y and
people, it is easy to understand why he has at times claimed to represent
the nation when, in reality, he was merely representing partisan views.
Such an attitude is naturally irritating to the Opposition and explains
something of the virulence that characterized the attacks made upon him
in 1918 and later.

Wilson's political sentiments are tinged by a constant and intense
interest in the common man. More than once he has insisted that it was
more important to know what was said by the fireside than what was said
in the council chamber. His strongest political weapon, he believes, has
been the appeal over the heads of politicians to public opinion. His
dislike of cliques and his strong prejudice against anything that savors
of special privilege shone clear in his attack upon the Princeton club
system, and the same light has not infrequently dazzled his vision as
President. Thus, while by no means a radical, he instinctively turned to
the support of labor in its struggles with capital because of the abuse
of its privilege by capital in the past and regardless of more recent
abuse of its power by labor. Similarly at the Peace Conference his
sympathies were naturally with every weak state and every minority group.

Such tendencies may have been strengthened by the intensity of his
religious convictions. There have been few men holding high office in
recent times so deeply and constantly affected by Christian faith as
Woodrow Wilson. The son of a clergyman and subjected during his early
years to the most lively and devout sort of Presbyterianism, he preserved
in his own family circle, in later years, a similar atmosphere. Nor was
his conviction of the immanence and spiritual guidance of the Deity ever
divorced from his professional and public life. We can discover in his
presidential speeches many indications of his belief that the duties he
had undertaken were laid upon him by God and that he might not deviate
from what seemed to him the straight and appointed path. There is
something reminiscent of Calvin in the stern and unswerving determination
not to compromise for the sake of ephemeral advantage. This aspect of
Wilson has been caught by a British critic, J. M. Keynes, who describes
the President as a Nonconformist minister, whose thought and temperament
were essentially theological, not intellectual, "with all the strength
and weakness of that manner of thought, feeling, and expression." The
observation is exa