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

Twenty-eighth President of the United States and the first Democrat since Jackson to serve two successive terms, Woodrow Wilson occupied the presidency during eight years of such world upheaval and turmoil that his propor place in history cannot be as- signed to him until his contemporaries are likewise assigned to their inches.
 Certainly he ranks as one of the great war presidents of the American republic. and he exercised such an in iuence in world offaiFs as never before attached to his office. si Rose From Obscurity
 Empires crumbled, thrones collapsed. the map of the world was made over, and under his administration the coun- try abandoned its policy of isolation and became an active participant in world affairs. In all of that he took a powerful hand. No biographer could attempt to assess him accurately. ana in full, until the processes which be- gan in his day and with his participa- tion have come to a conclusion.
 An obscure lawyer, by nature man of letters. he became an educator and won his first attention from the public as president of Princeton university. Then by the strange ways of politi- cal system he became governor of New Jersey and later. because the voters of the republican party were divided be- tween Theodore Roosevelt and William H. Taft he became president of the United States.
 During his eight years of power he travelled the gamut of human emotions :: victory, defeat, courtship and marriage i; responsibility for leading a nation into war with the collateral responsibility of bringing it back again to the ways of peace and finally a daily struggle with death.
 He had heard himself hailed by the millions of Europe as the God of peace" and heard his name hissed by the same millions. Acclaimed at one time almost as q new Messiah, he heard himself excoriated and denounced as an autocrat and worse at home and abroad. No other president since Lin- coin was so wOrshipped and hated; no other president since Roosevelt had such friends and such enemies. Through it all he preserved an outward calm while the grim destroyer which lowered close about him during the last months of his occupancy of the presidency, fol- lowed him relentlessly to the modest home where he lived the ways of re- tired gentleman and knocked at his door every day until it was at last opened.
 Smashed Many Precedents
 After having borne the burdens of a war president he undertook the task of making a peace which he sincerely be- lieved would be a lasting one and al- though he succeeded in getting Europe to accept it in large measure his own he broke his health, wore himself out, suffered stroke of paralysis which led to his death and declared through it all that he would have been happy to give his life for the success of his efforts.
 Woodrow Wilson was precedent smasher from beginning to end. He began by reviving the practice of Washington and Jefferson in delivering his message to Congress in person; he finished by actually leaving American soil and going to Europe. His was the responsibility of deciding when a country with people torn by conflict ing sympathies was ready to throw it. self into the great World war. and when the moment came he took the re- sponsibility of throwing in the men and millions which turned the scale to victory.
 Whatever an army of Boswells may write. that will be the part in which he will be best remembered by coming generations.
 Born in Staunton. Va, December 2S, 1856. of Scotch Irish parentage. he was christened Thomas Woodrow Wilson and he was known in early life as Tommy" After he graduated from Princeton in 1879 he was known only as Woodrow Wilson. His father was the Rev. Joseph Ruggles Wilson, Presbyterian clergyman, and his mother was Jessie Woodrow
 Spent Youth In South When he was two years old the for tunes of his father took the family to Augusta. Ga. and later to Columbia, S. C., where at the age of 17 Thomas Woodrow Wilson entered Davidson college, but left there soon to 70 to Princeton. After graduating at Prince ton he studied law at the University of Virginia and in 1882 hung out his shingle in Atlanta Ga. Meantime he courted Ellen Louise Axson, the daugb- ter of Savannah Presbyterian clergy.