“I am ready,’ breathed the martyr,
And in fancy I can see
In his worn and weary body
Just a type of what will be
When the hatred among nations,
Which he strove hard to efface,
Shall depart, as it must some day,
From our whole war-weary race.
“T am ready”—and the spirit
Of the patriot and the seer,
As it leaves its earthly dwelling,
Bids us follow, year by year.
Till all men shall catch the vision
That the master mind foresaw,
And the Golden Rule of conduct
Shall be universal law.
—Authorship Unknown.
NOTABLE DATES IN LIFE OF
WILSON.
v 1856, Dec. 28th—Born at Staunton,
a
1879, May—Graduated from Prince-
ton.
1885, June 27th—Married Ellen
Louise Axsen.
1885—Became professor at Bryn
Mawr College.
1890—Became professor at Prince-
ton.
1902, Aug. lst—Became president
of Princeton.
1910—Took office as New Jersey
Governor.
1918, March 4th—Inaugurated Pres-
ident of United States.
1914, Aug. 6th—Mrs. Wilson died.
1915, Dec. 18th—Married Mrs. Edith
Bolling Galt.
1917, March 4th—Inaugurated for
second term as President.
1917, Feb. 3rd—Severed diplomatic
relations with Germany.
1917, April 6th—War with Germany
declared. :
1918, Nov. 11th—Armistice signed,
ending war.
1918, Dec. 4th—Sailed for peace
conference.
1919, Jan. 18th—Peace conference
convened.
1919, Feb. 14th—League of Nations
covenant adopted at Versailles.
1919, June 28th—Treaty signed at
Versailles.
1919, Sept. 3rd—Began nation-wide
campaign for League.
1919, Sept. 26th—Collapsed at
‘Wichita, Kansas.
1921, March 4th—Retired from the
Presidency an invalid.
1824, Feb. 8rd—Died in Washing-
ton.
1924, Feb. Tth—Buried in the Na-
tional Cathedral in Washington with
ceremonies as simple as for any pri-
vate in the great army of which he
was once commander-in-chief.
Outstanding achievements of the
Wilson Administration were the es-
tablishment of
Federal reserve banking system.
Rural credits banking system.
Federal trade commission.
Tariff commission.
Shipping board and emergency fleet
corporation.
War risk bureau.
Federal water power commission.
Employees’ compensation commis-
sion, and,
Alien property custodian.
Construction of great government-
owned merchant marine and govern-
ment railroad in Alaska.
Enactment of:
Constitutional amendments provid-
ing for direct election of Senators,
national prohibition and equal suf-
frage.
Selective service draft act, a war
measure.
Clayton anti-trust law.
Eight hour day for railroad em-
ployees.
Workmen’s compensation law.
Law for federal aid in state high-
way construction.
LaFollette seamen act.
Immigration law with literacy test.
Revenue law with huge increases
in income and other taxes.
Repeal of the clause in Panama Ca-
nal law exempting American ships
from tolls.
Government operation of railroads
and telegraph and telephone lines as
war measures, together with food and
fuel control. :
Sale of seized enemy dye and chem-
ical patents to Chemical Foundation.
Passage of the Esch-Cummins
transportation act and creation of
railroad labor board.
Creation of Pacific battle fleet with
transfer to Pacific of bulk of naval
forces.
Refusal of the Senate to ratify
treaty of Versaliles and the League
of Nations covenant.
Negotiation of arbitration treaties
with Great Britain, Japan and many
other countries.
Military occupation of Haiti, Santo
Domingo and Vera Cruz.
Purchase of the Danish West In-
dies.
Refusal to recognize any leader in
Jatin-america who acquired office by
orce.
Refusal to recognize the Russian
Soviet government.
Wilson was the first President to
banish wines from the White House
able.
Wilson’s open espousal of the cause
of Suffrage was the influence that
threw the balance in favor of adop-
tion of the Nineteenth amendment.
