Woodrow Wilson: Some Princeton Memories 9781400875917

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WOODROW WILSON Some Princeton ^Memories

(PHOTOGRAPHED BY R. H . ROSE AND SON)

Woodrow Wilson speaking at the presentation by James Bryce (Viscount Bryce) of the Mather Sun Dial on Thursday, October 31, 1908

WOODROW WILSON George McLean Harper Robert K. Root Edward S. Corwin William Starr Myers Edwin Grant Conklin Luther P. Eisenhart J. Duncan Spaeth EDITED BY

William Starr Myers

PRINCETON P R I N C E T O N U N I V E R S I T Y PRESS • 1946

Copyright, ι$φ, by Princeton University Press London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press

Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press at Princeton, New Jersey

INTRODUCTION

*^y WING the month of March 1945, while on a visit to my alma mater at Chapel Hill, the idea of a book such as this was suggested by William T. Couch of the University of North Carolina Press. Mr. Couch thought it unfortunate that those men in the Princeton faculty who had known Woodrow Wilson at first hand had never set down their mature estimates of him. The suggestion remained in my mind after my return home and the more I considered the idea the more valuable it seemed. Others agreed to cooperate, and this book is the result. The authors of the various chapters of this little book have joined their efforts in producing what they believe to be a true picture, or set of pictures, of Wilson. They have not only drawn on memories, which might have proved inaccurate in detail after thirty-five or forty years, but also have attempted to confirm or correct these recollections by means of letters, diaries and other records. The reader will find here a real concurrence of opinion with regard to Wilson, and this is all the more impressive since none of these sketches was written in conference but are all the result of entirely independent work. Of the seven authors two, Professor Harper and Dean Eisenhart, were members of the Princeton faculty before Woodrow Wilson became president of the University. Professor Corwin, Dean Root and Professor Spaeth were among the fifty original preceptors who came to Princeton upon inauguration of this system of education in the autumn of 1905, there to be joined by Dean Eisenhart. I was among the six additional preceptors who came in the fall of 1906. Professor Conklin came to Princeton as professor of biology in the year 1908. Professor Corwin and I assisted President Wilson in his courses in jurisprudence and constitutional government from time to time. Of the seven • V ·

INTRODUCTION

authors, three are from the Department of English, two from Politics, and one each from Mathematics and Biology. It should be said here and now that the choice of those who were asked to write for this little book was a very difficult one, since there are a number of men still living in Princeton and elsewhere who were associated in greater or less intimacy with President Wilson as members of the University faculty. There were many considerations which made necessary the choice of but a few among so many who were qualified to write their views of this outstanding and commanding figure in American history. The others were omitted only with sincere regret. It will be found that the individual impression is predominant, and I have urged my colleagues not to hesitate to use the first person singular even though the "Fs" should stick up like pickets in a paling fence. What has been desired is the close personal touch which might make Woodrow Wilson appear as he was, and as a living man. The authors are indebted to Mrs. Wilson for her gracious permission to publish the letters from Mr. Wilson which are quoted in certain of the chapters. In conclusion it should be stated that by direction of the authors all royalties from this book will be devoted to the creation of a "Woodrow Wilson Memorial Fund" to purchase books in the field of political science for the Princeton University Library. WILLIAM STARR MYERS

