Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1993. [Vol. 1.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 21)

BOOK REVIEWS - John C. Chalberg: August Heckscher: Woodrow Wilson. Macmillan, 1991. 734 pp

Wilson's nature, but he is insistent that that idealism was almost always tempered by political skill and historical knowledge. It is true that foreign policy was totally ignored in Wilson's first inaugural address. It is also true that his self-described "one track mind" focused primarily on domestic issues during the first months of his administration. And it is finally true that Wilson thought it would be a "supreme irony" if his presidency was engulfed by foreign policy. Engulfed it became, but Heckscher argues that Wilson was "not as unprepared ... as has often been supposed." For years Professor Wilson had examined European forms of government and had pondered the "American march toward imperialism." For months President-elect and President Wilson had wondered about the fate of the previous graduate of Princeton University to occupy the White House. Woodrow Wilson, like James Madison before him, took pride in his scholarly erudition. But President Woodrow Wilson, unlike James Madison, was determined that he would never be drawn into war. After August, 1914, Heckscher pursues Wilson's pursuit of peace, whether he was closeted in the White House with his thoughts and his typewriter, or at large on the golf course, out for a Sunday drive, or before a post-Lusitania crisis audience which learned that there was "such a thing as a man being too proud to fight." Clearly, Woodrow Wilson was not anxious to take his country into the maelstrom that was World War I. Neither were his countrymen anxious to be so led. To accomplish this peaceful end, Wilson had to steer between the Allied and Central powers and among any number of feuding advisers, from his first secretary of state, William Jennings Bryan, who was too ready to sacrifice American interests, to his second secretary of state, Robert Lansing, who was too determined to join the allies on the field of battle. Only Wilson, it seems, knew just when to urge peace, or to plot mediation, or to press the belligerents, or to begin the process of American mobilization. In fact, it was the "preparedness" issue that led Wilson to depart from his presidential practice of simultaneously listening to the people and remaining aloof from them. Until the end of 1915 and the decision to make the case for increased defense expenditures Wilson's 159