George Edward Creel to Woodrow Wilson
Title
George Edward Creel to Woodrow Wilson
Creator
Creel, George, 1876-1953
Identifier
WWP25515
Date
1918 November 20
Description
Chairman of the Committee on Public Information passes along an editorial by William Allen White
Source
Library of Congress, Woodrow Wilson Papers
Publisher
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum
Subject
White, William Allen, 1868-1944
Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924--Correspondence
Contributor
Morgan Willer
Relation
WWP25516
Language
English
Provenance
Document scan was taken from Library of Congress microfilm reel of the Wilson Papers. WWPL volunteers transcribed the text.
Text
My dear Mr. President:
I received a letter the other day from William Allen White, and I quote part of it, together with quotations from an editorial which he sent me.
“My dear George:
I am sending you an editorial about your beloved President--I suppose I might as well confess he is also mine--which is in answer to the last paragraph of your letter of November 9.
It is indeed a bit funny that we are not together. We who hold eighty per cent of our political opinions in common. I suppose that each of us is repelled by the crooks that the other runs with. You don’t like mine and I don’t like yours. I hope the day will come when there will be a thorough-going radical party, with a thorough-going radical program. I am weary of promises and repression, and all the mummery of pretended agreement with smug conservatism.” *****
“We who heaved the rocks, tossed the bats, and were careless with our rhetorical cats and cabbages, should not forget how great a service to humanity our President really has rendered. We Americans have built up during this war the greatest machine for propaganda in the world. To all the neutral nations of the earth by wireless, and to all our Allies and to their dependencies daily goes a great grist of American news; and in this grist always go the President’s state papers and addresses. In remote China, in Central and South America, in Asia Minor, in the fastnesses of the Balkans, in Russia, in the Scandinavian countries and hence surely and accurately to our enemies themselves, the words of President Wilson are sent to be printed at almost the same hour and in the same amplitude in which they appear in America. So that all over the world these words have gone - to the rulers and to the weak and oppressed alike - these living words voicing America’s ideals of liberty, of international justice, of human freedom under government. No other man who ever trod this planet has spoken to such a wide and various contemporary audience as President Wilson has spoken in the past two years. And he has spoken always with power, with conviction and with kindly grace. His words have had the strength of an army with banners -- of mighty battalions.
“If this war means anything, if it is worth while at all -- its meaning and its worth enforce the fact that, fundamentally, this is not a material world; that the spiritual forces of humanity at last in the slow evolution of the ages have become ascendant. Germany stands for the faith of the pagans -- the faith that brute force, sheer physical power, crass selfishness backed by might have no check or let or hindrance in the conduct of men and nations. The war is fought to deny that thesis forever. And in the great denial of the powers of unrighteous might, it has been fitting that the strongest single force in the war has been the voice of the people who for three centuries of slow steady growth have stood for freedom; for the spiritual development of man ahead of material things -- even though those material things have been added unto them also. And it was given to President Wilson to speak for America to the world. The nobility of his utterances, the simplicity and directness of his appeal, the splendid way in which he has risen to his job as the speaking voice of humanity in this world conflict mark him for a great world leader.
“Paint me, warts and all,” quoth Cromwell, who had his warts even on his strong face. President Wilson, too, has his deficiencies. He is human. In the past ten days or two weeks of the passing campaign we have been more or less preoccupied with the President’s human side. We have treated him as one of us, giving him the American compliment of our bitter partisan broadsides. Let us hope that now, having had our way with him, we may escort him back to his pedestal with Yankee felicitations -- and wishing him no harm -- hope he may die there and pass into blessed and deserved immortality.”
Respectfully,
George Creel
Chairman.
The President,
The White House,
Washington, DC
I received a letter the other day from William Allen White, and I quote part of it, together with quotations from an editorial which he sent me.
“My dear George:
I am sending you an editorial about your beloved President--I suppose I might as well confess he is also mine--which is in answer to the last paragraph of your letter of November 9.
It is indeed a bit funny that we are not together. We who hold eighty per cent of our political opinions in common. I suppose that each of us is repelled by the crooks that the other runs with. You don’t like mine and I don’t like yours. I hope the day will come when there will be a thorough-going radical party, with a thorough-going radical program. I am weary of promises and repression, and all the mummery of pretended agreement with smug conservatism.” *****
“We who heaved the rocks, tossed the bats, and were careless with our rhetorical cats and cabbages, should not forget how great a service to humanity our President really has rendered. We Americans have built up during this war the greatest machine for propaganda in the world. To all the neutral nations of the earth by wireless, and to all our Allies and to their dependencies daily goes a great grist of American news; and in this grist always go the President’s state papers and addresses. In remote China, in Central and South America, in Asia Minor, in the fastnesses of the Balkans, in Russia, in the Scandinavian countries and hence surely and accurately to our enemies themselves, the words of President Wilson are sent to be printed at almost the same hour and in the same amplitude in which they appear in America. So that all over the world these words have gone - to the rulers and to the weak and oppressed alike - these living words voicing America’s ideals of liberty, of international justice, of human freedom under government. No other man who ever trod this planet has spoken to such a wide and various contemporary audience as President Wilson has spoken in the past two years. And he has spoken always with power, with conviction and with kindly grace. His words have had the strength of an army with banners -- of mighty battalions.
“If this war means anything, if it is worth while at all -- its meaning and its worth enforce the fact that, fundamentally, this is not a material world; that the spiritual forces of humanity at last in the slow evolution of the ages have become ascendant. Germany stands for the faith of the pagans -- the faith that brute force, sheer physical power, crass selfishness backed by might have no check or let or hindrance in the conduct of men and nations. The war is fought to deny that thesis forever. And in the great denial of the powers of unrighteous might, it has been fitting that the strongest single force in the war has been the voice of the people who for three centuries of slow steady growth have stood for freedom; for the spiritual development of man ahead of material things -- even though those material things have been added unto them also. And it was given to President Wilson to speak for America to the world. The nobility of his utterances, the simplicity and directness of his appeal, the splendid way in which he has risen to his job as the speaking voice of humanity in this world conflict mark him for a great world leader.
“Paint me, warts and all,” quoth Cromwell, who had his warts even on his strong face. President Wilson, too, has his deficiencies. He is human. In the past ten days or two weeks of the passing campaign we have been more or less preoccupied with the President’s human side. We have treated him as one of us, giving him the American compliment of our bitter partisan broadsides. Let us hope that now, having had our way with him, we may escort him back to his pedestal with Yankee felicitations -- and wishing him no harm -- hope he may die there and pass into blessed and deserved immortality.”
Respectfully,
George Creel
Chairman.
The President,
The White House,
Washington, DC
Original Format
Letter
To
Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
Files
Collection
Citation
Creel, George, 1876-1953, “George Edward Creel to Woodrow Wilson,” 1918 November 20, WWP25515, World War I Letters, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.