gress if the labors of a session were not to be wasted. It was this system of dual evasion that led to many legislative crimes. The President evaded responsibility by throwing the onus upon Congress; Congress pretended that it would have passed a better bill had it not been for the folly or obstinacy of the President.

Mr. Wilson had no hesitation in exercising the functions that he believed the people conferred upon him. He resorted to no subterfuge to shape the tariff bill as he desired. There were no vague hints as to what he might do if a bill passed which was unsatisfactory to him. Mr. Wilson knew what he wanted, and he insisted that his party must either follow him or destroy the party by deserting him. His position was impregnable. It is not material whether his party followed him willingly or grudgingly, whether he was wiser than his party or his party wiser than he. That the future will determine; dealing with the present it is sufficient to say that the tariff and currency bills were passed in the shape they assumed because he led. They were the bills he demanded.

But while it is easy enough to sum up the result in a few words, it was not reached without much tact, vast patience, great self-denial, inflexible determination. In those long, hot, weary summer months when men's nerves were on edge, and they were in resentful mood because they were forced to labor against their will, it would have been easy to disrupt the party or to make it impossible for legislation honestly carrying out party pledges to be passed. A less conscientious President would have allowed Congress to stew in its own oratorical juice while he watched the pot from a rocking-chair set to catch the pleasant breezes of sea-shore or mountain. Verily Mr. Wilson "stuck to his job." So long as Congress sweltered, he sweltered, sharing and directing its labors, by his presence encouraging his party, inspiring it with his own high devotion to the public service.

It was no light achievement to secure the passage of the tariff bill; it was a much greater achievement to secure the passage of the currency bill. On the tariff, Democrats must either vote for the bill or vote themselves out of the party; on the currency, Democrats might disagree and still

not risk the charge of disloyalty. There was a time while the bill was pending in the Senate that Mr. Wilson was told his bill was in danger. A President under less self-control and determined to be a "boss" (and curiously enough one of the grounds of complaint against Mr. Wilson is that he is too much of a boss, and has reduced Congress to a nullity, so as to magnify the power of the Presidency) would have denounced his opponents. A weaker and less "self-centered" President would have become panic-stricken and sold his Presidential birthright for senatorial support, thus putting himself virtually in pawn to a senatorial oligarchy. Mr. Wilson was neither angry nor fearsome. He neither threatened nor fawned. He denounced no one, nor did he buy peace. A great many persons wanted to see an opportunity to test Mr. Wilson's capacity as leader. They wanted to take his measure as strategist and tactician. The currency bill was the answer.

Mr. Wilson came to the Presidency under peculiar circumstances, in some respects more peculiar than those surrounding any of his predecessors. He was a minority President, President by a rare combination of luck and chance, as we may all admit. He was the unknown, and he must have been aware that the country accepted him with some distrust. The things in his favor were few; those against him were many. The impression as to his reticence and aloofness had already gone abroad; although the country professes to have no great respect for politicians, it questioned whether a politician was not more qualified to do a politician's work than a college professor. He succeeded a President who was sensational for the love of sensation and the excitement he created, and another, disliking sensation, who made life seem dull by comparison. Mr. Wilson could not be sensational, and he must not be commonplace.

Mr. Wilson is that rare combination, a conservative iconoclast. He is a breaker of precedent and a defier of tradition. Not that he delights to smash for the pure joy of destruction; but when precedents and traditions lumber up the way, the sensible thing is to throw them out. Yet with all his impatience of being tied to forms and customs that have neither use nor picturesqueness to commend them, his habit

of thought is conservative rather than radical.

This man, naturally conservative, disliking show, almost timid in parading himself, with no gift for advertisement and a contempt for the sensational, has done many sensational things in his first year; but I am convinced they have not been done simply for love of the spectacular, but with a purpose. That feeling the country has. He is not feared as an unstable man willing to sacrifice custom founded on wisdom for the vanity of the momentary applause of the unthinking.

