done, and the situation in the Senate, it is necessary for me to explain my own relations with Mr. Wilson before and after he entered the White House, to consider carefully what he said and did, and, at the same time, in order to complete the picture, to endeavor to describe the conditions in the Senate and the attitude both of those who opposed and of those who supported the President.

President Wilson was inaugurated on the 4th of March, 1913. He had been elected by a minority of the popular vote because the Republican party was divided at the election. Mr. Taft and Colonel Roosevelt polled together 7,604,463 votes, Mr. Taft receiving 3,484,956 and Colonel Roosevelt 4,119,507. Mr. Wilson received 6,293,019 and therefore was, as I have just said, a minority President, polling 1,311,444 votes less than the combined Roosevelt and Taft vote. The result had been foreseen long before the votes were cast, and the Republicans, torn by their own dissensions, had but little of the bitterness of party feeling toward their political opponents which usually arises after a close and doubtful election. The success of Mr. Wilson was wholly owing to Republican divisions.

A few days after his inauguration I called upon Mr. Wilson simply to pay my respects. It was my intention and, I think, that of Republicans in Washington generally, to make no attempt to oppose the new President merely for the sake of opposition. I said to Mr. Wilson when I saw him: "You do not, of course, remember me, Mr. President, but I had the pleasure of sitting next to you at the alumni dinner at a Harvard Commencement." He replied very pleasantly: "Senator, it is not necessary to recall our meeting at Cambridge, because a man never forgets the first editor who accepts one of his articles. You were the first editor who accepted an article written by me." I had for the moment entirely forgotten that I had first known him in that connection. I had been

for a time one of the editors of the International Review and I had accepted an article from Mr. Wilson, who was then, I may say, unknown to the public. His recalling to me this incident in such a pleasant way led me to look at some of my letter files, and I found there, rather to my surprise, a letter from Mr. Wilson in regard to an article on "Cabinet Government in the United States" which I published in August, 1879. Mr. Wilson's letter to me was written from Wilmington, North Carolina.

After his administration had begun, the question arose of repealing the act by which Congress had authorized a discrimination in the matter of tolls in favor of American vessels passing through the Panama Canal, and I supported the position of the President. I was present at a meeting which he held at the White House, consisting, I think, of the committees of the two Houses on Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs respectively, where a very animated discussion took place and Senator O'Gorman, Senator William Alden Smith of Michigan, and perhaps one or two others opposed the President's proposition to repeal the law imposing the tolls discrimination. The President made an argument in favor of his position and showed, as I remember, a strong feeling in regard to it. He then made the statement, now well known, that the action which he asked from Congress was necessary to enable him to carry on his foreign policy. This position he defined in his message to Congress of March 5, 1914. These were his words:

"I ask this of you in support of the foreign policy of the administration. I shall not know how to deal with other matters of even greater delicacy and nearer consequence if you do not grant it to me in ungrudging measure."

What his precise purpose was or in what way this action aided his conduct of our foreign relations has not yet been

disclosed. Mr. Walter Hines Page, who had much to say about this question of Panama tolls in his correspondence, was puzzled as to the motive, but finally said he thought afterwards that what the President meant was that it would help him to preserve the peace of the world which, some months after this Panama tolls debate, was shattered by the war with Germany. I confess that this explanation did not seem to me to explain anything because no one foresaw the great war at the time of the Panama Message, and the fact that we had taken the action in regard to the tolls desired by the President seemed, from all that is known of that period, to have had no weight either with the Allies or with Germany. I do not know to this day what he meant by its being necessary to repeal the tolls discrimination in order to enable him to conduct the foreign relations of the country, and I have never found anybody who was better informed on this point than I. This assertion by Mr. Wilson at the time, however, undoubtedly had great weight, especially with members of his own party.

Subsequently, on the 9th of April, 1914, I spoke in the Senate at some length on the question of the tolls. Mr. Wilson called me up on the telephone very soon afterward and thanked me for my speech and for all that I had said in support of his position. He also wrote to me cordially regarding my reply to Senator Bristow in the Panama tolls debate, made in the Senate on February 18th. I then said:

"Mr. President, I do not believe that the President of the United States is the least embarrassed, as the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Bristow) suggests, and I should not undertake to interfere in such a debate as we have been listening to here today were it not that the Senator seemed to take a view of the President's attitude in regard to the Panama tolls which I do not share. I listened to all the Senator from Kansas said, and he left me with

the impression that, in his opinion, the influence of corporations, both foreign and domestic, had been very strong in determining the attitude of the President with reference to the repeal of what is known as the exemption clause in the Panama Canal act. Whoever else may have changed his mind, I do not think that the President has changed his mind on that question at all. My own impression is that he has held his present view for a long time. Of this I am certain: The President did some of us who are on the Committee on Foreign Relations the honor of consulting with us about this matter, and I am sure that in dealing with it he is guided entirely by what he thinks is for the honor and credit of the United States in our relations with foreign nations. I think he has no other object in view. I think he feels, unless I greatly misunderstand him, as some of the rest of us have felt, that the position we held not very many years ago in the way of prestige and standing among the nations of the world has been lost or greatly impaired. I think he feels that the time has come to retrace some of the steps that have been taken subsequently in late years. I think he has the conviction that in one way or another-and I am laying no blame now at anybody's door-the United States has fallen into an unfortunate and unhappy position, where she has incurred the active dislike of many nations and the distrust of many more, instead of the friendship and respect which she once possessed. The President does not like, in my judgment, to see the United States in the attitude of an outlaw among the nations. He feels that we should have all the prestige, all the influence which is our due and which we have ever had among the nations of the earth. He believes, I think, that prestige and influence are not to be obtained by disregarding the international obligations or by reversing policies long held by the United States simply to gratify some passing whim

or some passion of the moment. I believe also that the President regards the foreign relations of the country as above the party.

"I do not hold a position in this Chamber which calls upon me or entitles me to be the President's defender, but I cannot sit in silence, as a member of the opposition and of the minority, and hear what I consider an injustice done to the President of the United States, in whose hands rests the conduct of all our foreign relations, without making a protest against it simply in my capacity as an American citizen. I have always held very strongly the opinion that in the matter of foreign relations it is our duty always to stand by the President of the United States just so far as it is possible to do so without violating one's own convictions. I have always tried to follow that course in my public life, and therefore I shall not now consent to censure him because he has taken a certain view of our international duties in regard to toll exemption-a view which I think he has probably always held-or charge that he is doing something inconsistent and improper as a party leader which, I confess, seems to me absurd.

"I am myself a pretty rigid Republican and party man. Yet I have known things which in some way crept into Republican platforms that I would not have voted for if they had been brought up here as the basis of legislation, because my conscience and my sense of duty would have forbidden it. Cases constantly arise where party conventions in their resolutions travel out of the line of their duty, which is simply to set forth general principles and not undertake to regulate the details of legislation. It is entirely within the province of the President, if he chooses, to say that in an act in which he can have no participation-for he does not sign a constitutional amendment-he does not feel justified in injecting a new article into the party creed. I see no inconsistency