Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters, Vols. Iii, Iv

THE MAN of the MONTH

[Doubleday, Doran, $10.00]

THERE are long waits between the acts of Mr. Baker’s drama of Woodrow Wilson. Four years have passed since the first act, in the form of Volumes I and II (‘Youth’ and ’Princeton’), was presented. The second is now ended. If the curtain is to fall at last upon a third act, with a volume to each of two scenes under some such designations as ‘War’ and ‘Peace,’ it is much to be hoped that the wait will be reduced in length. Even Eugene O’Neill, were he to cast a drama in the form of biography, would hesitate to demand eight years of his audience.

It is a happy circumstance that these new volumes appear precisely when they do — on the eve of a Presidential campaign. By no means their least virtue lies in their sharp illustration of what a positive and aggressive leadership may mean in the political life of America. More than twenty years have passed since Wilson made his plunge from the cloisters of a university into the arena of politics. From the very beginning of this new, and final, stage of his existence, lie embodied for the American public, nearly evenly divided between violent antagonists and enthusiastic supporters of his views, the tonic value of definite ideas, grounded in reasoned conviction, presented with all the force of a trained mind and an ardent spirit, only the more effectively for the employment, provocative to friends and foes alike, of an extraordinary gift of expression both in speech and in writing.

Of course Mr. Baker is a sympathetic biographer. But he is considerably more than that. His long experience in ‘the higher journalism’ has equipped him with a remarkable knowledge of the backgrounds against which the figure of Wilson must be studied — the backgrounds of state and national politics, with all the bewildering array of campaigns, conventions, political appointments, and manifold exertions of influence upon legislation and public opinion. The portrait demands a gigantic canvas, to which Mr. Baker has brought a remarkable advantage of familiarity and command.

The character of Wilson himself provides, however, the central interest of the picture, or rather of the drama, for it is still that unfinished product of record and interpretation to which these new volumes make their most notable contribution. The Wilson enigma is not likely, for a long time to come, to meet with an entirely satisfactory solution. Yet Mr. Baker has placed before students of the subtleties of human character the largest yet available store of that authentic autobiographical material on which a true estimate of the intrinsic man can be based.

Friends and foes may draw different conclusions from this material. It would be a poor friend who did not welcome the frankness with which Mr. Baker has spread it before the public. Here, for example, stands forth that quality of iron which could bring its possessor to partings with friends — and friends were his dearest treasure — when the continuance of friendship blocked the accomplishment of an object on which his determination was set. The New Jersey boss who called him a ‘Presbyterian priest’ suggested a quality which cannot be ignored. Over against this strain of iron stands, on Mr. Baker’s equally open showing, a quality of sensitiveness in personal relationships which suffers no derogation if it is frankly called feminine in its nature. Wilson’s extraordinarily happy domestic life, entirely feminine but for himself, was supplemented by close friendships with women, to whom he turned, by no means least in times of stress, for ’unarguing sympathy.’ This, which he craved, he received in full measure — a boon notoriously charged with dangers. It was to no single ‘dearest friend’ but to many, including a few friends of his own sex, that he wrote such letters as only a lover of the romantic and the poetic could pour forth.

Mr. Baker’s work as a whole is singularly temperate in tone. He refrains from those extremes of eulogy of his subject and of railing against the holders of opposing views which have been among the misfortunes of Wilson at the hands of his friends. The conclusion of the author’s enormous task appears more clearly than ever among the most desirable objects of American history and biography. A figure with attributes of genuine greatness, though not without its human fallibilities, is emerging with steadily increasing clarity. What wonder that there are some who go on saying, — especially as they contemplate the earlier achievements of political leadership, — ‘Thou shouldst be living at this hour!’

M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE