Woodrow Wilson The Caricature, The Myth And The Man

WOODROW WILSON Jhe Qiricature, the and the by EDITH GITTINGS REID 1934 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS London New York Toronto TO MARGARET WOODROW WILSON HIS DAUGHTER AND HARRY AUGUSTUS GARFIELD HIS FRIEND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS WILSONS early work on government, and his writings and addresses, collected by R. S. Baker and Dodd in the important volumes entitled The Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, give his political creed. The authorized Life by Ray Stannard Baker is a rich source of information from all angles. For the interpretation of the official side of Wilsons life I am especially indebted to Colonel Houses Intimate Papers and to both Colonel and Profes sor Charles Seymour for their great kindness and the pains they took to select and send me copies of those letters of Mr. Wilson to Colonel House that seemed to them to touch the high lights of his political life to Dodds Woodro w Wilson and his Work to Houstons Eight Years with the Wilson Cabinet to Palmers Life of Newton D. Baker and to numerous other essays, memoirs, and less comprehensive biographies. Frank Cobb, of the New York World, and Walter Lippmann, though they have written little on this subject, have a sure touch when Wilson, the man and poli tician, is under consideration. I am especially indebted to Mr. Ray Stannard Baker for his courtesy in permitting me to use letters from Mr. Wilson to me which had previously been given to him for his use in his authorized Life of Woodrow Wilson. President Harry A. Garfield, of Wil liams College, gave me every assistance in his power. To Professor William Starr Myers, of Princeton University, my thanks are due for some intimate details. It is impos sible to name all who have assisted me, but Imust ex press my thanks to Mr. Bernard M. Baruch for permis sion to reproduce the unfinished Orpen portrait and to Miss Harriet W. Frishmuth for the picture of her bust of Woodrow Wilson. PREFACE THE Wilson administration occurred during such a period of storm and stress, when all human passions were at the boiling point, that the solitary figure of the advocate of peace became the target both for the mud slinging and for the eulogies of an abnormal world. He was made either a god upon the mountain to whom all appeals must be made, or else a bloodless pedagogue playing a lone hand in the attic of his own soul, a hindrance and a disturb ance rather than a constructive force. Innumerable articles and reminiscences of Mr. Wilson have been written, and a number of biographies, many of them more autobiographical than biographical but in the main they have been written by those who knew him only in the latter part of his life, or who knew him personally not at all. Consequently these portrayals depict the presi dent or the statesman rather than the man and as a rule they are coloured by their authors political convictions. This is not an attempt at historical narrative, though it is so intertwined with the political life of the day that one is inevitably drawn with Wilson into big events and made to share his ideas, his politics, his democracy, his person ality he insisted that one should share them. I am not concerned with whether what he did was right or wrong but only with why he did it. Having known him intimately from his youth to his death, my effort is to separate him from the mass of irrelevant matter collected about him, to consider the man alone his ideas, his purposes, and themotives that controlled him. It is curious how Abraham Lincolns simplicity illumi nates his character, while Wilsons simplicity bewilders the . vu preface interpreters of his. The Wilson caricature, made out of hate, without humour, is fast fading away. The myth is growing and obscuring the man. This is ironic, as the object of his life was to make his ideals practicable. My aim is to draw a portrait of the man I knew so well for those who are bewildered by conflicting and untrue accounts of his personality. The desire of his daughters, Margaret and the late Mrs...