classes in
Italy his name was a heavenly clarion at the sound of which the earth
would be renewed. The Germans regarded him and his humane doctrine as
their sheet-anchor of safety. The fearless Herr Muehlon said, "If
President Wilson were to address the Germans, and pronounce a severe
sentence upon them, they would accept it with resignation and without a
murmur and set to work at once." In German-Austria his fame was that of
a savior, and the mere mention of his name brought balm to the suffering
and surcease of sorrow to the afflicted. A touching instance of this
which occurred in the Austrian capital, when narrated to the President,
moved him to tears. There were some five or six thousand Austrian
children in the hospitals at Vienna who, as Christmas was drawing near,
were sorely in need of medicaments and much else. The head of the
American Red Cross took up their case and persuaded the Americans in
France to send two million dollars' worth of medicaments to Vienna.
These were duly despatched, and had got as far as Berne, when the French
authorities, having got wind of the matter, protested against this
premature assistance to infant enemies on grounds which the other
Allies had to recognize as technically tenable, and the medicaments were
ordered back to France from Berne. Thereupon Doctor Ferries, of the
International Red Cross, became wild with indignation and laid the
matter before the Swiss government, which undertook to send some
medicaments to the children, while the Americans were endeavoring to
move the French to allow at least some of the remedies to go through.
The children in the hospitals, when told that they must wait, were
bright and hopeful. "It will be all right," some of them exclaimed.
"Wilson is coming soon, and he will bring us everything."

Thus Mr. Wilson had become a transcendental hero to the European
proletarians, who in their homely way adjusted his mental and moral
attributes to their own ideal of the latter-day Messiah. His legendary
figure, half saint, half revolutionist, emerged from the transparent
haze of faith, yearning, and ignorance, as in some ecstatic vision. In
spite of his recorded acts and utterances the mythopeic faculty of the
peoples had given itself free scope and created a messianic democrat
destined to free the lower orders, as they were called, in each state
from the shackles of capitalism, legalized thraldom, and crushing
taxation, and each nation from sanguinary war