Princeton, N.f. February 18, 1946

• vi ·

CONTENTS INTRODUCTION WILLIAM STARR MYERS

page ν A HAPPY FAMILY GEORGE MCLEAN HARPER

page ι WILSON AND THE PRECEPTORS ROBERT K. ROOT

page 13 DEPARTMENTAL COLLEAGUE EDWARD S. CORWIN

page /9 WILSON IN MY DIARY WILLIAM STARR MYERS

page 36 AS A SCIENTIST SAW HIM EDWIN GRANT CONKLIN

page 52 THE FAR-SEEING WILSON LUTHER P. EISENHART

page 62 WILSON AS I KNEW HIM AND VIEW HIM NOW J . DUNCAN SPAETH

page 69

A HAPPY FAMILY /-^

-

BY GEORGE McLEAN HARPER

/ / C - Y acquaintance with Woodrow Wilson began in 1888 at the New York apartment of Robert Bridges, my colleague on the editorial staff of Scribner's Magazine. Bridges was one of my first friends, having held me in his arms when I was five days old and he five years older. He and Wilson were class­ mates. In 1890, on returning to Princeton after my first year as instructor in French, I encountered Wilson in the Nassau Hotel. He was about to begin his first year as a member of the college faculty. He said, "My family are still at dinner. Come into the dining-room and meet them." So we went in. Mrs. Wilson and her three little girls were seated at the table, and for a moment I was in doubt which of them was the mother, because Mrs. Wilson looked so young, so happy, and so beauti­ ful. They were a lovely quartet. I was invited to call on them as soon as they should be settled in their new abode, and there­ after Wilson frequently came to my rooms in East College after Sunday morning chapel and took me home for dinner. After dinner we three grown-ups would discuss poetry, chiefly Wordsworth's, for about an hour, and then the little girls, having had a nap, would join us and beg me to tell them a story. I suppose their parents left us then, for we passed into fairy-land, where we traveled many a Sunday afternoon, en­ joying the exploits of a certain Brownie, and this performance would hardly have held the interest of older persons. These happy hours were spent in 72 Library Place, the first house on the left north of Stockton Street. An unexpected glimpse of those happy afternoons was granted me when looking over some old papers after begin­ ning this chapter. In a tiny envelope addressed to me at my college rooms, 11 S.W. Brown Hall, in Wilson's handwriting, •ι ·

GEORGE M C L E A N

HARPER

stamped "Princeton, Nov. 3,1894," I found the following letter from his daughter Jessie: My dear Mr. Harper Does your brownie still like you and when are you going to marry Miss Westcott and will you soon come to see me. Margaret went to New York and she brought us each a little doll and we bought a new hat and it is perfectly lovely. Did you ever see our beech tree. Will you and Miss Westcott come to see me and the beech tree on Sunday. Nellie has the green fairy book and I have the tales from Shakespere anoSstories from livy [?] and the blue fairy book and Margaret has the red fairy book and the Greek Heroes and our Children's Songs and Nellie has Poetry for Children and the Childrens Garland from the best Poets and all have got an Bible and I am sure that you love me and when you come to see me will you tell me some more about your Brownie Mr. Westcott says that when we grow up he is going to marry one of us—your loveing little JESSIE

One might have supposed that with three children to bring up and with a husband breaking ground in a new position, Mrs. Wilson would have had enough to do; but it soon became apparent that their household was to be continually enlarged by the inclusion of relatives on both sides of the family, some of whom remained for long periods. All were interesting persons. The one who impressed me most was Professor Wilson's father, a venerable and yet jovial Presbyterian minister. In his majestic presence the professor was a pupil; the parent of three children was an obedient boy. As a teacher, Wilson quickly rose to eminence in the college faculty. As an author he attained eminence in the wide world. It is amazing how many books, essays, and addresses he wrote • 2 ·

A HAPPY FAMILY

in those early years of his Princeton life. I realized that it was a great privilege to be a sharer of his Sunday leisure. Mrs. Wilson became one of my wife's most intimate friends. We were driving along Nassau Street in our buggy one day in 1896, when Wilson, overtaking us on his bicycle, announced triumphantly, "I've decided on my opening sentence! That means the battle is won." This refers to the oration he was to give at the Sesqui-Centennial Celebration. It begins: "Princeton pauses to look back upon her past today, not as an old man grown reminiscent, but as a prudent man still in his youth and lusty prime, and at the threshold of new tasks, who would remind himself of his origin and lineage, recall the pledges of his youth, assess as at a turning in his life the duties of his station." The oration was a great success and received so much applause that I heard an aspirant for the presidency of the University admit mournfully to a fellow conspirator that he had given up all hope. The administration of Dr. Patton lasted six years longer than jealous "reformers" expected; and when he retired, in 1902, Wilson was chosen president. We all hoped and expected that there would now be an increased severity in the entrance requirements and in scholastic discipline. Dr. Patton's administration had been admirable in most respects except in these matters. By appointing Professor Henry B. Fine to the deanship, Wilson made possible the raising of scholastic standards, so that Princeton became one of the hardest American colleges to enter and to remain in. Men were dropped by tens and twenties. Hard study became general. Teachers remodelled their courses and rewrote their lectures. It was a great revival. I was amused to find, however, that our new President was setting up a billiard table in the basement of Prospect, his official residence, as if he intended to relax occasionally, for I had never known him to indulge in any sport. • 3 ·

