THE CLOSE OF AN EPOCH.

Taranaki Daily News, 7 May 1921, Page 11

THE CLOSE OF AN EPOCH.

AMERICAN REVELATIONS - *r THE ROLE OF EX-PRESIDENT WILSON. William Roscoe Thayer in the current issue of the North American Review and in an article entitled “The Close of an Epoch” unburdens his soul with regard to President Wilson, permitting to himself a freedom of speech even now unusual and at one time dangerous. The outbreak of war, he says, seemed to bring to the President the great opportunity, of his career. Appealing for the abandonment of partisan politics, he himself redoubled his political activities: “The truth is that by this time the President’s keen eyes had discovered a new opening for his ambition. He thought, at the beginning, that the war would soon be over and that the belligerents would turn to him as mediator. To shine with- posterity as the mediator of the greatest war in history might well dazzle even a self-satisfied college professor. In order to be invited to stand on this high pinnacle, therefore, he must see to it that the United States did nothing to displease Germany, which would be one of he principals in the expected mediation. Mr. Wilson had pounded the doctrine of neutrality “even in mind” so persistently into his fel-low-countrymen that he did not, as was often his custom, openly contradict it by his own actions. He did not come out boldly in favor of the Germans, but at the time, and until the end of the war, he showed, now stronger, now weaker, pro-German preferences. Count Bernstorff the German ambassador, was a frequent and welcome visitor at the

White House until the beginning of 1918. And we have evidence enough aireddy, to justify the assertion that the President was always busy concocting some scheme for peace which should favor the Germans. Of course the sinking of the Lusitania gave the true test of Wilson’s inmost feelings. That monstrous crime, before which the world stood aghast and held its breach in horror—that crime which Nana Sahib himself might have shrunk from committing—touched Mr. Wilson so little, either by its atrocity or by its significance that he could complaisancly roll off on his type-writer a message to Germany in which he spoke of ljer well-known reputation for “justice and humanity;” and for nearly two years thereafter, he never managed to sum up more courage than to say. “Tut! tut!” to the most barbarous of the German acts.”

When war was eventually declared the President seemed to think that it

was his war. Having resisted every effort for preparation, he none the less assumed the sole merit for achievement: “The Secretary of War, Mr. Baker, achieved notoriety by declaring, “Thank

God, we are unprepared!”—the most fatuous remark made in our time, or perhaps in any other. What should we

say to a surgeon, who on being called to perform a capital operation should ex-

claim, “Thank God, I have no instruments”? Or of a fire commissioner who on the breaking out a conflagration which threatened to destroy his .city, should shout. “Thank God, we are unprepared, we haven’t an engine or a fireman in the service?” Most surgeons and most fire commissioners do not start as Newton D. Bakers. The appalling fact is, however, that Baker merely put into words President Wilson’s policy of unpreparedness during the more than

thirty months since the war began. What a fine thing it was then to talk that way to Sunday-school classes and to “uplift” ministers! But when the scourge came and our boys died by thousands in battle because we were unprepared, or of preventable disease, because we were unprepared, do you think that their mothers and fathers, their wives and sisters and sweethearts, their children and friends, got satisfaction from Mr. Wilson’s mawkish fall-

acy?” The President, in spite of his inflexibility on thp league of nations, was easily worked by Lloyd George and Clemenceau, who found no difficulty in shaping his policies to their own ends: “Sometimes it happened, of course, that the English and French prime ministers found adulation and bamboozling insufficient: then they adopted other means. President Wilson had gone abroad filled with a passion for the freedom of the seas. That shining Prussian casuist, Dr. Dernberg, had taught him that “British Navalism” was not

less harmful than German Militarism. But from the time Mr. Wilson first met Mr. Lloyd George till now, the President had, not lisped a word About “Naval-

ism;” one would like to know how the Welsh statesman enlightened him. M. Clemenceau, also, did not always sprinkle orange-flower water over his

conversations with Mr. Wilson. But these experiences took place in private. The President insisted on open diplomacy—in all cases where his superiority could be recorded.” America went to war for self-preserv-ation, and not to make the world safe for democracy nor to abolish the principle of the balance of power: “Equally Pharisaical is the assertion that we

went to war to make the world safe for democracy. No doubt, if the Germans

were victorious, Democracy would fare badly in the world. But our regiments held no purpose so definite as President Wilson’s words imply; and after all, who was he to pose as a spokesman of democracy? Woodrow Wilson has done more to denature and destroy democracy in the United States than all our enemies have been able to do since our government was founded in 1789. As I write these lines he exercises an autocracy which the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs would have envied.” Even at the time when the President was incapacitated he was still able to interfere autocratically with the affairs of Europe. “In the midst of his campaign illness cut short his activity. For months he was incapable of performing the ordinary duties of* a President, by any fair interpretation of what the Constitution

regarded as “incapacity.” We recognised the Wilsonian voice in the amazing message he addressed to Great Britain abusing her for not letting him know certain transactions. The truth was that the special envoy, Viscount Grey, sent by Great Britain to confer with the President, had been allowed to wait four months in Washington, without meeting the President. If this was a proof of capacity, what would incapacity have been? A second letter in which Mr. Wilson cruelly assailed France as being “militaristic” and “imperialistic” in her designs had his unmistakable stamp. Gradually he regained sufficient strength to take part, from his bedroom and study, in the political campaign, and when the Democrats nominated Mr. Cox, President Wilson seems to have equated from him a pro*

mise that he would carry out all the Wilsonian principles and that Article X should not be changed in the doting of an i or the crossing of a t.. It was plain that the illness which had struck him down had rendered him unable to deal with certain series of ideas. Egomania and Article X were obsessions. He repeated his utterances of the year before with parrot-like iteration, and he looked forwad to election day as the day of the “Great and Solemn Referendum,” when the American people should ratify his “Vision” and place him among ths world’s faw supreme mem”