his progress for a time, and one Sunday in a great New York political club sat from morning to night among the books he had written, in which some of his principles were expounded. They showed a new way of thinking; they gave a hint about a new possibility for the future. One could not doubt that this man was meant to lead America, and, with the Old World showing signs of a new emancipation, of leading perhaps something more than America. Only a few others had noticed in the past what a remarkable personality and mind was here, and what its prospects might be. First to do so was Colonel George Harvey, editor of the North American Review, who nominated him for a future presidency in 1906, and five years later described him as "Woodrow Wilson, the highly Americanized Scotch-Irishman, descended from Ohio, born in Virginia, developed in Maryland, married in Georgia, and now delivering from bondage that faithful old democratic commonwealth, the state of New Jersey." This bright summary by the American editor indicates an origin and early career of peculiar interest; but there was none of that special romance that it is the delight of a certain class of sentimentalists to associate with the youth of those who were afterwards great. Young Wilson was not a dreamer; no past President gave him a dollar and told him that one day he would be President too; the boy himself did not devote all his leisure hours to the study of the lives of such as Washington, and he made no dramatic declarations to his parents. And yet in the consideration of the origin of Woodrow Wilson, the PresiIdent of the United States, there is romance enough. What an odd mixture he is!-Scots, Irish, American, and so forth, as Colonel Harvey said. His grandfather on the paternal side

self.

lived in County Down, Ireland, and a hundred and ten years ago went to Philadelphia to better things for himHis other grandfather was the Rev. Thomas Woodrow, a Scottish Presbyterian minister, who held an appointment for a long time at Carlisle, and then moved first to Canada, and afterwards to Ohio, where he held a pastorate. The youngest of the seven sons of the Irishman turned towards the ministry for a career, and was licensed to a post at Steubenville Male Academy. There he, Joseph Ruggles Wilson, came to acquaintance with Parson Thomas Woodrow's daughter Janet, who was a pupil at the companion academy for girls. They became friends, lovers, and married. The President was their third child, two daughters having come before, and he was born at Staunton, Virginia, in the last week of 1856. The little family had moved to Georgia at the time the Civil War broke out, Mr. Wilson having accepted a pastorate at Augusta. The boy Woodrow was only four years old at that stirring time, and retains but few impressions of it; but the earliest recollection of his whole life is that of some men shouting in the street outside his father's house that Lincoln had been elected and there would be war. One day, as he remembers, he saw a number of Confederates riding through the town on their way to join the army, and he recalls Jefferson Davis passing through in 1865 on his way to imprisonment. His father was a stanch Southerner, but the family came into little contact with the great struggle. It made no impression at the time on this boy; but yet the Civil War inevitably had a tremendous effect on his mind, his temperament, his thoughts and ideals. It wound up every spring in him, and set him alive and burning for zealous action when the time came for him to go out into

the world a man.

That was because by the time he was grown up America was passing through that magnificent inspiring period of building and reconstruction under the new unity. The great fabric of mighty and industrious America was being prepared with amazing vigor. Young Wilson saw it at work, and any man with a germ of the statesman in him was bound to be enormously impressed and stimulated. He was. And at the same time he began to feel that destiny might have something for him; he thought of the presidency, and he determined to direct himself towards law and politics. His education was slow in starting. His father did not believe in forcing in these matters, and he was past nine years of age before he could read; but the pastor, in his careful companionship with his boy, had been affording him training of no small value. They had long walks together; they visited workshops and factories where great object lessons were presented, and at other times in the evenings the father read aloud to the members of his family chapters from Scott and Dickens. Then, after four years at an academy at Atlanta, he was sent to Davidson College, North Carolina, but left after a year through ill-health. In 1875 he proceeded to Princeton University, and there a passion for the study of history and politics took hold of him. He read deeply into Chatham and Burke, and in his fourth year he was regarded as the best speaker and debater at the College. This led to a strange and, as some might say, a significant incident. There was an annual debate at Princeton between two rival debating societies, and that there should be no preparation and that the full capacity of the participants might be tested, both the subject and the debating part in it to be taken by each side were chosen by lot. The rival societies

each put forth a champion, and then the subject and the side were determined by hazard. Wilson was selected by his society, and when the slips of paper were drawn it was ordained that the question should be that of Protection against Free Trade, and, further, that Wilson should urge the case of Protection against the other. He would not do so much violence to his convictions, even though it were but an academic exercise; he tore up his commission and abandoned the debate.