GEORGE M C L E A N

HARPER

One day in faculty meeting he made what seemed to me an unnecessarily long, tedious speech. I do not remember what the motion was or who else had spoken. When he had ended, I rose and said: "We have had enough of this quibbling. Let us get on with the business." Wilson flared up, red in the face, and gave me a verbal scorching. I do not remember what he said, but he hurt my feelings. Walking home after the meeting, I felt sadly that in all probability this verbal combat had put an end to our friendship. But as I was going up the steps of my front porch I felt a hand on my shoulder and heard Wilson say: "Don't let this little spat spoil our friendship." We made up the quarrel then and there, and neither of us referred to it again. No doubt the trouble arose from the ambiguity of the word "quibble." It has two very different meanings. I had used it in the only sense then known to me, namely of "hair-splitting," making too much of insignificant details. Alas! it is defined in the dictionaries as an unfair evasion of the real point in an argument. How many a friend Wilson would have kept whom he lost in the two great controversies of his career, if he had made such a brotherly gesture and spoken such reconciling words! The first of these controversies concerned the so-called "Quad Plan." Suddenly, and without sufficiently preparing the alumni, trustees, faculty, and students to evaluate such a radical proposal, Wilson recommended that the institution should be reorganized for residential purposes as a group of colleges, each to consist of graduate students, undergraduates from all four classes, and several members of the faculty. Instruction, examinations, and awarding of degrees were to remain functions of the university. This is the system which has prevailed at Oxford and Cambridge for centuries, and it has great advantages: each college has its own intellectual life; the younger students get acquainted with the older ones; the fellows or residential faculty members influence the whole family. Princeton was no •4 '

A HAPPY F A M I L Y

longer a small college where it was easy for a freshman to get acquainted with upperclassmen. It was growing rapidly, and the transmission of ideas was horizontal and no longer vertical, as it had been to some extent for three half centuries. It was a mistake to call Wilson's proposal the "Quad Plan," for this term seemed to imply enormous expense for building new colleges. A better term would have been "collegiate system," for people would then have perceived that some, if not all, of the existing dormitories might serve as nuclei of colleges. Of course, however, the reorganization of the University would have been expensive. But a stronger source of opposition was the upperclass club system. A large amount of money and loyalty was invested in this system. Apart from the fact that it brought certain groups of juniors into daily intercourse with certain groups of seniors, it was exclusive; it was undemocratic; it was unfavorable to scholarly progress. The opposition to Wilson's plan was very strong on the part of those alumni, young, of course, who had been members of upperclass clubs. Another source of opposition was the group of loyal and generous alumni who were contributing to the establishing of the graduate college. At their head was Dean Andrew Fleming West, a man of fertile imagination and endowed with a rich gift for making friends. What would be the effect upon his great enterprise, already far advanced toward complete success, if the generosity of the alumni and other friends of Princeton were to be deflected to the broader plan? Here was the time when Wilson's hand might have been laid on West's shoulder. Here the moral of my anecdote about the Quibble is applicable to the Quad. If these two great men had come together in a brotherly way and made a certain compromise, the graduate college, by admitting a few undergraduates annually, to come under the influence of graduate students and resident faculty members, would have been the first example of a series of colleges constituting Princeton University. •5 '

GEORGE M C L E A N

HARPER

But there was no compromise. Opinions hardened, friendships were broken, personality superseded principle. An extremely interesting view of the conflict is contained in a series of letters to the Princeton Press called "Penn's Neck Papers," written by Francis Charles MacDonald. My wife gives me permission to use the following story, dating from the spring of 1912: "I sat with Mr. Wilson on the train and told him my husband had suggested taking our children to see the sights of Washington, but I had said we would wait until he went to the White House. He threw his head back and laughed heartily and said he was sorry for the children, because that would never happen. I told him I was sure it would." In my opinion Wilson would not have become a candidate for the governorship of New Jersey had he not failed to realize that "favorite dream" of a collegiate university. Some day perhaps a residential college such as he envisioned will be incorporated in the University and named for him. In the summer of 1912 we were in France, living on a farm near Blois, when we read of his nomination to the Presidency of the United States. We danced in the garden to celebrate the event. The campaign was well advanced by the time we had returned to Princeton. How Princeton celebrated the result is remembered thus by Mrs. Harper: "A week before the election Mrs. Wilson asked me to bring my husband and children to spend the election evening with them. She said they wished us to be with them when the returns came in, whether they were favorable or not. We planned to go to their house about midnight, thinking the result would not be known before 2 a.m. But Mr. Harper watched the voting record at Alexander Hall, and at ten o'clock came rushing home, crying, 'It's a cinch! It's a cinch! We must hurry to them.' We did so (all but our small son, who was asleep and refused to wake up and come with us), and were barely in time to get into the house in Cleveland •6 ·

