fessed they knew nothing, that instead of being the players they were merely marionettes with the strings in the hands of a few men of skill or cunning. Their eyes had been opened, and they saw that politics was something more than a game in which the players changed sides, and that government had a vital, a more solemn meaning than the tax gatherer and the policeman. They had long remained in ignorance of the truth that the framework of society is political, that their welfare, their comfort and their happiness could not be dissociated from politics, that there could be no advancement independent of government, but only through the efforts of government. To the faithful whose creed that the best governed country is the least governed country, this was heretical, an entirely wrong and irregular concept of government, and shocking to the disciples of individualism, to whom paternalism is a thing of reproach, who conceived the function of government to be merely to impose taxes and punish the offender in the name of society.

5

The Puritan made America what she is, and although the admixture of the blood of many foreign races has diluted the strain of Puritanism its spirit survives. To the Puritan his religion was not a thing apart from life but the very essence of life; it was not simply a religious code but a rule of conduct,

political as well as moral; not a cloak to be worn only on Sunday but the garb in which men worked as well as played; they wore it joyously when no danger threatened and wore it proudly when death was faced. Without the grim power of expression of the Puritan, but with the same grim determination, the children of the Puritan were proving their heritage. Unconsciously they were following in his footsteps, like him they were vexed with doubts, like him they were searching their souls, like him they were continually asking why and wanting to have the great mystery explained. It was not, however, the meaning and mystery of death that appalled them, it was the meaning and mystery of the inequalities, the injustice, the brutality of life. The masses are often deluded by words, but only for an instant, as progress is reckoned, are they deluded by false principles. They had been content to believe that poverty was as inevitable as death, that misery was the wisdom of God that might not be questioned, that suffering and hunger had always been. The truth of these things they doubted but could not deny, but they groped in their blindness and dumb rage until the falsity of what they had been told became clear. What had been in their hearts but found no voice was voiced for them. They were no longer content to accept poverty, toil, suffering as their normal lot; it was not the visitation of God but the iniquity of man. What man had done man could undo, and the weapon to

dethrone the oppressor, to liberate them, was politics. The way of escape was through the government, government that would do justice to all men, treat all men with the same impartiality, make it impossible for a few men to lord it over their fellows.

There was nothing surprising about this. It was the same aspiration that the masses have always had, the same resentment they have always shown; only now the masses were more intelligent than they had ever been, more cohesive, more readily responsive to leadership and suggestion, better able to understand the selfishness of those over them and to see that reformation, to be real and lasting and to root out inequality and injustice, must be built on the solid foundation of truth and justice, and the fellowship of man must be a living force. It would be misleading the reader to convey the impression that what has been thus hastily sketched found its expression in concrete form. Thought is born long before it becomes articulate. Ideas exist, but not before they are quickened into life is the world richer. What men thought and believed they could not express, but they could feel. There was ceaseless agitation and discussion, vagrant thoughts floated to the surface like bubbles from the unfathomed depth, some of them to glitter for a moment in the sun and burst and disappear into the void before they could be grasped by eager hands. But other thoughts floated on the stream; they carried the seed of life, they were fertilized by the

contact of minds and bore their fruit. Men were ready to try an experiment and to see whether their theories were workable.

It has been thought advisable to give this brief résumé of the state of public opinion preceding Mr. Wilson's entry into politics because many Americans under the pressure of their own intimate affairs only imperfectly realize the great intellectual revolution of which they were a part; and to foreigners, now so keenly interested in everything pertaining to America, this insight into American social development may not be unwelcome. It is necessary, moreover, because it makes more comprehensible the difficulties Mr. Wilson had to contend with and the reason he was able to overcome them.

CHAPTER III

THE MAN

1

Ir was not surprising that Mr. Wilson should have been selected as the Democratic candidate for the Presidency. Men were looking for a champion rather than a political leader in the ordinary use of that word; one who thought as they did, who shared with them their aspirations and held the same ideals. The division in the Republican party insured the election of the Democratic candidate, unless the Democrats were so foolish as to nominate a candidate who did not have the confidence of the public, a species of political folly of which they had more than once been guilty. Victory was theirs if they displayed prudence and common sense, and it was incumbent upon them to pass over the claims of hack politicians and select a man truly representative of the prevailing spirit, who would antagonize neither the workingman distrustful of promises never fulfilled, nor his employer fearful of the radicalism of impractical theorists.

Mr. Wilson measured up to these requirements. As Governor of New Jersey he had served his political