When his university career was completed he tried to settle to the practice of the law, with a partner, but this arrangement was soon abandoned. He determined to teach law instead, took a post-graduate course, and was then appointed lecturer in history and political economy at a women's college near Philadelphia. Some time later he was appointed to the chair of jurisprudence and politics at Princeton, and in 1902 he became president of the university, a position of the utmost control and authority. Now he entered upon his career as a reformer. He set about changing the system of instruction, overthrowing traditions, and abolishing abuses. Princeton at that time was a university greatly controlled by the rich, where their sons, living at the clubs they established, devoted themselves far less to educational matters than was desirable. The new president set a higher standard of efficiency; he made rules by which the students found it necessary to study more than they had done, and he established a system of groups, whereby numbers of students were brought into close personal contact for purposes of discussion and tuition with professors, and not left to their own devices after merely attending lectures, as had been the custom. His was a period of great reforming changes such as had never

been known before; but he found strong interests set against him, especially when he attacked the system of the residential clubs and essayed to substitute another that would have made for more efficiency and less luxury. He had defeats to bear; but in 1910 he ascended to a greater reforming task, for then he was nominated, and elected with a plurality of fifty thousand votes, to the governorship of New Jersey. "Absolute good faith in dealing with the people and unhesitating fidelity to every principle avowed is the highest law of political morality in a constitutional government," he said at that time. He purified and strengthened municipal government in his state; he amazed the people by his boldness, his independence, and his daring. The rest of the world was a little surprised when it heard that one Woodrow Wilson was to be a candidate for the presidency, but those knowing him and about him were not surprised. At the great Democratic convention he was selected as the candidate for the party after a sharp contest with others, and, according to the custom at these remarkable gatherings, he was cheered for an hour and a quarter. At the later trial, when the Republican vote was split between Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft, with consequences fatal to them, he was an easy winner. He had 435 electoral votes, the plumping votes, from each state in the electoral college, against the 88 that were given to Roosevelt and the 8 to Taft. The election is not counted this way, but it was reckoned that he had 6,286,987 popular votes against

Chambers's Journal.

Roosevelt's

4,125,804, and Taft's 3,475,813. The electoral figures take no account of minorities, but the others do. The rest is familiar to most of us. Without doubt Mr. Wilson's re-election last year, near thing as it was, meant much for the great cause of the best of the world.

He is not a man to be judged by physiognomy. He looks cold, hard, unemotional, far from humor, but he is not so. No man is more devoted to home life; he has fine warmth of feeling and rare powers of humor. He can tell a little story as well as any American, and they say he commonly opens his meetings of the Cabinet with an anecdote. He has none of the primary "bad habits," as we call them. There was a flutter in Washington when he first went to the White House, and the rumor spread that only grape juice would be set upon the table. But all were happy afterwards He lives a clean life. He is fond of sports and games; he is devoted to cycling, rowing, and golf. At times of great stress of mind during the war he has consistently sought relaxation on the golf-course. But when grappling with a problem he paces his study or the gardens of the White House in solitude for hours. The war has aged the President somewhat, but yet his vitality is enormous. It needs to be. On him, perhaps as much as on any one now alive, does the fate of the world depend. He is handling and controlling the most marvelous, most efficient, and most gigantic force that mankind has ever known.

Henry Leach.

The skippers and the mates, they know! The men aloft or down below They've heard the news and still they go.

The merchant ships still jog along
By Bay or Cape, an endless throng,
As endless as a seaman's song.

The humbler tramps aloft display
The English flag as on the day
When no one troubled such as they.
The lesser ships, barques, schooners,
brigs,

A motley crowd of many rigs,
Go on their way like farmers' gigs.
Where Aeolus himself has thrones
The big four-master Glasgow owns
Through Trades and Roaring Forties
drones.

The lofty liners in their pride,
Stem every current, every tide:
At anchor in all ports they ride.

They signal Gib., which looks and winks;

Grave Malta sees them as she thinks;
They pass old Egypt's ageless Sphinx.

Socotra knows them: Zanzibar
Mirrors them in its oil: they are
Hove to for pilots near and far.

For them Belle Isle and bright Penmarch

Shine million-candled through the dark,
They're inside Ushant, or by Sark.
Perim and Ormuz and Cochin
Know them and nod: the mingled din
Of cities where strange idols grin.
The Westminster Gazette.

The wharves of sea-set Singapore,
Batavia and Colombo's shore
Where over palms the monsoons roar.
The opened ports of shut Japan,
Chemulpo's harbor and Gensan,
Strange places, Chinese, Formosan!
Head hunters watch them in close seas,
Timor, Gillolo, Celebes,

They sail by the New Hebrides.