A HAPPY FAMILY

Lane before it was completely hemmed in by the crowd of University students and townspeople who arrived to cheer our new President. Mrs. Wilson had just told her husband the good news, and we were deeply impressed by his modest attitude and grave sense of responsibility. Mrs. Wilson and the daughters were radiant. When I shook hands with him he said, 'You are very kind to care so much.' Later he went outside to express his thanks to the seething crowd. And the small group inside felt awed by the situation, even when we gathered in the dining-room to enjoy Mrs. Wilson's Southern hospitality before saying good-night." Of course I went to Washington for the inauguration; and after returning to the White House after the ceremony at the capitol, Mrs. Wilson, who was tired of standing and shaking hands with the throng of jubilant callers, asked me to go into a small sitting-room and have a cup of tea with her. We were presently joined there by Mr. Taft, the retiring President, who said, "Mrs. Wilson, may I have a cup of tea with you in what is now your house?" We then had a quiet and restful half-hour together. It seemed to me impossible that the Wilsons, so accustomed to quietness and the intimacy of private life, should ever endure the confusion and complexity of existence in the White House. But of course this was not a typical day, and in a short time they had built up a system of family routine which enabled them to set apart certain hours for reading and conversation among themselves and with old friends. It had been understood that we were to be among their first guests at the White House, and as soon as they were comfortably settled they invited us to come, bringing our sixteenyear-old daughter and our thirteen-year-old son. One of the Wilson girls met us at the station. My bedroom was the apartment in which Lincoln signed the !^mancipation Proclamation. Our boy slept or tried to sleep in a room where he was kept awake by the sound of a sentinel pacing back and

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GEORGE MC LEAN HARPER

forth below his window. On Sunday afternoon we all sat or reclined on a rug before an open wood fire, repeating some of our favorite passages of poetry, especially Wordsworth's. The only thing I remember as having any political significance was Wilson's saying to me suddenly and in a tone that showed great pleasure, "I am glad to tell you that Bryan and I get on quite well together." My last meeting with Wilson occurred when my wife and I were in Washington visiting our friends, Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop M. Daniels. As I was walking alone in a wide, quiet avenue, I saw a carriage or automobile approaching slowly, and in it Wilson and his second wife. They stopped the vehicle and he introduced me to her. I was depressed by the change in his face. He was very pale and looked as if he had lost all interest in life. And well he might! For he had fostered a plan which would, he believed, have saved the world from war, perhaps forever; but his own country had not supported it. A little group of willful men had kept the United States from joining the League of Nations. Perhaps if he had laid a friendly hand upon the shoulders of several senators jealous of his genius, humanity might have been spared World War II. Perhaps. Woodrow Wilson's many books, magazine articles, and published addresses are all excellent, both in substance and in form. They are brave where opinion might be challenged, firmly based on profound study, and inspired with the hope of doing good. In the Introduction of a volume entitled President Wilson's Addresses which I edited in 1918, my opinion of his literary achievement is expressed as follows: "No one can rise from a perusal of the great mass of Mr. Wilson's writings without an almost oppressive sense of his unremitting and strenuous industry. From his senior year in college to the present day he has borne the anxieties and responsibilities of authorship. The work has been done with extreme conscientiousness in regard • 8 ·

A HAPPY FAMILY

to accuracy and clearness of thinking and with sedulous care for justness and beauty of expression. It might well crown a life with honor. And when we remember the thousands of his college lectures and the hundreds of his miscellaneous addresses which have found no record in print, when we recall the labors of administration which crowded upon him in middle life, when we consider the spectacle of his calm, prompt, orderly, and energetic performance of public duty in these latter years, our admiration for the literary artist is enhanced by our pro­ found respect for the man." Wilson's dream of a permanent and worldwide peace main­ tained by a league or union of all nations could be realized. The failure of the first league, which broke Wilson's heart and rendered possible the most devastating of all wars, makes ap­ plicable to Wilson the agonizing lines in "Samson Agonistes": God of our fathers! what is man, . . . such as thou hast solemnly elected, With gifts and graces eminently adorned, To some great work, thy glory, And people's safety, which in part they effect: Yet towards these, thus dignified, thou oft, Amidst their height of noon, Changest thy countenance and thy hand. [The following appreciation of President Wilson was written by Professor Harper about the year I ρ I5, but never published. It is included in this boo\ as a contemporary evaluation of the man.] MUCH depends at this moment on the character of President Wilson. I do not know why some persons find him difficult to understand. He is a straightforward man, and in private con­ versation almost recklessly and passionately outspoken. No one can be long in his company without realizing what he likes •9 ·

