A Life of Wilson

There have already been biographies and more biographies of Woodrow Wilson. Hardly had the War President died last February, when Josephus Daniels rushed down to his private domain in North Carolina to pen one. Last summer, William Allen White undertook another. But at last an official and authorized biography is to be produced. Mrs. Wilson has announced the undertaking.

She chose as biographer Ray Stannard Baker, of Amherst, Mass. Mr. Maker, a man of 54, is the author of a number of books on public questions and (under the pen name of David Grayson) of a number of essays. After leaving the University of Michigan, he was connected with McClure's Syndicate and McClure's Magazine, served as an editor of the American Magazine. During the War he was attached to the State Department, and afterward served as Director of Publicity for the American Commission at the Paris Peace Conference. It was there that Baker --the spectacled, professional, earnest man with his deep chin-dimple and his mustache--grew to know Woodrow Wilson well. Afterward, Mr. Wilson gave him access to his papers, and Mr. Baker produced, two years ago, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, a three-volume exhaustive study of the Versailles Peace. It was probably Mr. Wilson's perception that he was a writer of earnestness, intelligence and accuracy as well as of force and spirit that won him the opportunity of making his three-volume study.

Just a year ago, less than ten days before his death, Mr. Wilson dictated one of his last letters--to Mr. Baker:

Every time that you disclose your mind to me you increase my admiration and affection for you. I am glad to promise you that with regard to my personal correspondence and similar papers, I shall regard you as my preferred creditor, and shall expect to afford you the first--and if necessary exclusive--access to those papers.

But I have it on my conscience that you should know that I have not made the smallest beginning towards accumulating and making accessible the papers we have in mind . I would rather have your interpretation of them than of anybody else I know, and I trust that you will not think it unreasonable that I should ask you to accept these promises in lieu of others which would be more satisfactory, but which, for the present, would be without practical value.

Last week, Mrs. Wilson announced that this promise was to be made good. She was turning over to Mr. Baker "the entire private record in letters and documents of Mr. Wilson's service as President." The letters alone number 30,000. In addition there are many of Mr. Wilson's own memoranda made in shorthand, as well as notes which he had typed himself. Mrs. Wilson declared:

"Mr. Baker will have no restrictions whatever upon a full and truthful account. It will be an unhurried work, carefully verified at every point, and studied with co-operation of many of Mr. Wilson's friends and associates."