Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P. Tumulty

I can answer this question only by saying that Ireland has never had a truer friend than Woodrow Wilson. From the day that we went to war it has been his steadfast purpose to induce the Government of England to settle the Irish question justly and permanently. His statesmanlike approach to a settlement of the problem is the only one that holds hope of success.

As I completed this chapter, an article appeared in a Washington newspaper apparently confirmatory of the President's foresight, showing that by September, 1921, Mr. De Valera had arrived at the same view. The article seems to show Mr. De Valera as insisting that the British Government grant Ireland membership in the League of Nations as one of the guarantees of autonomy.

As for myself, I believe that Ireland is going to be free in company with the rest of the world and in accordance with a new world order which shall function through the machinery for justice and liberty which is provided for in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and is provided for nowhere else.

CHAPTER XL

PROHIBITION

One of the things for which the Wilson Administration was held to "strict accountability" was the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, establishing nation-wide prohibition.

Unfair critics of the President, in their foolish attempt to charge the Administration with every unusual happening in the eight years of Democratic control, had stated that the President was the real motive force that lay back of the movement to establish the Eighteenth Amendment as part of the fundamental law of the country. As a matter of fact, during the discussion of this amendment in the Senate and House, the President maintained toward it an attitude of absolute neutrality. While he was an ardent advocate of temperance, he felt that Congress in enforcing the amendment by the passage of the Volstead Act, so extreme and unreasonable in character, had gone a long way toward alienating the support of every temperance-loving citizen in the country, and that certain of its provisions had struck at the foundation of our government by its arbitrary interference with personal liberty and freedom. He felt that the practical unanimity with which the Eighteenth Amendment was supported arose from a nation-wide resentment against abuses by the American saloon and the economic evils that had grown out of the unorganized liquor traffic. He felt that it was unreasonable for Congress, in the Volstead Act, to declare any beverage containing an excess of one half of one per cent. of alcohol intoxicating and that to frame a law which arbitrarily places intoxicating and non-intoxicating beverages within the same classification was openly to invite mental resentment against it. He was of the opinion that it required no compromise or weakening of the Eighteenth Amendment in order to deal justly and fairly with the serious protests that followed the enactment into law of the Volstead Act. He was, therefore, in favour of permitting the manufacture and sale, under proper governmental regulations, of light wines and beers, which action in his opinion would make it much easier to enforce the amendment in its essential particulars and would help to end the illicit traffic in liquor which the Volstead Act fostered by its very severity. This would put back of the enforcement of the Eighteenth Amendment the public sentiment always necessary to the execution of laws. Satisfied with a reasonable recognition of their rights to personal liberty and control of their personal habits, he believed that the American people would be the readier to turn their attention to the grave issues of reconstruction and steadier in meeting these issues which would test to the utmost our capacity for progressive self-government.

Time and time again when we discussed the Volstead Act, he would say: "The wrong way of doing the right thing. You cannot regulate the morals and habits of a great cosmopolitan people by placing unreasonable restrictions upon their liberty and freedom. All such attempts can only end in failure and disappointment. In the last analysis, in these matters that seek to regulate personal habits and customs, public opinion is the great regulator."

In New Jersey, where he served as governor, the liquor question had been for many years a burning issue and had been thrust into every gubernatorial campaign up to the time when Woodrow Wilson as governor took hold of the situation. Many political futures had been wrecked and wasted by ambitious politicians who tried to "pussyfoot" on this issue. But there was no shying away from it by Woodrow Wilson. When the question was presented to him by the ardent advocates of the Anti-Saloon League early in his administration as governor, without evasion of any kind, he stated his views in the following letter addressed to the head of the Anti-Saloon League:

Executive Office,
Trenton, New Jersey.