Woodrow Wilson

"14. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."

"Wilson was as much a Utopian as Lenin. He, too, planned to end the Balance of Power in Europe, not to restore it. As well, he was in idealistic competition with the Bolsheviks. He wished to show that America's war-aims were, like theirs, 'anti-imperialistic', and so to persuade them to continue in the war. The Fourteen Points laid down on 8 January 1918 were the outcome. Self-determination was to supersede the historic states of Europe. Belgium, of course, was to recover her independence; Alsace and Lorraine were to return to France, and all Russian territory was to be evacuated. But, as well, Poland was to be restored; the peoples of Austria-Hungary and the Balkans freed. Secret diplomacy was to be ended, and a League of Nations to take the place of the Balance of Power. The defeat of Germany was for Wilson merely a preliminary, whereas to Great Britain and France it was the essential aim. Yet they did not acquiesce in the Fourteen Points solely in order to commit the United States. They, too, had a public opinion which thought of 'a war to end war' and demanded a permanent peace, secured by some other means than the Balance of Power."

"Those who know you, know what a passion you have always felt for the many as against the few. Your life has been marked by real devotion to the cause of the people. Would it not be wise now to make a reaffirmation of this faith; to visualize for those who see in your [you] their friend and leader those conditions of life that the new order is to create? In such an exposition there could be included such points as: Living wage; hours of labor; representation of labor in the direct[or]ate of the undertaking in which it is engaged; profit-sharing; pension system; old age; health and employment insurance; national labor exchanges; housing; welfare conditions; the right to change employment without sacrifice of pension interest (with which goes the connotation of reward for continuous and efficient service); plans for the transitional period of demobilization; greater ease of land purchases; elasticity in loaning operations; readjustments of taxation; the development of a deeper national and community interest. This is but a rough outline of the points that might be encompassed in such an address as I have in mind. Some of them, perhaps, are visionary and impractical, but I am including them because even if they are not susceptible of immediate achievement they belong, properly, in such a vision of the future as you, best of all, could paint. You have done it for the world. Why not draw in the details for America?"

"McCarthy was a Republican. The Democrats, however, have skeletons in their own closet and it's worth remembering them, too. For example, Democrat Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General, A. Mitchell Palmer, who was just as rabid an anti-Communist as McCarthy, did far more to repress free speech and political freedom than McCarthy ever attempted."

"Wilson was a virulent racist who imposed white supremacist policies while serving as president of the United States."

"when President Wilson went to Paris for the peace conference, he was always issuing some wonderful, idealistic statement that was impossible to reconcile with what he was doing at home. And we had an enormous bell—I don’t recall how we ever got such an enormous bell—and every time Wilson would make one of these speeches, we would toll this great bell, and then somebody would go outside with the President’s speech and, with great dignity, burn it in our little caldron."

"The President has received me twice with very great kindness. He is a man who does not resemble his photographs at all. A determined-looking gentleman with whom one would not care to be in antagonism, he is about as tall as I am, more slightly built, very quiet in his manner, compresses more meaning into a few words than any other American I have met, uses more American in his speech than I had expected, is, I believe, with his family quite a hermit, is always surrounded with a bodyguard of detectives, does not entertain privately, bears his worries remarkably well, is quite humorous and amusing and, incidentally, the most powerful individual in the world. I should say that his fault is lack of power of delegation. He called himself to me "the clearing house of the Government". Everything has to be "put up" to him. I like him thoroughly and believe that I shall get on with him."

"That Woodrow Wilson was so keen an advocate of [the League of Nations] is explained by many factors. For one thing he was a jurist and an historian and therefore trained to look at historical fact and political possibilities with a sense of intellectual responsibility. For another he was a very European and, it may even be said, an English personality as opposed to the middle western neo-American type... He was learned not only in the political thought of the Fathers of the American constitution, but also in the great English masters... If ever a man was formed to be link between what was best in the political traditions of our two nations it was Woodrow Wilson. But he was recognizably a Liberal, and therefore viewed with suspicion by the Tories. Moreover, he was hated by the majority of the wealthy in the Eastern States, and upper-class Englishmen, meeting similar persons in America, were not likely to hear much good of him."

"To see the British Prime Minister watching the company, with six or seven senses not available to ordinary men, judging character, motive, and subconscious impulse, perceiving what each was thinking and even what each was going to say next, and compounding with telepathic instinct the argument or appeal best suited to the vanity, weakness, or self-interest of his immediate auditor, was to realize that the poor President would be playing blind man's buff in that party."