GEORGE M C L E A N

HARPER

and dislikes. He has accustomed himself to found his feelings upon reason, and takes far more care than most men to explain why he chooses or rejects a given line of conduct. This is not to say that the force of his prejudices and instincts is not very great; but he has trained them to obey his will. The baser sort of politicians are said to have been puzzled by his course, and cynics have sneered at his "idealism"; but, after all, his ideals are those which every intelligent and serious man professes to honor, and his course has been that which one might expect an honest and unselfish leader to pursue. Political opportunity came to him late in life, when he was already well established as a successful man of letters, a great teacher, and a still greater administrator. He was never even tempted to learn the politician's arts and tricks. At Princeton University, where his splendid work was hampered by a bitter and resourceful opposition, he never condescended to put himself at the head of a party or to avail himself of the help of his supporters when they offered to come forth in his favor. His acknowledged guide and model intellectually is Edmund Burke. He quotes no other writer so often, and no other has had so marked an effect on his literary style. In manner and temper he has, I imagine, been deeply affected by the example of Washington, but he has not the marble coldness and majesty of that other great Virginian. I have often been asked why Mr. Wilson did not denounce the violation of Belgium and why he has on more than one occasion been rather stiff in his insistence on strict legality when dealing with Great Britain. It seems to me obvious that he had last August neither the time nor the information requisite for an effective rebuke of Germany and that we cannot estimate too highly the value of a "correct" attitude in diplomacy. One may have wished to see him favor the Allies last August and again and again since then; but on second thought . IO ·

A HAPPY FAMILY

one realizes that there could have been no middle ground between strict neutrality and war. I have even been asked whether Mr. Wilson were not under some malign pro-German influence. To this I have no hesitation in saying flatly, "No." He is, so far as I know, free from whispering counsellors. The justest criticism I have ever heard made of him is that he is too scornful of advice, too much inclined to trust his own intelligence and his own conscience. After all, this is so rare a failing in political men that if the present danger were not grave, one might admit the charge with satisfaction. He has always listened to advice with a generous show of patience, and sometimes, when it has lain a long time in his mind, he has acted upon it, but I have never known him to surrender his own control over his actions. As president of Princeton University, he insisted on understanding whatever was brought to him for approval, even in departments of science where he was confessedly ignorant. If a matter could not be made clear to him, he deferred action upon it. His uneasiness on these occasions was often painful to witness. He does not like to keep many irons in the fire at once. He takes up one thing at a time and hammers it out. He once said that his was a single-track mind, and because of this remark persons with no minds at all, and others who ought to know better, have wagged their heads and wondered how such a man could presume to be President of the United States. He was referring, of course, to his preference for doing one thing at a time and putting all his strength into his work. At present his task, it seems, is to keep his country at peace, because he believes that peace is always better than war except when absolutely necessary. I feel sure that his personal sympathies are with Great Britain, for there are few if any Americans so thoroughly steeped in the old English traditions of manners, speech, thought, and habit, as Woodrow Wilson; but against his instincts and feelings he is trying to be in fact the First Mag• II ·

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HARPER

istrate. Naturally impatient, he is forcing himself to be patient. Naturally quick of apprehension, he is studying the art of delay. If and when such a man decides to take action, we may be sure it will be on just grounds and with an energy proportioned to the restraint he has been imposing upon himself and upon the American people.

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WILSON AND THE PRECEPTORS* ^_-

BY R O B E R T K.

ROOT

tne i/ N spring of 1905 I was a young instructor in English at Yale. Though I could foresee no early promotion to a higher academic status, I had just been reappointed for a term of three years and was thoroughly wrapped up in my work. I enjoyed my teaching and I was busily engaged on a book about Chaucer. On the whole, I was reasonably contented and had no wish to migrate to another college campus. I had been only impersonally interested by the public announcement that the President of Princeton University was proposing to introduce a new method of undergraduate instruction. Then one day I received the following letter:

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRINCETON, N J . PRESIDENT'S R O O M

March 23, 1905 M Y DEAR SIR:

We are just about instituting in Princeton a Tutorial system based upon that at Oxford, for the purpose of bringing the undergraduates and the faculty into closer and more efficient relations. In order to give the appointments made under the new system the dignity which ought to attach to them, we have determined to give the preceptors appointed (for that is the name by which they will be called) the rank and privileges of Assistant-Professors, so that they will be in line for promotion to Pro* This chapter reproduces, with a few revisions, an address delivered, in the Faculty Room, Nassau Hall, on November 7, 1945, on the occasion of the presentation by Mrs. Ira Nelson Morris of a bust of Woodrow Wilson done by Jo Davidson.

