Pegler: On Wilson
By Westbrook Pegler
New York –
A visit to the screen show President Wilson allays any thought that this might be politically unhygienic entertainment for the American fighting people, even though it is a propaganda picture, heroizing a man who had at least a fair share of faults and arguing that the resistance of the historic little group of willful men in the Senate was, in the end, responsible for the present World War.
Without the benefit of counterpropaganda or argument, the young men and women of the American forces in this war might be persuaded that Mr. Wilson was a god and that none of the fault was his. However, the whole thing is very provocative so I think the result will be a reopening of the debate among those who see it.
And there are, fortunately, still many Americans around, even in the fighting services, who remember that Mr. Wilson, himself, was no less willful than Henry Cabot Lodge and that, the conduct of the whole American people after 1920, showed that they were fed up on Europe and didn’t want to commit themselves to intervention in Europe’s interminable wars, as the phrase went in those days.
Wilson bossy and patronizing
For the benefit of those who came into this world too late for personal observation of the issues and personalities, it will be recalled that Mr. Wilson was a very bossy and patronizing President, wherein he seems to have served as a model for the next man elected on the same ticket.
He had a way of low-rating Congress and going over their heads to appeal to the people who then turned him down on two important occasions. His conduct in Europe revealed an appetite for personal honors and homage which, likewise, is reflected in Mr. R., and each had a mysterious personal stool pigeon whose unaccountable importance created ill-feeling and some distrust.
The tendency of this film is to suggest that Mr. Roosevelt is the heir to Mr. Wilson’s wisdom and his woes and that, therefore, the troops ought to vote for him and a league of some kind to enforce peace.
It may be questionable pool to issue a propaganda film on this theme during the current campaign and it should be noted again, for future reference, that in going in for propaganda, the moving picture industry so far has conspicuously refrained from presenting any work dealing forcefully with any of the notorious evils of the New Deal. Under a Republican administration, it might be moved to pay some attention to such phases of our recent history, including the elevation to the Supreme Court of two men who have flagrantly condoned violent insurrection.
Film provokes own reputation
The trouble with this kind of film is that it provokes its own refutation. You present Wilson as he is shown here and you instantly arouse reminiscences showing that he was so self-willed and mulish, in fact so selfish, that he estranged himself from almost all his friends and even treated the faithful Joe Tumulty so badly that public sympathy went out to Joe.
You insinuate that money-hungry men tried to drive him into the war prematurely and you draw attention to the presence in his cabinet of old William Jennings Bryan who was always running off from the State Department to pick up $500 or $1,000 for a lecture and who, in the end, became so greedy that, in the Florida boom, he actually exploited the people’s trust in him to rally suckers for a real estate promotion by preaching religion to them and then leading them out to the scene of the development.
The man who paid him his hire in those days revealed later that Bryan always demanded his money before he would go on with his act and, toward the end, when the company seemed shaky, demanded it in currency.
There have been parallels of this exploitation of high office and public faith in the present government which will be brought to mind instinctively as the film unreels.