With this picture of him in mind, we can return to the actual course of events.  The President’s program for the World, as set forth in his speeches and his Notes, had displayed a spirit and a purpose so admirable that the last desire of his sympathizers was to criticize details,—­the details, they felt, were quite rightly not filled in at present, but would be in due course.  It was commonly believed at the commencement of the Paris Conference that the President had thought out, with the aid of a large body of advisers, a comprehensive scheme not only for the League of Nations, but for the embodiment of the Fourteen Points in an actual Treaty of Peace.  But in fact the President had thought out nothing; when it came to practice his ideas were nebulous and incomplete.  He had no plan, no scheme, no constructive ideas whatever for clothing with the flesh of life the commandments which he had thundered from the White House.  He could have preached a sermon on any of them or have addressed a stately prayer to the Almighty for their fulfilment; but he could not frame their concrete application to the actual state of Europe.

He not only had no proposals in detail, but he was in many respects, perhaps inevitably, ill-informed as to European conditions.  And not only was he ill-informed—­that was true of Mr. Lloyd George also—­but his mind was slow and unadaptable.  The President’s slowness amongst the Europeans was noteworthy.  He could not, all in a minute, take in what the rest were saying, size up the situation with a glance, frame a reply, and meet the case by a slight change of ground; and he was liable, therefore, to defeat by the mere swiftness, apprehension, and agility of a Lloyd George.  There can seldom have been a statesman of the first rank more incompetent than the President in the agilities of the council chamber.  A moment often arrives when substantial victory is yours if by some slight appearance of a concession you can save the face of the opposition or conciliate them by a restatement of your proposal helpful to them and not injurious to anything essential to yourself.  The President was not equipped with this simple and usual artfulness.  His mind was too slow and unresourceful to be ready with any alternatives.  The President was capable of digging his toes in and refusing to budge, as he did over Fiume.  But he had no other mode of defense, and it needed as a rule but little manoeuvering by his opponents to prevent matters from coming to such a head until it was too late.  By pleasantness and an appearance of conciliation, the President would be manoeuvered off his ground, would miss the moment for digging his toes in, and, before he knew where he had been got to, it was too late.  Besides, it is impossible month after month in intimate and ostensibly friendly converse between close associates, to be digging the toes in all the time.  Victory would only have been possible to one who had always a sufficiently lively apprehension of the position as a whole to reserve his fire and know for certain the rare exact moments for decisive action.  And for that the President was far too slow-minded and bewildered.