Memories of Woodrow Wilson

At the beginning of Woodrow Wilson’s Administration, ADMIRAL CARY T. GRAYSON, M.D., was appointed naval aide and private physician to the President, and their official relationship grew rapidly into a close friendship. In Paris during the Peace Conference and at home during the President’s long illness, Wilson confided to Admiral Grayson many of his views and his opinions of public men in America and abroad. The ATLANTIC is Pleased to draw the following excerpt from the Admiral’s unpublished account of Wilson’s last years.

PRESIDENT WILSON’S reception in Europe was without parallel in history. In Paris the throngs along the sidewalks cheered and wept, hailing him as the savior of France. Though he arrived in London on Boxing Day, when the streets are generally deserted, there were greater crowds in the streets, it was said, than had ever collected before, calling out in chorus, “ We Want Wilson.”

It would be impossible to say where the President received the most magnificent ovation. Certainly nothing could surpass that of London, but all of us who saw the reception in Rome carry an unforgettable memory of the spontaneous crowds and enthusiasm in the ancient city. At Milan in the great Cathedral Square the crowds were massive, and there was a reverence everywhere that touched the President deeply. Candles were burned before his picture, his signature was kissed and pressed to men’s hearts. Seeing this, the President, by nature a philosopher, grew very solemn. He said: “There is bound to be a reaction to this sort of thing. I am now at the apex of my glory in the hearts of these people, but they are thinking of me only as one who has come to save Italy, and I have got to pool the interests of Italy with the interests of all the world, and when I do that I am afraid they are going to be disappointed and turn about and hiss me.”

This was prophetic. It was not long before the reaction which he had foreseen set in. And it manifested itself first in Italy, because Italy desired possession of Fiume and full control of the Adriatic Sea. Such demands were incompatible with President Wilson’s conception of full justice to small nations and a seaport for Jugo-Slavia. The relapse in Italy and elsewhere was not Woodrow Wilson’s failure, but the failure of nations and their leaders to look as far ahead as he, to comprehend the real meaning of his mission and his doctrine. While he was pleading for world harmony, others were too often thinking of national ambition.

But at the time of his arrival in Europe the populace had recognized in him the champion of the people. They were warworn and weary of the old processes which, since the beginning of historic time, had led to conflict, slaughter, plunder, devastation, and misery. They were tired of the old diplomacies which always culminated in war. They saw in Mr. Wilson a deliverer from the old order and the originator of a new and better plan. His words had reached vaster multitudes in all parts of the world than the words of any other man. They were straightforward words, and therefore understandable by plain people — words which voiced the aspiration of the multitude. His personal magnetism seemed to overcome the handicap of foreign language as far as his Continental hearers were concerned. People everywhere seemed to understand him. It was a very striking tribute to the power of his personality.

Bust by Jo Davidson. Photograph courtesy of Princeton University.

It was humanly impossible to prevent the reaction which followed within a year. Astute politicians distorted his language and interpreted to the people a meaning different, often diametrically opposed to what it really meant. This was going on in America, in France, in Italy. The poison worked into the minds of the people, and for a while it seemed as if Mr. Wilson would never live to see himself vindicated. But he did. Long before he died, while politicians were reviling him and weak-kneed supporters were apologizing for his mistakes, there was a popular swing back to him. Plain people everywhere, those who had no interest in the political game, saw that this man had caught a vision of a future of peace and happiness and had plainly pointed the way to it. They saw that the world in rejecting him had rejected its own restoration to order and stabilized peace.

He was a statesman, a war President, a leader in international councils, but he was always a teacher. A great teacher is an interpreter, and Woodrow Wilson was the interpreter of the deepest-lying political aspiration of collective peoples — a desire to be unmolested by the wiles of scheming diplomats and the ravages of conquest. Now death has set its sacred seal upon his mission, and we know beyond question that his principles were right.

As from the tomb at Mount Vernon people get fresh impulse for their faith in individual liberty, so from the tomb in the Cathedral of Mount Saint Alban people will always gather new inspiration from Woodrow Wilson’s controlling ideas of the equality of nations, small and great, and of international peace founded not on strength of arms, but on justice. “Justice” was to him no empty word, as “liberty” was to Washington no empty word. Mr. Wilson knew that complete world justice could not be won by a word or a single act, but he believed with all his mighty intellect and all his fighting soul that the hour had come to make a beginning and to make it with as little compromise as possible.

BETWEEN him and many with whom he conferred there was a conflict between the ideas of a peace of justice and a peace of vengeance. Most of the French officials were unable to understand Mr. Wilson’s calmness. They did not realize that he as much as any of them hated Germany and all her ways but that he was holding himself in hand because he knew that peace terms drawn up in furious rage would defeat their own ends, that to destroy Germany economically would make just reparations impossible. Besides, he continued to hold to his distinction between the German war authorities and the German people. The German people had done evil, but it was done under wrong leadership. He felt that to keep cool was the first essential to the making of a peace of justice.

