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
the "partisan passions" arrayed against him. And an earlier Woodrow Wilson, the "shrewd and practical" Woodrow Wilson, no doubt would have forged a working coalition to secure ratification of the treaty in some acceptable form. But the Woodrow Wilson of the summer of 1919 was a "depleted man." It was this Wilson who made one of the "most fateful decisions" of his political career, and a decision which Heckscher argues was out of character for him, namely the decision to take his case for the Treaty and the League directly to the American people. According to Heckscher, Wilson's "nature" as a political leader was to stand on principle, but to "take circumstances into due account" when applying his principles to political reality. As Lodge added reservation upon reservation Wilson had to have been aware that the Treaty would not pass the Senate without some changes. Instead of accepting —and modifying — the Lodge agenda, Wilson refused to "take circumstances into due account." Instead of dealing with the Senate he took to the hustings. The result was political defeat and a personal breakdown. "I don't seem to realize it," the president told his White House physician, "but I seem to have gone to pieces." That much at least he did come to realize. The loss of the treaty, however, he refused to accept. Isolated in battle, Woodrow Wilson grew even more remote in the remaining months of his suddenly depleted presidency. Like Cleveland before him and Carter after him, Wilson left the White House a politically broken man. Though it was not necessarily his intention to do so, Heckscher has tried valiantly to separate his subject from the failures of these two Democrats, who also rose to the presidency almost without warning, who also preferred to stand apart from their party at critical junctures, and who met failure in Washington partly because of their refusal to play Washingtonian games. For better or for worse, Woodrow Wilson was an oracle —and an idealist —before he was a politician. Heckscher would have it the other way around, but to minimize his idealism is to deny the reality of the man. Wilson himself said it best during his fight to keep the United States out of World War I: "I know I am an idealist, because I am an American and America is the only idealistic nation in the world." 164