"As a college undergraduate some decades ago, I was assigned an essay on the three most evil men of the 20th century. Adolf Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong were obvious choices, and most of my fellow students chose from that group. I agreed on Hitler and Lenin, but felt that Stalin and Mao were just additional manifestations of the evil Lenin embodied. My third choice was Woodrow Wilson, which upset my professor at the time, but which I stand by today. The Nazis and the Soviet Empire are gone and while meager bands of the admirers of both survive to inhabit steamy corners of various ideological swamps, the evil for which Hitler and Mao were responsible died with the last century. Woodrow Wilson’s legacy, however, simply won’t go away. Schools and think tanks are named for the man and various polls continue to rate him as a great or near-great president. The “progressive” politics of today’s Democrats are part of his legacy, as is the instability of much of the world in which we live. Wilson, the first college president to occupy the White House, banned blacks from government restrooms, was the first president to openly attack the U.S. Constitution and eagerly support laws to prosecute and imprison those who disagreed with his policies. His hostility to black Americans was matched only by his antipathy toward Italian, German and Irish Americans and his desire to rid the nation of those he referred to dismissively as “hyphenated Americans” and against who he railed incessantly."

"Twice in this century, the world has been threatened by a catastrophe; twice this catastrophe was bom in Europe, and twice you Americans, along with others, were called upon to save Europe, the whole world and yourselves. The first rescue mission—among other things—provided significant help to us Czechs and Slovaks. Thanks to the great support of your President Wilson, our first president, Tomás Garrigue Masaryk, could found our modern independent state. He founded it, as you know, on the same principles on which the United States of America had been founded, as Masaryk’s manuscripts held by the Library of Congress testify."

"We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.""

"The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty."

"It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other."

"1. Open covenants of peace must be arrived at."

"2. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war."

"What is at at stake now is the peace of the world. What we are striving for is a new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice, — no mere peace of shreds and patches."

"The peace of the world depends upon the just settlement of each of the several problems to which I adverted in my recent address to the Congress. I, of course, do not mean that the peace of the world depends upon the acceptance of any particular set of suggestions as to the way in which those problems are to be dealt with. I mean only that those problems each and all affect the whole world; that unless they are dealt with in a spirit of unselfish and unbiased justice, with a view to the wishes, the natural connections, the racial aspirations, the security, and the peace of mind of the peoples involved, no permanent peace will have been attained. They cannot be discussed separately or in corners. None of them constitutes a private or separate interest from which the opinion of the world may be shut out. Whatever affects the peace affects mankind, and nothing settled by military force, if settled wrong, is settled at all. It will presently have to be reopened."

"This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost."

"After all, the test of whether it is possible for either government to go any further in this comparison of views is simple and obvious. The principles to be applied are these: First, that each part of the final settlement must be based upon the essential justice of that particular case and upon such adjustments as are most likely to bring a peace that will be permanent; second, that peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power; but that third, every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims amongst rival states; and fourth, that all well defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to breaks the peace of Europe and consequently of the world. A general peace erected upon such foundations can be discussed. Until such a peace can be secured we have no choice but to go on."

"My dear Swope, Your letter of yesterday interests me very deeply, I need hardly say, and furnishes much material for constructive thinking, but my present judgment is that this is not the time for formulation. If we were dealing with only one class, a statement could be made which I think would guide and stimulate rather than disturb, but just so certainly as such a statement was attempted at this time, there would spring up a grand controversy in which the selfish and exclusive interests of the country would speak loudest because through the largest number of the journals and magazines. I am afraid that, while we could easily hold our own in such a debate, this is not the wise time to start a debate which would distract attention from the matters immediately in hand and pressing for the right solution. Don’t you think there is something in that? Cordially and sincerely yours, Woodrow Wilson."

