him. "I will not write about myself," is his invariable retort to friends
who urge him to publish his own story of the Paris Peace Conference. He
craves the silence from others which he imposes upon himself. He is quite
willing to leave the assessment and interpretation of himself to time and
posterity. Knowing all this I have not consulted him about this book. Yet
I have felt that the book should be written, because I am anxious that his
contemporaries should know him as I have known him, not only as an
individual but also as the advocate of a set of great ideas and as the
leader of great movements. If I can picture him, even imperfectly, as I
have found him to be, both in himself and in his relationship to important
events, I must believe that the portrait will correct some curious
misapprehensions about him.

For instance, there is a prevalent idea, an innocently ignorant opinion in
some quarters, an all too sedulously cultivated report in other quarters,
that he has been uniformly headstrong, impatient of advice, his mind
hermetically closed to counsel from others. This book will expose the
error of that opinion; will show how, in his own words, his mind was "open
and to let," how he welcomed suggestions and criticism. Indeed I fear that
unless the reader ponders carefully what I have written he may glean the
opposite idea, that sometimes the President had to be prodded to action,
and that I represent myself as the chief prodder.

The superficial reader may find countenance lent to this latter view in
the many notes of information and advice which I addressed to the
President and in the record of his subsequent actions which were more or
less in accord with the counsel contained in some of these notes. If the
reader deduces from this the conclusion that I was the instigator of some
of the President's important policies, he will misinterpret the facts and
the President's character and mental processes; if he concludes that I am