Neary-Sighted

Those of you who follow @wtneary on Twitter or are Facebook friends have been keeping track of how I re-enacted President Wilson's appearance at the Stadium Bowl in September 1919. This was today in honor of the bowl's 100th anniversary. I thought I'd share the speech I read on President Wilson's behalf.

My friends and fellow citizens, it is very delightful to find myself in this beautiful spot and very thrilling to find myself surrounded by so great a company of my fellow citizens.

I cannot in these circumstances make you a speech, but I can say something from my heart.

I can say that I am profoundly glad to see you and profoundly touched by a welcome like this.

I want to express my particular interest in this charming circle of school children – I am told there are 12,000 of you - because one of the thoughts that has been most in my mind recently is that we are making decisions now which will mean more to the children than they mean to us and that as we care for the future generations we will be careful to make the right decisions as to the policy of the United States as one of the factors in the peace of the world.

I feel, as I am sure you feel, that we have reached one of the most critical periods in the history of the United States. The shadow of the war is not yet lifted from us, my fellow countrymen, and we have just -come out of the depths of the valley of death.

I offer you a substitute for war, the substitute for turmoil, the substitute for sorrow and despair. That substitute is offered in the covenant of the league of nations. America alone can not underwrite civilization. All the great free peoples of the world must underwrite it, and only the free peoples of the world can join the league of nations.

We must have peaceful means; we must have discussion — we must have frank discussion, we must have friendly discussion — and those are the very things that are offered to us among the nations of the world by the covenant of the league of nations.

My fellow citizens, do not forget the aching hearts that are behind discussions like this. Do not forget the forlorn homes from which your boys went and to which they never came back

I have it in my heart that if we do not do this great thing now, every woman ought to weep because of the child in her arms. If she has a boy at her breast, she may be sure that when he comes to manhood this terrible task will have to be done once more.

Everywhere we go, the train when it stops is surrounded with little children, and I look at them almost with tears in my eyes, because I feel my mission is to save them. These glad youngsters with flags in their hands—I pray God that they may never have to carry that flag upon the battle field!

I will make further remarks later at a smaller place in a few minutes. Here, I give you my most cordial greeting and my most profound thanks for this generous welcome.


I'm no expert on the Wilson years, but I found his speech rather poignant. Here was a guy who hoped through the League of Nations that he had out-thought war. Throughout his tour of the West, including his stop in Tacoma, he was very ill. He had to be worrying that his body was going to give out on him, which it did when he had a stroke a month later.

I should for the record note that of the speech above, the first four sentences and the last sentence were from his remarks at the Stadium. All he did at Stadium, in the absence of today's sound systems, was acknowledge the reported 40,000 people who were there. The rest of the speech came from his main speech in town, at the Tacoma Armory, which sent on for 45 minutes to an audience of about 4,000. My goal with the Stadium audience today was to include enough of his Armory talk to explain why he was here - to support the League of Nations.
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