Woodrow Wilson to Mary Allen Hulbert Peck

The enclosed envelope was handed me this morning. Do you wonder that it startled me with its foreign postmark! does it not look like the handwriting of the dear lady, who, when I last heard from her, was at Nantucket? It turned out to be the handwriting in fact of Mrs. Seymour Davis of Philadelphia, and enclosed a clipping from the London Daily Mail about the passage of the tariff bill. The chief point with me is, that it was not from my friend, last heard from at Nantucket, and that when last heard from she was by no means recovered from an illness which made me wretchedly uneasy about her. I have been waiting, waiting, with what anxiety and suspence she may imagine, to hear how she has fared. Will she not have someone drop me a note to tell me how she is, so that this anxiety may not gnaw at my thoughts while I strive to handle big things of state? I will bless her with all my heart if she will! For my heart is the organ by which I live and its loads are the only loads that are intolerable to me. If I must speculate whether my dearest friends are well or ill, in danger or out of it, I am in no shape to care as I should how the currency bill is shaped or handled. And so I cry out to her for aid. I must know how she is. I have been distressed by all sorts of conjectures and daunted by all sorts of doubts. My fear is, of course, that she is more ill than she cares to have me know, for fear of distressing me in the midst of public anxiety. If that is true, this is to tell her that it is kinder to tell me the real facts. And if, along with that, she can tell me what that I can do would help most to bring her back to health and strength, how it would cheer a man who chafes most at helplessness and inaction! I am perfectly well and strong, in spite of the strain which I had feared might be too much for me. Partly, perhaps, because so far all has gone singularly well in public matters. Do not believe anything you read in the newspapers. If you read the papers I see, they are utterly untrustworthy. They represent the obstacles as existing which they wish to have exist, whether they are actual or not. Read the editorial page and you will know what you will find in the news columns. For unless they are grossly careless the two always support one another. Their lying is shameless and colossal! Editorially the papers which are friendly (and some which are not) represent me, in the most foolish way, as master of the situation here, bending Congress to my indomitable individual will. That is, of course silly. Congress is made up of thinking men who want the party to succeed as much as I do, and who wish to serve the country effectively and intelligently. They have found out that I am honest and that I have no personal purpose of my own to serve (except that “If it be a sin to covet honour, then am I the most offending soul alive!”) and accept my guidance because they see that I am attempting only to mediate their own thoughts and purposes. I do not know how to wield a big stick, but I do know how to put my mind at the service of others for the accomplishment of a common purpose. They are using me; I am not driving them. But I need not tell you all this. The joy of a real friend is that one need not explain anything: it is known and comprehended already. You will know just how I accomplish anything that I do accomplish. And what a pleasure it is, what a deep human pleasure, to work with strong men, who do their own thinking and know how to put things in shape! Why a mean should wish to be the whole show, and surround himself with weak men, I cannot imagine! How dull it would be! How tiresome to watch a plot which was only the result of your own action and every part of which you could predict before it was put on the boards! That is not power. Power consists in one’s capacity to link his will with the purpose of others, to lead by reason and a gift for cooperation. It is a multiple of combined brains. But you know that, too. The fact is that you are a very wise lady, because you instinctively comprehend your fellow beings, both singly and in the mass. That explains the hold you have upon individuals and the power you have in society whenever you have the chance or the wish to exercise it. To comprehend people is to rule them. At any rate that is the root and source of the whole thing. See the thing from the point of view of those with whom you are dealing and your influence is established, and is welcome. But how are you?¹ That’s what I am really thinking about. I spoke of the rest only because your own gifts suggested it. I am waiting more anxiously than you know to learn how my dearest friend is.