with historical personages but with men, with men on whom the glamour of history has not yet fallen, who have not yet made history and passed into the keeping of the Immortals but are history in the making. And history invests its characters with a quality of its own. It makes them either very great or very small, it places them on a pedestal for all ages to do them reverence, or degrades them to earn the contempt of posterity for history is no gentle muse but is always extreme; but whatever the recorded verdict, to us of a later day they have ceased to be men and have become legendary figures. Our contemporaries are men, men like ourselves, whom daily we judge, criticize, condemn or approve to meet our passing mood. I have made no attempt to write either history or a biography of Woodrow Wilson. That time has not yet come. The history of the Administration of President Wilson it would be inadvisable to write now,— for reasons so obvious they need no enlargement, nor would it be possible unless the writer were in possession of letters, diaries, documents and state papers that are not likely to gratify this generation. Some of these, a few, are even now available, but discretion imposes silence. For history we must wait until time permits disclosures that now would be inopportune. What I have endeavored to do is to interpret the character and motives of Mr. Wilson as revealed by his speeches, writings and statesmanship, letting the reader draw his conclusions from the evidence presented. 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. |