The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-04

gle. He devoted his whole being to the war, seeing nobody and thinking of nothing else. Some of his days prob- ably were like Lincoln's. 4s
 It was Wilson who conducted the correspondence with Chancellor Max, of Germany. when the request for an armistice came. and once the Germans laid down jtheir arms he turned his thought wholly from war to peace; tell ing his friends that while Germany must be made to pay to her full ability, Europe must not have another Alsace- Lorraine.
 It was quite a different Wilson who sat in the Presidents chair when the war ended. With hair whitened and face lined, he showed the effects. He had learned something about men and human nature. He had learned, he told a friend, that some men become xreat and others swell up" but his penchant for doing things himself never had les sened. He wrote state papers and read them to the cabinet afterward; he became impatient with men who dis. agreed with him and frequently dis missed them. He quarreled with friends who in turn reproached' him with being ungrateful, but he always kept on his course having once decided upon it. i' Takes Trip To Europe fr Peace in sight, Wilson decided to % to Europe himself and take, hand in making it. Congress, no longer the suppliant hand maiden it was during his first administrati tion roared its dis approval. Wilson assured Congress, that in the day of wireless and cable it would know all he did. As . mat ter of fact he told Congress very little of what he was doing, or anybody else for that matter, until 1t was done. That was not Mir. Wilson's way. The result was that he committed the United States to the League of Ma. ] tions and was repudiated.
 Wilson's participation in the memor. able peace Congress had been de- scribed by many pens, friendly and unfriendly, and his past was SC indeli- ply written in recent history that it needs little attention in brief re. sume of his life works.
 The statesmen of Europe were charmed by his oratory, his wit and his personality, until they bumped into his inaomitable will to do things his way when he was convinced he was right. Then the sparks flew in the secret meetings he had with Lloyd George, Clemeceau and Orlando He was determined to have a League of woven with treaty of peace that no nation could accept one without ac- cepting the other. The opposing statesmen found that only by letting him have it could they get the,p pro- visions of peace they wanted. The re- suit was a treaty in which all got something and it was denounced by it's opponents as breeder of wars rather than a treaty of peace.
 It would require large volume to tell All the interesting things that happened to Wilson while he was par ticipating in making the treaty of peace in Paris in that historic winter of 101S-1019 It would require An- other volume to tell the enRrossing story of diplomatic maneuvers, in. trigues, and dramatic moments that attended it. Publication of either at this time probably would result in the creation of Annanias clubs on both sides of the Atlantic and certainly would not add to good feeling among peoples who are looking forward to an end of wars and an era of peace.
 Wilson, himself, would not wish it. When, in 1920, he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for being the person who has promoted most or best the fra. ternity of nations and the abolishment or .diminution of standing armies and the formation and increase of peace congresses" he said:
 ''The cause of peace and the cause of truth are of one family. Whatever has been accomplished in the past is petty compared to the glory of the promise of the future"
 Wilson lived his last years and died in ''the glory of the promise of the flu. ture" confident that right as he saw it would ultimately prevail. He never lost faith in the League of Nations, but he lost faith in some of the hu. man beings who were its inevitable elements.
 He closed his eyes confident that as man of letters and President he haG done his best for humanity, but that his best was not all that he might have wished.
 Time alone can write his epitaph.