"Do not think of this treaty of peace as merely a settlement with Germany. It is that. It is a very severe settlement with Germany, but there is not anything in it that she did not earn. Indeed, she earned more than she can ever be able to pay for, and the punishment exacted of her is not a punishment greater than she can bear, and it is absolutely necessary in order that no other nation may ever plot such a thing against humanity and civilization. But the treaty is so much more than that. It is not merely a settlement with Germany; it is a readjustment of those great injustices which underlie the whole structure of European and Asiatic society. This is only the first of several treaties. They are all constructed upon the same plan. The Austrian treaty follows the same lines. The treaty with Hungary follows the same lines. The treaty with Bulgaria follows the same lines. The treaty with Turkey, when it is formulated, will follow the same lines. What are those lines? They are based upon the purpose to see that every government dealt with in this great settlement is put in the hands of the people and taken out of the hands of coteries and of sovereigns who had no right to rule over the people. It is a people's treaty, that accomplishes by a great sweep of practical justice the liberation of men who never could have liberated themselves, and the power of the most powerful nations has been devoted not to their aggrandizement but to the liberation of people whom they could have put under their control if they had chosen to do so. Not one foot of territory is demanded by the conquerors, not one single item of submission to their authority is demanded by them. The men who sat around that table in Paris knew that the time had come when the people were no longer going to consent to live under masters, but were going to live the lives that they chose themselves, to live under such governments as they chose themselves to erect. That is the fundamental principle of this great settlement. And we did not stop with that. We added a great international charter for the rights of labor. Reject this treaty, impair it, and this is the consequence to the laboring men of the world, that there is no international tribunal which can bring the moral judgments of the world to bear upon the great labor questions of the day. What we need to do with regard to the labor questions of the day, my fellow countrymen, is to lift them into the light, is to lift them out of the haze and distraction of passion, of hostility, not into the calm spaces where men look at things without passion. The more men you get into a great discussion the more you exclude passion. Just so soon as the calm judgment of the world is directed upon the question of justice to labor, labor is going to have a forum such as it never was supplied with before, and men everywhere are going to see that the problem of labor is nothing more nor less than the problem of the elevation of humanity. We must see that all the questions which have disturbed the world, all the questions which have eaten into the confidence of men toward their governments, all the questions which have disturbed the processes of industry, shall be brought out where men of all points of view, men of all attitudes of mind, men of all kinds of experience, may contribute their part to the settlement of the great questions which we must settle and can not ignore."

"Reconstruction was detestable] not because the Republican Party was dreaded but because the dominance of an ignorant and inferior race was justly dreaded."

"It will take one hundred years to eradicate this prejudice, and we must deal with it as practical men. Segregation is not humiliating, but a benefit, and ought to be so regarded by you gentlemen."

"The sum of the whole matter is this, that our civilization cannot survive materially unless it be redeemed spiritually."

"The great malady of public life is cowardice. Most men are not untrue, but they are afraid. Most of the errors of public life, if my observation is to be trusted, come not because men are morally bad, but because they are afraid of somebody. God knows why they should be: it is generally shadows they are afraid of."

"Gossips are only sociologists upon a mean and petty scale."

"It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

"Raymond Fosdick came to my room and awakened me last night to tell me the following story and ask me what he should do about it: When he reached the 23rd street ferry on his way to the boat at 6 A.M. December 4, he noticed hundreds of young men and women and old men and women hurrying off the ferry boat and away into the darkness. He asked his tax driver who they were and was told that they were sweat shop workers. He happened to meet one of them buying a morning paper and asked the man how long he worked a day. The man replied: “Fourteen hours. But do you see that boat (pointing across the river towards the George Washington) there’s a man aboard her that is going to Europe to change all that.” I advised Fosdick to tell the story to the President and to advise him that he must see to it that a bill of industrial human rights was written into the treaty of peace – a bill providing for world wide maximum hours of labor (at least in civilized countries) minimum wages, unemployment insurance, etc. Fosdick did this today. The President replied that it frightened him to think how much the common people of the world expect of him. That he did not consider it possible to take up any such matters at the peace conference. That he hoped the international labor conference on which he looked with much favo[r] would press for these matters."

"The war sharpened Liberal dissatisfaction with the traditional methods of conducting foreign policy. ... They found in President Wilson a man after their own hearts. His views and theirs coincided at many points: a just peace without annexations or indemnities; the map of Europe redrawn on the principle of self-determination; "open covenants openly arrived at", arbitration and the rule of law; disarmament and the replacing of exclusive alliances by a League of Nations; above all, a devotion to the ideal of the brotherhood of man."

"The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force."