Wilson’s conduct of the war
threw such comforts and safe-
guards about American soldiers as the
world had never known before and
provided insurance and rehabilitation
to follow through for their benefit.
VOL. 69.
STATE RIGHTS AND FEDERAL UNION.
BELLEFONTE, PA., FEBRUARY 8. 1924.
NO. 6.
THE LIFE OF PRESIDENT WILSON EBBED PEACEFULLY AWAY.
The World Mourns
Thomas Woodrow Wilson, twenty-
eighth President of the United States,
died at his home on S street, Wash-
ington, at 11:15 o'clock last Sunday
morning. His going shocked the
world. Not beca=z2 it had not known
that his life has been suspended by a
thread ever since the break at Wichi-
ta, Kansas, on the morning of Sep-
tember 26th, 1919, but because it had
watched with hope the years long
fight he had made to live to see his
dreams of world peace come true.
Dr. Cary T. Grayson, his friend and
physician, gave the remote causes of
his death as the ill health which be-
gan more than four years ago in gen-
eral arterio-sclerosis with haemopli-
gia. The immediate cause being ex-
haustion following a digestive distur-
bance which began the early part of
last week, but did not reach an acute
stage until the early morning hours
of February 1st.
Then it was that Dr. Grayson an-
nounced that there was practically no
hope and then it was that the man
who had ridden the crest of the
world’s wildest acclaim, in simple,
trusting faith, said: “I am ready.”
When Pershing, at the head of the
grandest army of all time, arrived in
France he went to the tomb of Amer-
jca’s hero of continental days and
said: “Lafayette, we are here.”
Those four words were ripe with
meaning for the comfort and liberty
of the world, but Wilson’s “I am
ready,” are the three that the
world must prepare itself to say ere
it’s soul can find that eternal comfort
and liberty that is not to be won with
arms.
Last Friday the grim reaper had
forced his way into the house after
waiting on the doorstep more than
four years. Saturday he had advanc-
ed to the landing of the staircase, and
stood counting off the ticks of the
great clock. Saturday night he
knocked on the chamber door.
faithful physician and a loyal wife
stood with their backs against it. At
9 o'clock he rattled the knob and call-
ed to the peaceful, prostrate figure on
the bed—a great bed, long and wide
—a reproduction of the bed in which
Abraham Lincoln slept in the White
House, with a golden American eagle
and a tiny silk American flag just
over the head-board.
The watchers knew the battle was
lost.
At the portal of the door now open,
the faithful Negro servant hovered.
On the bed, sitting beside her hus-
band, sustained with all the fortitude
and composure of a woman facing a
crisis, was Mrs. Wilson, holding be-
tween her hands the wan, withered,
right hand that had proved the pen
mightier than the sword. Near the
foot of the bed was his eldest daugh-
ter, Margaret, resigned to the inevit-
able. Close by, tears welling from
his eyes and coursing down his
cheeks, was Doctor Grayson, taking
the measure of the fluctuating pulses,
weaker and fainter with each effort.
Death advanced and beckoned for
the last time. The tired, worn-out
man drew a long breath, there was a
slight flutter of the eyelids and al-
Dios imperceptible twitch of the nos-
trils.
Woodrow Wilson’s soul had drift-
runs around the world.
Out through a city stilled in a Sab-
bath morning’s reverential calm, his
name was being spoken from a hun-
dred pulpits. In the Central Pres-
byterian church where he faithfully
went to worship while the flesh was
able, a choked-up congregation had
sung “The Son of God Goes Forth to
War,” “How Firm a Foundation,” and
“Onward Christian Soldiers,” favorite
hymns in which he loved to lift his
voice in a happier, better day. Over
a great land that had acclaimed him
chief, and in lands across the seas
where he had been hailed as a God
of Peace, prayers were rising for the
repose of his soul.
In the street before the square brick
house where he has lived with his
memories, his hopes and his regrets, |
was another scene. There was a gath-
ering of people there, it was not a
crusading throng come to a mecca in
pilgrimage to attest their faith in the
ideals he personified. It was a group
of men and women kneeling on the
pavement in silent prayer.
