New Britain herald., 1914-04-29
WHAT OTHERS SAY
Views on all sides of timely questions as discussed in ex. changes that come to Herald office.
Our War Presidents.
(BOStOn GlObe.)

Some persons have voiced their fears that MT. Wilson lacks training and preparation for carrying on a war. So have all our war presidents in the past The more belligerent oc- cupants of the White House, like Jackson, Grant, Cleveland and Roosevelt, have been permitted to go through their terms in peace. It has remained for most unmartial presidents to be chief of the army and navy when our forces have been sent into action.
 Madison was a statesman, but no soldier, a scholar and graduate of Princeton, like MT. Wilson. President Madison evaded the war of 1912 through nearly the whole of his first term, only to have it crash down upon him and to find himself in his second term a fugitive from the White House, with Washington in the hands of the British. .+
 Polk was no soldier, but he was made readier for the Mexican war by his long advocacy of the measures that caused it. Yet he passed the day when it began with a mind filled with religious thoughts, as his diary re- cords and not in listening to the music of the bugle.
 Lincoln, it would seem, must have known he was war president when elected, but the refused to see his destiny. He fancied that the trou- ble would blow over and laughingly predicted that the southerners would not give up the offices.
 'If there were a rumor of a va cant post office at the north pole" he said ''the way there would be strewn with frozen Virginians."
 Although, on his election, he stood unf1inchingly against compromising any principle he sat in the. White House a month without taking any military measures to counteract se- cession ordinances and the batteries that the seceders were setting up in front of southern forts still held by the federal government When the seeded states refused to let the United States mail enter their terri tory he did not try to force it on them and when young William Tecumseh Sherman called and foretold the war Lincoln lightly replied: T reckon we will manage to keep house. Secretary of State Seward finally proposed on April 1 that he should
 
 was doing nothing to avert war Sew ard himself was no more able 10 see the magnitude of the oncoming strug- gle. He thought that it ought to have been and could have been set tied in a month! Mckinley, our fourth war president, although he had been a soldier, was unaggressive. He did everything to stop the demand for the Spanish war and to reassure Spain there would be peace, until congress at last broke way from his control and virtually held a stop watch on him. as was said at the time, while he wrote a war message.
 The Tribuna at Rome did we'll from it's distance so readily to see and point
 out a comparison between Lincoln and Wilson. Lincoln's unwillingness and slowness in the beginning left us unprepared throughout the opening months, but those qualities, as the war fairly got under way, became militant virtues. He persisted just as constantly in fighting for peace as he had persisted in clinging to it while it lasted. Moreover, he put forth such a moral leadership as no other man ever exercised in this country. His nature expressed itself in mercy and a passion for reconcilia- tion so that the nation was reared anew on Linco1n's cornerstone, dedi-
 cated with malice toward none; with charity for all.''
 President Wilson has some of these Lincolnian qualities in a more abun- dant degree than any other president in a generation. He has shown an unusual gift for holding the moral | leadership of the nation. People do | not censure him for his mistakes, but trust his virtues and the rectitude of his purpose. So, in this crisis, which he approaches so unwilling1y and with unfeigned horror, the people will stand back of him. If war comes, l and he gets into it, we may be sure that he will stay until he sees it l through. At the same time, his char acter and his temper will be pledge i to the Mexicans and to the world ] that victory will not be abused, but will be approached as a high duty and with an earnest sense of respon- :, sibility to make sure that Mexico and ] the United States will both benefit by the peace and security to follow.