The 28th president of the United States, Thomas Woodrow Wilson was born in Staunton, Virginia (1856). He was one of the few American presidents who came to office after a career in academia. He'd started out as a professor of history and political science at Princeton University, and in 1902, he was appointed president of Princeton. But he ran into a series of disagreements with the Board of Trustees over his ambitious plans to remake the university. He was on the verge of getting fired in 1910, when he received an offer to run for governor of New Jersey. He took the offer, and wound up winning the election by a landslide.
At first, he found that he didn't much enjoy politics. But his talent for oratory and his sweeping reforms of New Jersey government caught the attention of the national Democratic Party. In 1912, he was nominated to run for president after barely two years of government experience. And thanks to the fact that Teddy Roosevelt ran as a third-party candidate, the Republican vote was divided, and Wilson won.
Wilson had been a member of the American Peace society and he leaned toward pacifism. As president, he advocated arms reduction and international arbitration of disputes between nations. When war broke out in Europe in 1914, Wilson immediately declared that the United States would remain neutral in the conflict, and he repeatedly tried to bring the warring nations to a negotiating table.
In 1917, Wilson drew up a plan for establishing world peace. He believed that if the nations of the world were ever going to get along, they had to form an international organization in which they could work out their disputes. He called this international organization The League of Nations. But nine days later, German submarines began attacking American naval ships. Even though he'd won a second term on the promise to keep America out of the war, Wilson decided that the United States could no longer remain neutral. He justified entering the war by saying, "The world must be made safe for democracy."
It was the first time that the U.S. had chosen to intervene in world affairs outside of the Western hemisphere. By the end of the war, the United States had emerged as one of the most powerful nations in the world. Wilson went to the peace conference in Paris in 1919 with the idea of selling his League of Nations to Europe as a way to prevent any such war from ever occurring again.
But his plan was a huge failure. Before he arrived in Paris, he was a widely respected world leader. But once the Europeans met him, they couldn't stand him. The British prime minister said that Wilson behaved like a heathen come to rescue the missionaries. The French prime minister said that talking to him was like talking to Jesus Christ. He was just too idealistic, and he wasn't prepared for the selfishness of the world leaders who wanted to turn the peace negotiations into a land grab.
The one thing Wilson got the European leaders to agree to was the inclusion of a League of Nations as part of the treaty. But when he returned to the United States, he couldn't even convince his own Congress to approve the treaty. Some senators offered ways of compromising the plan, but Wilson refused to compromise. He went on a cross-country speaking tour to appeal directly to the people, but during the tour, he suffered a massive stroke. He partially recovered from the stroke; he never again functioned fully as president.
Woodrow Wilson said, "If you want to make enemies, try to change something."
*...it is as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.
*A conservative is a man who sits and thinks, mostly sits.
*America lives in the heart of every man everywhere who wishes to find a region where he will be free to work out his destiny
*I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
*Just what is it that America stands for? If she stands for one thing more than another it is for the sovereignty of self-
*No man can sit down and withhold his hands from the warfare against wrong and get peace from his acquiescence.
*The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.
*The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it.
*You are not here merely to make a living. You are here to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, and with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world. You impoverish yourself if you forget this errand.
*The world must be made safe for democracy.
*Once lead this people into war and they will forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance.
*Power consists in one's capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift of cooperation.
*No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation.
*There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight; there is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.
*The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
No comments:
Post a Comment