The Birmingham age-herald., 1918-01-29
MEN, WOMEN
 AND THINGS

'It will be sometime before anyone will again refer to President Wilson as mere "schoolmaster" and cast re- flection on his ability to rise above the academic shades and take his stand put in the broad daylight of the forum where | men wrestle over great workaday prob- lems.
 President Wilson has put every school teacher in the land under obligations for showing to the world that a man need not lose his manhood or sacrifice his virlity just because he chooses teaching as profession. I was glad that pr Lang of Anniston gloried in the Tact that he was the head of a college. Clemenceau, the man of the hour in France, was once a. school teacher, and, strange to say, he carried on his profession here in America, and there is small doubt but that in connection with his having married an American girl, has made him a democrat of democrats even in the land which boasts that it 
 words, liberty, equality and fraternity.
 I said recently that the scholar in poli- sight as in England, but when Bal four, one of the worlds gerat scholars and thinkers, came here at the head of the English commission, he met his equal in every way when he was intro- duced to Woodrow Wilson. I glorfed in House a man of such scholarly attain ments.
 The carer of woodfow Wilson is a high incentive to bookish men I Ike to think of his college course. I am pleased at the idea of his wooing law, the jealous mistress, in Atlanta. I rather like the thought of his teaching young wom- en. l am proud that he gave his time to instructing young men. Up to the time of his entry into politics he was known as an educator. This fact initiated against his candidacy when he ran for governor of New Jersey
 If there is state in the union where man must be wise to the political game, it is that same New Jersey. It is of the great corporate interests whose tentacles stretch out to the farthcst ends of the land. It's statesmen were past masters in the art of intrigue. He got tc measure his strength in the coils of the octopus and met face to face the political boodlers.
 New Jersey learned that the scholar and gentleman was able not only to hold his own with the masters of big business, but that he could best the practical poi- ticans who looked on politics as trade, and were willing to sell out their own party to keep in office. He learned the selfishness of the great trusts and the venality of their servants who repre- sented them in the legislature and in the halls of Congress.
 They thought they could drive him back to the quiet life by trying to make his life miserable, but, strange to say, he fooled them by seeming not only will ing to fight back, but to get joy out of the scrap. In spite of George Harvey S friend. who wrote story to show that the gerat editor made Woodrow Wilson President, I am of the opinion that he tcok hand in it himself, and played good, sensible. sane, and safe politics and landed the plum despite the fact that many other old and shrewd statesmen had long poles and were doing their best to knock it down for themselves.
 
 Governor Wilson stood the galling stress of official and officious criticism and put to route as interruptions a band of political thugs as ever stabbed an op- ponent in the back. They found to their sorrow that he could not only stand the gaff, but that he could slip few under the ribs of those who were trying to put him to sleep in the ring. I am glad they put him through the third degree of pol itics, for it has stood him well at Wash ington.
 Now, I am not writing diatribe against politics, for politics as an art consists in the deft manipulation of mo- tive. Now, the President has proved him. self to be no amateur politician, but professional iI the highest and best sense of the word. If you doubt this, just go back over the record and see what he has been able to get Congress to do. It is one of the marvels in the political life of Washington. I doubt if any Of hls predecessors ever wielded anything like the power he has over the two branches of Congress.
 Now, I have set out this much to show that '.the schoolmaster' at Washington is man among men; that he is no nar- row grammarian, a mere spinner of fine phrases though he is a happy phrase maker; but he is man with a vision, broad and accurate, and in his place of vantage occupies discriminating out look upon the great war as the drama of democracy is being staged on the blood-red battlefields of Europe-as the great democratic nations fight to pre- serve the nationalities of the lesser ones and save them from the cruel talons of the Imperial Eagles of. Germany now