It came as something of a shock when Mr. Wilson announced that he did not wish the customary ball on the night of inauguration. Mr. Wilson has never given any reason for having broken that precedent, and it was not necessary that he should, but one can well understand his motive. Why should the President of the United States put himself on exhibition in the same way that fat stock is exhibited at an agricultural fair? The President was to be used simply to swell the gate-receipts and enable the local committeemen to enjoy their brief hour of glory. But if the Presidency is a great and dignified office, and withal a serious office, then it was not a dignified thing for its occupant to make of himself an adjunct of the box-office. Reference has already been made to the President addressing Congress in person; not less a departure from precedent was his going to the Capitol to confer with senators instead of inviting them to the White House. It was criticized as being unseemly; the President, it was contended, should go to no one. To Mr. Wilson it appeared the sensible thing to do; it was the short cut to results, and it saved time. Mr. Wilson, it will be noted, is a stickler for dignity when the dignity of the Presidency is involved, but he is not so sensitive about his own dignity that he is afraid to outrage it by common sense.

That-common sense-is his dominant characteristic. An English writer said of him: "He has no vague ideas of reform that are impossible of accomplishment. He lives in no intellectual Utopia, and spreads no Barmecide feast." It is curious, but nevertheless true, that the most practical President in recent years is the President who by training and environment should be the least practical.

He has shown how the practical dominates him in all that he has done. He began with the tariff as the legislation of the highest importance. His message was very brief, very concise, very simple. He used short words. There was no attempt at epigram or phrase-making; neither was there any oratorical ambiguity. No one could twist two meanings into his words. He not only knew what he wanted, but he was insistent that every one else should share that knowledge. He held Congress strictly to the one thing in hand-the tariff. There must be nothing to dissipate its energies, nothing to distract its concentration, nothing to serve excuse for delay. It was the same with the currency. His message was equally brief, equally workmanlike, almost matter of fact in its simplicity, and yet not without a certain charm. Congress was weary, and would like to adjourn, but the President refused. Congress would compromise; if the President would agree to adjournment, it would not object to meeting in advance, and thus compensating for the time lost. But the President remained firm, and again he got what he wanted.

In Washington, at the end of his first year, one can get two diametrically opposite views of President Wilson, and both the honest conviction of those who hold them. One is that of the "self-centered," cold, passionless man, almost unhuman in his control of emotion and concealment of sympathy; the other is that of a magnetic personality who appeals and attracts. Now, the truth is that men get from others a part of what they give, and friendship is a reflection of ourselves. Mr. Wilson is not magnetic in the ordinary use of the word. He is neither "mixer" nor "good fellow," as politicians use that term, but he has a great force of intellectual magnetism, a rare gift that makes little appeal to the multitude. Among other things, the unwritten law requires that a President shall coin epigrams and say smart things and write quotable letters. One may search the newspapers diligently during the last year, and not find a single paragraph beginning, "President Wilson was reminded the other day to tell a story." He has not the national vice of "being reminded" by a "story," nor does he indulge in the pseudo-philosophy of the anecdote. His manner of speaking and

his form of expression are as direct as his desk is orderly. He no more clutters up his conversation with idle words than he litters his desk with papers. He keeps to the subject in hand with as much fidelity as he keeps his appointments. Mr. Roosevelt was often so interested in a visitor's conversation that he forgot that other people were waiting to see him. Mr. Taft was notorious for being from thirty minutes to an hour or more behind his schedule. Mr. Wilson adheres to his schedule as punctiliously as a train-despatcher. He listens or talks, as the occasion may demand; but he remains master of his own time, and brings the interview to a close on the tick of the clock. The man who comes primed to tell a story in the hope of impressing the President with his his "good-fellowship" goes away chilled; the man to whom intellect appeals, who the force of character impresses, and a clearcut decision is a delight, goes away warmed by the intellectual magnetism that has radiated from the President. Hence two opinions so contradictory, the general belief in Mr. Wilson's coldness, and the feeling confined to a few that he is magnetic.

