Published at Trinity College, Durham, N. C., by the OFFICERS: ROBERT L. FLOWERS, President ALBERT M. WEBB, Vice-Pres. BOARD OF DIRECTORS: W. P. FEW WILLIAM H. GLASSON WILLIAM H. WANNAMAKER ROBERT L. FLOWERS This journal was founded in January, 1902, in order to afford better opportunity in the South for discussion of literary, historical, economic, and social questions. It knows no sectional jealousy and aims to offer a publishing medium in which respectful consideration will be accorded to all who have some worthy contribution to make in its chosen field. The QUARTERLY was originally established by the "9019," a society of young men of Trinity College, but it later passed into the control of the South Atlantic Publishing Company, Incorporated. It is under the joint editorship of Dr. W. K. Boyd and Dr. W. H. Wannamaker. For their journal the editors and publishers solicit the support of thinking people in all sections of the country and especially in the South. The subscription price is three dollars per year. Communi cations in regard to articles, book reviews, and editorial matters should be addressed to the Editors, SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY, Trinity College, Durham, N. C. If the return of manuscripts not accepted is desired, the required postage should be enclosed. Subscriptions and all communications relating to advertisements and business matters should be addressed to the Treasurer, SOUTH ATLANTIC QUARTERLY, Durham, N. C. Volume XXI JANUARY, 1922 Number 1 The South Atlantic Quarterly The Place of Woodrow Wilson in American Politics: An Estimate EDWARD J. WOODHOUSE Smith College In January, 1917, one of the very keenest and ablest political thinkers in the country, a Progressive or member of the Roosevelt "Bull Moose" party of 1912, a trained political scientist and a social-minded politician of the finest type, declared Woodrow Wilson to be in native ability and in training for the position the best equipped president the United States has ever had. He was the first president to realize the potential constitutional and legal powers of the presidency and to use them. The estimate made five years ago from the fullness of this critic's knowledge of United States history is the conviction today among many of the so-called intellectual class of the nation. Among students and teachers of the social sciences, the conviction is still stronger. In achievements as president as well as in fitness for the office, Woodrow Wilson was the greatest president of the United States. He displayed the magnitude of "common sense" or wisdom, the poise and the towering preeminence of George Washington, the understanding and genius for political theory and the abiding faith in democracy of Thomas Jefferson, the independence and vision in ideals and in practice and the consecration to duty of Abraham Lincoln. *Compare Ford, Woodrow Wilson, 312; Dodd in Journal of Political Economics, XXV, 261; Baker, What Wilson Did at Paris, 109; Dodd, Life and Work of Woodrow Wilson, throughout; Creel, The World, the War and Wilson, 14. In spite of this position and of these qualities and services, no American president has ever been cast off more fully and completely than Woodrow Wilson was repudiated by the voters in November, 1920. As he himself sadly remarked to one of his biographers early in 1921, he was elected in 1912 by default (meaning the split in the Republican party between the supporters of William H. Taft and of Theodore Roosevelt, respectively) and in 1916 by accident (referring, no doubt, to the rumored disagreement between ex-Governor Hiram Johnson, Progressive leader in California, and Charles E. Hughes, the Republican presidential candidate, which may have caused the state to go for Wilson in 1916 by a narrow margin while giving majorities to most Republican candidates); and further, continued this broken statesman, the American people have never really and positively chosen him as their president. This is the pathetic truth, and his most enthusiastic supporters cannot feel sure that a majority of the electors of the nation would have voted for him at any time except during the exaltation of the war spirit from April, 1917, to about November, 1918. Even when he, more than any other one man, represented at the Peace Conference the liberalism of the world, a large majority of his own people were either indifferent or actively opposed to him and to his policies. The causes for these conditions were complex and uncertain in relative weight, but not difficult to explain. Woodrow Wilson has never fully understood the American people, and they have never understood him at all. Too firmly intrenched in his habits of scholarly reflection and reserve to be drawn out by his executive duties as president of Princeton, as governor of New Jersey, or even as president of the United States into advertising and exploiting himself as do so many executives, partaking much of the inward-living quality of his Scotch-Irish ancestry, placed apart and elevated by his remarkable mental gifts, he is a solitary soul, too solitary to receive the love he craves from the people in whose service he offered his life and gave his health and strength. Washington, too, and Lincoln, in less measure, paid with positions of loneliness for being moulded in such towering form. Placed upon a pedestal of military glory, though Wash |