youth.” The study that will throw a penetrating light on Woodrow Wilson will be one that concerns itself chiefly with the years between 1874 and 1885, from the time he went to Columbia, South Carolina, until he left Johns Hopkins University, where “he was known as a friendly cuss in the American vernacular and never a grind.” In his school and college days he met, worked and played with other boys who were destined to become successful Americans. Perhaps there was a rule amongst them taking notes which he will print. If there was, he is the one to unleash the bridegroom “coming forth rejoicing as a strong man to run a race” better than his brother-in-law, Stockton Axson, whom Mr. White quotes.
Woodrow Wilson’s presidency of Princeton University has probably never been outlined more accurately and attractively than in the chapters, “The Lecturer Becomes the Administrator” and “Going Through the First Fire.” Not only is the chief leading actor sketched by the hand of a master, but there is a Hogarthian vignette of Dean West, and a portrait of Colonel House which is so perfect that I must quote it:
“A man of slight figure, perhaps five feet six in height, of a thin, oval cast of countenance, adorned by a short, grey, stubby moustache over a firm and yet sensitive mouth which in turn is carved above a strong chin. The whole countenance bursts into illumination with beaming, kindly eyes below a rather higher brow than one expects from the remainder of the face; and the voice, when it comes from this gentle, interesting, and intelligent face, is soft and low and modest. A certain almost Oriental modesty, a Chinese self-effacement, abides with the personality of Colonel House. He seems to be in constant and delightful agreement with his auditor. And this delightful agreement, as one knows him, expresses itself in a thousand ways in an obvious and unmistakable desire to serve. He is never servile, but always serving; gentle without being soft, exceedingly courteous with the most unbending dignity. He is forever punctuating one’s sentence with 'that’s true, that’s true’; and stimulating candour among men, which is the essence of friendship.”
Mr. White is an impartial partisan, a pleading judge. These desirable qualities of the biographer are revealed most conspicuously in the narrative of Woodrow Wilson’s first great struggle with his most deforming limitation: inability to bear and forbear, to do team work, to play the game according to the rules. No doubt he felt that he had gained a moral victory at Princeton, but the trustees were glad to see him leave.
How he got the nomination for Governor of New Jersey, how he short-circuited the political machine, how he inoculated the Democratic party of his adopted state with liberalism and how, gradually but surely, the immunisation that resulted was felt throughout the country are told most interestingly. The chapters are interspersed with pleasant references to three women who influenced his life: he got understanding, loyalty, indulgence and devotion from Ellen Axson and from Edith Boiling; from Mrs. Peck he got appeasement of his latent hedonism, encouragement of his ambition, justification of his conduct, and praise which was to Woodrow Wilson what manna was to the Children of Israel. She, “of exquisite spiritual prowess and facile charm,” is supposed to have enjoyed his confidence to a remarkable degree. Her recently published story does not tend to prove it. Until his letters to her are published, I shall continue to believe he got nothing from her save what I have enumerated.
Woodrow Wilson’s nomination and election to the Presidency of this country and the accomplishments of his first administration are passed over rather briefly. All will not agree “that when his four years’ work are considered as a whole, when they are viewed retrospectively they may be seen as the fastest moving four years in our economic and social history.”
It was in 1916, when he was renominated by his party without opposition, and re-elected, that President Wilson became a world figure. His dealings with Germany, his restraint in bringing this country into the war, the way in which he developed public opinion to back him up when there was nothing to do save to join up with the Allies, are told with candour and simplicity. Then come the glad and the sad chapters: the President’s gestation of the League of Nations plan, and his abortive attempts to deliver himself; his European odyssey; his encounter with the sirens; his shipwreck; the shattering of the raft that he got together to take him before the people when the Republican Senators convinced him they would not accept the treaty; his final illness and his tiresome wait for the ring down of the curtain are told with gratifying impartiality and in satisfactory résumé.
The relation of Woodrow Wilson’s illness to his great failure: his inability to get his country to accept the League of Nations idea and membership in that product of his brain, has never been properly recognised nor publicly discussed. But it has a definite and a pathetic relation. Mr. White says:
“He brought with him to the White House a stomach pump which he used almost daily and a quart can of some sort of coal-tar product—headache tablets; they were giving him incipient Bright’s disease until the White House doctors took hold of him and stopped the tablets. The tinkering with his intestines proved the frailty of the man.”
Alas, how frail man is, and how many men and women are frail if “tinkering” with their intestines proves such frailty!