Woodrow Wilson Nationalist
KOHN, HANS
Woodrow Wilson Nationalist Review by HANS KOHN Professor of History, Smith College WOODROW WILSON AND THE PEOPLE. By H. C. V. BelL Garden Cty, ?. ? ? l)»*bleday, uoron & Co., 1945. 392 page,....
...it had deeper roots in Wilson's nstionslism which reflected American nationalism...
...He rather increased their naive arrogance...
...Bot men and women can—don't marry anybody with a wig...
...Rather It is to be found in the stimulation to revise one's own thinking and free it from too great a reliance upon traditional or popular views...
...his battlecry could have been "God and the People" too...
...He wss convinced, snd he educated the Aajsrican people in the belief, that the American nation alone was disinterested •diile all other nations thought only of their interests and greed...
...It is obvious thst many of the opinions expressed are personal speculations and need not be accepted as final truths...
...Naturally America's cause Was "the cause of humanity itself...
...We Americans were to him "a body of idealists more ready to lay down our lives for s thought than a dollar...
...Poets have raved about women's hair, aad 1 subscribe to the theory that it is s necessary adjunct to the bead...
...eft wss much upset st Wilson's sction: ?* recognises no obligations of part-mmhisi or of decent courtesy...
...Thomson is a splendid antidote to academism and conservatism...
...ss such a crucial hour is here again, we have much to learn from a thoughtful study of this book...
...the book 1, written with an easy and graceful fluency which keeps the attention of the reader throughout and leads him to comparisons snd conclusions of his own...
...The only thing that haa saved us thus far, apparently, is that seen and women marry each other because each has none remnants of the hairy cost that once covered ua sll...
...DUTY AND PUASUR1 From GEORGE FRIEDMAN As a member of the Social Demo«i stic Federation, a liberal, and a person who wanta to know what it Is all about, I consider It a daty te read The New Leader...
...Though many S point remains obscure or debatable (and thus rtenforces ones again the observation how grava are the pitfalls of musical analysis) there is happy reward for ths reader in these invigorating snd original esssys...
...The style avoids all the firework* of modern journalism...
...With so many people in the world, and separated in terms of time and transportation hardly st all (it is now One World to the anthropologists as with Willkie), evolution may be speeded...
...Luis Alberto Sanchez, the leading literary critic of Latin America, has pointed out that American promises in the present war do not arouse much enthusiasm in South America where people remember that Wilson's slogan of "the free self-determination of nations" was not applied to Central America, and that economic imperialism expanded there under Wilson...
...Doublsday, Doran & Co...
...The book deals with an American leader and the American people at a crucial hour of Iheir end of world history...
...The increased sise of our brains has already made childbearing exceedingly painful and it is not likely that the portrait of future man as mainly head will come true...
...Naturally the allies were up-ft, too...
...My earlier impression of this entic, as that of a brilliant but often nvei sophisticated intellect, has been agreeably altered by a careful perusal of this volume...
...Pages xiv, 301...
...It was to be his peace and nobody else's tMce...
...in practice he expected them always to think and act as he did...
...There are about 2,000,000,000 people today, about five times as many ss in 1600 AD, and maybe 200 times as many as there were a mere 10,000 years ago...
...Thereby it outgrows iU biographical frame: it becomes a drst-rste contribution to the problem of leadership in a democratic nation and it the «ante time a pertinent analysis of AsjHfiesn nationalism and of Woodrow Wilsen as a nationalist...
...He thinks ? is running the whole show himself...
...Only sexual selection can savs us from this catastrophe...
...319 pp...
...V945...
...Wilson himself expressed his paternalism naively when he said: "I am going to teach the South American republic to elect good men...
...A student of nstionslism will be especially grateful to Professor Bell for his emphasis on the late President as typically American in his ambitions, in his crusading spirit and in his attitude toward other nations...
...One is the relations with Central America: the true crucial point of United States foreign relations...
...However, besides it being a duty, it is also a pleasure because of Its well -written articles by mentally unchained contributors...
...We ought to put a stop to this particular evolutionary process, even If it would save barber's and hair dresser's expenses...
...Although this bias sometimes gives rile to highly psrsonsl enthusissms not shsred by other critics, It does provide s corrective against our long tradition of German dominance in the field of music...
...The conspicuous merits of the author snd the unique way in which he relates a particular musical event to basic problems lifts the book out of the ephemeral realm of newspaper review...
...Tes, snd we are still bewildered, about the beginning, the purpose, if sny, and ths end...
...In the Upper Paleolithic man's head was slightly larger than now...
...3.00...
...13.0O...
...Though he deeply believed in the people, he regarded himself as their undisputed representative who could voice their "true" opinions and lead them on the nath which their "true" nature demanded...
...As on many other occasion*, American complacency with its disinterestedness wss sharply contrasted with reality in the Western Hemisphere...
...He was hi no way educating the American people to cooperation with, and a fair understanding of, the allies...
...We Americans, it seemed, were to be freedom's chief, if not first and only champions...
...Particularly trenchant is the section on opera, and the one on compositions and composers contains some brilliantly penetrating analysts...
...The people were always right—in theory...
...Alfred A. Knopf...
...Thomson ii an ardent Francophile and listens eon amore to French music, French artists, or anyone or anything bearing evidence of French influence...
...New York City...
...The value of the book, however, does not rest upon such acceptance of all of Mr, Thomson's judgments...
...This is hot a particularly brilliant book, but It is thoroughly honest, for the author admits he doesn't know the answers to the multitude of pussies thst confront anthro-pologist and politician alike...
...Among the seversl books which the renewed concern with m American relations with the world at war has produced, Professor Bell's study j, by far ?» most enlightening...