A ‘SIMPLE RELIGIOUS
SERVICE.
In accordance with the wishes of
Mrs. Wilson, who rightfully claimed
her dead for her own, the entombment
Wednesday afternoon was marked
with only the simplest of religious and
civil ceremony. The rites of the
Presbyterian church were observed at
the house at 3 o’clock after which the
body was taken to the chapel of the
new National Cathedral where it was
placed in a vault to remain until the
completion of that National shrine
when it will be placed in a crypt to
be prepared for it there. Rev. James
H. Taylor, pastor of the Presbyterian
church which Mr. Wilson attended,
officiated. Rev. Sylvester Beach, well
known in this place, and now a pas-
tor at Princeton, assisted.
home only the
BURIAL
‘ered surroundings.
| later that a great memorial shall rise
At the
President and Mrs. |
Coolidge, the family and a few very |
the Passing of a Great Idealist and Possibly History
will Record Him the Greatest.
EX-PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON
close friends were present. In the
cortege to the chapel there were no
bands, no batallions of soldiers with
draped flags and muffled drums. Only
A | such veterans with over seas service
who wanted to follow to its last rest-
ing place the body of their great
commander. The chapel is small so
but 450 persons could gain admission
to it and its grey walls closed to the
thousands gathered on the slopes ap-
proaching the last solemn scenes in
the burial of the man whom a world
mourns.
There were those in high places
who argued strongly that it was befit-
ting that Woodrow Wilson, the war
President, should be given up for a
time in death to the keeping of his
: countrymen that he might be render-
! ed the homage they would do him for
the greatness of the place he held.
For his entombment was offered that
shrine of American patriotism, the
memorial amphitheater at Arlington,
where America’s unknown from
France holds his faithful watch for-
ever. No quibble, Mrs. Wilson was
told, would be permitted to keep this
| fallen war leader from sharing that
! glorious vigil in the Virginia hills.
But it was not to be, and for a
time, at least, Woodrow Wilson will
sleep as any honored American citi-
zen may sleep, in a vault set in sa-
Men may decide
to his honor, but for the present he
went forth from his home for the last
time to lie deep in a marble vault be-
ed out on the great dark tide that neath the floor of Bethlehem Chapel
at Washington Cathedral while men
and women and children come and go
at their prayers above him.
The only military touch ot the fun-
eral aside from the uniforms of the
diplomats and high officers who at-
tended were the little squad of men
of non-commissioned rank of the ar-
my, navy and marine corps who bore
the body and form the immediate
escort from house to chapel. There
was for this dead chieftain no motion-
less honor guard about his casket
night and day, no filing past of shuf-
fling thousands for a last glimpse of
the dead. But the fighting men into
whose careful hands he was given in
the last journey, were World War
veterans as he was.
BIOGRAPHY OF WILSON.
One of the “war Presidents” of the
United States, burdened by problems
and tasks as great if not greater than
those born by Washington and Lin-
coln, the words and works of Wood-
row Wilson are still too vivid in the
public mind to assure them of a com-
plete appraisal. A decade or two
hence, perhaps, the world will fix up-
on this great American its estimate
of his eight years’ service as the chief
magistrate of the republic that fur-
nished $18,000,000,000, nearly five mil-
lions of men and almost inexhausti-
ble war material to end the deadlock
between the allies and the central
powers and bring Germany to defeat
in the historic struggle of 1914-1918.
It was under Woodrow Wilson’s
leadership that the United States
abandoned its policy of isolation and
became an active participant in world
affairs. The republic underwent a
national metamorphosis. Mr. Wilson,
nicknamed “the schoolmaster in pol-
ities,” formerly head of Princeton
University, was the first Democrat
since Andrew Jackson to serve two
terms as President.
SMASHED PRECEDENTS.