French officials continually urged him to visit the devastated regions, and he kept postponing, saying to his friends, “They want me to see red, and I can’t afford to see red. To whip myself into a passion of rage would be to unfit myself for the present task. I know well enough the wrong that Germany has done, and Germany must be punished, but in justice, not in frenzy.”

We had made brief trips to the American headquarters at Chaumont and to Château-Thierry and Rheims, but the French wanted the President to make a much more extensive tour of the ruined area. It was not until Sunday morning, March 23, that we took a somewhat extensive tour to the scenes of battle, revisiting Château-Thierry and Rheims and visiting for the first time Soissons, the Chemin des Dames, Coucy-le-Château, Chauny, Noyon, Montdidier, and the neighboring regions. The party consisted of the President, Mrs. Wilson, Miss Benham (Mrs. Wilson’s secretary), and myself. We were followed by the necessary secretservice guard but were not accompanied by any military aides.

The President was intensely interested in each spot that we visited, and the informality of our visit enabled me to get some of the human reactions toward him. At the little town of St. Maxence the President’s car stopped to take oil and gas and was surrounded by French people, old men and old women as well as French soldiers and many little children. They acclaimed the President as the savior of the world and appealed to him to stand by the common people of France to bring about a peace which would be a peace for the people. This same sentiment had been expressed by a French officer at Soissons who told me that the soldiers wanted the President to know that they were back of him in his plans for peace and did not want him to allow France to get the kind of peace that Clemenceau and the French commission were desirous of having made. They declared that a Clemenceau peace would favor the capitalists but that they had such faith in the President of the United States that they knew he would give them a peace that would be just to all.

The President’s last visit to the stricken areas was to Belgium, a long-contemplated journey which had to be frequently postponed because of the duties which confined him to Paris.

Among other places, we saw the Ypres Canal, by which the Belgians flooded the lowlands when the Germans made effort to break through to the sea; Ypres, where the Canadian troops were practically annihilated and where the Germans first used poison gas — all of it wasteland which had been fought over repeatedly, a morass of mud with halfpicked skeletons of horses, wrecked trucks and ambulances, and little clusters of graves marked with crosses.

The next day our party motored to the town hall at Louvain, where the President was received by the burgomaster. In the manuscript room of the ruined university a degree was conferred upon him by Cardinal Mercier. In response the President paid a noble tribute to education and condemned in scathing terms the ruthlessness of the Germans which had led them to this wanton act of destruction, saying that the Germans had misused their own education, that education could be prostituted and had been when the Germans made their assault on the ancient University of Louvain.

But this evidence of German atrocity did not swerve the President from his view that the peace terms, however stern, must be made on a basis of justice rather than on a basis of vengeance. He held firmly to the idea that revenge would be only temporary and would sooner or later lead to reprisals and other wars, and that uncompromising justice would lay the foundations for a permanent peace. His idea of justice involved the idea of holding Germany to strict accountability for what it had done, to punish it but not to destroy it economically and nationally.

This fundamental idea of the sort of peace that would be lasting and constructive for the future sometimes brought him into sharp conflict with his conferees, Mr. Lloyd George, M. Clemenceau, and Senor Orlando — able statesmen but none of them possessing the prophetic qualities of Mr. Wilson, who looked beyond the immediate results of the Peace Conference to the far-off future of Europe and the world.

I MYSELF was a witness of a scene in the conference room which was as dramatic as anything ever played upon a stage. In the intensity of the debates feeling sometimes ran high, and men would say things on the impulse of the moment which they would not have uttered in calmer circumstances.

One morning the three premiers grew so passionate in their opposition to Mr. Wilson’s calmer, forward-looking policy that they accused him of being pro-German. I happened to enter the room just as they were about to recess for lunch. Mr. Wilson told me a little of what had occurred, but for the most part was quite silent at the lunch table. After lunch he asked me to ride with him in the Bois. He was very silent, but I could see that he was thinking deeply and that his emotions were profoundly stirred. When we returned to the house and just before we got out of the motor, he said to me: “I want you to come into the room with me. Those men this morning accused me of being pro-German. They have gone a step too far and I don’t know what may happen.” With that he walked down the hallway, very straight, his jaw set, his eyes fixed. I could see that his fighting blood was circulating, and there was electricity in the air.