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ROBERT K. ROOT

fessorships if an opportunity should offer, and the salary paid the preceptors will range from $1500 to $2000. The appointments will at first be for a term of years, but with the same prospect of permanency that all such appointments should have when the work done is perfectly satisfactory. Of course it is impossible in a letter to describe as I should wish them described, our plans for the operation of this system, and I am therefore taking the liberty of writing you to ask if you would be willing to have your name considered for one of the appointments, and whether, in case you should be willing, you could make it convenient, at some early date, to come to Princeton or arrange for an interview with me in New York City. I know that your friend Professor Hibben would wish to be very cordially remembered to you if he knew I were writing. Very sincerely yours, WOODROW WILSON

Mr. Robert K. Root, New Haven, Ct. To such an invitation, so graciously expressed, a young instructor, though reasonably contented where he is, does not say "no." And a salary of $2,000 was, according to the standards of 1905, a very handsome stipend. But as I journeyed to Princeton on a bright day in early April, I had misgivings as to this newfangled method of teaching and more personally as to whether a Yale man could be happy in Princeton. My interview lasted some forty minutes. Mr. Wilson asked me no questions about myself, but spoke with winning eloquence about his plans for Princeton. Before five minutes had passed I knew that I was in the presence of a very great man. Of course I was not sufficiently a prophet to foresee the scope . 14 ·

WILSON AND THE PRECEPTORS

of his subsequent achievement, that his great qualities of mind and spirit were to make themselves felt not only in academe but throughout the country and the whole circuit of the world. But I did recognize that I had never before talked face to face with so compelling a person. Before the talk was over my loyalties were entirely committed to him. Had Woodrow Wilson asked me to go with him and work under him while he inaugurated a new university in Kamchatka or Senegambia I would have said "yes" without further question. And my loyalty and devotion to a great leader were shared by the forty-nine other young scholar-teachers who made up the original group of fifty preceptors. In those early years of the preceptorial system we felt that we were embarked upon a great educational adventure under the immediate guidance of a great and wise innovator. Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven. And we were all still young men—a little under or a little over thirty. Woodrow Wilson's preceptorial system is still vigorously alive on the Princeton campus, though of the original group of preceptors less than half a dozen are still in active service, and they are due to go on the emeritus shelf in June 1946. Mr. Wilson described its purpose as a "bringing of undergraduates and faculty into closer and more efficient relations." That has continued to be the underlying purpose of the subsequent educational arrangements, such as the upperclass plan of study, which have further implemented Woodrow Wilson's original idea. In no other American university or college does the student have such opportunity to come into close individual relation with the mature scholars who are his teachers. He does not merely listen to lectures, however stimulating, or submit to the quizzing procedure of the class-room. In a small group of his . 15.

ROBERT K.

ROOT

fellows, seated about a study-table, or around an open fire, he is invited to formulate his own ideas and check their validity by the comments of fellow-students and of the older and presumably wiser student who as preceptor keeps the free discussion in paths that may lead to fruitful results. Mr. Wilson himself described his plan as "meant to give the undergraduates their proper release from being schoolboys, to introduce them to the privileges of maturity and independence by putting them in the way of doing their own reading instead of 'getting up' lectures or 'lessons'... Their exercises with their preceptors are not to be recitations, but conferences, in which, by means of any method of report or discussion that may prove serviceable and satisfactory, the preceptors may test, guide, and stimulate their reading. The governing idea is to be that they are getting up subjects—getting them up with the assistance of lecturers, libraries, and a body of preceptors who are their guides, philosophers, and friends."* Some thousands of Princeton graduates of the last forty years look back to the preceptorials of their student days as the chief agent of their intellectual enfranchisement. Mr. Wilson picked his original group of preceptors with rare skill. They came from universities all over the country. They were eager investigating scholars and devoted teachers. I think that no university in the country has ever, before or since, added to its faculty at one blow so large and so able a new recruitment. A surprisingly large proportion of them qualified for subsequent promotion to professorships, and have borne a very important part in maintaining during the past forty years the university's intellectual distinction and in administering its affairs. The group has provided Princeton University with nine chairmen of departments, four deans, and one charter trustee. Woodrow Wilson began his great service to the nation by * Public Papers of Woodrow Wilson, Ed. R. S. Baker and W. E. Dodd, I, 488.

