When sufficient years have elapsed for the forming of a correct perspective, when the dissolving elements of time have swept away misunderstandings and the influences engendered by party belief and politically former opinions, Woodrow Wilson is destined to occupy a place in the Temple of Fame that all Americans may well be proud of.  Let us analyze this and let us be fair about it, whatever may be our beliefs or affiliations.

Washington gave us our freedom as a nation and 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.