WOODROW WILSON.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 1949, 8 March 1919, Page 4

WOODROW WILSON.

THE MAN AS HE IS. Bv “L.R.M.” in the Loudon Daily Mail. No Allied statesman during the war has attracted more widespread attention than the professor-Presi-dent of our great Ally the United States of America. His speeches have introduced a new note into world politics. In him for the first time Democracy has become articulate. Strangely enough, there are few world statesmen whose personality is so little known to the people of European countries. Thus one welcomes the more heartily an unpretentious little book (“President Wilson: The Man and His Message," by C. Sheridan Pones, London: William Rider and Son, Limited. Is 6d net) which gives a singularly intimate and arresting picture of the great statesman.

The camera gives an entirely wrong impression f the character of the President. He is not a good subject. The camera shows him calm and resolute, but fails to indicate the geniality which makes him such an engaging personality to all who know him. The public, seeing only his photograph, come to think of him as a professorial, dry-as-dust, stiffly decorous, drably austere. He himself has not, hesitated to make capital out of this mistaken impression. On one occasion he recited with glee from a platform the following Limerick: — “As a beautv I am not a star;

There are others more handsome by far. But my face —I don’t mind it, For I am behind it; The people in front get the jar.” The quotation is full of self-re-velation. The President has an ebullient sense of humour, an intensely keen eye for the ridiculous. And all.that interests humanity interests him. A PASSION FOR WORN. Work is a passion with him. Lucidity of expression is another. His main aim in speech-making is to make his meaning so crystal-clear that there can be no possibility of mistake. He has a hatred of the ambiguous phrase. He feels that he is speaking for Democracy to Democracy. And his philosophy of life is perhaps best expressed in his own aphorism: “I am for the average man. If I did not believe in him I. should move out of Democracy.” Epigrams come readily to him. Here it re a few : “The way to slop financial ‘joyriding’ is to arrest the chauffeur, not the automobile.” .“Publicity is the great antiseptic against the germs of some of the worst political methods.” “A conservative man is a man who just sits and thinks, mostly sits.” And here is one which throws a whole flood of light upon his attitude during the very trying time which preceded America's entry into the world war; “\ou do not settle things quickly by taking what seems to be the quickest way to settle them.” Reference has been made to his passion for work. Rapidity of execution is still another passion. His famous reply to the first communication from Austria, suggesting a. Peace Conference, was. written and delivered to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and communicated to the Press, within less than half an hour of its receipt. An expert shorthand writer, his most important despatches are often written swiftly in this medium. He does not even scorn to be an expert typist. Many of his most important despatches have been written by this mechanical means in the still hours of the morn-

DESCENT AND EARLY LIFE. The President, who will be (52 years of age on (he 28th of this month, is of Scotch-lrish descent. His father —also a professor —was the son of an Ulster emigrant, who left County Down in 1807 to obtain employment as a compositor in Philadelphia, and who died a well-to-do newspaper proprietor. His mother was the daughter of a Scotch Presbyterian minister, and her earliest years were spent in England.

The President was not taught his alphabet until he was nine years of age, but once his education began in earnest ho soon made up the leeway. He went to Princeton University—of which later he was to become president —in ,1875. He graduated only 41st in a class of 122. The ordinary college routine had no great fascination for him. “He devoted every energy of his mind to its furnishing and training as an authority on government, the history of government, and leadership in public life. Chatham, Burke, Brougham, and Bagelot were his first favourites —Burke first of all.” In those days he was a passionate Free Trader. One-of the great Princeton prizes is offered for an extemporaneous debate. The subject in Wilson’s day was “Protection versus Free Trade.” He drew from a hat a slip which required him to speak in favour of Protection. It was too severe a lest for his conscience. He tore up the slip, refused to debate—and lost the prize. • FROM LAW TO LITERATURE. When he had qualified as a lawyer he started in practice with a partner in Atlanta, Georgia. As no clients came along in 18 months, the partnership was dissolved. It was during this period that Wilson began to write. His first considerable • work, “A Study of Government by Committee,” achieved instant success. It encouraged him to propose marriage to' Helen Louise Axon, whom he had known from babyhood, That was in 1885.

Ho left Princeton as a student in. 1879. Twenty-two years later he Woodrow Wilson ■ —2 returned to be its president. There, as everywhere else, he was a reformer. He strove to make the university a place in which to work, not to idle. His methods aroused bitter antagonism. He was accused of being a revolutionary. He left the university owing to his refusal to accept a large money gift wherewith to erect palatial buildings. He would not be a party to (he acceptance of gifts which would take the education policy of the university out of the hands of the faculty and put it in the hands of those who gave the money. The episode which closed his academic career opened the door to politics. He was chosen to he Democratic candidate for the Governorship of New Jersey. All the “bosses’-' opposed him. But his speeches, denounced as visionary, gripped the people, and he turned a minority of 82,000 votes into a majority of 49,000. His brilliant success as Governor of New Jersey placed him well in the running for the Presidency. A clamour arose for him from all parts of the Union. “People of all parties began to speak of him as a new leader who was to usher in an era of clean administration and pure government. But he was regarded by the party managers as a dangerous man.” No stone was left unturned to defeat him, but he was triumphantly returned after a campaign of unprecedented .bitterness.

AN ACCESSIBLE PRESIDENT. Before "Wilson went to the "While House it was the hardest matter to get an interview with, the President of the United States. The entrance was jealously guarded, and people of importance were filtered through apartment after apartment until finally they reached the, presence — not of the President himself, but of his secretary. After this, if their importance was sufficient, they managed to get audience of; the President. Even then the visit was largely one of ceremony. But President Wilson changed all this. Before the war, anyone who had any rca,l business in hand had direct access to his secretary, Mr Tumulty, in whose discretion it was to arrange interviews with the President himself. These are carried out with timetable exactness. Mr Wilson is an ideal listener. His reply is instant and satisfying. “There was not an irrelevant word,” said one visitor, (-(lining away; “he listened like a judge, and answered instantly, speaking precisely to the subject I had raised, and not to some other subject.’

Newspaper men slip in and out of Mr Tumulty’s office to “keep in touch." The whole place runs as, smoothly as a highly organised business concern. There is only one kind of visitor whom the President will not see ■ —the “pie hunter," the man who wants some job from the Administration. J-'or him the President has no lime at all.