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WILSON AND THE

PRECEPTORS

breathing new life into one of its oldest institutions of learning; but he was presently to belong to the state of New Jersey, to the whole nation, and to the entire world. I last saw him when he was at the height of his power and influence. On December 13,1918,1 was in Paris on a brief errand from my regular station at the Headquarters of the First Army, A.E.F., and saw his triumphal entry into the city. As he drove down the Champs-filysees, accompanied by Poincare, Clemenceau, and Foch, between lines of cheering Parisians, he carried with him the hope of all the world—a hope destined to tragic frustration by the blindness of certain of his fellow-countrymen. Then two months later, at that time stationed in Paris, I stood one day with a fellow-officer as a quite superfluous ornamental guard in an ante-room of the Quai d'Orsay Palace where were held the preliminary meetings of the Peace Conference. As the great of the earth passed by—Foch, Pershing, Lloyd-George, Sonino— we stood to attention and clicked our heels as loudly as possible. I made up my mind that I was going to speak to the President. When he arrived, almost the last of the notables, I was somewhat abashed to find that he was busily conversing with the French Foreign Minister. But my heart was set on at least a word and a smile. Having come to attention, I took a halfpace towards him and again clicked my heels. He gave a sudden start at an unexpected movement so close to him; but immediately the look of uneasy surprise gave place to a smile of kindly recognition. For about a minute he left the Foreign Minister to his own devices while he shook my hand, asked what I had been doing, and what recent news I had heard from Princeton. It is a memory that I cherish as among the most precious of my life. I never saw him again. We who were Mr. Wilson's younger associates in his years as president of Princeton knew him to be authentically a great man before the country at large had had a chance to recognize him. We were proud to have a share in his great educational • 17 ·

ROBERT K. ROOT

adventure. We listened with rapt attention to his compelling eloquence as he addressed the whole faculty on some major issue of university policy. But in his own study at Prospect we had a chance to know him as a very human person, a man of playful wit as well as keen comment, and a man of unfailing kindliness. Our reverence for a great leader was tempered by warm affection for a very gracious and charming Christian gentleman.

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DEPARTMENTAL ^ ^

COLLEAGUE

BY EDWARD S. CORWIN

-^/ FIRST met Woodrow Wilson early in June 1905. I was then on the verge of taking my Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania and naturally on the lookout for a teaching position. My major work was in American history, which I carried on under the famous historian John Bach McMaster. It was Mrs. McMaster's delightful custom to invite her husband's students to their pleasant home on Locust Street to take Sunday evening supper with the family and whatever other guests might be present. On this particular June evening, one of the topics of conversation was my approaching jobless condition. Said Professor McMaster, "Why don't you run over to Princeton and apply to Woodrow Wilson for one of those preceptorships they're handing out over there?" I confessed that I had not heard of Wilson's plan; but after some explaining on his part, I said, "I'll go over to Princeton in the morning," which I did, with an extraordinarilyfloweryletter of introduction from Professor McMaster to Mr. Wilson. When I arrived at Prospect that Monday forenoon at about 11,1 rang the doorbell and was met by a servant who told me that Mr. Wilson had a caller but would be able to see me shortly. In about ten minutes I was shown into Mr. Wilson's study. That was one of the memorable moments of my life. Mr. Wilson seemed to me easily the most impressive human being I had ever met. But that impression did not prevent the succeeding brief conversation with Mr. Wilson regarding the preceptorial system and my own qualifications from proceeding easily and delightfully. Finally, Mr. Wilson directed me to go out Mercer Street and have a talk with Professor Winthrop More Daniels, who was chairman of the Department of His' 19 ·