In a moment or two the others came in and all were seated, and for a few seconds there was intense silence. Contrary to his usual custom in the Council of Four, he rose from his chair and began to speak standing. I wish I had a stenographic report of what he said, for it was certainly one of the greatest speeches of his whole career. In substance, it was to the effect that he had never liked Germany, that he had never been in Germany, that he had never cared for the German methods of education, that no man in the room was less German-minded than he, and that he resented deeply the accusations which they had brought against him at the morning session. Turning to M. Clemenceau, with his eyes ablaze, he said: “And yet you this morning told me that I should be wearing the Kaiser’s helmet. And why? Because I have protested against laying a taxation upon Germany which will make life so unattractive to the little children and the children yet unborn that existence would be a running sore and dreams of vengeance an obsession. I am not thinking only of Germany. I am thinking about the future of the world. I am thinking of the inevitable results of a so-called peace founded merely upon revenge. Such ideas belong to the old order. We are facing a new world with new conditions. We are trying to stabilize a world that has been thrown into chaos.

“One reason why France has had the sympathy of most of the world in this terrible war is that individuals and nations have remembered with indignation the terms which Germany imposed upon France after the Franco-Prussian War, the insolence and the inhumanity of it all. This is why most of the nations have become allies of France —because she had been wronged. I want to save France from being put in the place of Germany in the future. If we do wrong around this peace table the sympathy of the world will someday turn to Germany as it has turned to France in this war. I want to save the whole world from repetitions of such disasters as the world has experienced during the last four years. I know that you men are going the wrong way about it, and I know that I am right, because I know human nature and the processes of war. I am for a severe punishment for Germany but a just one.”

While he was speaking, M. Clemenceau made a motion to rise from his chair. Mr. Wilson whirled around toward him and said: “You sit down. I did not interrupt you when you were speaking this morning.” M. Clemenceau sank back in his chair.

Then Mr. Wilson continued. He said that he was speaking as an advocate of the little children, that he wanted them to be saved from what their fathers and their elder brothers had been through, that he wanted to stem and stop the floods of blood with which Europe had been drenched, that the supreme purpose of this war had been to make it a means of ending war. He said: “Therefore, I cannot consent to be a party to the kind of adjustment that you men counsel because it is no adjustment. It is merely laying fire for the future. It is not only the innocent children of Germany that I am thinking of. I am thinking of the children of France, of England, of Italy, of Belgium, of my own United States, of the whole world. I see their little faces turn toward us in unconscious pleading that we shall save them from annihilation. I am not asking for a soft peace but for a righteous peace.”

Again M. Clemenceau rose from his chair and slowly approached Mr. Wilson, this time with moisture in his eyes. Taking the President’s hand in both of his, he said: “Mr. President, I want to say that you are not only a great man but you are a good one, and I am with you.” There was tense silence. In his chair, Mr. Lloyd George sat nodding approval, and Senor Orlando was standing over by the window softly sobbing.

CONSTITUTIONALLY, Mr. Wilson had not been strong either as a youth, a young man, or a man in early middle age. An attack of measles had gone hard with him at Davidson College, preventing him from completing his freshman year there, forcing him to return to his father’s home in Wilmington, North Carolina, where he spent a year in recuperation and in preparation to enter Princeton. The aftereffects of this malady prevented him, to his extreme regret, from taking violent exercise, though he was so deeply interested in college athletics that he became the manager of the baseball team. Again, poor health prevented him from graduating in law from the University of Virginia. At Bryn Mawr and Wesleyan he had to take good care of himself in order to discharge his professorial duties. As professor and president of Princeton he was frequently under the care of physicians for a stubborn stomach ailment, and three times he broke down. In the first attack he suffered from neuritis, of which he was not entirely cured until he became President of the United States. In the second attack he was operated upon for hemorrhoids and developed phlebitis. In the third and most serious attack there was a retinal hemorrhage in his left eye which partially destroyed the sight of that organ. In spite of all this, his iron will and perfect equanimity enabled him to do an increasing amount of work each year, but he had not cultivated habits of regular exercise and periodical recreation.

When he entered the White House and I became acquainted with the physical man, I was confident that if I could get his cooperation in carrying out daily the simple laws of health he would, barring accident, carry through to the end, though one of the most eminent physicians of the country, Dr. Weir Mitchell, prophesied that the new President could not possibly outlive his first term. Careful examination and all the medical tests revealed that there was no organic disease, but much sedentary life had been bad for a constitution not naturally vigorous, and he was below par. It was a clear case for preventive medicine.

With his confidence and cooperation, four outstanding elements of treatment and of his own personality kept him going under conditions that would soon have exhausted the powers of a younger and stronger man. These four things were system, exercise, a sense of humor, and food suited to his idiosyncrasies. The last I was able to ascertain after some experimentation. He was the most obedient patient a physician ever had. He grew steadily stronger. He worked as few Presidents have worked and bore burdens such as few men have been called upon to shoulder. The remarkable thing is not that he broke down finally but that, with his constitution and his burdens, he kept well by obedience to the simple laws of health. At the conclusion of the armistice he was stronger than he had ever been in his life, notwithstanding all he had gone through.

