When, on March 4, 1913, Woodrow Wilson entered the White House, the first Democratic president elected in twenty years, no one could have guessed the importance of the rôle which he was destined to play. While business men and industrial leaders bewailed the mischance that had brought into power a man whose attitude towards vested interests was reputed none too friendly, they looked upon him as a temporary inconvenience. Nor did the increasingly large body of independent voters, disgusted by the

Despite the wars and rumors of wars in Europe after 1910, few Americans perceived the gathering of the clouds, and probably not one in ten thousand felt more than an ordinary thrill of interest on the morning of June 29, 1914, when they read that the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria had been assassinated. Nor, a month later, when it became obvious that the resulting crisis was to precipitate another war in the Balkans, did most Americans realize that the world was hovering on the brink of mom

Early in the winter of 1914-1915 President Wilson apparently foresaw something of the complications likely to arise from the measures and counter-measures taken by the belligerents to secure control of overseas commerce, and sent his personal adviser, Colonel House, across the Atlantic to study the possibilities of reaching a modus vivendi . There was no man so well qualified for the mission. Edward Mandell House was a Texan by birth, but a cosmopolitan by nature. His hobby was practical politic

The Government of the German Empire was inspired by a spirit that was at once modern and medieval, and this contradictory spirit manifested itself in the ways and means employed to win the sympathy of the United States and to prevent it, as a neutral power, from assisting the Entente. Germany worked on the one hand by means of open propaganda, which is the method of modern commercial advertisement translated into the political field, and on the other by secret intrigue reminiscent of the days of

The presidential campaign of 1916, taken in conjunction with the increasing tension of European relations, forced Wilson to a further development of his international ideals and a more definite formulation of the means by which to attain them. As we have observed, the spring of that year saw him reject the doctrine of isolation. "We are participants," he said on the 27th of May, "whether we would or not, in the life of the world. The interests of all nations are our own also. We are partners wit

When Congress declared that the United States was in a state of war with Germany, on April 6, 1917, the public opinion of the country was unified to a far greater extent than at the beginning of any previous war. The extreme patience displayed by President Wilson had its reward. When the year opened the majority of citizens doubtless still hoped that peace was possible. But German actions in February and March had gone far towards the education of the popular mind, and the final speeches of the

On May 18, 1917, President Wilson issued a proclamation in which are to be found the following significant sentences: In the sense in which we have been wont to think of armies there are no armies in this struggle, there are entire nations armed. Thus, the men who remain to till the soil and man the factories are no less a part of the army that is in France than the men beneath the battle flags. It must be so with us. It is not an army that we must shape and train for war—it is a Nation. To this

The encouragement given to the Allies by the entrance of the United States into the war injected a temporary ray of brightness into the situation abroad, but with the realization that long months must elapse before American aid could prove effective, came deep disappointment. The spring of 1917 did not bring the expected success to the French and British on the western front; and the summer and autumn carried intense discouragement. Hindenburg, early in the spring, executed a skillful retreat on

The armistice of November 11, 1918, resulted directly from the military defeat of German armies in France, following upon the collapse of Turkey, Bulgaria, and Austria-Hungary. But there were many circumstances other than military that led to Germany's downfall, and by no means of least importance were the moral issues so constantly stressed by Wilson. His speeches had been carefully distributed through the Central Empires; they had done much to arouse the subject peoples of Austria-Hungary to r

On Friday, December 13, 1918, the George Washington steamed slowly into Brest harbor through a long double line of gray battleships and destroyers, greeted by the thunder of presidential salutes and the blare of marine bands. Europe thrilled with emotion, which was half curiosity and half genuine enthusiasm: it was to see and applaud the man who during the past eighteen months had crystallized in speech the undefined thought of the Allied world, who represented (at least in European eyes) the st

Whatever mistakes President Wilson made at Paris, he did not greatly underestimate the difficulties of his task when he set forth from the United States. The liberal utterances of the Allied chiefs during the war had never succeeded in winning his sincere confidence; more than once he had even intimated that he did not consider their governments completely representative of public opinion. He anticipated a struggle with Clemenceau and Lloyd George over the amount of indemnity which was to be dem

President Wilson's success in securing approval for the League as the basis of the Peace Treaty was his greatest triumph at Paris; and it was accentuated by the acceptance of certain of the amendments that were demanded in America, while those which the French and Japanese insisted upon were discarded or postponed. In comparison with this success, he doubtless regarded his concessions in the matter of reparations and the special Franco-British-American alliance as mere details. His task, however

Neither President Wilson nor those who had been working with him at Paris seriously feared that, after securing the point of chief importance to him at the Conference, he would fail to win support for the League of Nations and the treaty at home. They recognized, of course, that his political opponents in the Senate would not acquiesce without a struggle. The Republicans were now in the majority, and Henry Cabot Lodge, the new chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, had gone far in his e

By the accident of history the Presidency of Woodrow Wilson, which he designed to utilize for a series of social reforms, was characterized by the supreme importance of foreign affairs. Whatever the significance of the legislative enactments of his first year of office, he will be remembered as the neutrality President, the war President, and the peace President. Each phase of his administration represents a distinct aspect of his policy and called into prominence distinct aspects of his charact

Thus far no adequate biography of President Wilson, covering his career through the Peace Conference, has been published. The most suggestive is Henry Jones Ford's Woodrow Wilson: The Man and His Work (1916) which stops with the close of the first term. The author, a Princeton professor, is a warm personal and political admirer of the President, but he makes a definite attempt at critical appreciation. W. E. Dodd's Woodrow Wilson and His Work (1920) is comprehensive and brings the story to the e