During all the long weary days of the war I never for a moment doubted that England would dictate the terms of peace; even after we entered and threw our immense resources of men and money into the balance, not even on that dreadful day when Gough's fifth army was destroyed, when Amiens was almost within rifle-shot of the enemy, when Haig made the announcement that would have prostrated any other nation, "Our backs are to the wall," never did it occur to me to doubt that England would dictate the terms of peace; but how completely she would win the war, I began to suspect only when the President made the fatal mistake of going to Paris, there, alone and unaided, for he would have it so,- to confront the most astute diplomats of the time. Why did he do it? Any tyro could have told him that, if he had kept out of the hurly-burly of Paris he could have imposed his will upon the world. If he had but remained secluded and detached! But his vanity got the upper hand, and he made the fatal mistake of showing Europe that he was not the god it, for a moment, thought him, but a man like other men.

"Politics is adjourned," he cried, meanwhile playing the game more coarsely than it has ever been played before in such a crisis, and flagrantly insulting the men with whom he knew that, sooner or later, he would have to work. The one clear and unequivocal statement that came from Paris was the announcement of the death of Roosevelt, which we knew of before he did, and with the details of which it was absurd for him to clutter up the cables. And so,

surrounded by little men,- for he could work with none other, with whom he quarreled and whom he insulted when they disagreed with him, he played a lone hand, and lost. Perhaps it was well for us that he did. Who knows? Certainly he was elected President of the United States and not President of a League of Nations, to which he had no right to commit us without our consent. The little group of willful men" in the Senate who opposed him simply insisted upon not being deprived of their constitutional rights.

66

A considered "Life and Times of Woodrow Wilson" cannot be written in our generation; he has aroused too many antagonisms.

Only when all the actors in the greatest tragedy the world has ever seen are dead, can such a work be attempted. Such books as are now appearing are merely the timber out of which the final story will be constructed. To me the President appears to be cold, selfish, and self-centred, and although fatally fluent in expression, incapable of speaking generously of either friend or foe, or frankly of anything. Unable to make friends,- it would be more exact to say, unable to keep them when made, he has shown his complete incapacity for working with other men at a time when team-work is a prerequisite for success.

When the old world was in flames, and when it was almost certain that the conflagration would reach these shores, he, in full control of affairs, did not even inquire as to the cost of a chemical engine or order a fire-bucket. When at long last we entered the con

flict, it was with a pacifist, who "thanked God that we were unprepared," as Secretary of War, and the editor of a village newspaper as Secretary of the Navy. In our haste we squandered billions. Soon we shall discover that it is easy to borrow but difficult to pay, and our children's children will still be struggling with a burden of debt that his lack of prescience loaded upon us.

Last in the war, Mr. Wilson wills it that we shall be last in peace also I would not finish the distorted quotation, but rather "The rest is silence."1

1 In the preparation of these papers for the press, I have allowed my criticism of Mr. Wilson to remain just as it was written a year ago. Occupying for a moment a position exalted beyond his deserts, Mr. Wilson, now a private citizen, may survey that portion of the disaster which, if he did not cause, he could to some extent have prevented. History will for some time be busy with the personality of the man who sought to reverse the old adage, “Actions speak louder than words." While he was "matching minds" with men more flexible and astute than he, the ship of state which he had sworn to protect was pounding upon the rocks. It will be floated after a time by men abler and kindlier than he.

The individual lessens and the world is more and more.

A man may be wiser than some other men, but rarely wiser than all other men. When he feels that he is so, it behooves him to move carefully. To warnings and to danger-signals, Mr. Wilson paid no attention. As the pen-pictures of him multiply, it is seen that the thumb-nail sketch by John M. Keynes, in The Economic Consequences of the Peace, is likely to become the official portrait.

VIII

WALT WHITMAN

I WALKED away from Stan. Henkels's auction-room in Walnut Street one afternoon some time ago in a reminiscent mood. Stan. had just "cried the sale," as he calls it, of a lot of Whitman material formerly the property of my old friend, the late Isaac Hull Platt. Dr. Platt has been dead for some years, and in less than two hours a collection had been disposed of which its former owner had spent years in getting together. It is much easier to disperse a collection than to assemble one; I remember how proud Dr. Platt was of his collection, how complete and valuable he thought it. "It will be sold some day," he said, "and it will make the boys sit up." I am glad he was not there; for the boys were not many, and they sat up for a few minutes only and then seemed to fall into a deep sleep, from which the auctioneer roused them with difficulty.

It was not his fault; the fault was with the material, or rather, with the quantity of it. An auction sale, if it is to be successful, must have variety, so that various tastes may be gratified; only when the items are of very great value, can interest in one subject be sustained for several hundred numbers; and so, after a few important first editions and manuscripts had been knocked down at good prices, all enthusiasm