Nevertheless, I dreaded the added strain of his personal attendance upon the Peace Conference. I foresaw that he would be in almost daily contest with antagonists. I knew that he would see sights which would drain his emotions, and I feared that in a new environment it would be impossible for him to maintain the systematic habits of life which had sustained him at home even during the struggle of war. There was something else which I did not foresee, an attack of influenza in Paris, which proved to be one of the contributory causes of his final breakdown. But I could not argue with his conscience. All I could do was to accompany him and take the best medical care of him possible.

When he took his seat at the peace table he was sixty-two years old. Had he considered his health, had he put prudence and caution first, he would not have embarked for Europe on December 4, 1918. Then and there he deliberately neglected his health. Then and there for the first time he deliberately refused to obey his physician and the laws of health which he so well understood. Duty was for him superior to his health.

My worst fears were realized. There were the hurry and flurry of official engagements. He met most of the important people in Europe. He addressed crowds such as no man had ever faced before in Great Britain, France, Italy, and Belgium. He was in continual struggle with the representatives of the Allied and associated nations, he standing single and alone among them for a principle which seemed to them too far off to grasp. He was forced to break in upon his regular regimen, to forgo exercise, to work at all hours day and night and even on Sundays. His emotions were torn by sights of pain and sorrow everywhere, in the devastated regions and in the hospitals.

His tender heart bled for each afflicted soldier in the hospital wards. Soon after his arrival in France, he and Mrs. Wilson visited the hospital at Neuilly. For most of the soldiers the President had a word of good fellowship, but it was noticed that in shaking hands with one soldier he said nothing. This soldier, who had been blinded, asked the nurse why the President had held his hand so long, gripped it so hard, and said nothing. We who were with him and watching him knew, for we had seen his face working for self-control, a film cover his eyes, a clutch in his throat. We observed the same significant silence in another ward when the President asked a splendid specimen of manhood on crutches and at attention how it was that so many of the men were bereft of a leg. The soldier answered: “Those who were shot higher up are not here, sir.” The President’s lip quivered as he passed silently down the line.

That afternoon he and Mrs. Wilson visited all the wards of one of the French hospitals. In one ward a blinded French soldier stood erect and sang the Marseillaise. To the end of his life, the President referred, always with emotion, to that.

At the American cemetery at Suresnes, on a hillside looking toward Paris, the President on Memorial Day, 1919, delivered one of his great addresses, a memorial to the dead, an admonition to the living to be faithful to those things for which their comrades had died. After the ceremonies he went down among the lines of graves, each marked with its cross, and deposited a wreath in behalf of the Boy Scouts of America. As he rose to his feet, a French lady approached him and said, “ Mr. President, may I be permitted to add these flowers to those which you have just deposited here as a tribute to the American dead, who, in sacrificing their lives, saved the lives of thousands of Frenchmen? My two boys were killed in battle.” And then she broke down and cried.

Such incidents, and there were hundreds of them, took their toll from a man who was always under pressure and who beneath a reserved exterior carried the heart of a child, tender, susceptible to the griefs and burdens of others.

I used to beg him to slacken a little the pressure under which he worked, but he would answer: “Give me time. We are running a race with Bolshevism, and the world is on fire. Let us wind up this work here and then we will go home and find time for a little rest and play and take up our health routine again.”

IN THE early spring of 1919 came that ill-omened attack of influenza, the insidious effects of which he was not in good condition to resist. Then followed asthma, which broke the sleep that had always been his sheet anchor. In the pressure of public business or private grief he had always been able to sleep, but now asthmatic coughing woke him at intervals all through the night. He was less obedient than he had been to his physician’s advice. He insisted on holding conferences while he was still confined to his sickbed. When he was able to get up he began to drive himself as hard as before — morning, afternoon, and evening conferences.

Though below par in the spring, he worked with all his strength. The conference, which had lasted seven months instead of the few weeks which he had originally thought would be necessary, closed on June 28, 1919, in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles, where old William II of Prussia had been crowned Emperor of Germany nearly thirty years before. The Germans were reaping a sour harvest from the seeds they had sown in the Franco-Prussian War.

In place of the imperial splendor of the earlier scene, as shown in the historical painting of it, the ceremony on June 28 was without spectacular features. In the presence of an immense audience (the French government had issued twice as many tickets as there was seating capacity), the meeting was opened with a brief address by M. Clemenceau. President Wilson had suggested that the German delegates sign first, because if left to sign last they might change their minds, refuse to sign, and make the whole procedure ridiculous. Then the representatives of the Allied and associated powers signed in the French alphabetical order of the nations which they represented. This placed the United States (États Unis) at the head of the list, and, of course, President Wilson was the first of the American delegation to set his signature to the epochal document. He used a pen which he had purchased for Mrs. Wilson several years before and with which he had signed a majority of state papers.

