American schools were really accused of teaching a false patriotism and depriving American children of "the advantages of cooperation and reciprocal instruction.' "The so-called educated youth of America" in some respects, it was charged, are inferior to students of a similar grade even in South America. "The latter," it is said, "speaks commonly French and often English, besides his native tongue, speaks them fluently and not stammeringly. In every Latin country, indeed, French is a second mother tongue to the well-to-do. Thanks to our lingering provinciality, and the admirable linguistic uselessness of most of our schools and colleges, the majority of 'educated' North Americans are unilingual. And, lacking the very A B C of business intercourse, we expect to compete successfully in the other Americas with Englishmen, Germans, Frenchmen, who are thoroughly familiar with the language, commercial and social customs, and institutions of those countries."

If North America, therefore, is to understand South America, a condition absolutely necessary before there can be any lasting Pan-American Union, the colleges and universities have an intellectual task to perform before this great program is completed. But the great war has discovered South America to North America, and President Wilson, in speaking to the delegates of the Financial Conference in May, 1915, said what others have felt since.

"It is even a source of mortification to me,"

he said, "that it should have required a crisis of the world to show the Americans how truly they were neighbors to one another. If there is any one happy circumstance, gentlemen, arising out of the present distressing circumstances of the world, it is that it has revealed us to one another; it has shown us what it means to be neighbors. And I cannot help harboring the hope, the very high hope, that by this commerce of minds with one another, as well as commerce in goods, we may show the world in part the path to peace."

Woodrow Wilson was closing his administration. The first half was devoted to the task of restoring the rule of right and justice in the nation, and in its relations with foreign nations. The second half was concerned with the European war: the task of preserving peace in America, and of holding the mad nations of the world to some standard, coupled with the greatest domestic problem that has confronted this nation since the Civil War,-how to prepare the nation socially, industrially, and educationally to meet the great issues born of the war. In looking back over his achievements as he faced another political campaign, he declared:

"I am willing, no matter what my personal fortune may be, to play for the verdict of man

kind. Personally, it will be a matter of indifference to me what the verdict on the 7th of November is, provided I have any degree of confidence that when a later jury sits, I shall get their judgment in my favor, not in my favor personally -what difference does that make?-but in my favor as an honest and conscientious spokesman of a great nation."

CHAPTER XXIII

THE MAN IN ACTION

Woodrow Wilson, the man in action, is intensely human. He loves the simple life and his habits are those of the plain men of the country. He hates the silk hat and the conventional dress, and he is happiest, it is said, in his working clothes. It was this preference for the unconventional, for simplicity and directness, that led him to dispense with the inaugural ball, and to upset the precedents of a century by going to Congress to deliver his first message. And he disarmed those who thought this act savored of royalty by introducing himself as "a human being."

He does not give much consideration to the way his acts will be seen through the eyes of others. Disliking form and ceremonies and preferring the simple life, he declined, without even thinking of it, an election to the Chevy Chase Country Club, and was amazed next day to find that he had committed a mortal sin against high society.

The ceremonies that surrounded him in the White House amused him. "For example," he

said, "take matters of this sort: I will not say whether it is wise or unwise, simple or grave, but certain precedents have been established that in certain companies the President must leave the room first, and the people must give way to him. They must not sit down if he is standing up. It is a very uncomfortable thing to have to think of all the other people every time I get up and sit down, and all that sort of thing, so that when I get guests in my own house and the public is shut out, I adjourn being President and take leave to be a gentleman. If they draw back and insist upon my doing something first, I firmly decline."

Moreover, he protested with a show of humor against enforced presidential conventionalties that kept him virtually a prisoner in the White House, and he ridiculed the customs that placed him in the "same category as the National Museum, the Smithsonian Institute, or the Washington Monument."

"If I only knew an exhibition appearance to assume," he said once, speaking humorously of this custom, "I would like to have it pointed out, so that I could practice it before the looking glass and see if I could not look like the Monu