New-York tribune., 1919-06-11
The Presidents New Critics

LII d SlT1klng arClclo IN Inc 40
Republic Walter E. Weyl seeks t. ex-
plain what he calls the Failure" Of
President Wilson at Paris.
The sketch has significance because it's
author is of the group which gathered
at the Hotel Crillon to take charge Of
the peace making. They took ship full
Of hope and zeal, believing they had
captured the President, and that through
him and Americas economic and mill
tary power and prestige of disinterested-
ness they would win a great triumph
for what they are pleased to regard as
liberalism.
Now, disillusoned, they turn with bit
terness against their former idol. "Thus
comes to an inglorious end," writes Mr..
Weyl, "the quest of Woodrow Wilson
in search of new world" Mr.. Wilson
is ikened to gullible Moses Primrose,
who went to market, and after an in
terview with a reverend gentleman, came
back empty of pockets, but with gross
of green spectacles. He is held to have
met cynical and shrewd gentlemen who
were firm of will. Not the ideals of
Mr. Wilson, we are told, led to his un-
doing, but his weak failure to stick by
them-his fatal tendency to entertain
contradictory ideas consecutively, this
rather than hypocrisy is said to be the
reason why the President, after preach
ing the doctrine of simple honesty
among nations, "then wrote a new
Brest-Litovsk."
During the coming months the public
is likely to hear much criticism pitched
on this key. 1t is well to prepare our
minds for it. The Tribune hazards the
guess that the bottom cause of the dis
satisfaction is not the reason assigned,
but is the Presidents refusal, when the
test came, to function as class-con-
scious revolutionary international So
cialist.
Nothing is 'liberal' to the dogmatic
revolutionares which does not smooth
the pathway to something open to Boil
shevism. These illiberal liberals do not
like democracy Of elf-governing groups
occupying particular territories. They
are for democracy only of the kind
whose allegiance flows to class.
President Wilson firted with these
men and their ideas. He liked the in
ternationalsm they emphasized. But
when what they principally sought
clearly appeared he turned away from
them and became, as Mr.. Weyl might
say, bourgeoisie. To call the treaty a
Brest-Litovsk one is statement of such
wild extravaganza as to indicate baff1ed
rage.
No one knows hoA far the President
was Bolshevist in thought. He did not
take the public into his confidence. His
words can be interpreted more than one
way For long time his intimacy with
those who now assail him gave grave
concern. He did not contradict when he
was saluted as "comrade"
But it is significant that he was vague,
even in the fourteen point speeches, and
vagueness is sometimes by intention.
The self-styled liberals" hailed him as
OF their fellowship, but it was more their
saying than his own.
The President, one may imagine was
more educated by events than by any,
thing else. He saw in Europe beyond
the Rhine what acceptance of revolu-
tionary socialism really meant. The
abyss he drew back from. So he escaped
from the clutches of his would-be
mentors and yielded to the solid argu-
ments he heard.
No one has been cajoled or fooled, ex-
cept, perhaps, the social revolutionaries.
who fooled themselves. The world is
not as witless as they assume. It sees
the objective this element has in mind
Seeing it, there is desire to avoid taking
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