Herbert Hoover Describes the Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (June 1958 | Volume: 9, Issue: 4)

Herbert Hoover Describes the Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson

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Authors: Herbert Hoover

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June 1958 | Volume 9, Issue 4

woodrow wilson
Woodrow Wilson was “the personification of the heritage of idealism of the American people,” writes former President Herbert Hoover, who knew him well.

 

A third of a century since his defeat and death, most of the passion that surrounded Woodrow Wilson in life is spent. Nearly all his friends and contemporaries have left the scene, and a world resounding to fresh agonies catches only echoes of the crusade that failed and of the opportunity cast aside at the close of the “war to end wars.” But the figure of the crusader himself, the unlikely St. George in silk hat and pince-nez, the Presbyterian moralist wrestling with a backsliding world, remains ever interesting, a hero suited to Shakespearean tragedy, the center of an ever-mounting literature.

Of all the new books about him, none can match in basic importance the one excerpted here, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson, by Herbert Hoover. Save for Wilson himself, who wrote a biography of Washington, no other President of the United States has written a book about another. Unlike Mr. Churchill in England, very few American Presidents have ventured far into history or any other form of literature save for the publication of their papers, speeches, and autobiographies. But Mr. Hoover has had more than the advantage of sharing the burdens of the same great office with his subject; both as Food Administrator and as unofficial adviser, he worked for him.

On many occasions, Mr. Hoover sat at Wilson’s side, in private and at the conference table, during the war and the peacemaking, the period with which his book is concerned. Most importantly, he shared Wilson’s ideals and aspirations and saw them, after endless, man-killing struggles, dashed in large part to earth. Mr. Hoover writes not only with the grace born of simplicity, wide experience, and clear organization, but also with humor and sympathy. His is a remarkable work which illuminates with a fresh light the tragic figure whose presence must still haunt every statesmen’s conference table and every meeting at the “summit” until some kind of lasting peace descends upon this battered planet.

    ---The Editors

 

President Wilson, in the memories of thinking men, is the only enduring leader of those statesmen who conducted the First World War and its aftermath of peacemaking. I served under him in those times. I was a witness to the ordeal and tragedy of Woodrow Wilson. I had some background and a point of vantage from which to evaluate his endeavor to serve mankind.

It may be recalled that for eighteen years before the First World War I had been an administrative engineer, managing large industries in Russia, China, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, Britain, Belgium, Mexico and the United States. These projects required for their successful conduct some knowledge of their governments, their economics and their history. My relations with their peoples were not as a tourist or a diplomat. I participated in