ILLUSTRATIONS SIGNING THE PEACE TREATY, JUNE 28, Photographed before completion from the WOODROW WILSON From a photograph. EDWARD MANDELL HOUSE From an etching in possession of the author. GENERAL PERSHING Photographed before completion from the HERBERT HOOVER From the painting by Edmund C. Tarbell, ADMIRAL SIMS From the painting by Irving R. Wiles, N.A. WOODROW WILSON AND THE WORLD WAR CHAPTER I WILSON THE EXECUTIVE 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 "stand-pattism" of the Republican machine, regard Wilson much more seriously; rather did they place their confidence in a reinvigoration of the Grand Old Party through the |