t 2--In the Manner of Eugene
O'Neill

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

A CRITICAL SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

In the Manner of William Lyon Phelps

On a memorable evening in the year 1904 I witnessed the opening
performance of Maude Adams in "Peter Pan". Nothing in the world can
describe the tremendous enthusiasm of that night! I shall never forget
the moment when Peter came to the front of the stage and asked the
audience if we believed in fairies. I am happy to say that I was
actually the first to respond. Leaping at once out of my seat, I shouted
"Yes--Yes!" To my intense pleasure the whole house almost instantly
followed my example, with the exception of one man. This man was sitting
directly in front of me. His lack of enthusiasm was to me incredible.
I pounded him on the back and shouted, "Great God, man, are you alive!
Wake up! Hurrah for the fairies! Hurrah!" Finally he uttered a rather
feeble "Hurrah!" Childe Roland to the dark tower came.

That was my first meeting with that admirable statesman Woodrow Wilson,
and I am happy to state that from that night we became firm friends.
When Mr. Wilson was inaugurated in 1913 I called on him at the White
House, taking with me some members of my Yale drama class. Each one of
us had an edition of the president's admirable "History of the American
People", and I am glad to say that he was kind enough to autograph each
of the ten volumes for all of us.

Early in Mr. Wilson's second term as president, just before the break
with Germany, I was sitting in the quiet of my library rereading
Browning's "Cristina". When I came to the third stanza I leaped to my
feet--the thing seemed incredible, but here before my eyes was actually
Browning's prophetic message to America in regard to the submarine
sinkings.

"Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows! But not so sunk that
moments--etc." It is an extraordinary evidence of the man's genius that
in 1840 he should have perhaps foreseen prophetically the happenings
of seventy-six years later! Not only did Browning seem to know what was
bound to happen, but he told us the remedy. I sat right down and wrote
to my good friend the president, enclosing a marked copy of the poem. On
the sixth of April, 1917, war was declared.

May 7, 1912, was the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Robert
Browning. On that memorable date I was traveling to Ohio at the request
of my dear friend Miss Jones to deliver an address at the Columbus