translation of principle into reality. Wilson, on this showing, was forever being too stubborn and uncompromising about “principles,” too optimistic about the chances of making reality behave in accordance with principle, too unrealistic about the stuff of which actual situations are made to take the steps necessary for moving them where they ought to go. Wilson, accordingly, comes out, after all, a Hero —a Hero with, to be sure, some regrettable intellectual limitations and even some personality defects, but still a Hero; and Wilson’s opponents, Senator Lodge for example, come out by the same token men without principle and so the agents of Old Nick. What was really wrong with Wilson, namely, that his principles were phoney principles to begin with, thus eludes Blum—along with the real significance of his story; which is that Woodrow Wilson, like the poor, we have always with us, and that the name he answers to, at the moment, is Dwight Eisenhower.
WILLMOORE KENDALL
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