Woodrow Wilson as I Know HimTumulty, Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick)
History
Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him
Tumulty, Joseph P. (Joseph Patrick)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
"Would Woodrow Wilson have intervened in behalf of Ireland?"
I can answer this question only by saying that Ireland has never had a
truer friend than Woodrow Wilson. From the day that we went to war it has
been his steadfast purpose to induce the Government of England to settle
the Irish question justly and permanently. His statesmanlike approach to a
settlement of the problem is the only one that holds hope of success.
As I completed this chapter, an article appeared in a Washington
newspaper apparently confirmatory of the President's foresight, showing
that by September, 1921, Mr. De Valera had arrived at the same view. The
article seems to show Mr. De Valera as insisting that the British
Government grant Ireland membership in the League of Nations as one of the
guarantees of autonomy.
As for myself, I believe that Ireland is going to be free in company with
the rest of the world and in accordance with a new world order which shall
function through the machinery for justice and liberty which is provided
for in the Covenant of the League of Nations, and is provided for nowhere
else.
CHAPTER XL
PROHIBITION
One of the things for which the Wilson Administration was held to "strict
accountability" was the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment to the Federal
Constitution, establishing nation-wide prohibition.
Unfair critics of the President, in their foolish attempt to charge the
Administration with every unusual happening in the eight years of
Democratic control, had stated that the President was the real motive
force that lay back of the movement to establish the Eighteenth Amendment
as part of the fundamental law of the country. As a matter of fact, during
the discussion of this amendment in the Senate and House, the President
maintained toward it an attitude of absolute neutrality. While he was an
ardent advocate of temperance, he felt that Congress in enforcing the
amendment by the passage of the Volstead Act, so extreme and unreasonable
in character, had gone a long way toward alienating the support of every
temperance-loving citizen in the country, and that certain of its
provisions had struck at the foundation of our government by its arbitrary
interference with personal liberty and freedom. He felt that the practical
unanimity with which the Eighteenth Amendment was supported arose from a
nation-wide resentment against abuses by the American saloon and the
economic evils that had grown out of the unorganized liquor traffic. He
felt that it was unreasonable for Congress, in the Volstead Act, to
declare any beverage containing an excess of one half of one per cent. of
alcohol intoxicating and that to frame a law which arbitrarily places
intoxicating and non-intoxicating beverages within the same classification
was openly to invite mental resentment against it. He was of the opinion
that it required no compromise or weakening of the Eighteenth Amendment in
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