Their spars are tried by southern gales,
Great alien stars shine on their sails
Set for the breeze or in the brails.
To carry home their golden rape
A thousand courses still they shape
By the lone Horn or windy Cape.
They've seen the hot seas' dreadful
drouth,

The bitter gales of Sixty South,
Disasters fell and greedy mouth:

The menace of the berg and floe,
The blindness of the fog and snow,
All these the English seamen know.
From Sydney to San Salvador
They know what they are seeking for!
Their gods are not the gods of war.
And still they calmly jog along
By Bay and Cape, an endless throng,
As endless as some dog-watch song.
Morley Roberts.

thunder

A revolution is like a storm: there are heat and mutterings beforehand: and those who govern the State ought to know the signs and prevent the danger. Francis Bacon, one of the greatest of lawyerpoliticians (who fell because in his day there was a prejudice against corruption), says some wise things upon this matter.* "The matter of sedition," he says, "is of two kinds: much poverty and much discontentment." And here he adds that "rebellions of the belly are the worst."

*Essay xv, "Of Seditions and Troubles."

He proceeds to a list of causes and motives which I take the liberty of enumerating:

"The causes and motives of seditions are," he says, (1) "Innovation in religion; (2) Taxes; (3) Alteration of laws and customs; (4) Breaking of privileges; (5) General oppression; (6) Advancement of unworthy persons; (7) Strangers (i. e. foreigners); (8) Dearths; (9) Disbanded soldiers; (10) Factions grown desperate; and (11) Whatsoever, in offending people, joineth and knitteth them in a common cause."

All those conditions, which in the opinion of the wisest of men make

trouble in a State, are either with us now or in prospect.

Let us consider them seriatim.

(1) Religion is more frequently the color than the cause of rebellions in a State; innovations are dangerous because they are used as a cry and a banner. The Civil Wars were not about religion, yet religion spread, perplexed, and embittered them. might therefore be wise to allow the Disestablishment of the Church in Wales to drop quietly into the waters of oblivion. It is a minor yet gratuitous addition to our national discontents.

It

(2) When the Colony of Natal was about to levy a poll tax on the Zulus, she was wisely advised by Paul Kruger to get the money by an import tax on blankets. The Zulu would then pay without knowing that he paid. This is one of the several advantages of indirect over direct taxation, that being less noticed it causes less discontent. And there is another advantage in a tariff: it decreases idleness by cherishing manufacturers, and the "cherishing of manufactures" is, according to Bacon, one of the best preventives against sedition. A nation whose industries are flourishing has no time or much cause for sedition: it is such slumps of trade as might be caused by an influx of German goods after the war that put people in the condition and temper to give trouble.

(3) Before the war there was too much liberty in England; after the war there may be too little. In peace the person encroaches upon the State; in war the State upon the person. Nations are like fagots, to be strong they must be bound together. To preserve our national freedom we must lose our individual liberties. The gain is greater than the loss, or it is at least certain that if we lose the first we cannot preserve the second. The Russians are foolish to celebrate

the liberty of the individual when the nation is in danger of being enslaved. To make bonfires at the capital with the invader in your territory; to rejoice over freedom while your fellow-countrymen are prisoners; solemnly to renounce conquests which you have not made and to proclaim liberties which you cannot secure- -this is not conduct well calculated to make a people free. If we desire to maintain our independence we must submit to discipline; but in a nation like ours long used to license, the change is bound to breed discontent.

(4) And so with customs and privileges. The Trade Unions have been persuaded to surrender some of those safeguards which they substituted for the protection of our ancient tariffs and wage boards. When the State ceased to protect the workmen against exploitation, the workmen were right to protect themselves. But war unprepared for means work at high pressure or destruction. The Trade Unions were therefore persuaded to relax their customs, and the agitator is busy telling them that what they have surrendered will never be restored. The politicians try to reassure them, but the worst of a politician is, he has lied so much to become one that he is never trusted afterwards. If our manufacturers had been left to handle the situation themselves, there would have been less trouble; but labor was put in the hands of civil servants and politicians, whose method was to take warning from nobody and do nothing. If the Munitions Department had been exploited with the design of fomenting discontent, the thing could not have been better done. Until British employers are restored to their rightful place in the counsels of the State, and until politicians give up fishing for votes in the pool of industry, we shall not get rid of this trouble. And this is the greater pity, since our