It has seemed to me that it is work that ought to be done, not only because the man who to-day occupies the largest place in the world's thought is almost as little understood by his own people as he is by the peoples of other countries and still remains an enigma, but a certain interest may attach to the work of a contemporary foreign observer who, while having the benefit of long residence in the United States, and an intimate knowledge of its people and politics, may justly claim to take a detached point of view and to be uninfluenced by personal or political considerations. It is in that spirit of detachment, as if I were dealing with the past and not the present, I have endeavored to write; and while, I repeat, this is not history, I have not been unmindful of the responsibility of the historian. In his preface to "Division and Reunion" Mr. Wilson wrote: "I cannot claim to have judged rightly in all cases as between parties. I can claim, however, impartiality of judgment; for impartiality is a matter of the heart, and I know with what disposition I have written." That sentiment I make my own. I cannot hope that in all my judgments I have been correct, that I have perhaps in all cases done justice, but I can claim to have written with sincerity and a purpose, striving to tell the truth as it is given to me to see it, WASHINGTON, October, 1918. CALIFORNIA WOODROW WILSON AN INTERPRETATION CHAPTER I THE BEGINNING OF REFORM 1 WHEN Woodrow Wilson came to the White House on the fourth of March, 1913, the Democratic party returned to power after sixteen years in opposition. Mr. Wilson's Democratic predecessor, Mr. Cleveland, left as a legacy to his successor war or peace with Spain. That war, fought in the year following Mr. McKinley's inauguration, had far-reaching consequences for the United States: for the first time since it became a nation the United States was the master of oversea dependencies and the ruler of subject races; it became an Asiatic power and its frontier was flung seven thousand miles across the Pacific. In the year following peace the American people were to be witness to another and more costly war when the Boers challenged the power of England; and five years later the American people, in common with the rest of the world, were witness to a still mightier struggle when 1 |