The Woodrow Wilson Foundation is asking the public to contribute to a fund which has two objects. One is to make possible an award, from time to time, in recognition of some meritorious service to humanity. The other object is to signalize, through associating his name with the award, the public service of a living American. Here enters inevitably, the element of personal and political feeling. Woodrow Wilson, like Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt, possessed the faculty of inspiring intense admiration and intense hatred. Many of his friends believe him to be the noblest figure in our political life since Lincoln. What his enemies believe is too familiar to be repeated. Argument is useless until the historians have weighed the facts. We are still too close to the events and personalities of the world war, and all contemporary verdicts upon statesmen are notoriously fallible.

The Organization is Non-Partisan

The Foundation will naturally get more contributions from Mr. Wilson's supporters than from his opponents. But inasmuch as the organization is non-partisan, there is no reason why any American should refuse to contribute, provided he believes that the conferring of awards for distinguished service to humanity would be desirable, and provided, also, that he does not carry personal or partisan rancor to the point of unwillingness to have Woodrow Wilson's name associated with the undertaking. Probably there are persons who are conscious of this unwillingness. They are not likely to contribute. There are certainly some persons who honestly oppose any co-operation of the liberal forces of mankind, and who really think that the United States can "go it alone". They cannot be expected to contribute to a fund named in honor of a man who pledged the good faith of the United States to the cause of brotherhood among nations.

Who, then, will contribute?

Some generous political adversaries of Mr. Wilson, who are chivalrous enough to regret his broken health and are not unwilling to see him honored in his retirement.

Some lovers of fair play.

Some lovers of courage, whether it wins or loses.

Some men who will say with the Russian Chekhov, "We judge' human activities by their goal," not by their incidental failures in detail, and who recognize that Wilson's aim was, in Lincoln's words, "something that held out a great promise to all the people of the world for all time to come."

There will be contributions from the ranks--never yet fairly counted--of believers in international good-will, and from many obscure men and women who are working in a hundred quiet ways for the betterment of the world. They are eager to show their faith in progress. They have gained fresh confidence in the popular response to every forward stop taken by the Washington conference. They believe that public opinion has advanced far beyond the position taken by official opinion. They hold that anyone who invests in a closer moral and political organization of the world, in the spread of liberal ideas, or in the recognition of unselfish service to humanity, is buying into a rising market.

To such men and women the name of Woodrow Wilson connotes, not defeat, but victory.