PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XLIV, Issue 14822, 22 October 1920, Page 8

PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON.

I A-PSYCHOLOGICAL EXAM IN Ell. j i Dr Joseph Collins, M.D., an eminent J New York neurologist, has made an analysis of the President's psychology, and has come to the conclusion that the reason so many people have no use for him, in spite of his many claims to greatness, is that Mr Wilson himself has no great lore for anybody. "He has the:mind of a Jove but the heart Of a bat'rachian," is the way the doctor puts it. In his discussion of the dislike some Americans have for ilr Wilson, the writer confesses that this attitude is incomprehensible to him. Woodrow "\yilson, "the man who was accorded higher esteem in Europe than was ever vouchsafed mortal man." was the only statesman with a plan which, put in'operation, ended the war; he was a leader in formulating the peace terms, and he has been the most insistent advocate of a covenant whose enforcement would make for perpetiuu peace, says Dr Collins, and yet theoniy thanks He gets from a lot of Americans is' abuse. Dr. Collin.s, writing in the prominently anti-Wilson North American Review , asserts that t}ie President is a practical idealist. H<#proc-ccds: "He is the kind of idealist who destroyed the Democratic rhaeljine in the State of New Jersey which had been the synonym for corruption in politics lor a generation; the kind of idealist who nut through' the Underwood Tariff Bill, vSiich, at one stroke, did more to strangle the ' unnatural mother of privilege than any measure in the past 2!) yean,; the kincl of idealist who a lew months ago when the transport system of the entire country threatened to be hopelessly paralysed by. reason of the deterInitiation of the railway magnates to refuse the demands of locomotive en«v gineers that their working day should consist oif eight hours, sent for representatives of tile plutocrats and the proletariat and told what thev were to do and when they were to Jo it. and the whole civilised world approved. He. is the idealist who has done more to make our Government a Republican Government representative oi the people and not of the party bosses than any one in the memory of man. He is the idealist who is a scholar, a thinker, a statesman, a creator, an administrator, and a man of vision. More than that, he. is an efficiency expert in the re:*! in of world-ordering." Nevertheless, the President is hated< in some quarters, and it is the doctor's purpose in his analysis of the Wilsonim psychology to show why part of the public is resentful against this man in whoso -wisdom it professes -to have no confidence, 11 otw i t hsta nd in g "thei factthat tip to d'ato he has displayed! more wisdom than all the solons in America combined." The fact is, we are told. Mr Wilson is disliked for emotional, net intellectual reasons. The- writer elucidates: — "Woodrow Wilson does not love, his fellow men. He lovefi them in the abstract, but not in the- flesli. He is roncerned with their fate, their destiny, their travail en masse, but the- predicaments, perplexities, and prostrations of thoi individual or'"groups of individuals make no ;yppea Ito him. He does not reifresh his soul by bathing it daily in tjio milk of human kindness. He cays with his lips that he loves his fellow men, but there is no accompanying emotional glow, none of the somatic or spiritual accompaniments' which arc the normal anc-illa? of love's display. Hence he does not respect their convictions when they are opposed to his own, lvs does not value their counsels. His determination to put things through in the way lie has convinced himcslf they should be put through is not susceptible to change from influences that originate without bis own mind "In contact with people he gives himself the- air of listening with deference, and indeed of being beholden to judgment and opinion, but in reality it is an artifice which he puts off when lie returns to the dispensing centre of i lie word: of the law just as he puts off his glove.s and his hat. Nothing is so illustrative; of this unwillingness to heed counsel emanating from authoriiy and given wholly for his benefit as bis conduct toward his physician during the trip around the country in September. 1919. The newspaper representatives who- accompanied him say that he' often had severe and protracted headache, was often nervon.s and irritable., some.tinies dizzy, and always looked ill. iiicpe symptoms, conjoined with the fact that for a long time he had high blood pressure, were danger signals which 110 physician would dare neglect. It is legitimate to infer thatfhis physician apprised him and counselled iiim accordingly. Despite it he: persisted until nature exacted the penalty and by so doing jeopardised his own life and -the equilibrium of affairs of the country. Indeed, obstinacy is one of his most conspicuous characteristics. "The President- attempts to mask with facial urbanity and a smile in verbal contact with people- and with the .subjunctive mood in written contact, his third most deforming defect of character, namely, his inability to enter into a: contest of any sort in which there is strife without revealing his true nature, that is, his emotional frigidity, his l ack of love for his fellow men. They explain. why lie did not win out with Congress. When he attempts to play this game his artificed civility, cordiality, amiability are so discordant with tiie I real man that they become, as offensive as affectations of manner or speech always are!, and instead of placating the | individual toward whom they are manifest, or faciljtating a. modus vivendi, I they oiffend him and make rapport with him impossible. "Probably nothing would strike. Mr Wilson's family and intimates as so wholly untruei as the- staterrien'f that he is cruel, yet nevertheless I feel convinced that- there is much latent cruelty in his make-up, and every now and then he is powerless to inhibit it. ije was undoubtedly wholly within his rights in dismissing Mr Lansing from his Cabinet, but the l way he did it < onetituted the refinement of cruelty. He may have had a contempt for Lansing beca.use the Secretary had not insisted on playing first, fiddle in Mr Wilson's orchestra, the part for which lie was engaged, but that did not justify Mr Wilson in flaying him publicly because he attempted tiV keep the orchestra together and tuned up. as it were, during Mr Wilson's illness."

Selfishness is another conspicuous deforming trait of the President. Ho is moro selfish than cruel. Undoubtedly his friends can point, to many acts of generosity that denv the. allegation. Some of the most, selfish people in the world give freely of their counsel, money, and time. Selfishness and miserliness are not interchangeable terms. Mr Wilson is the apotheosis of selfishness, because he puts bis decisions and determinations above those of any or all others. It matters not who' the others may be. Until some one comes forward to show .that he has ever been known to yield his judgments* and ixhi'tions to those of others, I must hold to this view. He is ungenerous of sentiment and unfair by implication. Nothing better exemplifies his ungencrosity than his refusal to appear before the Senate or a Committee of them previous to his return to Paris after his visit here and say to them that he had determined to incorporate all their suggestions in the Treaty and the Covenant. He did incorporate them, but he ! did not give the Senate the satisfaction of telling them that he was going to do so or that the instrument would be 'jnprored by so doing. The receptive side of Mr Wilson is neither: sensitive nor intuitive, we are told, nor his reactive side productive. | or creative. He is not a genius. T)r Collins thinks, but merely a man m j talent.