He began smashing precedents al-
most immediately after his induction
into office by delivering his addresses
in person before Congress and finish-
ed by going to Europe to attend the
pe conference. He went abroad
twice, first in December, 1918, and
again in March, 1919. At times he
was the most idolized and the most
| bitterly assailed President since Abra-
ham Lincoln. Friends extolled him
as “the peace-maker of the world;”
enemies declared he had thrown to
the winds Washington’s warnings to
beware of “entangling alliances” with
foreign powers.
The war over and the treaty of
Versailles, which he personally had
helped to draft in Paris, signed by
“the Big Four”—Clemenceau, Lloyd
George, Orlando and Wilson—the
President returned from France to be-
gin a few months later on September
3, 1919, a 10,000 mile speaking tour
of the United States in behalf of the
League of Nations covenant, which
was part of the treaty. A conserva-
tive Senate threatened and did block
its ratification. During 26 days of al-
most constant travel he delivered
speeches aggregating 150,000 words.
Working his way east from the Pa-
cific coast, he had planned to make
many more addresses in behalf of the
League but reaching Wichita, Kan-
sas, suffered a physical collapse which
caused him regretfully to abandon his
tour.
ACCOMPANIED WARREN G. HARDING.
At times during the following 18
months, he was desperately ill and
had recovered sufficiently as late as
March 4, 1921, to accompany Warren
G. Harding, his successor, to the Cap-
itol for participation in part of the
inauguration ceremony. Previous to
this he had made only one public ap-
pearance in all that time, on June 16,
1920, and there were many alarming
rumors regarding the state of his
health.
Relieved of the cares of office, Mr.
Wilson’s convalescence was more rap-
id and although he did not regain en-
tirely his one-time robust health, he
was able to engage in the practice of
law in Washington in partnership
with Bainbridge Colby, his former
Secretary of State. The former Pres-
ident and Mrs. Wilson resided there
in a beautiful home which they pur-
chased for $150,000 some months be-
fore his retirement. Before leaving
the White House, however, he was the
recipient of a signal honor.
The Noble prize was awarded to
Mr. Wilson “as the person who pro-
moted most or best the fraternity of
nations and the abolishment or dimi-
nution of standing armies and the
formation and increase of peace con-
gresses.” In accepting it, President
Wilson wrote on December 11, 1920:
“The cause of peace and the cause of
truth are of one family. Even as
those who love science and devote
their lives to physics or chemistry,
even as those who create new and
higher ideals for mankind in litera-
ture, even so with those who love
peace, there is no limit set. ‘What-
ever has been accomplished in the past
is petty compared to the glory of the
promise of the future.”
Three interesting periods charac-
terized Woodrow Wilson’s entrance
into public life. Elected President of
Princeton University in 1902, the
country at that time obtained its first
glimpse of him as a national figure.
This was accentuated by what has
been called his fight for the “democra-
tization” of the University in which !
student cliques were abolished and
the sons of rich and poor men were
encouraged to fraternize. Eight
years later, in 1910, he was elected
Governor of New Jersey.
The nomination of Governor Wilson
to the Presidency by the National
Democratic convention in June, 1912,
at Baltimore, after a long deadlock,
was one of the most dramatic episodes
in American political history. Then
followed his election the following
November when he received 435 votes
in the electoral college to 88 for Col-
onel Roosevelt and 8 for Mr. Taft,
who had been nominated by the Re-
publican party to succeed himself.
During President Wilson’s two
terms there occurred a world upheav-
al such as had never before been wit-
nessed since the dawn of time. Em-
pires crumbled and thrones collapsed.
The map of Europe was torn to
shreds. China, that aeons-old monar-
chy, had already become a republic
and with the ending of the world war
Russian autocracy had been humbled
in the dust. German militarism was
crushed, Austria-Hungary dismem-
bered and Turkey driven out of the
Holy Land.
LEAVES FOR EUROPE.
Upon his first trip to Paris, Mr.
