If almost the latest in point of time, President Wilson is the most surprising as well as the most valuable discovery of the Allies. It is hardly an excess of language to say that he is one of the wonders of the War. He has accomplished that which in its way is among the most amazing feats of all history. To put it colloquially, he has swung into line with himself a free people of a hundred millions, the vast majority of whom not only were thoroughly pacific at heart but sincerely thought that their country had no special interest in, far less any vital concern with, the struggle, however much it was convulsing the rest of the world. It took him six months to bring about this prodigious result-not a long period when everything is considered. Events which occurred during these months have doubtless helped him materially, but previous events, not very dissimilar in their nature, had made no strong impression on the mass of American opinion. At the outset it might well have seemed an impossible undertaking. Germany was confident that it was impossible. More than that, she was certain, with that deadly infallibility of hers with respect to men and nations outside the Germanic pale which is one of the things working her ruin, that he would not fight at all. What he had said and done, or left unsaid and undone, in the earlier stages of the War had given Count Bernstorff, her Ambassador at Washington, that conviction, and she herself, counting besides on the Germans and pro-Germans and other factors in her favor in the United States, was of the same mind. For about two years and a half nothing took place seriously to disturb her in that comfortable belief. The feelings of pain and indignation evoked

throughout America by the torpedoing of the Lusitania, in itself as sinister an incident as could be imagined, did not lead the President to take belligerent action. Even when a year later, in his Note of April 1916, after the sinking of the Susser, he went so far as to threaten a rupture of relations, and Germany yielded to his demand for a restriction of submarine warfare, she was in reality as sure as ever that she had read him aright, and accordingly busied herself intensely in building fleets of U-boats-the lack of a sufficient number of which had been the true reason for her compliance. Not that she neglected to take such steps as appeared to her likely to assist him in keeping the path of peace. For example, immediately after the publication of the Sussex Note myriads of telegrams arrived at Washington, as many as a hundred thousand messages being received in a single day, all protesting against war, and all of them, it subsequently came out, inspired by Count Bernstorff and his friends. This was only one of the numerous German plots and intrigues of which the United States had been and was then the field, and some at least of which must have been within Mr. Wilson's cognizance-as Germany knew perfectly, and was confirmed thereby in her conviction that he was not and never would be a fighter. She was to be undeceived, but for several months longer her belief in the unalterable character of the President's devotion to peace could not be said to be other than justified by the course which he adopted.

President Wilson took the stage as the protagonist of peace. In May 1916 he spoke in North Carolina in favor of a negotiated settlement of the War. Later, in the same month, at a

meeting of the League to Enforce Peace, he strongly urged a compromise on the belligerents. He said that the United States was willing to become a partner in any feasible association of the nations, and argued that had such an association existed soon enough the War would never have broken out. The idea of the League, which had been developed by ex-President Taft, had found some support in certain quarters in England, but obtained remarkably little encouragement in the country of its origin. Neither in the United States, which as a whole was still profoundly indifferent about the War, because still profoundly ignorant of the menace to itself that was implicit in it, nor among the Allied peoples, who realized the menace to themselves, and wondered why Americans did not grasp the situation, was there any response worth mentioning to Mr. Wilson's proposals. In any case all such suggestions were quickly lost sight of in the turmoil and excitement of the Presidential election campaign, which started in July 1916. The conflict between the Democrats and the Republicans was of infinitely more absorbing interest than the War, which, however, reacted on the political position. Led by Mr. Wilson, who was standing for re-election, Democrats, with few exceptions, were for peace almost at any price so far as America was concerned, and passionately asserted that the War was Europe's affair, not America's. Mr. Hughes, the Republican candidate, preserved a discreet reticence, but Mr. Roosevelt, one of his principal lieutenants, vigorously denounced the Germans, and pretty plainly indicated that if his party came into power, and he had anything to do with the influencing of its policy, there would be a marked alteration in the attitude of the United States towards the Central

the

Powers. The Republicans as a party were not exactly identified with an attitude of belligerency, for others of their leaders besides Mr. Hughes maintained a diplomatic reserve, but popularly they were credited with views and aims that might involve the country in the War. On the other hand, Mr. Wilson and the Democrats were definitely regarded as the peace party, as unchangeably determined to keep out of the War. Very many Americans, especially in the West and in the South-the East was largely pro-Entente-supported Mr. Wilson's candidature on the specific ground that he had kept the United States at peace and would continue to do so, as they were assured by fervent Democratic orators would be the case. Mr. Wilson's platform rather was that there was nothing in the War, once the submarining was restricted, that necessarily involved America.

