PRESIDENT WILSON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12064, 20 July 1917, Page 3

PRESIDENT WILSON.

LONDON, April 19. Testerday the Hons© of Commons registered its appreciation of America's long anticipated step, tho definite ranging of its man jnowor and resources on tho side of the Allies. ltd significance roused tho "blunt spoken Soot, Mr Bonar Law., even unto eloquence vvhon

lie ventured to express the belief that a change was coming, and that the long night of sorrow and anguish' which had desolated tho world was drawing to a close. The scene at St Stephen's in a long oacked series of historic scenes marks for us and for the world a moment in the struggle the potentialities of which are infinite. One becomes almost palo at tho thought. The consolidation of the democratic forces which tho' Russian revolution has brought to tho Allied cause, Mr Lloyd George's absence somewhero in France, and tho break through'successive lines, all combine to make tho moment, tt-nso with suppressed feeling -mcl high hope for the fut'are and the cause of freedom. It is at such a moment that- an English life of President Wilson has been issued, and it should find a public far outside the bounds oi the United Kingdom. 1 had flattered myself, living as I had so many years on the dominion side of tho world and more open to the iufluenco of the American Republic that I ■ understood, better than tho average stay-at-home Britisher, tho ins and outs of American political thought. This study of the man who lids lair to rank with Lincoln lias chastened my pride. Partly I think because we have all been so deeply and so terribly _ interested in the European an>l Near Eastern aspect of th c struggle one has allowed cheap jibes—too proud to tight—to colour our estimate of President Wilson's character. The quick play of events in the ficid and at home gavo no time, and we did not think it important enough to make timo to understand what, in reality, was the. role being played by America, and what m fact was its effect. The part played well, it seems safs even now to say, is much more than a merely passive one. If one is to tako tho verdict of H. Wilson Harris, President Wilson saved us from becoming entangled in a world-wide conflagration which civilisation might not hav e sur-

vived. This study of American politics makes abundantly clear that to Woodrow Wilson, the writer of Notes, posterity may not deny the praise that, he has proved the pen to . bo indeed mightier than the sword, even at the moment when, he, as chosen chief of the United States, is buckling on liis armour. And the brief sketch of his life as the head of a University shows that his character there was amply displayed as essentially that of the man at White House. He has both in university nnd Senate commanded support outsido the ranks of his titular supporters. He has never sought, to coerco those of nis own following. His policy has always been to carry with him the mind and "will of those* over whom ho has been set. If ho does not succeed in this he bides his time. His career at Princeton showed him superficially an opportunist, actually it showed him as holding by his ideals, even when h© could not carry with him sufficient support for his plans, hut those plans never really dropped arc held back until he has convinced public ppinion of tho Tightness of his views. The author's prefatory note says :—• The average Englishman's real interest in the United States and its present President dates 'from August, 1914, and ho is under an inevitable, bub unfortunate temptation to form sweeping estimates of a nation and a man on the basis of their attitude towards nne particular issue, and that an issue of great complexity, over a space of little more than two years." His stricture is true. The author reveals with ;vhat care Mr Wilson paved the way for reform, and how, notwithstanding tha_tl ho took office as a " minority President," he'carried out in liis first term of offico a "\vholo scries of reforms, so much so, that in spite of the over-pre-sent anxieties created by tho war, ho was able to enter his second term of offico with the legislative measures he had planned all embodied in tho Statute Book. * His second term found him ready to translate that legislation into spirited administrative action. Throe great measures were passed during his first year of office. Tho Federal Reserve Act. by distributing credit, stabilised trade/and thercforo employment; tho Underwood Tariff Act lowered the prico of staple commodities, like sugar, to the poor * and the Clayton Anti-Irust Actin certain important particulars constituted a charter for Labour comparable to tho Trade Disputes Act in Great Britain. To him, too, 'is duo the Rural Credits Act and Currency Act, in passing which ho declared that " our banking laws must mobilise reserves, must not permit tho concentration anywhere in a few hands of tho monetary resources of the country, or their use for speculative purposes in such volume as to hinder more fruitful uses.'' President Wilson in liis foreign policy was unable to follow as clear a path. "To President Wilson's administration the country owes its thorough committal to two policies which nearly concern its rigliteousnes and its dignity. The first of these policies is—no war with Mexico. The second is—no intervention by force of arms to protect on .foreign soil American commercial and manufacturing adventurers who of their own free will hare invested their monoy or risked lives in foioign parts under alien jurisdiction. . . . 'America lias now turned her back on the familiar policy of Rome and Great Britain of protecting or avenging thenwandering citizens by force of arms, and has set tip quite a different policy of her own." This, Dr C. W. -Eliot says in tho " Atlantic Monthly, October, 1916. In respect of Mexico and of '®iropo he had to modify his policy, circumstances were too strong. His conduct in tho two cases shows curious differences. In the seizing of the Custom House at Vera Cruz he acted at ,onca| without reforenco to Congress, and constitutionally, since the American President ihas unlimited authority over tlio armed forces of the Union, but it is a nice point whether constitutionally his action could havo been upheld sinco Congress had not declared war. Yet in, declaring war with Germany he exercised tho utmost oare to carry Congress with him, since that body, and not the President, has the right to declare war. It is in the Mexican business that President Wilson seems to deserve more than anywhere the taunt of being an opportunits. Yet even then in the event his caution was justified, for if tho Morisan trouble proved anything, it proved the absolute inadequacy of tho U.S.A. military establishment. To plunge headlong into the European fracas would have been suicide for America.' if not for the civilised world.