At the conclusion of the ceremonies, President Wilson and Premiers Clemenceau and Lloyd George walked into the square in front of the palace, and the throngs, crying “Vive Wilson!”, pressed so closely about him that, notwithstanding the troops, the President’s own guard had to close around him to protect him from the enthusiasm of the multitude, many washing to shake his hand, all wishing to see him.

Before the President left Paris, Clemenceau and Lloyd George had been urging him to return to Europe after a while, to which the President replied: “That is practically out of the question. Lincoln one time told the story about a little girl who had some blocks with letters on them. She was learning her ABC’s with the use of those blocks, and one night before going to bed, she was playing with them. When she got into bed she started to say her prayers, but she was so sleepy that all she could say was, ‘ Oh, Lord, I am too sleepy to say my prayers. Here are the blocks and the letters; you spell it out!’ ” The President applied the story by saying: “ I have worked over here and laid down all the principles, rules, and regulations that I could think of. Someone else now will have to take the blocks and spell it out.”

WE HAD a pleasant, uneventful voyage home. The President had to do much work aboard the ship, but he had more time for exercise in walking the decks and for watching motion pictures in the evenings. I was pleased by the improvement that I saw in him and got his consent to prolong the journey two days. He was an excellent sailor, always enjoyed the salt air, and never rested anywhere better than at sea.

We arrived in New York Bay July eighth on a sunny afternoon and were met by a squadron of the Atlantic Fleet and, later, by a huge, nondescript flotilla of hundreds of vessels, some bearing the city officials and committees of reception and others loaded to the water line with volunteer welcomers. After landing in Hoboken, we crossed the river by ferry and drove direct to Carnegie Hall, through a city colorful with flags and confetti and through the greatest crowds that up to that time had ever greeted an individual in the history of America.

The President’s address in Carnegie Hall was his first gun in the battle for the ratification of the treaty. The next was in the United States Senate, where he presented the documents to the body whose ratification was necessary to make our country a participator in the treaty and in the covenant.

As he was ushered into the Senate Chamber, he looked completely well again. His step was elastic, his color good, his eyes bright, his figure erect. His attitude was that of a man who had called his associates in government to reason with them, but if they would not reason, was ready to fight them to the end. His exposition of the meaning of the covenant was lucid and noble:

“The united power of free nations must put a stop to aggression and the world must be given peace. . . . Shall we or any other free people hesitate to accept this great duty? Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world? . . . The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God, who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else.”

These were some of the key sentences of this great address. They remind us again of the faith that was in Woodrow Wilson, the faith that God had selected this epoch for the liberation of mankind from the tyranny of old usages and those outworn methods of international dealing by which misery is sown in the wind and reaped in the whirlwind.

But America was not allowed to “show the way.”

This is a personal sketch of Mr. Wilson, not a challenge to controversy. I shall not inquire into or speculate on the motives which prompted some senators to obstruct his plans; nor shall I comment on the post-war psychology by which the majority of the people, who on Mr. Wilson’s return from Europe undoubtedly favored ratification, became in a few months violently opposed to ratification.

There were conferences between the President and individual senators and a notable conference lasting several hours in the East Room between him and the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the Senate. Gradually, however, a spirit of opposition in the Senate increased in strength, and there was a demand for reservations to which the President would not concede, because he believed such reservations would emasculate the covenant.

His faith in the people was complete, and he felt that if he could get before them the truth about the treaty and the covenant they would rally to his banner. I dreaded the extensive journey necessary for this more than I dreaded the plague. I had already seen that the wear and tear on him of continual controversy over the treaty were undoing the good that had been done by his ocean voyage and that his vitality was being slowly sapped.

I succeeded in persuading him to cancel plans formed for the journey in early August, but later on the conviction grew upon him that he must go. Opposition to the treaty was increasing in the Senate, and he must rally the moral opinion of the country and do it immediately, so he felt. I played my last card and lost. Going into the study one morning, I found the President seated at his desk writing. He looked up and said: “I know what you have come for. I do not want to do anything foolhardy, but the League of Nations is now in its crisis, and if it fails I hate to think what will happen to the world. You must remember that I, as Commander in Chief, was responsible for sending our soldiers to Europe. In the crucial test in the trenches they did not turn back, and I cannot turn back now. I cannot put my personal safety, my health in the balance against my duty. I must go.”With his pen in hand, he rose and walked to the window looking out toward the Washington Monument, stood silent for a few seconds, and as he turned around and looked at me I saw moisture in his eyes. I paused a moment; then, turning, left the room. There was lead where my heart ought to be, but I knew the debate was closed, that there was nothing I could do except to go with him and take such care of him as I could.

IT WAS on September third that he started on the mission against which I had so earnestly protested for the sake of his health. For him the journey was a prolonged agony of physical pain, for Mrs. Wilson and me, an unceasing agony of anxiety.