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tory, Politics, and Economics. I did so, and enjoyed another pleasant interview. Two or three days later I received word from President Wilson that I had been made a preceptor in the department at the salary which I had suggested to Professor Daniels would be necessary if I was ever to induce my creditors to lose interest in me. I have sometimes been asked whether I thought Mr. Wilson handsome or the reverse. I should answer that his appearance was invariably arresting, but whether he was handsome according to the more ordinary meaning of the word depended principally on his remarkable eyes, which dominated his countenance, as they were apt to dominate beholders. When his eyes were bleak, his countenance was bleak and angular; when they were gracious his countenance was gracious and mobile. Someone remarked of Walter Bagehot's eyes that "if you saw them in a horse, you wouldn't buy the horse," and Mr. Wilson's eyes had something of the same quality. Mr. Wilson's figure was trim, his carriage confident and distinguished, his manner cordial with a touch of reserve but not of condescension; his utterance was singularly beautiful and imparted distinction to his words. These, then, were among the qualities which account for that ineffaceable impression of his superiority which I felt the first instant I saw him and which I never ceased altogether to feel in our subsequent acquaintance. My second confrontation with Mr. Wilson was less gratifying to my vanity. Shortly after our arrival in Princeton in September 1905, the fifty "preceptor guys" were summoned to meet the President in Murray-Dodge to confer upon the many problems which troubled us all as to the operation of the new system of instruction. The afternoon was rather cool for that time of year, and the University heat was not yet on, and Mr. Wilson apologized for the necessity of bringing us together in "a sanctified icehouse." Presently the question arose of how to value student performance in preceptorial work in relation to • 20 ·

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the final examination mark, and as a contribution to the discussion I got up and expressed the opinion that there was "obviously a certain incompatibility between the ideals of the new system and final examinations." Mr. Wilson interrupted me to remark with adequate decision that final examinations would be retained. The question I have just mentioned was, of course, only one of many that arose from time to time, and in an article which at its request I contributed to the University of Michigan Alumnus in the spring of that first year I expressed the opinion that President Wilson had shown wisdom as well as courage in instituting his experiment in the face of problems which could not be resolved satisfactorily except by actual experience in working it. V. Lansing Collins asked me for a copy of the article and later told me that the President had read it with "great interest." In the operation of the system in the Department of History, Politics, and Economics Mr. Wilson, a teaching member of the department, took an especial interest, meeting several times with the department, of which, on account of Professor Daniels' absence on leave, Professor Harry Garfield was acting chairman. One thing which I especially recall is the President's insistence that preceptorial meetings should be called "conferences," not "classes," for he agreed with Confucius as to the importance of names. His continued interest in the practical operation of the system is shown by a letter which I have before me as I write. It is dated June 19, 1908 and discusses at some length the question whether a student should be subject to debarment from examinations by his department against the objection of his preceptor. Mr. Wilson, while agreeing with me that this ought not be done in the particular case I had put to him, declined to state a general rule. Either the Committee on Examinations and Standing or the departments themselves ought to rule on the matter, he held. • 21 ·

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As one of the few survivors on the campus from the original fifty I have been often asked in recent years whether I thought the preceptorial system of today was essentially the system that President Wilson inaugurated. Although I have not given preceptorial instruction except very occasionally since 1918, I should say that by that date the system had come to depart rather widely from the original Wilsonian conception. The system had at the outset two weaknesses, or to speak more accurately, it had two features which were too good to survive. One was the idea that while all students could be required to do a minimum amount of reading, the better ones could be induced to do considerably more than this minimum. The ideal was not realized in my day except in a few instances in which preceptors were permitted to put their best students in a special group, thereby proportionately reducing the interest and profitableness of the discussions in other groups. The upshot was that the minimum list of reading soon became for most students the maximum list. The other feature of the system alluded to at the outset was much more important, at least as it was administered in the Department of History, Politics, and Economics. Each preceptor in the department that first autumn of 1905 was assigned a group of seniors and also a group of juniors, each of whom was to report to his preceptor on all of his departmental work. In a word, the preceptor was to be to each of his men the proverbial "guide, philosopher, and friend." The amount of work this put upon each preceptor was enormous. My first year at Princeton I taught seventeen hours per week in seven subjects the first semester, sixteen hours in six subjects the second semester, and in preparation for the preceptorial discussions I was called upon to read something between ten and twelve thousand pages of such works as Wilson's State, Holland's Jurisprudence, Maine's Ancient Law, Jenks' Law and Politics in the Middle Ages, Hall's International Law, Ostrogorski's . 2'2 ·

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Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, etc. At least I got an education—something which most newly fledged Ph.D.'s stand in considerable need of, and too often continue to remain in need of. Naturally, the preceptors in my department discussed the situation I have just described, and we arrived at the conclusion that our teaching burden must be reduced, and that the best way to do that in harmony with the system would be for a preceptor to give only junior work one year and senior work the next, thus continuing through the two years with the same students. So one day in the spring of 1906 when Professor Garfield invited me to take a walk, and the talk turned to the work of the department, I communicated this idea to him—perhaps others had done the same thing—and it was adopted in