The Wolf Point herald. (Wolf Point, Mont.) 1913-1940, 1924-02-07
LIFE SKETCH OF
WOODROW WILSON

I've TERMS, woodrow Wilson occu
pied the presidency during eigh
years of such world upheaval ant
turmoil that his proper place in his
tory cannot be assigned to him unit
his contemporaries are likewise as
signed to their nitches.
Certainly he ranks as one of the
great war presidents of the Ameri-
a republic, and he exercised such
an influence in world affairs as never
before attached to his Office.
Empires crumbled, thrones collaps-
ed, the map of the world was made
over, and under his administration
the country abandoned its policy of
isolation and became an active par
ticipant in world affairs. In all of
that he took a powerful hand. No
~biographer could attempt to assess
him accurately, and in full, until the
processes which began in his day and
with his participation have come to
a conclusion.
Rapid Rise
An obscure lawyer, by nature a
man of letters, he became an educat-
or and won his first attention from
the public as president of Princeton
university. Then, by the strange
ways of a political system, he became
governor of New Jersey and later,
because the voters of the Republican
party were divided between Theo-
dore Roosevelt and William H. Taft,
he became president of the United
States.
During his eight years of power
he travelled the gamut of human emo
tons: Victory, defeat; courtship and
marriage; responsibility for leading
a nation into war with the collateral
responsibility of bringing it back
again to the ways of peace and final
ly a daily struggle with death.
He had heard himself hailed by
the millions of Europe as "The God
of peace" and heard his name Kissed
by the same millions. Acclaimed at
one time almost as a new Messiah,
he heard himself excoriaten and de-
nounced as a autocrat and worse, at
home and abroad. No other presi-
dent since Lincoln was so w~orshiped
and hated; no other president since
Roosevelt had such friends and such
enemies. Through it all he preserv-
ed en outward calm, while the grim t
destroyer, which lowered close about
.im during the last months of his
occupancy of the presidency, follow
ID him relentlessly to the modest :
where he lived the ways of a '
-etired gentleman and knocked at :
lis door every day until it was at {
asst opened. :
After having bourne the burdens !,
# a war president, he undertook the :
ask of making a peace which he sin !.
erely believed would be a lasting -
ne and although he succeeded ir
Europe to accept it in large q
leasure his own country rejected it -
md in the fight he broke his health =
-ore himself out, suffered a strok, !
f paralysis which led to his death, =
nd declared through it all that he
'ould have been happy to give his y,
fe for the success of his efforts. u
Turned Scale of Victory &c
Woodrow Wilson was a precedent dl
nasher from beginning to end. He dc
cyan by reviving the practice OF tn
'ashlngton and Jefferson in deliver la
G his message to Congress in per- fo
m; he finished it by actually leav-
American soil and going to Eur
,e. His was the responsibility of
when a country with a peo-
e torn by conflicting sympathies
as ready to throw itself into the
eat world war, and when the mo- ov
emit came he took the responsibility
throwing in the men and millions Oh
itch turned the scale to victory.
Whatever an army of Boswells o+s
ny write, that will be the part in
itch he will be best remembered ~,
coming generations.
Born in Staunton, Va, December aot
, 1856, of Scotch-Irish parentage,
was christened Thomas Wood tar
" Wilson and he was known in !
.ly life as Tommy. After he was ;s
aduated from Princeton in 1879 {
was known only as Woodrow Will 90
His father was the Rev. Joseph 7
ggles Wilson, a Presbyterian cler- deb
nan, and his mother was Jessie 7
,odrow. MIA.
When he was two years old the +
tunes of his father took the fam bri,
to Augusta, Ca, and later to {
S. c., where at the age par
IT Thomas Woodrow Wilson en-
Davidson college, but he left ]
re soon to go to Princeton. After me
duation at Princeton he studied T
at the university of Virginia and not]
1882 hung out his single in At r
ia, Ga. Meantime, he courted of
en- Louise Arson, the daughter A
a Savanna Presbyterian Clergyman. for
were married in 1885 and had F
ee daughters, Margaret, the eldest cror
, did not marry: Jessie, who be- IT