During the trip he worked under the most unfavorable conditions. He made speeches daily to record-breaking crowds and shook hands with hundreds of spectators. He was again deprived of exercise and, in addition, subjected to sudden changes of climate and altitude. The steel cars of the special train held the heat like ovens. There was no question that he needed rest, but he was unable to get enough because of the last schedule that had to be maintained. The terrific strain which he had been under for more than a year was telling, and his exertions on the Western trip were sapping up his vitality very fast. With it all, he was under enormous emotional strain because he felt that he was fighting the fight of future generations. Again and again as we rode through the crowded streets of Western cities he would look intently at the lines of school children on the pavements and say: “I am the attorney for these children.”

From the time we reached Montana, the President suffered from asthmatic attacks and severe headaches which seriously interfered with his rest. Frequently I was summoned during the night to give him necessary aid and to assist him in breathing. It was necessary for him to sleep a good part of the time sitting up, propped up with pillows in a chair, but he was so considerate that frequently when an attack would recur, instead of sending for me, he would get up, prop himself up in a chair, and remain there.

The full justification of my fears was realized after he addressed audiences during stops in Denver and Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25. All day the President had such a splitting headache that, as he expressed it, he could hardly see. Leaving the Pueblo auditorium, he went directly back to the train. He was very tired and suffering when he entered the car. I was concerned as to the best method of restoring him so that he could continue the trip, as there were now only five scheduled addresses remaining. I asked the President whether in his opinion it would be of benefit if he could get out and stretch his legs by taking a walk. He agreed, and we stopped the special train some twenty miles outside of Pueblo, and the President, Mrs. Wilson, and myself went for a walk. We stepped along at as brisk a pace as was possible without tiring the President too much.

An elderly farmer who was driving along the road in a small automobile recognized the President and stopped his car. He asked to have the honor of shaking hands with the President and after doing this presented him with a head of cabbage and some apples, expressing the hope that the cabbage could be used for dinner that night.

We walked for the better part of an hour. En route back to the train, the President saw a soldier in a private’s uniform sitting in a chair on the porch of a house some distance back of the road. He was very plainly ill. The President climbed over the fence and went over and shook hands with him. The boy’s father, mother, and brothers came out while the President was talking to him and were very much touched with the consideration which the President had shown in stopping to express sympathy for the sick youth.

We then returned to the train, bringing the apples and the cabbage with us. The trip was resumed for Wichita, Kansas, where the President was scheduled to make an address the following morning. The President was very desirous of retiring after dinner to get some rest, but at the first stop, Rocky Ford, Colorado, a large crowd surged about the car and shouted for the President to come out and shake hands with them. Secretary Tumulty and others on the train were very anxious that the President should spend the entire time on the platform shaking hands with the people. I did my best to persuade the President to remain inside the car until just before the train pulled out. Then the President came out on the platform and grasped the hands of those who were closest to the rear end of the train. As the train moved out, he stood and waved his hand to the people lined up on either side of the tracks and then retired to his room.

Early the next morning I was awakened from my sleep and told that the President was suffering very much. I went at once and found that he was on the verge of a complete breakdown. His own consciousness of his physical exhaustion helped to make him understand the dire necessity of the situation. But even then there was a flash of his own grim resolution, for he rose and shaved himself as usual, though any other man would have omitted that ceremonial altogether. It was with great difficulty that I could persuade him to turn back to Washington and omit the remainder of the itinerary. He insisted that he must go on, saying: “ I should feel like a deserter. My opponents will accuse me of having cold feet should I stop now.” I replied: “ I owe it to the country, to you, and to your family not to permit you to continue.” I told him that if he would try to make another speech he would fall before his audience. Mrs. Wilson added her pleas to my urgent medical advice, and at last he turned to me and said sadly, “ I suppose you are right,” and tears ran down his cheek as he added, “This is the greatest disappointment of my life.”

We arrived in Washington on Sunday, the twenty-eighth of September, and he walked erect from the station platform to the White House car which was awaiting him. He wanted to go to church that morning, but I persuaded him not to do so. In the afternoon, accompanied by Mrs. Wilson and myself, he took a short automobile ride.

In the following three days he consented to rest and to ride out daily. On the evening of October first he seemed quite bright and cheerful, played billiards a few minutes, and appeared better than at any time since he started on the Western trip. But early the next morning the crash came. He fell stricken with a thrombosis. Mrs. Wilson was never braver, more composed. She and I got him on the bed, and we knew that the giant had fallen. A clot had formed in an artery in the brain, though there was no rupture.

