"If I didn’t feel that I was the personal instrument of God I couldn’t carry on."
-- Woodrow Wilson, during the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles, as quoted in 1912 by James Chace (p.268).
Thanks to a Political Wire reader for sending this after reading the similar quote by President Bush earlier this week.
When I read that, a little factoid I've seen here and there in countless history books jumped out at me. It seems that the general consensus is that the Treaty of Versailles is one of the major causes, if not the cause, of World War II.
- "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." -George Santayana
3 comments:
Only Christians in some form or another get elected president - I sincerely doubt that Wilson was the last divinely *isnpired* president, although I wouldn't presume to suggest any of the others might have intense.
Nothing ever has only one cause. The treaty might have been major, but it can't have been the only one. Especially in politics.
Oh, and one of my sisters went to school in Staunton, Virginia, which was some major place in Wilson's life because signs about him were everywhere.
-Katye
I don't know if you read it already, but at www.kuro5hin.org there's an essay on the politics page about Bush's comment.
-Katye
Yeah, I realize that every president is at least nominally Christian, and some are very serious about it. I think I've read somewhere that Carter, for example, had an annoying habit of witnessing to foreign diplomats. My post was less a serious critique than it was gallows humor like lots of people make about this administration.
Thanks for the link, by the way. I had never heard of kuro5hin, but it looks interesting.
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