This has been one of the most complexing and trying weeks of my existence over here. The President was taken violently sick last Thursday. The attack was very sudden. At three o'clock he was apparently all right; at six he was seized with violent paroxysms of coughing, which were so severe and frequent that it interfered with his breathing. He had a fever of 103 and a profuse diarrhoea. I was at first suspicious that his food had been tampered with, but it turned out to be the beginning of an attack of influenza. That night was one of the worst through which I have ever passed. I was able to control the spasms of coughing but his condition looked very serious. Since that time he has been gradually improving every day so that he is now back at work—he went out for the first time yesterday. This disease is so treacherous, especially in this climate, that I am perhaps over- anxious for fear of a flare-back—and a flare-back in a case of this kind often results in pneumonia. I have been spending every minute of my time with him, not only as physician but as nurse. Mrs. Wilson was a perfect angel through it all.
Sincerely,
CARY T. GRAYSON.
Continuing the narrative Mr. Creel writes:
On April 7th, the President struggled to his feet and faced the Council in what everyone recognized as a final test of strength. There must be an end to this dreary, interminable business of making agreements only to break them. An agreement must be reached once for all. If a peace of justice, he would remain; if a peace of greed, then he would leave. He had been second to none in recognizing the wrongs of the Allies, the state of mind of their peoples, and he stood as firmly as any for a treaty that would bring guilt home to the Germans, but he could not, and would not, agree to the repudiation of every war aim or to arrangements that would leave the world worse off than before. The George Washington was in Brooklyn. By wireless the President ordered it to come to Brest at once.
The gesture was conclusive as far as England and France were concerned. Lloyd George swung over instantly to the President's side, and on the following day Le Temps carried this significant item:
"Contrary to the assertions spread by the German press and taken up by other foreign newspapers, we believe that the Government has no annexationist pretensions, openly or under cover, in regard to any territory inhabited by a German population. This remark applies peculiarly to the regions comprised between the frontier of 1871 and the frontier of 1814."
Again, in the lock of wills, the President was the victor, and the
French and English press, exhausted by now, could only gasp their
condemnation of Clemenceau and Lloyd George.
The statement of Mr. David Hunter Miller, the legal adviser of the
American Peace Commission, with reference to the debate on the Monroe
Doctrine, in which the President played the leading part, is conclusive on
this point. Mr. Miller speaks of the President's devotion to the Monroe
Doctrine in these words:
But the matter was not at an end, for at the next meeting, the last of all, the French sought by amendment to obtain some definition, some description of the Monroe Doctrine that would limit the right of the United States to insist upon its own interpretation of that Doctrine in the future as in the past. The French delegates, hoping for some advantage for their own proposals, urged such a definition: and at that last meeting I thought for a moment, in despair, that President Wilson would yield to the final French suggestion, which contained only a few seemingly simple words: but he stood by his position through the long discussion, and the meeting and the proceedings of the Commission ended early in the morning in an atmosphere of constraint and without any of the speeches of politeness customary on such an occasion.
Of all the false reports about the President's attitude none was more erroneous than the combined statements that he was lukewarm about the Monroe Doctrine and that he declined to ask for or receive advice from eminent Americans outside of his own party.