I summoned in consultation Dr. Sterling Ruffin, Rear Admiral E. R. Stitt, and Dr. F. X. Dercum of Philadelphia. Later I called in Dr. H. A. Fowler, Dr. Hugh H. Young, Dr. George DeSchweinitz, and Dr. Charles Mayo. At intervals the President’s friend and classmate, Dr. E. P. Davis, would confer with me about the case.

THE President’s collapse brought no weakening of his purpose. Foes demanded a compromise covenant in a form which President Wilson believed would draw its teeth. Perhaps he believed that the fight over reservations was only a maneuver, that to comply with the reservationists would merely give opportunity for fresh objections and further mutilation. But, above all, he believed in the covenant as it had been finally agreed upon in Paris, believed that it conformed in its basic principles to the initiatory ideas which he had conceived as essential to a world consort, and he was unwilling to have it tampered with on partisan grounds.

In a remarkable interview with the newspapermen in the Hotel Crillon in Paris on June 27 he had said, in reply to a question, that he had been surprised that he had been able to keep the covenant so close to his original Fourteen Points, and he had, at that time, openly praised Clemenceau and Lloyd George for the manner in which they had cooperated after they had sifted and weighed the purpose of the plan. He was unwilling to yield at home what he had won abroad. He believed that the objections in the Senate were chiefly political and that the representations to the people that the plan was un-American were disingenuous. He proudly craved for America leadership in the new order of international dealings.

When he was able to receive visitors, some of his own political supporters called on him to advise compromise, arguing that half a loaf was better than no bread, but one and all left the sickroom with renewed admiration for his superb fighting spirit and with fresh resolve to continue the battle on the President’s own lines.

He had an important interview with Senator Hitchcock, on the morning of November 17, 1919, who asked him if he had read the Lodge Resolution and whether he had anything to suggest concerning it. The President immediately replied: “I consider it a nullification of the treaty and utterly impossible.” He then drew an analogy between this and South Carolina’s threat to nullify the Constitution. Senator Hitchcock then called the President’s attention to the changes the Senate had made in Article X, to which the President replied: “That cuts the very heart out of the treaty; I could not stand for those changes for a moment because it would humiliate the United States before all of the Allied countries.” Senator Hitchcock said: “What would be the effect of the defeat of the treaty by the Lodge Resolution?” The President’s answer was: “The United States would suffer the contempt of the world. We will be playing into Germany’s hands. Think of the humiliation we would suffer in having to ask Germany whether she would accept such and such reservation!” The President said: “If the opponents are bent on defeating this treaty, I want the vote of each Republican and Democrat recorded, because they will have to answer to the country in the future for their acts. They must answer to the people. I am a sick man, lying in this bed, but I am going to debate this issue with these gentlemen in their respective states whenever they come up for re-election if I have breath enough in my body to carry on the fight. I shall do this even if I have to give my life to it. And I will get their political scalps when the truth is known to the people. They have got to account to their constituents for their actions in this matter. I have no doubts as to what the verdict of the people will be when they know the facts.”

Senator Hitchcock favored certain compromises with the Republicans. The President said: “With the exception of interpretations, which would not alter the substance, I am not willing to make any compromise other than that we have already agreed upon.” The President’s position was that he would not oppose reservations which were merely interpretations of the treaty but that he was irreconcilably opposed to any alteration of the treaty which would cause a recommitment to counsel with other nations.

The Senator told the President that he had had a conference with Lord Grey, the British ambassador, and with M. Jusserand, the French ambassador. They told the Senator that they considered that Senator Lodge and the Republican Party had killed the Peace Treaty and the League of Nations. They also commented on the fact that this view had been published in both English and French papers and expressed the belief that their countries would reject a treaty amended in accordance with the Lodge Resolution.

The President discussed at length with Senator Hitchcock occurrences connected with the treaty debate in the Senate, the interview lasting one hour and five minutes. Whenever Senator Hitchcock would bring forth some argument why soand-so was done, the President would combat him and ask to be advised why it was done and for what purpose. He said repeatedly: “Senator, I think you have acted very wisely and used good judgment in the circumstances, but why did you do so-and-so? I am not criticizing you, but I am asking you for information.”

As the interview was drawing to a close, the President said: “If it is not too much trouble, will you please send me a little notice of what is transpiring during the day so that at your next visit we may discuss the situation?” The Senator replied that he would be very glad to comply with his request.

As the Senator arose to leave the room, he said: “Mr. President, I hope I have not weakened you by this long discussion,” And the President smilingly replied:“ No, Senator, you have strengthened me against the opponents.”

After the Senator and I had left the room, the Senator turned to me and said: “The President is looking remarkably well. He has strengthened so much more since I saw him last. He is very combative today as he sits up there in that bed. On certain compromises he is as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar.” The Senator also said to me: “I would give anything if the Senate could see the attitude that man took this morning. Think how effective it would be if they could see the picture as you and I saw it!”