It is doubtful whether any man with a serious purpose has ever been helped by popularity or hindered because he was deemed unpopular. Contemporary public opinion, a thing usually wrong and seldom enduring, can neither add an iota to a man's moral or intellectual stature nor subtract from it. Yet valueless as popularity is, scornful as a man may be who cares nothing for the verdict of the moment and looks to the future to do him justice, it must be conceded that it is an asset no sensible man will reject and not every man may possess. In the larger sense Mr. Wilson has not yet succeeded in making himself popular in Washington, nor has he infused the imagination of the country. Democrat though he is by heredity, environment, and conviction, he is an intellectual aristocrat, to whom knowledge is the one thing to excite reverence. A nature cast in this mold is apt to have little pliability; it breaks seldom and bends. never. Mr. Wilson has little tolerance for the superficial. "He could not or would not suffer fools gladly." Hence he listens not willingly to the ordinary person, rates men by his own standard, and makes few friends.

Mr. Taft complained of the seclusion of the White House, and no matter how frequently the President entertains and how numerous his visitors, from the day he enters the White House he is no longer free to come and go or to mingle with men as he did before. But despite these restrictions, Presidents have not lived the hermit life in Washington; they either renewed friendships made in the earlier days of their Washington service, as Harrison and Cleveland and McKinley and Roosevelt and Taft did, or they formed new ones. Mr. Wilson came to Washington almost a total stranger, knowing no one intimately, and it is doubtful if he has really made a friend in the year he has been in office. With the exception of a call at the house of Mr. Tumulty, his secretary, one has yet to hear of his entering any private house in Washington, or "dropping in" on friends for a chat and a cup of tea, as did his predecessors. He has accepted no invitations outside of the immediate cabinet circle. Sordid as politics often are, warm and lasting friendships are frequently made between politicians; for common interests and a natural liking bring men together, and each finds the best in the other. Although Washington is a selfish and artificial place, it has another and more generous side.

Mr. Wilson cares little for society, for which one cannot blame him. His society is in his home, his wife, and his daughters. Large dinners and rich food, much chattering small talk when nothing is said worth remembering, fuss and feathers and show, do not attract him, perhaps because he has known little of that exotic life. Plain living and high thinking make their appeal. He finds his relaxation at the theater in the company of Mrs. Wilson and his daughters, or in a book. He golfs not avidly, but as a penance imposed by his physician. By preference he goes to bed early, sleeps eight or nine hours, and gets up early. He has none of that catholicity of taste and interest that Queen Victoria had, who delighted hearing from their own lips the reports of statesmen, soldiers, travelers, or any one who had done something out of the usual.

Rather he is of the type of the late Lord Salisbury, who was noted for his belief that when a man had something important to communicate, he could do it much bet

ter in writing than orally. And yet a serious man, as the President is, need not necessarily be a melancholy man, to whom life is as unjoyous as it was to the Puritan, crushed under the immensities of the weight of existence and always struggling to repress the desire to live gladly. Mr. Wilson finds his enjoyment in the way he would; he has humor, and he can laugh. No man needs to be pitied so long as he has not forgotten how to laugh.

It would be better for Mr. Wilson personally, and it would make his leadership easier, if he were able to cultivate the art of companionship and remembered that life is reciprocity. A man of warm and generous impulses, he suffers as Cleveland and Harrison did under the imputation of coldness and indifference; he is accused of being as unmindful of obligation as was his immediate predecessor; for Mr. Taft, despite his good nature and large heart, was often curiously careless of acknowledging service. It is easy for a President to show appreciation, and even the man inspired by the highest motives, unselfishly working for the public good rather than for his personal advantage, likes to know that his efforts are appreciated.

As President Mr. Wilson has done in his first year two things, and has done or not done or has still to do, according to the point of view, one thing. Accomplishment is written in the two great legislative acts of the special session, the tariff and the currency. Still inchoate is Mexico.

Exactly as there are two views held as to the President's personality, so there are two views as to the President's Mexican policy. He is commended for what he has done; he has been vigorously attacked not only for what he has done, but even more for what he has failed to do. Both schools, however much they may disagree on the main proposition, are united as to its consequences. Supporters and opponents concur that Mr. Wilson's Mexican policy will either make or break him. If it is successful, his position will be unassailable; if it is a failure, it will destroy him.

