immediate occasion for a fight.

As president of Princeton, Doctor Wilson had proved that he was not averse
to a fight when a fight was necessary and when it was distinctly his
affair, but he may well have paused to consider whether the Smith-Martine
business was his affair. One of his favourite stories in later years was
of the Irishman who entered a saloon and seeing two men in a tangle of
fists and writhing legs and bloody heads on the floor at the rear of the
saloon, turned to the barkeeper and asked: "Is this a private fight, or
can anybody git into it?" A more politic man than Woodrow Wilson and one
less sensitive to moral duty, might well have argued that this contest was
the business of the Legislature, not of the Governor. Many a governor-
elect would have avoided the issue on this unquestionably sound legal
principle, and friends in Princeton were in fact advising Mr. Wilson to
precisely this course, the course of neutrality. It would not be strange
if neutrality, aloofness, had presented a rather attractive picture at
times to Mr. Wilson's mind. Why should he gratuitously take a partisan
position between the factions which would inevitably win for him the
enmity of a strong element within the party? Which would also win for him
the unpleasant reputation of ingratitude? For though he had at the first
overtures from Senator Smith and his friends made it as clear as language
can make anything that he could accept the nomination only with the
explicit understanding that acceptance should establish no obligations of
political favours to anybody, it would be impossible to make it appear
that opposition to Smith's darling desire to become senator was not an
ungracious return to the man who had led the forces which had nominated
Wilson at Trenton.

On the other hand, there was his distinct pledge to the people during his
campaign, that if they elected him governor he would make himself the