besides Mr. Lansing—Messrs. Baker, Philips, Polk, Long, Lane and Houston. Mr. Richard Crane was secretary to Mr. Lansing and with him, as with his father, my relations were constant. Nor must I forget either the French Ambassador, M. Jusserand, who helped us everywhere and in every way, even with the President; or Colonel House, the influential adviser and confidential friend of the President, with whom I discussed very thoroughly the problems of war and peace. And over and above this personal intercourse, I supplied Mr. Lansing and other Ministers, as occasion arose, with memoranda or notes upon the weightiest questions at issue and expressed my views upon them.
My own relations to the President were purely matter-of-fact. Throughout our movement, I relied upon the justice of our cause and the force of my arguments. I believed and believe that upright, educated people can be taught and convinced by argument. Therefore, in oral discussion with the President and in my memoranda and notes, I trusted solely to argument and to the weight of carefully verified facts, linking them with the President’s own declarations and writings. What he had written upon “The State” and the development of the American Congress, I had known before the war; and as I read his speeches carefully, I was able to cite passages from them in support of my contentions. Thus I was able, step by step, to persuade the President and Mr. Lansing to accept our programme. But this was by no means the result of my personal influence alone. The work and propaganda of our people won us public goodwill—and Austria-Hungary lost it. The change in the situation could be seen from the fact that the head of the Near Eastern section in the State Department, Mr. Putney, a well-known writer on legal questions, had upheld our view of the Austrian problem in the memoranda which he wrote for Mr. Lansing about the time I reached America. Mr. Putney was acquainted with our anti-Austrian literature and was in touch with my secretary, Mr. Pergler. The subsequent drift away from pro-Austrianism was revealed in the degree of recognition which the United States gradually accorded us.
It was upon Austria and the Hapsburgs that my conversations with President Wilson presently turned, Clemenceau’s revelations of the Austrian peace manœuvres supplying a welcome opportunity. I pointed out the sorry behaviour of the Emperor Charles towards his German Ally, saying that, soon after the war began, Germany had saved Austria from