"To the people of the United States, the death of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States from March 4, 1913, to March 4, 1921, which occurred at 11:15 o'clock today at his home at Washington, District of Columbia, deprives the country of a most distinguished citizen, and is an event which causes universal and genuine sorrow. To many of us it brings the sense of a profound personal bereavement... His early profession as a lawyer was abandoned to enter academic life. In this chosen field he attained the highest rank as an educator, and has left his impress upon the intellectual thought of the country. From the Presidency of Princeton University he was called by his fellow citizens to be the Chief Executive of the State of New Jersey. The duties of this high office he so conducted as to win the confidence of the people of the United States, who twice elected him to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic. As President of the United States he was moved by an earnest desire to promote the best interests of the country as he conceived them. His acts were prompted by high motives and his sincerity of purpose can not be questioned. He led the nation through the terrific struggle of the world war with a lofty idealism which never failed him. He gave utterance to the aspiration of humanity with an eloquence which held the attention of all the earth and made America a new and enlarged influence in the destiny of mankind."

"In those days, 1913 and 1914, the leadership of the Nation was in the hands of a great President who was seeking to recover for our social system ground that had been lost under his conservative predecessor, and to restore something of the fighting liberal spirit which the Nation had gained under Theodore Roosevelt. It seemed one of our great national tragedies that just when Woodrow Wilson was beginning to accomplish definite improvements in the living standards of America, the World War not only interrupted his course, but laid the foundation for twelve years of retrogression. I say this advisedly because it is not progress, but the reverse, when a nation goes through the madness of the twenties, piling up paper profits, hatching all manner of speculations and coming inevitably to the day when the bubble bursts."

"You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality."

"You are not here merely to prepare to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget this errand."

"[W]e are not bound to adhere to the doctrine held by the signers of the Declaration of Independence."

"If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing."

"Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation."

"There are two beings who assess character instantly by looking into the eyes,—dogs and children. If a dog not naturally possessed of the devil will not come to you after he has looked you in the face, you ought to go home and examine your conscience; and if a little child, from any other reason than mere timidity, looks you in the face, and then draws back and will not come to your knee, go home and look deeper yet into your conscience."

"Like a lusty child, government with us has expanded in nature and grown great in stature, but has also become awkward in movement... English and American political history has been a history, not of administrative development, but of legislative oversight-not of progress in governmental organization, but of advance in law-making and political criticism... We go on criticising when we ought to be creating."

"The success of a party means little except when the Nation is using that party for a large and definite purpose."

"There can be no equality or opportunity, the first essential of justice in the body politic, if men and women and children be not shielded in their lives, their very vitality, from the consequences of great industrial and social processes which they can not alter, control, or singly cope with."

"We are not put into this world to sit still and know; we are put into it to act. It is true that in order to learn men must for a little while withdraw from action, must seek some quiet place of remove from the bustle of affairs, where their thoughts may run clear and tranquil, and the heats of business be for the time put off; but that cloistered refuge is no place to dream in."

"The working people of America, — if they must be distinguished from the minority that constitutes the rest of it, — are, of course, the backbone of the Nation. No law that safeguards their lives, that improves the physical and moral conditions under which they live, that makes their hours of labor rational and tolerable, that gives them freedom to act in their own interest, and that protects them where they cannot project themselves, can properly be regarded as class legislation or as anything but as a measure taken in the interest of the whole people, whose partnership in right action we are trying to establish and make real and practical. It is in this spirit that we shall act if we are genuine spokesmen of the whole country."

"Mr. House is my second personality. He is my independent self. His thoughts and mine are one. If I were in his place I would do just as he suggested."

"No doubt a lot of nonsense has been talked about the inalienable rights of the individual, and a great deal that was mere vague sentiment and pleasing speculation has been put forward as fundamental principle."

"Administration is the most obvious part of government; it is government in action; it is the executive, the operative, the most visible side of government, and is of course as old as government itself."

"If every nation is going to be our rival, if every nation is going to dislike and distrust us, and that will be the case, because having trusted us beyond measure the reaction will occur beyond measure (as it stands now they trust us they look to us, they long that we shall undertake anything for their assistance rather than that any other nation should undertake it)— if we say, "No, we are in this world to live by ourselves, and get what we can out of it by any selfish processes," then the reaction will change the whole heart and attitude of the world toward this great, free, justice-loving people, and after you have changed the attitude of the world, what have you produced? Peace? Why, my fellow citizens, is there any man here or any woman, let me say is there any child here, who does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry? The real reason that the war that we have just finished took place was that Germany was afraid her commercial rivals were going to get the better of her, and' the reason why some nations went into the war against Germany was that they thought Germany would get the commercial advantage of them. The seed of the jealousy, the seed of the deep-seated hatred was hot, successful commercial and industrial rivalry."

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it."

"I would … rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than triumph in a cause that I know some day will lose."