I shall not discuss Mr. Wilson's Mexican policy, for it would be absurd and impertinent to attempt to pass judgment without a knowledge of all the facts, and that no one has; it would be as unjust to the President as it would to an artist

But

to criticize a half-finished portrait. while nothing shall be said as to what the future may bring in regard to Mexico, certain things arising out of the Mexican revolution can properly be said as contributing to a better understanding of Mr. Wilson's aims and purposes.

Mr. Wilson has formulated a broad policy touching the relations of the United States with Latin America, and of Central America more especially as being peculiarly the victim of its own unhappy political system. In brief, it is that the United States has been morally responsible for Latin American revolutions and disorder, first by the encouragement citizens of the United States have given to Central Americans by providing them with money and munitions to raise a revolution, looking for their return in valuable concessions and other profitable favors; and again in the laissez-faire policy of the United States in recognizing de-facto governments without ascertaining how these governments came into existence. Mr. Wilson is resolved not to recognize every adventurer who may set up a so-called government. He reverses the traditional American policy of more than half a century, that the United States could not go behind the returns, and when a man called himself president and appeared to be in possession of the government, that was sufficient for the United States to accord him recognition. him recognition. That policy has done. incalculable harm. It has been a direct incitement to revolution. There was no profit in being the President of a Latin American state unless the world accepted the title as valid, and Europe followed the lead of the United States. Mr. Wilson purposes not to accept a revolution as the certificate of the electoral college. He purposes to do what President Pierce said could not be done. He purposes to go behind the returns if necessary, to ascertain whether the president is in fact as well as in law president, or whether he has by force, cunning, and perhaps murder seized power.

Whether this is a practical policy or idealism run mad it would be foreign to the purpose of this article to discuss; nor would its discussion be of much importance. Time and the course of events will render the answer; but it is proper to note that Mr. Wilson has saved the coun

try from war; and while every one vehemently asserts that the whole of Mexico is n't worth the life of a single American soldier, many of these same people in the same breath condemn Mr. Wilson for having no policy. Any time in the last year it would have been easier to have brought on war than it has been to avert it.

The Mexican complications have afforded Mr. Wilson an opportunity to reaffirm in a broad and emphatic manner the Monroe Doctrine. As an Englishman, I am naturally not particularly enamoured of a doctrine which, no matter how essential it was to the safety and well-being of the United States in the past, is to-day, in my opinion, as injurious to Latin America as it is unnecessary to the United States, and detrimental to the progress of all the rest of the world; but that is a controversial subject not properly belonging here. As an American, as President of the United States, Mr. Wilson holds to the national polity, and permits no weakening of the Monroe Doctrine while in his keeping. In the early days of his Presidency, when relations with Mexico began to assume a threatening aspect, and some of the great European powers were showing signs of nervousness about the safety of their subjects and their investments in Mexico, suggestions were thrown out that Mexico was an international, and not purely an American, question, and certain newspapers urged the President to call a conference or in other ways invite the coöperation of Europe. That would not have been unpopular in some quarters, even although it might not unlikely have brought down on the President criticism for ignoring the Monroe

Doctrine; but at least it would have made Mr. Wilson's task easier. He not only refused to listen to the suggestion, but without offending European sensibilities he made it known that the United States would not consent to European interference in an American question, which Mexico is, and rather than the Monroe Doctrine being relaxed, it would be strengthened, if necessary. There is now no doubt in any European foreign office what President Wilson's attitude is on the Monroe Doctrine, and what his course would be should any European power challenge it. Whether for good or evil, the Monroe Doctrine exists as long as Woodrow Wilson remains in the White House. rest of the world "allows" the United States a free hand in dealing with Mexico because it has no alternative.

The

Mr. Wilson has been his own foreign minister, as he has been his own cabinet. The Mexican policy is his policy. He cannot shift responsibility. He must accept blame for whatever happens, and to him will be accorded the credit if he brings about peace without having forced his own country into war. He has put his impress upon the state department, as he has upon all the other departments of the Government. He controls Congress. He dominates Washington. He is the most masterful figure American politics has known, as determined as Jackson, but with the persuasion and tact that were foreign to Jackson's nature. He has done things. Among the men to whom the White House is a background there is no more interesting study, none with nature more perplexing, none whose future defies prediction. Time will deliver the verdict.