appeals to Page for help against his fool friends.  An indiscreet person in New Jersey is booming Mr. Wilson for the Presidency; the activity of such a man inevitably brings ridicule upon the object of his attention; cannot Page find some kindly way of calling him off?  Mr. Wilson asks Page’s advice about a campaign manager, and incidentally expresses his own aversion to a man of “large calibre” for this engagement.  There were occasional conferences with Mr. Wilson on his Presidential prospects, one of which took place at Page’s New York apartment.  Page was also the man who brought Mr. Wilson and Colonel House together; this had the immediate result of placing the important state of Texas on the Wilson side, and, as its ultimate consequence, brought about one of the most important associations in the history of American politics.  Page had known Colonel House for many years and was the advocate who convinced the sagacious Texan that Woodrow Wilson was the man.  Wilson also acquired the habit of referring to Page men who offered themselves to him as volunteer workers in his cause.  “Go and see Walter Page” was his usual answer to this kind of an approach.  But Page was not a collector of delegates to nominating conventions; not his the art of manipulating these assemblages in the interest of a favoured man; yet his services to the Wilson cause, while less demonstrative, were almost as practical.  His talent lay in exposition; and he now took upon himself the task of spreading Wilson’s fame.  In his own magazine and in books published by his firm, in letters to friends, in personal conferences, he set forth Wilson’s achievements.  Page also persuaded Wilson to make his famous speechmaking trip through the Western States in 1911 and this was perhaps his largest definite contribution to the Wilson campaign.  It was in the course of this historic pilgrimage that the American masses obtained their first view of a previously too-much hidden figure.

On election day Page wrote the President-elect a letter of congratulation which contains one item of the greatest interest.  When the time came for the new President to deliver his first message to Congress, he surprised the country by abandoning the usual practice of sending a long written communication to be droned out by a reading clerk to a yawning company of legislators.  He appeared in person and read the document himself.  As President Harding has followed his example it seems likely that this innovation, which certainly represents a great improvement over the old routine, has become the established custom.  The origin of the idea therefore has historic value.

To Woodrow Wilson
Garden City, N.Y. 
Election Day, 1912. [Nov. 5]

MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT: