Part 1 (1/2)

Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him

by Joseph P Tu this volu books: ”The War The World and Wilson” by George Creel; ”What Wilson Did at Paris,” by Ray Stannard Baker; ”Woodrow Wilson and His Work” by William E

Dodd; ”The Panah Gordon Miller and Joseph C Freehoff; ”Woodrow Wilson the Man and His Work” by Henry Jones Ford; ”The Real Colonel House” by Arthur D Howden Sar E Robinson and Victor J West In addition, I wish tobooks for incidental assistance: ”My Four Years in Germany” by James W Gerard; ”Woodrow Wilson, An Interpretation” by A Maurice Low; ”A People Awakened”

by Charles Reade Bacon; ”Woodrow Wilson” by Hester E Hosford; ”What Really Happened at Paris,” edited by Edward Mandell House and Charles Seymour, and above all, to the public addresses of Woodrow Wilson I myself had furnished considerable data for various books on Woodrow Wilson and have felt at liberty to uide posts for my own narrative

PREFACE

Woodrow Wilson prefers not to be written about His enemies may, and of course will, say what they please, but he would like to have his friends hold their peace He seems to think and feel that if he hi, his friends should be equally stoical

He made this plain in October, 1920, when he learned that I had slipped away froht shortly before the election and made a speech about him in a little Maryland town, Bethesda

He did not read the speech, I am sure he has never read it, but the fact that I had made any sort of speech about hi association with hi, but his silence was vocal

I suspect this book will share the fate of the Bethesda speech, will not be read by Mr Wilson If this seee to those who do not know him personally, I can only say that ”Woodrow Wilson is made that way” He cannot dramatize himself and shrinks from attempts of others to dramatize him ”I will not write about e him to publish his own story of the Paris Peace Conference He craves the silence fro to leave the assessment and interpretation of hi all this I have not consulted him about this book Yet I have felt that the book should be written, because I am anxious that his contemporaries should know him as I have known him, not only as an individual but also as the advocate of a set of great ideas and as the leader of great movements If I can picture him, even imperfectly, as I have found him to be, both in himself and in his relationshi+p to important events, I must believe that the portrait will correct some curious misapprehensions about him

For instance, there is a prevalent idea, an innocently ignorant opinion in some quarters, an all too sedulously cultivated report in other quarters, that he has been unifor, impatient of advice, his mind hermetically closed to counsel from others This book will expose the error of that opinion; will sho, in his oords, his estions and criticism Indeed I fear that unless the reader ponders carefully what I have written he lean the opposite idea, that sometimes the President had to be prodded to action, and that I represent myself as the chief prodder

The superficial reader may find countenance lent to this latter view in the many notes of information and advice which I addressed to the President and in the record of his subsequent actions which were more or less in accord with the counsel contained in some of these notes If the reader deduces froator of some of the President's important policies, he will misinterpret the facts and the President's character andto represent ator he willthese notes

These motives are: first, to tell the story of my association with Mr

Wilson, and part of the record is contained in these notes; secondly, to shohat liberty he allowedoffended, he welcoe I exercised it

I conceived it as part of my duty as his secretary and friend to report to hiathered these froest modes of action These notes were memoranda for my chief's consideration

The reader will see how frankly critical some of these notes are The mere fact that the President permitted me to continue to write to him in a vein of candour that was frequently brusque and blunt, is the conclusive answer to the charge that he resented criticism

Contrary to the misrepresentations, he had from time to time many advisers In most instances, I do not possess written reports of what others said orally and in writing, and therefore in this record, which is essentially concerned with my own official and personal relations with hi influence This is neither the fact nor my intention The public acts of Mr Wilson were frequently mosaics, made up of his own ideas and those of others My written notes were merely stones offered for the mosaic Sometimes the stones were rejected, sometimes accepted and shaped by the master builder into the pattern

It was a habit of Mr Wilson's toaction, to listen to advice without co whether or not the idea broached by others had already occurred to him We who knew him best knew that often the idea had occurred to hiht out more lucidly than any adviser could state it But he would test his own views by the touchstone of other minds' reactions to the situations and probleet the ”slant” of otherAn admirer once said: ”You could shut him up in an herht decision,” but as a ht counsel and considered it and acted on it or disment, for the responsibility for the final action was his, and he was boldly prepared to accept that responsibility and conscientiously careful not to abuse it by acting rashly While he would on occasion make momentous decisions quickly and decisively, the habitual character of his mind was deliberative He wanted all the facts and so far as possible the contingencies Younger men like myself could counsel i we knew that he would, without haste and without waste, cal fro froarded himself as the ”trustee of the people,” who should not act until he was sure he was right and should then act with the decision and finality of fate itself

Of another misapprehension, namely, that Mr Wilson lacks human warmth, I shall let the book speak without much prefatory coe froes a human-hearted man, a man whose passion it was to serve mankind In his daily intercourse with individuals he showed uniforh he did not have in his possession the little bag of tricks which some politicians use so effectively: he did not clap men on their backs, call them by their first names, and profess to each individual he met that of all the men in the world this was the man whom he most yearned to see Perhaps he was too sincere for that; perhaps by nature too reserved; but I am convinced that he who reads this book will feel that he has reat brain, but also by a great heart I did not invent this character

I observed him for eleven years

WOODROW WILSON AS I KNOW HIM