“Although he cannot speak French, the President understands it, so that a second interpreter will be unnecessary.”  Essad then addressed Mr. Wilson in Albanian, Stavro translated his words into French, and the President listened in silence.  It was the impression of those in the room that, at any rate, Mr. Wilson understood and appreciated the gist of the Pasha’s sharp criticism of Italy’s behavior.  But, to be on the safe side, the President requested his visitor to set down on paper at his leisure everything he had said and to send it to him.

PRESIDENT WILSON

President Wilson, before assuming the redoubtable role of world arbiter, was hardly more than a name in Europe, and it was not a synonym for statecraft.  His ethical objections to the rule of Huerta in Mexico, his attempt to engraft democratic principles there, and the anarchy that came of it were matters of history.  But the President of the nation to whose unbounded generosity and altruism the world owes a debt of gratitude that can only be acknowledged, not repaid, deservedly enjoyed a superlative measure of respect from his foreign colleagues, and the author of the project which was to link all nations together by ties of moral kinship was literally idolized by the masses.  Never has it fallen to my lot to see any mortal so enthusiastically, so spontaneously welcomed by the dejected peoples of the universe.  His most casual utterances were caught up as oracles.  He occupied a height so far aloft that the vicissitudes of everyday life and the contingencies of politics seemingly could not touch him.  He was given credit for a rare degree of selflessness in his conceptions and actions and for a balance of judgment which no storms of passion could upset.  So far as one could judge by innumerable symptoms, President Wilson was confronted with an opportunity for good incomparably vaster than had ever before been within the reach of man.

Soon after the opening of the Conference the shadowy outlines of his portrait began to fill in, slowly at first, and before three months had passed the general public beheld it fairly complete, with many of its natural lights and shades.  The quality of an active politician is never more clearly brought out than when, raised to an eminent place, he is set an arduous feat in sight of the multitude.  Mr. Wilson’s task was manifestly congenial to him, for it was deliberately chosen by himself, and it comprised the most tremendous problems ever tackled by man born of woman.  The means by which he set to work to solve them were startlingly simple:  the regeneration of the human race was to be compassed by means of magisterial edicts secretly drafted and sternly imposed on the interested peoples, together with a new and not wholly appropriate nomenclature.