WOODROW WILSON

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 154, 22 February 1932, Page 6

WOODROW WILSON

AMERICAN VIEW COMBIN ATION OF MACHIAVELLI, BISMARCK AND GLADSTONE. EXTRAORDIN ARY CHARAGTER. The picture of Woodrow Wilson entertained by the average Englishman is that of an estimable, and doubtless able, university professor who, having by a curious fluke become President of the United States at one of the greatest crises of the world's history, essayed to remodel the world on principles of academic idealism; was as a matter of course outwitted at every turn by the more astute and less scrupulous statesmen of wily old Europe; 'was thereupon repudiated by his own people, and died a disappointed and discredited man (writes Donald Casswell, in "John o' London's Weekly"). But it would be hard to find, even among his most bitter political opponents — "and surely the Tartar should know" — any American who shares that easy view. Woodrow Wilson's character is extraordinarily puzzling. Some of the acutest American students of men and politics have quite ffankly given it up as a bad job. But they are agreed on one point: That, whatever Woodrow Wilson was, he was no visiohary weakling, and that in political strategy he eould make the professional bosses look simply silly. Luck and Skill. He had luck, of course, but men ofdestiny always have. He ran for President when Roosevelt decided to split the Republican vote, thereby ensuring a Republican victory. That was luck, but his re-election for a second term in a straight fight was the reward of consummate political skill. To what was it all directed?

v A bold attempt to answer this question is made in "'Wilson the Unknown: An Explanation of an Enigma of History." The author's name is given as "Wells Wells," but this, the publishers explain, is a pseudonym that conceals the identity of a well known corporation lawyer. "Wells Wells" is a Republican who voted Democrat in 1912, but not in 1916. The "mugwump" mind, though it is a plague to party politicians, is all to the good in one who assays an exposition of political events, especially when they are comparatively recent. "Wells Wells" cannot bring himself to like Wilson, but he cheers him with all ' the perverse enthusiasm of the ranks of Tuscany. No Mistakes. According to him, Wilson was cold, self-centred, repellent, unscrupulous, subtle, and sagacious beyond all his contemporaries, and absolutely clear about his aims, which he kept to himself — in short, a combination of Machiavelli, Bismarck, and Gladstone, with more than a dash of Lenin. "Wells Wells' strains our credulity by his insistence that Wilson never made a mistake, not even in Paris, and that all his apparent "gaffes" were carefully calculated moves in a very long game.

"Wells Wells" can write admirably when he chooses — his exposition of the American view of the maritime rights of neutrals is a model of its kind — but as a rule his eagerness to be dreadfully bright is too much for him. Hence such flowers of rhetoric as "the Grand old multungulate mammal was berserker," which in the English tongue means simply that the Republican Party was very angry. ,