...The Musical Scene is, however, more than a descriptive appraisal of musical activities in New York City and other American communities...
...These shortcomings, balanced in many ways by his virtues, were of tragic consequence to the world as a result of the tremendous power which the President and his nation wielded, snd in the final accounting will probably be of more consequence than the virtues...
...Its publication in European countries would be highly desirable...
...It is not ,fsttfledged biography for it deals only wjth Wilson the statesman and starts with his inauguration as President of Princeton University...
...These few remarks in no way exhaust the wealth of Professor Bell's book which is of arresting intertst at the present time...
...He is at once a meticulous virtuoso of the phrsse and a superb colloquialist...
...It seems to me thst the French representatives were right against Woodrow Wilson and the British and American representstives st Paris when they insisted on a real league with teeth in it, and not on the shadowy and purely moralistic concept of a league on which Wilson had set his heart...
...Pithecanthropus to Supermao Review by USTOM ?. OAK MANKIND SO FAR...
...He was prepared to club by American power other nstions into what he considered righteousness...
...Though it is written by a scholar with all the sound Aground knowledge of the period, it is destined for a wider pubiie and should be tut widely read...
...He idolised and idealised the people and especially the American people...
...Howells says science can't do anything about it...
...With desperate earnestness he struggled in their behalf according to his own light which he deeply believed to be the universal light...
...There are only two occasions where Professor Bell seems to me not to do full justice to the circumstances...
...By William Howells...
...As Mr...
...Complaining to House of the imperialistic aims of the allies, he said: "When the war is over we can force them to our way of thinking because by that time they will, among other things, be financially in our hands...
...But this stupendous growth is coming to s stop, evidently...
...Evolution might bring improvement, refinement, of what brains we have now, not in size but in quality, since intelligence may come to have greater turvival value...
...ljfLSON'S mystical belief in the mis-JP of the American nation was one of ws two fundamental elements of his WM', the other was his mystical faith J ™* people as opposed to their "^ked" governments, in their iinme-J*s ability for self-government, wheth-** in Russia or in Germany, in their |ft»te goodness snd pescefulness...
...The annoyance with what I hsd felt to be sn oblique approach and a frequent retreat into obscurity is no longer experienced...
...The other is France's attitude to the League of Nations...
...He never understood that the American people might be less "idealistic" than their leader, and therefore lost his cause by . lecturing European statesmen instead of educating his own people...
...This was net »0 much the fault of some evil plot-tan, liberals like Johnson, Borah or Nerris, or conservatives like Lodge...
...rY^HK Heond World Wax- end the peace effort in itt wake have revived tile interest I i„ Woodrow Wilson...
...When ·· sllies did not accept Wilson's dictami he .threatened the conclusion of a ••mraie peace...
...Americans were God's chosen people and Woodrow Wilson their God-chosen leader...
...Thomson warns in the introduction, his aim is "to inform ths reader rather thsn to protect anybody's career or to help perpetuate any given state of affairs...
...One would hsve hardly judged from his speeches thst the allies knew anything about courage and sacrifice and loffering, or that some of the allied leaders also had ideas...
...When the Ger-siaae, clever psychologists in that I hey appealed to him alone, not to the allies, ¦nked for armistice terms, he did nut consult the allies st sll but hsndled the trtsate matter secretly snd by himself...
...By Virgil Thomson, New York...
...Wilson's moralistic imperialism, JNN*" Bv America's power, arrogated % bis and America's "pure idealism," '*· moral leadership of the world...
...We sre totally bewildered," Howells begins his book, "about the beginnings of life and the reasons for our existence...
...In any .case, Howells is reassuring: "Man for all his frailties, is now one of the toughest, most tenacious, most adaptable animals in the kingdom...
...but H stresses the hasten *<°* oi tne '*te Prw'dent snd draws nitb warni sympathy a convincing psychological picture...
...The wider reading public will probably be amused or irked by the unorthodox handling of well-known concert figures...
...But I am not so enthusiastic about the, Idea that our bajor will disappear...
...Even after America entered the war, Wilson fought it as his sepsrste war, never identifying himself with the allies, •stung America apart on a high moral pedestal from which he looked down upon, and lectured, mankind and his •Hies...
...EVER since the Late Tertiary period, more than a million years ago, when anthropoid apes took up the habit of walking erect, the pop-ulstion of the world has been growing...
...Nor is it an all-around political study: it gains its importance from the fact that it discusu, what the title promises, Woodrow WiUpn as the representative of the American people...
...Even trained musical thinkers cannot escape emotional biases and sensory predilections which make for differences In musical taste...
...Much has already been said of Virgil Thomson's wit, his literary style snd the controversial nature of his opinions...
...sports, varieties, variations, should appear more rapidly than ever before...
...Likewise the author's sealous interest in contemporary composers is no doubt Influenced by I he fact thst be is himself a composer of the modern school...
...1 am sure he is here to stay," Musical Mediations Review my HILDA PfNSON THE MUSICAL SCENE...
...He never understood that European statesmen might be much better and more moderate than their peoples, and therefore lost his cause by appealing to the peoples over the heads of their statesmen...
...His llg *·» a legacy of Rousseau end of ? He had much similarity with Mazei in his nationalism...
...ThIS book by the music critic of the New York Herald Tribune is s selection of reviews of concert and opera together with some of the author's feature articles which appeared during the past four years...
...fn spite of his warm admiration for Wilion, Professor Bell shows us clearly why America lost the peace...
...Though Professor Bell views Wilson with warm admiration and moving sympathy^ his fair objectivity makes his shortcomings stand out in bold relief...
Vol. 28 • September 1945 • No. 38
