New-York tribune., 1921-12-15
Ron1c By

Now that Mr.. Tumulty's diagnosis Of
Mr.. Wilson has been put into q book,
scholars in history may examine at
leisure and more profoundly the symp-
toms discovered and their results. As
you have been told, "Woodrow Wilson
As I Know Him" was written behind
Mr.. Wilson's hack and was inspired by
Mr.. Tumulty's anxiety to correct, de-
spite his chiefs Indifference, such curl
Gus misapprahensions as may exist
about his habits and character. The
work, most friendly and enthusiastic
advertisement, is not without its testi-
mony that it was published while Mr.
Wilson was not looking.
Eulogy, it seems, is an art as difficult
as animadyersion; and Mr. Tumulty Is
not among its gifted practitioners. AS
he whangs the so-called golden harp
Of panegyric, he kneels q little, and the
doxology that issues therefrom is a bit
monotonous in it's approvals. What
Mr.. Wilson needs to set him right with
the world is a sophisticated biographer,
one who will temper adulation with q
shrewd criticism-a biographer who
will announce his greatness and admit
his infirmities, extolling his ideals and
excusing his faults, il he can. Mr..
Tumulty's assay Of Mr.. Wilson finds
him 100 per cent godlike-the patient
Parent Of Good, shaking his ambrosial
curls as he mounts the storms and
breasts the pillows, nobly en- route to
succor his imperiled and helpless
babe, the Cosmos.
It must be acknowledged that Mr..
Tumulty's loud, go-the-limit stump
speeding method is with many persons
eficacious. 1t fetched him from minor
New Jersey politics to position where
he could shape in great crisis the
whispers Of throne, Averse to Mr..
Wilson, as Mr.. Wilson lay in the hum
Bile manger of events, he, with Colonel
Harvey, later became one of the three
or four wise men. Mr. Tumulty's brusque
notes to the President, beginning "Dear
Governor" and containing information,
advice, counsel, admonition, hints and
bewarings, must have been powerful
instruments in the grave surgery of
the times. From his long experience
in New Jersey politics he knew the
European nations, their virtues and
their feibles, and he was equipped to
inform his Rresident as to what should
be donel These informations and guild
ances he gave to Mr.. Wilson, who re-
ceived them hospitality; and that is
one OF the reasons that we are where
we are-wherever we are.
X X 4
Mr.. Wilson needs, as all statesmen
need, cunning biographer. Not a
Lincoln Strachey, who weuld, as Mr
strachey did in Queen Victoria" sub
tly blow him up as toy balloon and
as subtly punctVre him, laughing in his
sleeve as he collapsed, hut visa
yes-and= =ns=man-seme one who would
know as much about alteration as, fer
instance, Mr.. Lansing knew about ex-
postulation when he wrote his mem oirs
of himself and Mr.. Wilson, Mr.. Ian
sing knew the sly art that removes the
boost from the knock. He tempered
his wrongs with a broad. if insineere,
compassion, and he spoke his grievances
more in sorrow than in anger. Yet he
hurt the Wilson cause more than did
Colonel Harvey, who, in his crude
direct and paevishly personal attacks
on the President, made the President
many friends.
\ X =
At any rate we get some fertile side
lights on Wilson from the near-nalvete
of Mr.. Tumulty's memoirs, Many Of