Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY. JULY 9th, 1918. PRESIDENT WILSON.

Hokitika Guardian, 9 July 1918, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star TUESDAY. JULY 9th, 1918. PRESIDENT WILSON.

I.'.ndoi'tukw.v the man of the hour is President Wilson, whoso whole-souled advocacy of the war aims and aspirations of America was again being given voice to at the Independence Pay celebrations. Air W. Beach Thomas recording his impressions of an interview with Dr. Wilson at White House said: What li© was, interested me more than what he said ; for in private the President is very unlike his platform seif. When he stood under the vast sham Statue of Liberty, festooned with American bunting and flanked with a faked model of trench life at the front, erected in the huge hall at Baltimore, ho seemed to me a sort of theatre President “tripped of humanity, he did not speak, but road written matter, turning the pages carefully. His gestures were rare He eschewed all images. Through his :one3 carried to every corner, and his

os vrker. he :<fij “I accept th* j ehalionho.” gave a thrill, the speaker 1 impressed mo intellectually as a cold, relentless, logic machine, and physically as hearing a resemblance to a male .statue of Liberty onme to life—as a blend of John Stuart Mill, and a headmaster of Eton. The real President Wilson is quite another being, and to my mind a much greater person. llow shall 1 point the contrast.? lie is not so long in the* face, as in his pictures. He is more pink and white. He. can laugh as a man who likes laughter. lied blood Hushes in his cheeks and his grey eyes (lash. His list on occasion teas doubled and his masterful, broad-tipped fingers were laid conclusively on his open palm. He used his hands and arms in almost eccentric gestures when he wished to make visible a certain curious metaphor. His obstinate lower lip moved forward and back to suit the more warlike and pacific parts of his argument. Mill made one mild joke in all liis collected works; the President made two good ones in half an hour. He fell into raev slang without apology, almost; with a Duke of Wellington enjoyment;. Twice he used that coni pact ost- of all Americanisms. an idiom that has classic virtues “Something •that- will stay, put.” All the world knows of the President’s reasoned judgments. In conversation ho spoke of his intuitive judgments, and in spile of his contrary reputation, Pshould judge him as a man of quick instincts and indeed of quick emotions. T could see, it’ 1 had not otherwise known it, that he has his share of the greatest of all gifts in a leader, a power of righteous indignation, not to say of passion. Doubtless the Scottish element in his ancestry endows Kim both with his taste for a logical, philosophic thesis and his utter power of concealing emotional prejudices. Possibly his fault is to he too abstract, but, as one of his associates said, he is Irish as well ns Scotch. His closed fist looked very concrete and his will struck me as quite the match of his reason. During the interview lie said several things of present importance and historical value. He so made you see the present, as part of history that he himself might have stepped down from one of the portrait frames on the walls, and his blue serge suit, and tidy mien would have provide a suggestive contrast, with the portrait of .the great, ungainly Lincoln, who is his chief admiration. But I trust neither history now the Allies will adopt the too widespread view that President Wilson is a chilly and desiccated precisian. He has a wonderful gift of lucid speech, whether he talks impromptu or from the platform, but he is not a. speaking machine. I must not report any opinion expressed at interview, which was valuable because it was confidential, but. as General Foch writes in his masterpiece, * what chiefly matters in a general is will and character, and more immediately important and cheering than any news or views the President would have uttered was the ocular tangible evidence of his strong humanity. To give a purely personal impression, I derived more satisfaction and confidence from the parley with the President at home —it was the first he has given in war time—than from any speech spoken by him or others on the American continent; The President hates German ways and the President will “stay put.” T)u>*\Yhito House, in the midst of its open towns and orchard gardens, was sweet with the breath of

spring and the President is human enough to delight in his bulbs and flowering and fruit trees. The. charm and contrast of the snot, struck me-the more as 1 had spent the morning in a privileged ",uur of the greatest Ilaval gin. works on the’ continent watching impossible tools cutting brass, steel, and copper like butter. These are not theoretic, and we know that when the President spoke of “force to the utmost” he had been paying closer personal attention than over before to guns, engines, mid such tangible logic. More than words are behind the acceleration of force. The naval gun factory is being doubled in size. I was due in two days to see transports leave somewhere in America. The hundreds of skilled mechanics wore the best and cheeriest I ever saw, and their work, too, will “stay put.” What ever misgivings Presidential provisos or delayed production may have, aroused in Europe, or America, it remains that American workmen and the American President make a combination that should heart-pn an. Ally and depress any enemy.