The more one reads this study the more ono concedes to Mr Wilson gifts

nnd a foresight' that Britain and many

of his own countrymen have hastily de- * nied him. His currency gave a stability to its finance of which the Allies Jire to„ reap advantage, his reasoned support'of just claims of Labour huvo

PACIFIST AND WARMAKER.

(By E.L.C.W.)

saved the country from industrial strife. Let us see how much this meant. As month by month of the great struggle went by, tho pacifist m the U.S.A. still appeared to prevail. And to tho world President Wilson was the arch-pacifist whose Notes achieved then climacteric in tho pronouncement. "The objects," wroto tho President, "which the statesmen of tho belligerents on both .sides have in mind in this war arc virtually tho same, as stated in general terms to their own people and to tho worlch The unfortunate effect _of this classing of German and Allied claims on a level—the effect was not real but duo to "m happy phrasing—would have* been utterly erased.by his address to the Senate in January but for his lvnfortunato phrase "peaco -without victory," one of tho curious and ambiguous phrase-s which seem to dog his pronouncements on tho war. Not moro striking than his giving up of tho Monro dootrino which this .speech, by which ho declared himself "■eager to tako his part in tho work of preserving ,peace but not in tho work of preserving a bad peace," was his forced • abjuration, of pacificism.

E'ven before this, in spite, of the opposition of tho considerable pacifist school, tho conviction that new measunes of preparedness were essential spread rapidly during tho summer and autumn of 1915. And wlulo tho people* wero preparing themselves for acceptance of the principle, the President and his advisers were busy on tho detailed programme. With a, Naval Advisory Board, Thomas Edison, inventor, chairman, a programme with ten battleships heavier than Queen Elizabeth, and a personnel and expenditure in keeping, was drawn up . . . what in ono speech ho declared should be " incomparably tho greatest navy in tho world," and even when these demands wero reduced by the iScnate, Congress had authorised a programme unexampled in tho history of any country, which would raise the United States Navy to a position of paper supremacy over every rival fleet except Great Britain's.

A? for tho Army, Mr Wilson was frankly conscriptionist, and t-Jio Army Bill Tn final form provided a regular army of 175,000. with reserves, that bring it np to rather moro than 400,000, with a second lino army boliind these of another 400,000. One of tho niosti important' clauses provide*' that " if for any reason there shall not he enough voluntary enlistments to keep tho (militia) reserve battalions at the prestrength, a sufficient number ol ttie unorganised militia (which comprises every citizen between eighteen and forty-five) shall he drafted into the servico of tho United States to maintain each of such battalions at the proper strength,"

As for shipping, Mr Wilson had been ahvo to that as early as 1012, when he urged that "wo must build and buy ships in comparison with the world." But his Merchant Shipping Bill is only now, % in the pressure of entering tho ranks of belligerents, being implemented by Congress for tho struggle, between national interest and vested rights was long. But last August tho Bill appointing a Shipping Board was finally passed, and its members appointed in December. This then is President Wilson's record. pacifist as ho was. " The enactment, " says Mr Harris, "marked tho culmination of a notable constructive achievement. Within three years credit throughout tho Union had been placed on a new basis; an efficient homo defence army had been organised; the provision of American ships for tho transport of American goods had been assured; and tho protection of a navy second to only one in the world guaranteed.'*

And the date, April fi, 1917, of tho declaration of war, saw the announcement twiit half a million men would bo assembled in les.s than six months, and the navy bo even then recruited to full war s'rcngtH of 87.000 men. How will President Wilson emerge from this new phase of his career? Tf Jils academic career provides a parallel one may yet. find him the premier pacifist of the world, hack to his old furrow but no longer lonely—far other, with the democracies "of tho world join--ing him in'his* mission. Mr Harris, not blind to tho faults of the man lie pictures, says:—" The President may havo been quixotic. He may have been He may have been guilty of sacrificing his country's prestige beyond justification. But'at least ho was moving towards a definite objective, and an objective so pregnant with_ benefice jit possibilities for hulnan it v that if ever his hopes wero realisecl his part in tho work of establishing peace would give him an imperishable name among tho handful of men whose efforts have lifted tho world to now moral levels."

•'PresTdent Wilson: His Problems and His Policy," by H. Wilson Harris. Headley Bros., London.