The intimate papers of Colonel House arranged as a narrative by Charles Seymour.

viii

PREFATORY NOTE

certain that had he asked for such an army as I advocated
he would have been successful. The two arms do not hang
together on even terms, for the building of a great army
touches every nerve centre of the nation, social and economic,
and raises questions and antagonisms which could never
come to the fore over a large navy programme.
In my opinion, it ill serves so great a man as Woodrow
Wilson for his friends, in mistaken zeal, to claim for him
impeccability. He had his shortcomings, even as other men,
and having them but gives him the more character and
virility. As I saw him at the time and as I see him in
retrospect, his chief defect was temperamental. His prejudices were strong and oftentimes clouded his judgments.
But, by and large, he was what the head of a state should
be - intelligent, honest, and courageous. Happy the nation
fortunate enough to have a Woodrow Wilson to lead it
through dark and tempestuous days!
Much as he accomplished, much as he commended himself to the gratitude and admiration of mankind, by some
strange turn of fate his bitterest enemies have done more
than his best friends to assure his undying fame. Had the
Versailles Treaty gone through the United States Senate as
written and without question, Woodrow Wilson would have
been but one of many to share in the imperishable glory of
the League of Nations. But the fight which he was forced to
make for it, and the world-wide proportions which this
warfare assumed, gradually forced Woodrow Wilson to the
forefront of the battle, and it was around his heroic figure
that it raged. While he went down in defeat in his own
country, an unprejudiced world begins to see and appreciate
the magnitude of the conception and its service to mankind. The League of Nations and the name of Woodrow
Wilson have become inseparable, and his enemies have helped
to build to his memory the noblest monument ever erected
to a son of man.