Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1912-04-16
WOODROW WILSON
PROCLAIMS VIEWS
ON PUBLIC DUTY
'What Jefferson Would Do
Was Subject of Comprehen-
Sive Speech at New York
Last Night

NEW YORK, April I3.-Gov. Wood
row Wilson delivered an address at the
Jefferson Day banquet, held at the
Waldorf-Astoria here tonight. He re-
sponded to the toast, What Jefferson
Would Do" and said:
The circumstances of our day are
so utterly different from those of JEFF
ferson's day, that it may seem nothing
less than an act of temerity TO at
tempt to say what Jefferson would do
If he were now alive and guiding us
with his vision and command. The
world we live in is no longer divided
into neighborhoods and communities;
the lines of the telegraph thread it like
nerves uniting a single organism. The
ends of the earth touch one another and
exchange impulse and purpose. America
is linked to mankind by every tie OF
blood and circumstance. She is more
cosmopolitan In her makeup than any
other nation of the world is enriched by
a greater variety Of energy drawn from
strong peoples the world over. She is
not the simple, homogeneous, rural ma
ton that she was in Jefferson's time,
making only a beginning at development
and the conquest of fortune; she is great
and strong; above all she is infinitely
varied her affairs are shot through
with emotion and the passion that
comes with strength and growth and
self confidence. We live in new
strange age and reckon with new affairs
alike in economics and politics of which
Jefferson knew nothing.
"And, yet. we may remind ourselves
that Jefferson's mind did not move in
world of narrow circumstances; it did
not confine itself to the conditions of
single race or a single continent. 1t had
commerce with the thought of men old
and new; IL had moved in an age Of
ample air, in which men thought not
only of nations but of mankind, IN
which they saw not only individual poll
cies but a great field of human need
and of human fortune. Neither did he
think in abstract terms as did the men
with whom he had had such stimulating
commerce of thought in France His
thought was not speculation, It was
the large generalization that comes from
actual observation and experience. He
had had contact with plain men Of
many kinds as we'll as with philoso-
phers and foreign statesmen. He
thought in a way that his neighbors
in Virginia could understand, in way
which illuminated their own lives and
ambitions for them. And though he was
deemed a philosopher, he was neverthe-
less the idol of the people for he some
how heard and voiced what they them
selves could have said, and purposed
and conceived. For all the largeness
of his thought 1t was bathed in an ev-
eryday atmosphere; 1t belonged to the
actual, workaday world; it has its feet
firmly on circumstances and fact ana
the footing all men are accustomed to
who reflect at all on their lives and the
lives Of their neighbors and compatriots
He was holding up for the illumination
of things of which he spoke light
which he had received out of the hands
Tlr4N h.. m We
that light as he held it fell upon actual
American life; they did not lose them
selves vaguely in space; they were Tor
the guidance of mems feet every day.
1--WE may be sure, therefore, that had
Jefferson lived in our time he would
have acted upon the facts as they are.
in the first place, because he would have
the second place because he would have
been interested in theory only as he
seen them as they actually are, and in
could adjust IL to the reality Of the
life about HIM He would not have
been content with a philosophy which
he could fit together only within the
walls of his study.
SPECIAL INTERESTS"
'HTo determine what Jenerson would
have done, therefore, requires only that
we should ourselves clearly see the racts
of our time as they are. whether in the
Aeld Of government or in the field of our
economic life and that we should see
how Jefferson's principle of the rule and
authority of the people stands related
TO those facts. We are constantly quot
ing Jefferson's fundamental thought: 1t
was that no policy could last whose
foundation is narrow, based upon the
privileges and authority Of few, but
that it's foundations must be as broad as
the interests of all the men and families
and neighborhoods that live under It,
Monopoly, private control, the authority
of privilege, the concealed mastery of a
few men cunning enough to rule with
out showing their power-he would
have at once pronounced the rank weeds
which were sure to choke out all whole
some life in the fair garden of affairs
If we can detect these things in our
time; If we can see them and describe
them and touch them as they are, then
we know what Jefferson would have
done. He would have moved against
them, sometimes directly, sometimes in
directly, sometimes openly, sometimes
subtly; but whether he merely mined
about them. or struck directly at them,
he would have set systematic war
against them at the front of all his
purpose.
POPULAR GOVERNMENT
CAS- regards the real influences that
control our government, he would have
asked first of all: are they determined
by the direct and open contracts of
opinion? He would have found that
they were not; that, on the contrary,
our government as it has developed has
supplied secret influences with a hun
dred coverts and ambushes; that the
opinion of the nation makes little noise
in the committee rooms of legislatures;