At this time the comparative inactivity of the U-boats and the immunity of American vessels from their attacks could be and were adduced as proofs both of Mr. Wilson's wise statesmanship and of the friendship of Germany or, at any rate, of the absence of hostility on her part towards the United States. There would seem to have been no suspicion that the lull in the warfare of the submarines was a screen under cover of which these undersea vessels were being built in very large numbers-with intentions that were anything but amicable with regard to the Americans. In a speech delivered nearly a year afterwards Mr. Lansing, the Secretary of State, practically admitted that this was the fact. Yet in July and again in October of last year the Government and people of the United States saw two strange things happen on their Atlantic coast which might have given them an inkling of what was designed.

The first was the arrival at Norfolk, Virginia, of the ocean-going submarine Deutschland, a U-boat of a new type; she was unarmed, and had a valuable if small cargo; perhaps innocentlooking enough, her real function was to act as a supply-ship, a depot, for the fighting submarines. The second of these strange things was the havoc wrought by the new ocean-going U 53 off the shores of New England on the 7th of October. Here were two indications these large new submarines -of that intensification of the undersea war that was purposed by Germany. Moreover, the coming of the Deutschland informed the Americans that their littoral could easily be reached by the U-boats, and the depredations of U 53 emphatically pointed the moral that the United States would do well to keep out of the War. Republican "stalwarts" like Mr. Roosevelt found a fresh text for their denunciations of the German menace which, they declared, was now brought home to the national consciousness, but the Democratic leaders remained stubbornly pacific.

In that month of October Mr. Wilson, in the course of the electoral campaign, showed by his speeches that he had no belief in the reality of that menace, and that he still had not grasped the essential meaning of the War. Speaking at Omaha he said "The singularity of the present war is that its roots and origins and object never have been disclosed. . . . It will take the long inquiry of history to explain this war." In an address delivered at Cincinnati three weeks later, when the political contest. was at its height, he asked his audience "Have you ever heard what started the present war?" And he answered his query by stating "If you have, I wish you would publish it, because nobody else has, so far as I can gather. Nothing in particular started it. but

everything in general." Needless to say, President Wilson does not use such language now, but the point is that it was just such language as this that procured for him his second term. He was re-elected as a Peace President, with in effect a mandate to keep out of the War. It is only when this is understood that the magnitude of what the writer has characterized as President Wilson's Greatest Achievement can be realized. By his own words, his attitude, and his deeds or the want of them, he had made that achievement supremely difficult, yet he has succeeded in it-and succeeded magnificently. A splendid convert heads America.

Persons close to the President have intimated that he was always "proAlly," but the facts cannot be said to bear out this statement. To those already mentioned there has to be added another fact which is of the utmost significance in this connectionit was hinted at a few lines above in the phrase "deeds or the want of them." When by the joint resolution of Congress in April last the United States declared war on Germany it was not at all prepared for hostilities on a large scale, and was but ill-prepared for war even in a small way. That this was so must be put down very largely to President Wilson. In the Sussex Note he threatened Germany, but at the time and for months afterwards he took no military measures with a view to provide for the eventualities that might arise from carrying out that threat, as he believed he would never be called on to do anything of the kind. He was warned by the stalwarts that his belief might prove to be erroneous, and he was urged to be ready. He was reminded that weakness invited attack, and that even for self-defense the United States was in a lamentably poor position. Before this there had sprung up in America a strong movement for