Mr. Wilson’s confidence in the rightness of his ideas and his faith that the people would see the wisdom of the new order which he advocated made it unbelievable to him that the Senate could dare to reject the measure. All this accorded with his normal habit of looking far ahead. He foresaw that without America’s responsible participation in world affairs Europe would collapse and that sooner or later America must be drawn into the whirlpool.

THE first talk he had with me on the subject of the League of Nations since the defeat of the treaty in the Senate took place on the morning of March 25. While seated at his desk in his study in the White House, the President said to me: “ I note from the papers that members of the House and of the Senate are speculating as to what steps I will take relative to the defeat of the Peace Treaty. They are wondering whether I will veto a resolution declaring peace with Germany, in case they pass such a resolution, or whether I am going to write a message. My present intention is to do nothing. If they pass a resolution declaring peace with Germany, I will then express my views in a message — which I know will be extremely distasteful to the Senate, I do not doubt that they may try to impeach me for it. If I were well and on my feet and they pursued such a course, I would gladly accept the challenge, because I could put them in such a light before the country that I believe the people would impeach them. I do not think that in the history of the country the Senate was ever as unpopular with the people as it is now. It would only be necessary for the people to understand the facts in order to impeach them.

“ I have done all in my power to get this treaty through as it originally stood. My sole purpose was to see that it was not torn up or emasculated so that it would not stand the test of time. I entered into that treaty under solemn obligations with our Allies. We each promised, after much giving and taking, to stand by what we had formulated, and for me now to go back on that promise by changing or by permitting a change of the substance of the treaty would be to break faith with my colleagues. I would feel were I to violate my promise that I could never give them an honest look in the face again.”

His faith in the people made him confident of a Democratic victory in 1920. When others foresaw that post-war reactions and discontents must result in Republican success at the polls, he called them pessimists and kept serene faith in the triumph of what he believed was right. After the overwhelming defeat, he read in the newspaper that Governor Cox had stated that he planned to visit the devastated regions of France. The President smiled a little and grimly said: “Why go so far to see devastation?”

The day after the election, which Republican leaders and newspapers acclaimed as defeat of Wilsonism (Governor Cox, the Democratic candidate, had strongly supported the League of Nations in his campaign but was a secondary figure to the old warrior in the White House), Mr. and Mrs. Wilson rode out as if nothing had happened. Whether acclaimed or rejected, he was the same.

He served out the remainder of his term with his customary strict interpretation of his duty and insisted on playing his last public act as if he were in his normal health. He performed with decorum the concluding duties, ceremonials, and courtesies of the great office which he was laying down after eight years crowded with stupendous events. He insisted that he would ride with Mr. Harding to the Capitol, sign papers, and accompany the President-elect to the inauguration platform in the usual manner.

I visited the Capitol and carefully surveyed the situation. I saw that in order to reach the inaugural platform he would have to climb steep, long stairways, which was practically impossible for him. Then, when I stated the case to him, he at first protested, but the next morning said that he would comply with my judgment and not attend the ceremonies on the inaugural platform.

He carried out this program with grave courtesy. Mr. Harding, in turn, was attentive and considerate. None who saw the two figures that day could have guessed that the stalwart, active, middle-aged President-elect, who appeared younger than his years, would die before his companion, who in two years had grown to be an old man. Both died in less than three years from that day.

On the drive to the Capitol, Mr. Wilson insisted that the cheering was for the new President and therefore looked straight ahead without bowing any acknowledgments. On arrival at the Capitol he went directly to the President’s room to sign bills. Senator Lodge, in his official capacity, advanced and informed him that the Senate awaited his further directions. Mr. Wilson stated that there was nothing more, and said, “Good morning, sir.”

Presently a clock boomed twelve. It was a sign that the Administration had changed, that President Warren G. Harding had succeeded to office and that President Wilson was now Mr. Wilson, a private citizen.

There was a general movement to the Senate Chamber, where the Vice President was to be inaugurated, and Mr. and Mrs. Wilson, Secretary Tumulty, and I were left alone with one secretservice man. After descending in the elevator to the ground level, Mr. Wilson limped slowly to his car with the aid of his cane. He and Mrs. Wilson and I drove to the modest home which he had purchased in S Street, a house destined for the next three years to be almost as much a goal for sightseers as the White House itself.

Our route from the Capitol to the new home was through New Jersey Avenue and Massachusetts Avenue. These thoroughfares were as silent and deserted as on an early Sunday morning. It was as if the entire population had flocked to the Capitol. We drove in silence, and I reflected on the contrast between this scene and the noise and glamour of the ride up Pennsylvania Avenue some two hours before and the great cheering throngs along the Paris boulevards and in London and in Rome and in Brussels and in New York on Mr. Wilson’s return from abroad, and I wondered if the thought of the contrast was also passing through his mind. But he gave no sign of what he was thinking.