nd started the first great
wave of democracy. Probably, had some of us lived in Washington's time,
we would have been opposed to him politically. Today he is our national
hero and is reverenced by all free people of the earth, even by the
nation which he defeated at arms. Lincoln preserved and cemented, albeit
he was compelled to do it in blood, the democracy which Washington
founded. He did infinitely more; he struck the shackles from four
million human beings and gave the Negro of America his first opportunity
to take a legitimate place in the world. Lincoln's service in abolishing
slavery was not alone to the Negro. He elevated the souls of all men,
for he ended the most degrading institution that Satan ever
devised--more degrading to the master who followed it, than to the poor
subject he practiced it upon. Unitedly, we revere Lincoln, yet there
were those who were opposed to him and in every way hampered and sneered
at his sublime consecration to the service of his country. It takes time
to obtain the proper estimate of men.

Enough light has already been cast on President Wilson and his life
work to indicate his character and what the finished portrait of him
will be.

We see him at the beginning of the European conflict, before any of us
could separate the tangled threads of rumor, of propaganda, of
misrepresentation, to determine what it was all about; before even he
could comprehend it, a solitary and monitory figure, calling upon us to
be neutral, to form no hasty judgments. We see him later in the role of
peacemaker, upholding the principles of decency and honor. Eventually as
the record of atrocities and crimes against innocents enlarges, we see
him pleading with the guilty to return to the instincts of humanity.
Finally as the ultimate aim of the Hun is revealed as an assault upon
the freedom of the world; after the most painstaking and patient efforts
to avoid conflict, during which he was subjected to humiliation and
insult, we see him grasp the sword, calling a united nation to arms in
clarion tones, like some Crusader of old; his shibboleth: DECENCY,
HUMANITY, LIBERTY.

What followed? His action swept autocracy from its last great stronghold
and made permanent the work which Washington began and upon which
Lincoln builded so nobly. This of Woodrow Wilson; an estimate--there can
be no other thought, that will endure throughout history.

In the earlier chapters are sketched the main events of the grea