Wilson was everywhere acclaimed as
‘the friend of humanity,” and the
man who had come to put “an end to
all wars.” No monarch of ancient
times was ever accorded greater lau-
dation or listened to with greater ad-
miration. It seemed as if all Europe
hung upon the words that fell from
his lips. He was acclaimed as a
practical idealist, the representative
of a mighty new land, whose people
were altruistic and unselfish and
who desired to see the devastated
world restored to amity and happi-
ness.
President Wilson’s participation in
the peace conference was placid, it
is said, except for occasional ripples
that disturbed his usual calm, Ten-
sion at times was reported between
him and Clemenceau and Lloyd
George, Premier Hughes, of Australia,
and Premier Orlando, of Italy, the lat-
ter, at one stage of the negotiations
quitting the conference and return-
ing to Rome with his colleagues be-
cause of Mr. Wilson's attitude on the
Adriatic question.
Born in Staunton, Va., December
28, 1856, of Scotch-Irish parentage
and christened Thomas Woodrow Wil-
son, the future President was known
as “ommy” until he graduated from
Princeton in 1879 and was thereafter
known only as Woodrow Wilson. His
father, the Rev. Joseph Ruggles Wil-
son, a prominent Presbyterian minis-
ter, moved to Augusta, Ga., when
Woodrow was two years old. Later
the family went to Columbia, S. C.,
and there young Wilson, at the age of
17, entered Davidson college, leaving
soon to go to Princeton. Upon grad-
uating he studied law in the Univer-
sity of Virginia and in 1882 began the
practice of law in Atlanta, Ga.
ENGAGED TO SOUTHERN WOMAN.
While in Atlanta and at Augusta,
he became engaged to marry Miss
Ellen Louise Axsen, daughter of a
Presbyterian clergyman of Savannah,
Ga. The young lawyer's clients were
few and he soon abandoned a legal
career. For two years thereafter he
was a student at Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity and while there published his
first book, “Congressional Govern-
ment,” a study of American politics.
It won recognition both in the United
States and abroad and is believed to
have been influential in evoking offers
of professorships from Bryn Mawr
College and Wesleyan University.
He married Miss Axsen on June 27,
1885.
He became successively, professor
of history and political economy at
Bryn Mawr and at Wesleyan Univer-
sity and later professor of jurispru-
dence and political economy at
Princeton where, subsequently, he was
made head of that institution. Mean-
while, Professor Wilson had gained
high reputation as a writer. Some of
his works with the date of their pro-
duction, were as follows: “The State
—Elements of Historical and Prac-
tical Politics,” (1889); “Division and
Reunion,” (1893); “George Washing-
ton,” (1896); “A History of the
American People,” (1902); “Constitu-
tional Government in the United
States,” (1908); “Free Life,” (1913);
“The New Freedom,” (1913); “When
a Man Comes to Himself,” (1915);
“On Being Human,” (1916); “An Old
Master and Other Political Essays,”
and “Mere Literature and Other Es-
says” were among his earlier writ-
ings. His state papers, notes to bel-
ligerent governments and addresses
to Congress would fill many volumes.
Heretofore he had not been re-
garded as a politician. Indeed, it had
commonly been reported that the
president of Princeton, never a
wealthy man, was contemplating re-
tirement upon a teacher’s pension in
1910. In September of that year he
was nominated by the Democrats for
Governor of New Jersey. Elected the
following November he served until
March, 1913, when he resigned to
(Continued on page 5, Col. 1.)
1
THE EPIGRAMMATIC WILSON.
Woodrow Wilson’s many-sided
mind, apart from its grasp of matters
of statesmanship over a wide range,
and in relation to its alertness to the
lesser things of life, was always evi-
dent in his speeches.
An incomparable phrase maker, an
epigrammatist of pungent style and
occasionally a contriver even of hum-
ble limericks, Mr. Wilson was eter-
nally busy in a mental way.
A volume could be written of his
epigrams and striking phrases. Some
are so well known as to require no
repetition, as for example, the classic
of his war message to Congress: “The
world must be made safe for democ-
racy.”
Here are some other samples of his
faculty for epigrams:
“A boss is a gumshoe political man-
ager.” :
The right is more precious than
peace.
