RU Johnson to Woodrow Wilson
Title
RU Johnson to Woodrow Wilson
Creator
Johnson, Robert Underwood, 1853-1937
Identifier
WWP25440
Date
1918 November 11
Description
Praise for President Wilson.
Source
Library of Congress, Woodrow Wilson Papers
Publisher
Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum
Subject
American Academy of Arts and Letters
World War, 1914-1918--Peace
Dodge, Cleveland H. (Cleveland Hoadley), 1860-1926
Contributor
Danna Faulds
Language
English
Provenance
Document scan was taken from Library of Congress microfilm reel of the Wilson Papers. WWPL volunteers transcribed the text.
Text
Dear Mr. President:
On this day - the most illustrious and important in history, it seems to me, since the birth of Christ - let me congratulate you on the great results achieved by you and under your inspiration and direction. The victory for the right could not have been won but for our disinterested efforts, to which your leadership gave moral as well as material effectiveness. Your countrymen are proud of you, and happy that you have kept the conflict on so high a plane.
With the close of the war I am at once resuming the work entrusted to me by the Academy of presenting its claims to the financial support of public spirited men and women. Its potentialities in the advancement of the best standards of literature and art - already so sadly impaired by lawlessness and eccentricity - are immense. You have struck the moral and spiritual notes to great issues: I hope you will find occasion to insist on the predominance of the intellectual if we are to be able to produce the men of the future who must grapple with the new and puzzling problems. Your own career as a scholar in politics points the way toward a more aggressive stand for a better understanding of the function of culture. I am sure that we may count upon you as a member of the Academy, and as a broad-minded American, to help us in the movement to lay broad and deep the foundation of American creative and critical standards.
I am hoping that Mr. Dodge, who has already expressed an interest in the Academy, may see his way to build and endow its home on the eight lots given by Mr. Archer Huntington - for without a home we shall fail of our full dignity and prestige and without funds we shall fail short of our highest measure of usefulness. I hope to devote the rest of my life, outside my personal literary output, to this great enterprise so full of possibilities and promise in the field of the imagination and the national ideals.
You will be glad to know that it is expected that this week, as the result of the Concert at the Opera House on Liberty Day, we shall remit to Queen Margherita’s Fund for the Soldiers of Italy Blinded in Battle the sum of 275,000 francs (nearly if not quite). Mrs. Wilson and yourself may have the agreeable reflection that by your presence you contributed very largely to this result.
Renewing my appreciative felicitations on the triumph of today believe me, Mr. President, respectfully and faithfully yours,
RU Johnson
On this day - the most illustrious and important in history, it seems to me, since the birth of Christ - let me congratulate you on the great results achieved by you and under your inspiration and direction. The victory for the right could not have been won but for our disinterested efforts, to which your leadership gave moral as well as material effectiveness. Your countrymen are proud of you, and happy that you have kept the conflict on so high a plane.
With the close of the war I am at once resuming the work entrusted to me by the Academy of presenting its claims to the financial support of public spirited men and women. Its potentialities in the advancement of the best standards of literature and art - already so sadly impaired by lawlessness and eccentricity - are immense. You have struck the moral and spiritual notes to great issues: I hope you will find occasion to insist on the predominance of the intellectual if we are to be able to produce the men of the future who must grapple with the new and puzzling problems. Your own career as a scholar in politics points the way toward a more aggressive stand for a better understanding of the function of culture. I am sure that we may count upon you as a member of the Academy, and as a broad-minded American, to help us in the movement to lay broad and deep the foundation of American creative and critical standards.
I am hoping that Mr. Dodge, who has already expressed an interest in the Academy, may see his way to build and endow its home on the eight lots given by Mr. Archer Huntington - for without a home we shall fail of our full dignity and prestige and without funds we shall fail short of our highest measure of usefulness. I hope to devote the rest of my life, outside my personal literary output, to this great enterprise so full of possibilities and promise in the field of the imagination and the national ideals.
You will be glad to know that it is expected that this week, as the result of the Concert at the Opera House on Liberty Day, we shall remit to Queen Margherita’s Fund for the Soldiers of Italy Blinded in Battle the sum of 275,000 francs (nearly if not quite). Mrs. Wilson and yourself may have the agreeable reflection that by your presence you contributed very largely to this result.
Renewing my appreciative felicitations on the triumph of today believe me, Mr. President, respectfully and faithfully yours,
RU Johnson
Original Format
Letter
To
Wilson, Woodrow, 1856-1924
Files
Collection
Citation
Johnson, Robert Underwood, 1853-1937, “RU Johnson to Woodrow Wilson,” 1918 November 11, WWP25440, World War I Letters, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.