CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR 



WOODROW WILSON AS PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON 



AT the Commencement of 1902, Dr. Patton's administration came 

 to an end in general dissatisfaction. He had, it is true, secured the 

 growth of the college in numbers and material equipment and had 

 added several distinguished men to the Faculty, but, intellectually, there 

 was stagnation. Dr. Patton's resignation and Woodrow Wilson's elec- 

 tion to succeed him were announced simultaneously and every one felt 

 that the right thing had been done; if there was one dissenting voice, 

 I failed to hear it. Happily, there was no interregnum and no time for 

 the formation of parties and the setting up of candidates, with all the 

 accompanying bitterness and ill-feeling. 



Woodrow Wilson had been my friend since our undergraduate days 

 and such, I am proud to say, he remained to the end of his life. We 

 had been intimately associated on the athletic committee, which long 

 consisted of Wilson, Fine and myself, and I had learned to regard him 

 as a great man and I have no smallest doubt that history will recognise 

 his greatness. He had the rare gift of constructive imagination and 

 could suggest original lines of development. On the other hand, he had 

 faults of temper and temperament and, both in Princeton and in Wash- 

 ington, he made tactical blunders. At least, his most closely attached 

 friends so regarded and lamented them. One of these tactical errors he 

 committed at the outset and it returned to plague him long afterward. 

 At the alumni luncheon of that Commencement, speeches were made 

 by the retiring and incoming Presidents and Mr. Wilson completely 

 ignored Dr. Patton and he did the same thing at his inauguration in 

 October, at the great dinner which the New York alumni gave to Dr. 

 Patton and himself and, strangest of all, at the installation of Dr. Patton 

 as President of the Seminary. As there were thus four public addresses 

 in which this omission was practised, there could be no question of over- 

 sight or forgetfulness. 



