April 5, 1917 
LAND & WATER 
A Democratic Autocrat 
By Our Special Correspondent 
-13 
This lucid explanation of the position which President 
Wilson occupies to-day in the Unite I States is from the 
pen of an English writer, noit/ resident in Washington. 
The article was of course ivritten nearly a month ago 
PRESIDENT WILSON has recently loomed larger 
and larger before the world. He is no longer 
the neutral head of a distant country. Of his 
own volition he has tried to force upon the 
belligerents his views about peace. Before this can 
appear in print he may, by the ineptitude of Prussian 
savagery, have been forced against his will into the war. 
An American President is by the nature of his office 
a ]>uissant person. He is stronger during his term at the 
White House than any Old \\'orld autocrat. He can 
snap his fingers at Parliamentary majorities. His Cabinet 
holds office independently of Congress. Only when it 
comes to the ratilication of a treaty can the Senate inter- 
fere with his executive work. Technically it also dccla.res 
for peace and war ; but as a matter of fact a President 
can by his diplomacy either avoid war or bring things 
to a pass where the Senate must follow. It was Lincoln 
anfl not a timid Congress who in 1861 took up the gage 
Hung down by the Confederacy. In the President's 
hands and in his alone rests the decision to-day. More 
than that. If the break with Germany goes to its logical 
conclusion it will be for Mr. W ilson to decide on w hat 
scale the war shall be. 
President Wilson has to-day a greater authority Ahan 
perhaps any of his predecessors. One had good proof 
of that when Coimt von Bernstorft was handed his pass- 
ports. It was not what the country wanted, what Congress 
thought, what the .\dmiralty or the War Office were pre- 
paring to do that the newspapers canvassed and pro- 
claimed in their blackest print. Only the President 
counted. " The President is calm and collected " ; " The 
countrj' waits on the President " ; "Mr Wilson has been 
to the Naxy Department " ; " President Wilson summpns 
War Department's head"; "Mr. Wilson plays golfi" ; 
" Mr. Wilson goes to chui!j:h " ;— so ran the headlines 
wliich, sprawling across the first page of the paper, ;do 
service in America for the British poster. 
The President is indeed among the most extraordinary 
figures in transatlantic history. Cold and fastidious 
in manner and character, intimate only with a few people 
like his famous emissary and adviser Colonel House 
and his personal physician Dr. Cary Grayson, intolerant 
of advice from outsiders however well informed, a bad 
" mixer," as Americans say, a stilted, uncomfortable 
conversationalist save in his own circle, intellectually 
one of the most arrogant of men and hence a bad judge 
of individuals, guilty at times of impulsive action which, 
even his friends admit, smacks of bad taste, he has never- 
theless gained the confidence of the masses and the respect, 
or rather fear, of the politicans to a remarkable extent. 
Congress may be restless under his dragooning, some 
day it may perhaps revolt. It is quite possible that the 
Senate may, if the scheme is not temporarily obliterated 
by war, refuse to bless his Peace League idea with the 
impetus of its approval ; but for all that, when it comes 
to the sketching of broad policies it may be taken for 
granted that he has or will win the fundamental sympathy 
of his countrymen. There is no one whose criticism he 
need answer in public debate ; no one whom he of necessity 
consults before formulating a policy. 
It is important that your readers should understand 
that. They have heard Mr. Wilson consistently abused 
by representatives of stalwart American opinion and bv 
his Republican enemies. " The curse of Meroz," pro- 
claims Mr. Roosevelt, rest^s upon the Wliite House, 
for it, too, has not " dared to stand on the side of the 
Lord against the wrong-doing of the mighty." We may 
justly be grateful to our robust friends, but we should not 
l)e deceived by them. They represent much. Mr. 
Wilson will havo to depend upon them if it is necessary 
to prepare for real war. 
Mr. Wilson's autocracv is not tyrannical in the 
classical sense. It is essentially a product of the New 
World. It is, if the paradox may be allowed, a democra- 
.system of government which gives great latitude to its 
head. It is still more the product of a democratic political 
philosophy. For all his aloofness, Mr. Wilson has an 
almost uncanny power of appraising the popular mind. 
Mr Roosevelt moulded and used public opinion while 
in the White House with consummate skill. But 
his methods were very human and very understandable. 
He dominated by industr}', by the,indefatigable pursuit of 
knowledge,, by ceaseless advertisement of himself and 
his opinions, and by the appeal of the most compelling 
of characters. Mr.- Wilson dominates by instinct. He is 
strong partly because he is unbendingly sure of himself, 
but still more because he correctly appraises the public 
mind, because he is in personal sympathj' with its fears, 
prejudices, and ideals. He has also in his quietly 
spectacular way known how to appeal to its imagination. 
"The Professor in Politics" 
The present Democratic Government was, it will be 
remembered, thrown into power in 1912 by a wave of 
liberal and radical reaction against the hidebound con- 
servatism of the old RepubHcan party. The people 
were in a mood to applaud any broom that would sweep 
clean. They were sick of the administrative methods 
of the Republican gang and above all of a Congress of 
plutocratic tendencies. Mr. Wilson saw his chance. 
Directly he entered office he scandalised the political 
world by reading his messages in person to Congress in- 
stead of sending them to the Capitol by a clerk. He 
followed this up by constituting himself the Parliamentary 
leader of his party. Applause greeted what in any other 
President would have been fearfully dubbed an imperial 
extension of executive power, a dislocation of the cher- 
ished checks and balances of the Constitution. " The 
Professor in Politics " was succeeding. 
By August, 1914, a (then unsuspectedly) complete 
contact had been established between the White House 
and'the majority of the electorate. The President had 
reduced to its logical conclusion the modern liberal tenet 
that Governments should follow the popular will and 
should reserve leadership for their party organisation. 
Through him the Liberalism of the country dominated 
the Government. His shortcomings, whether praise- 
worthy or the reverse, were forgotten in pleasure at a 
leader who titillated the imagination by his, in domestic 
affairs, successful idealism. His diplomacy when the war 
started was equally in accord with the popular as opposed 
to the sophisticated view. Trained by their fathers in 
the creed that tradition and expediency alike bade the 
United States remain uncomfortably aloof from European 
affairs, they looked upon the contest just as the average 
Liberal voter at home looked upon the Balkan war. 
It w'as a tragic and regrettable incident, Prussian 
savagery w'as abominable and should be stigmatised as 
such : but it could not after all concern intimately the 
Republics of the New World if Europe was imlucky 
enough to be plunged into chaos by the muddling of 
effete monarchies and selfish autocracies. To this view 
the President subscribed officially. Hence his Pro- 
clamation in August.- 1914, counselling neutrality in 
thought as well as practice. 
Again in the Lusitania, Arabic and other submarine 
contro\^ersics with Germany, Mr. Wilson represented 
the United States better than those controversial patriots 
who proclaimed that such crimes and insults should be 
punished by arms. Possibly after the Lusitania his 
■personal passion for peace was for a moment the 
dominating factor. Under the shock of the news public 
opinion seemed to \'ibrate between peace and war until 
he by his " too proud to fight " speech came out for 
peace ; but apart from that there can be no doubt that his 
submarine diplomacy was what the United States 
public wanted. 
It wasthe*same regarding the peace talk of the winter. 
Mr. Wilson was abused as a megalomaniac w^ho thought 
that he had only to speak to become mediator ; he was 
accused of being under the Prussian thumb ; he was 
,i 1 -u.. 
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