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
Two months would pass before Wilson took the final "tragical" step. "Tragical" was Wilson's word, and by it he meant not just the loss of life, but the inevitable embrace of evil means to achieve what had always been his goal, namely the redemption of corrupt Europe. What he thought had been obtainable by peaceful example was now to be accomplished by force of arms. "Tragical" might also be Heckscher's word to describe Woodrow Wilson's public life between the spring of 1917 and the fall of 1919, "tragical" not solely because of Wilson's debilitating stroke, but also because of his failure to achieve his larger vision. It is Heckscher's contetion that this failure was both preventable and lamentable. He attributes Wilson's defeats to a series of errors in political judgment, rather than to a flawed —or inevitably interventionist — Wilsonian vision. Long reluctant to enter the war, Wilson also proved hesitant to demand wartime conformity at home or to eliminate Bolshevism in Russia. If there was hysteria on the homefront, it was beyond the president's power to conjure up or to control. And if Leninism was at odds with Wilsonianism, the president preferred more watchful waiting to military action, because he wanted the Russian people to have an opportunity to work out their own political destiny. To Wilson, Bolshevism was both an expression of Russian national will and a "protest against the way in which the world has worked." Wilson, of course, did ultimately sign on with the comic opera that was the allied intervention in the Russian civil war. Heckscher, however, sees this as a minor aberration rather than a symptom of the real Woodrow Wison at his evil worst. Finally, Heckscher is covinced that had Wilson not suffered his crippling stroke there would have been no Palmer raids and no American Red Scare. Having denied a politically powerful and apparently healthy Woodrow Wilson responsibility for the anti-Hun excesses, Heckscher presumes that a politically weakened but physically able Woodrow Wilson would have blunted its anti-red counterpart. But was Wilson as benign —or as powerful —as Heckscher suggests? Not when the peace settlement was at stake. Heckscher regrets Wilson's "almost inevitable" decision to go to Paris, but surmises that Wilson had an 161
