href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@29850@[email protected]#id_71b" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">71

Sonnets—Recessional by Richard Linthicum—Courtesy of the New York World 72 Workmen's Compensation—From President Wilson's Speech of Acceptance, 1916 73 Typophotogravure of Portrait of President Wilson at Peace Conference, by George W. Harris 74 Woodrow Wilson's Place in History—An Appreciation by General The Right Honorable Jan Christian Smuts, 1921 75-79 Cartoon—Without the Advice or Consent of the Senate, by Kirby in the New York World 80 We Die Without Distinction—From the President's Address at Swarthmore College, 1913 80 Woodrow Wilson—An Interpretation—Courtesy of the New York World 81-93 Typophotogravure of the President on Board Ship Returning from Peace Conference 87 The President and the Peace Treaty 87 Typophotogravure of the President at the Last Meeting with his Cabinet, 1921 88 Two Pictures—From Address by Joseph P. Tumulty 88 The Covenant of the League of Nations 93-100

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HISTORY'S PROVING GROUND

he modern newspaper through its intensive, minute and zealous activities in searching out, presenting and interpreting each day the news of the entire world, is tracing with unerring accuracy the true and permanent picture of the present. This picture will endure as undisputed history for all time.

Let us concede that the newspaper writer sometimes, in the passion of the hour, goes far afield. It is equally true that no statement of importance can thus be made that is not immediately challenged, answered and reanswered until, through the fierce fires of controversy the dross is burned away and the gold of established fact remains. Not alone the fact stands out, but also the world's immediate reaction to that fact, the psychology of the event and the man dominating the cause and the effect.

The modern newspaper is the proving ground of history. To illustrate let us suppose that our newspaper press, as we know it today, had existed in Shakespeare's time. Would there now be any controversy over the authorship of the world's greatest dramas?

Could the staff photographer of a Sunday supplement as efficient as one of our present day corps have snapped Mohammed in his tent and a keen reporter of today's type questioned him as to his facts and data, would not all of us now be Mohammedans or Mohammed be forgot? Had such newspapers as ours followed Washington to Valley Forge and gone with him to meet Cornwallis, would the father of his country be most intimately remembered through the cherry tree episode? Consider the enlightenment which would have been thrown upon the pages of history had a corps of modern newspaper correspondents reported the meeting of John and the Barons at Runnymede or accompanied Columbus on his voyages of discovery.

Would not even Lincoln be more vivid in our minds and what we really know of him not so shrouded in anecdote and story?

In Washington's time America became a Nation. In Lincoln's time our country was united and made one. In Wilson's time our Nation received recognition as the greatest of the world powers. It remained, however, for Wilson alone to reach the highest pinnacle of international prominence in the face of the pitiless cross fires of today's newspaper press. Yet this inquisition, often more than cruel, was not without its constructive value, for it has searched out every fact and established every truth beyond the successful attack of any future denial.

This little volume—the first perhaps of its kind concerning any man or event—presents with no further word of its compilers a summary of Woodrow Wilson's Administration and Achievements—eight years of the world's greatest history—taken entirely from the newspaper press.

It contains not one statement that has not been accurately weighed in the critical scales of controversy. Its object is simply to present the truth and have this truth early in the field so that the political canard which was so shamelessly indulged in during the close of the Wilson Administration may not be crystalized in the public mind and cloud for a time the glorious luster of his name.

It shall be as Maximilian Harden, the keenest thinker of the defeated Germans said: "Only one conqueror's work will endure—Wilson's thought."

Frank B. Lord and
James William Bryan

© James Wm. Bryan
March 5, 1916: Portrait of Mr. Wilson drawn in charcoal by Miss Hattie E. Burdett, and considered by many as the President's best likeness at the entrance of America into the World War

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