April 14, 1916.
MY DEAR DAVIES:
Thank you for having let me read this letter again.
There is one thing that distresses me. The implication of Mr. Alward's letter is (or would seem to one who did not know the circumstance to be) that I had not shown my gratitude for all the generous things he did in promoting my candidacy. Surely he does not feel that. Is it not true that I appointed him to the office he now holds? that I did so with the greatest pleasure as gratifying his own personal wish, and that the office itself has afforded him an opportunity of showing his real quality and mettle to the people of his state in the performance of duties for which he is eminently qualified? And have I not tried, my dear Davies, in every possible way to show my warm and sincere appreciation and my loyal friendship both to you and to him? It distresses me to find any other implication even latent between the lines, and the inference left to be drawn is that if I should not appoint him to the Federal Bench, it would be virtually an act of ingratitude on my part. I am sure he cannot soberly mean that, for it is so far from just.
It seems to me my clear duty to do in this case as in all others, the thing which commends itself to my judgment after the most careful consideration as the wisest and best thing, both for the interests of the Bench and the interests of the party.
Always, with real affection,
Faithfully yours,
WOODROW WILSON.
Hon. Joseph E. Davies,
Federal Trade Commission.
On one of the most critical days of the war, when Lloyd George was crying out in stentorian tones from across the sea that the war was now a race between Von Hindenburg and Wilson, a fine old Southern gentleman appeared at my office at the White House, dressed in an old frock coat and wearing a frayed but tolerably respectable high hat. He was the essence of refinement and culture and seemed to bring with him to the White House a breath of the old Southland from which he had come. In the most courteous way he addressed me, saying, "Mr. Secretary, I am an old friend of the President's father, Doctor Wilson, and I want to see Woodrow. I have not seen the boy since the old days in Georgia, and I have come all the way up here to shake him by the hand."
So many requests of a similar nature came to my desk during the critical days of the war and at a time when the President was heavily burdened with weighty responsibilities that I was reluctant to grant the old man's request and was about to turn him away with the usual excuse as to the crowded condition of the President's calendar, etc., when the old man said, "I know Woodrow will see me for his father and I were old friends." He then told me a story that the President had often repeated to me about his father. It seems that the old gentleman who was addressing me was on a hot summer's day many years ago sitting in front of a store in the business street of Augusta, Georgia, where the President's father was pastor of the Presbyterian Church, when he sighted the parson, in an old alpaca coat, seated in his buggy driving a well-groomed gray mare, and called out to him, "Doctor, your horse looks better groomed than yourself." "Yes," replied Doctor Wilson dryly as he drove on, "I take care of my horse; my congregation takes care of me."