in Mr. Harding is still a reflected interest, which is
concerned chiefly with the efforts that his Administration may make to
adjust itself to the forces that Mr. Wilson has set in motion. Stripped
of all the paraphernalia of his office, Mr. Wilson, by virtue of his
achievements, remains the most potent single influence in the modern
world; yet after this eight years in the White House it may be doubted
if even the American people themselves know him better or understand
him better than they did the day he was first inaugurated.

Neither Mr. Wilson's friends nor his enemies have ever succeeded in
interpreting him or in explaining him, nor can any interpretation or
explanation be satisfactory which fails at the outset to recognize in
him the simplest and at the same time the most complex character in the
greatest drama ever played on the stage of human history. Even his
closest associates have never found it easy to reconcile a fervent
political democracy with an unbending intellectual aristocracy, or to
determine which of those characteristics was dominant in his day-to-day
decisions.

No man ever sat in the President's chair who was more genuinely a
democrat or held more tenaciously to his faith in democracy than
Woodrow Wilson, but no other man ever sat in the President's chair who
was so contemptuous of all intellect that was inferior to his own or so
impatient with its laggard processes.

_A President Who Dealt in Ideas_

Mr. Wilson was a President who dealt almost exclusively in ideas. He
cared little or nothing about political organization and rarely
consulted the managing politicians of his party. When they conferred
with him it was usually at their request and not at his request.
Patronage hardly entered into his calculations as an agency of
government. He disliked to be troubled about appointments, and when he
had filled an office he was likely to be indifferent as to the manner
in which that office was subsequently administered, unless his own
measures were antagonized or his policies obstructed.

No man was ever more impersonal in his attitude toward government, and
that very impersonality was the characteristic which most baffled the
American people. Mr. Wilson had a genius for the advocacy of great
principles, but he had no talent whatever for advocating himself, and
to a country that is accustomed to think in headlines about political
questions his subtlety of mind and his careful, precise style of