AMONG the great political figures of our day, none has occupied so unique and spectacular a position as did President Wilson at the moment when the Allies, almost against hope, found themselves masters of the world on 11th November 1918. He was the chief magistrate of a nation whose decisive intervention had turned the tide of war, and made victory over the German alliance possible if only the strength and endurance of the nations whose sons had borne the burden and heat of the day, would rise to the height of a great opportunity. Not only was the President the chief magistrate of the great Republic that stood not yet as a fighter upon whose heart has fallen the chill of war-weariness, that was still mobilizing with marvellous enthusiasm its vast resources; but, throughout 1918, he had won for himself the fascinated attention of all who demanded an articulate voice, some formulation of the desire to escape from the nightmare that raged around them. In the great pronouncements of the President on the objects of the war, they found the formulation, the rationalization that made him the veritable prophet of a new and better world. Yet, because of the half-hysterical hopes he inspired, more was demanded of him in those days than flesh and blood could compass. Judged by such grandiose standards, his greatest achievements have shrunk to the dimensions of failure, and one who seemed to be the unchallenged master of events in those days of fevered hope, has been represented since as the mere toy and sport of circumstance and of his own idiosyncracies and vanity. It is safe to say that no man who has ever held the destinies of men for any time in his hands has escaped, or ever can escape, such charges. This song of the permanent Greek chorus of scoffers is sometimes true, sometimes justified, more often mere noise; in the case of President Wilson the chorus has been corybantic as well as vociferous. But the chorus has recruited not alone the irresponsible idealists who live by exploiting their disappointments, but many sober onlookers who lay to the charge of President Wilson the evils of the "Carthaginian Peace." The best way of testing, and perhaps correcting, such a judgment, is not to discuss directly and polemically this or that charge directed against this or that policy, but to try to reconstruct, however summarily, the life in time and, as it developed, of the historical figure round whose acts and days controversy has circled. So policies and programmes come to have a background, and cease to lie about as mere disjecta membra. Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born at Staunton, Virginia, on 28th December 1856. He came of a Scottish-Irish stock, and both his father's and his mother's family had settled in the United States as emigrants from the United Kingdom during the first half of the century. His paternal grandfather, James Wilson, a young emigrant from County Down, had come to Philadelphia, then the capital of the States, in 1807, and there had obtained employment in the office of William Duane, the famous editor of the Aurora. After the Peace of Ghent in 1812, which ended the second war of the States and Great Britain, James Wilson went to Pittsburg, and from there to Steubenville, in the newly founded State of Ohio. At Steubenville he founded The Western Herald, and in 1832 followed up this successful journalistic effort by starting The Pennsylvania Advocate in Pittsburg. He continued to direct both papers to his death in 1857.1 Altogether, this active and influential journalist, who was also a J.P.-from which office he was usually known as Judge Wilson-" must be held responsible for a goodly portion of the printed wisdom and folly of the early nineteenth century in the States." 2 Judge James Wilson brought up every one of his seven sons at Steubenville to be an expert compositor, which suggests that this vigorous personality, far-famed for the definiteness of his opinions, had practical views on the education of children and the desirability of fitting them into pre-arranged grooves. At Steubenville his youngest son, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, the father of the President, was born on 28th February 1822. Joseph Ruggles was the scholar of the family. After graduating he taught for some time at a school; later he was ordained a minister of the Presbyterian Church in which he had been brought up. Throughout his distinguished career he oscillated curiously between an academic and a pastoral calling. From 1851-5 he was Professor of Chemistry and Natural Science in Hampden Sydney College, Virginia; from 1858-70 he was pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Augusta, Georgia; 1870-4 Professor of Pastoral and Evan"Woodrow Wilson: The Man and his Work," p. 2. 2 Hale, "Woodrow Wilson: The Story of his Life," p. 9. 1 Ford, gelistic Theology, Columbia, South Carolina Theological Seminary; 1874-85 Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Wilmington, North Carolina; 1885-93 Professor of Theology in the South-West Presbyterian University, Clarksville, Tennessee. He was Permanent Clerk of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the South, 1865-99, and served as Moderator in 1879.1 In 1849, just before his ordination, Joseph Ruggles Wilson married Janet Woodrow, the daughter of Dr Thomas Woodrow, and as we have seen, their third child and first son, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, was born in 1856. Dr Thomas Woodrow, the maternal grandfather of the President, had been born at Paisley in Scotland in 1793. After graduating at Glasgow he was ordained a minister of the Presbyterian Church, thereby conforming to the tradition of his family, which numbered many ministers and more than one martyr in the "killing times." 2 Not long after his ordination he crossed the Tweed to accept the call to be pastor of the Independent Congregation at Carlisle, where he served from 1819-35. In the latter year he decided to emigrate with his family and embark on missionary work in Canada, where he worked for a year or so, before accepting the call to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian Church of Chillicothe, Ohio. He served at Chillicothe from 1837-49, when he went to Columbus, where he was a minister to his death in 1877. The history of the Presbytery of Chillicothe describes Dr Woodrow as "a fine scholar, a good preacher, and especially powerful in prayer. He was conservative in his views and thoroughly Presbyterian in his belief. His sermons were always instructive and pointed. He loved to dwell on the great cardinal doctrines of the Gospel and to proclaim them in their simplicity and fulness." 3 Thomas Woodrow Wilson was then a son of the manse." He came of a race of scholars, ministers, editors, and men of enterprise. He was born into a strongly Presbyterian tradition. His father was a pastor, his mother's father-who seems to have won the affections and captured the imagination of the boy-was also a pastor. If we are to believe the testimony of the "Dictionary of National Biography," the sons 1 Ford, "Woodrow Wilson: The Man and his Work," pp. 4-5. |