The world must be made safe for
democracy.
The false betray themselves always
in every accent.
“Corporations do not do wrong, in-
dividuals do wrong.” :
“Business can be free only when
the Nation is free.”
“Monopoly is always in the long
run, weak and inefficient.”
After all, life does not consist in
eternally running to a fire.
It is not an army that we must
shape and train for war; it is a na-
tion.
We are ready to plead at the bar of
history, and our flag shali wear a
new luster.
“A Progressive Republican is only
a Republican in a way to become a
Democrat.”
If you think too much about being
re-elected, it is very difficult to be
worth re-electing.
“Publicity is the great antiseptic
against the germs of some of the
worst political methods.
The day has come to conquer or
submit. For us there is but one
choice. We have made it.
Another flash of Wilsonian wit is
the following:
“A conservative man is a man who
just sits and thinks, mostly sits.”
“One cool judgment is worth a
thousand hasty councils,” he declared
at another time, thereby revealing a
trait that motivated much of his pub-
lic career.
“] am sure that America needs
more laws,” he said once, and then
added whimsically, “The old law is
good enough and dangerous enough
for any man.”
More slang in this:
“The minute I stop changing my
mind as President with the change of
all the circumstances in the world I
will be a back number.”
Mr. Wilson never liked generalities.
“Nothing stated in general terms is
terse of America,” he once said, “be-
cause it is the most variegated and
varied and multiform land under the
sun.
As to slang:
“If you are going to sell carpets in
India,” he once said, “you have to
have as good taste as the Indians in
the patterns of the carpets; and that
is going some.”
On another occasion, he declared:
“Now, I have long enjoyed the
friendship and companionship of the
Republicans because I am by instinct
a teacher, and I would like to teach
them something.”
In the midst of serious affairs when
his desk was piling high with papers
on a variety of important subjects he
never lost touch with events far re-
moved from his own sphere. That he
read the sport pages of the newspa-
pers and knew when the horse races
were on at nearby tracks can be tes-
tified to by Dr. Grayson.
Here is Mr. Wilson’s idea of states-
manship:
“A real statesman is a man big
enough to think in the terms of what
others than himself are striving for
and living for and seeking steadfastly
to keep in heart until they get it. He
is a guide, a comrade, a mentor, a
servant, a friend of mankind.”
Even when Mr. Wilson had passed
well into the stage of hopeless inval-
idism his sense of humor did not de-
sert him. When a crowd of weeping
women—affected by the picture he
presented when he appeared at the
window of his home on one occasion—
expected from him solemn and tragic
words, he chose the happier expedient
of quoting a limerick of his own.
Far from seeking relaxation from
state craft and politics in heavy vol-
umes of economics and biography,
Wilson, the historian and schoolmas-
ter, found his diversions at the mu-
sical revues and in “Diamond Dick”
detective stories. “Diamond Dick”
was one of his real heroes in book
form and Will Rogers and Nora Bayes
among the favorites on the stage.
The Admiral entered the Presi-
dent’s office one afternoon, inquiring
if Mr. Wilson had any special duty
for him and asked if he might be ex-
cused for the balance of the day to
attend to “some important business.”
The President could think of nothing
to require the services of his naval
aide de camp and assented readily to
the afternoon off. As Dr. Grayson
started from the room, glancing at
the clock to gauge how much time he
had to catch a train for the Laurel
track, Mr. Wilson threw at him:
“I hope you have a lot of luck.”
Mr. Wilson was always the fighter.
When he set out for a goal, he con-
sidered that goal more important than
individuals who might stand in the
way. He told a labor audience in
1916 this:
“The way we strive for our rights
is by getting our fighting blood up. If
you come at me with fists doubled, I
think I can promise you that mine
will double as fast as yours. But if
you come at me and say:
“Let us sit down and take council
together, and, if we differ from one
another, you understand why it is we
differ from one another; just what the
points of issue are. We will present-
by that we are not far apart after
all.