proved on the grandest scale; for, in it, three great monarchies with their aristocracies went down in the conflict with democratic nations.
President Wilson and Professor Herron.
My account of President Wilson’s change of mind in regard to Austria-Hungary would be incomplete without some reference to another quarter from which he received information—Professor Herron, to whom I have already alluded. Herron’s ideas may be gleaned from his writings. He is one of those American idealists for whom democracy is not merely a political but a living and moral programme. Unless I err, Professor Herron had not known President Wilson personally in America or, at least, had seen little of him. The two men were brought together by Herron’s writings, which Wilson recognized as accurate and to the point. Herron had been living in Europe before the war. When it broke out he settled in Switzerland where, from the autumn of 1917 to the end of 1918, he carried on negotiations with a number of Austrian and German politicians as Wilson’s unofficial representative.
While I was in Switzerland I read the writings of Professor Herron—of whom I had known something before the war—and watched his literary and journalistic work; and then, through Dr. Osuský, a curious chance brought me into direct touch with him. As I have said, Osuský was a young Slovak who had come to Europe from America in 1916. He had wished to do something as soon as the war began, and felt he must come to Europe since America was then neutral. As submarines prevented ordinary vessels from sailing, he managed, in July 1916, to sail on a cargo-boat laden with munitions. When he came to me in London I thought he could help in our propaganda, and agreed that he should join Dr. Beneš and learn French. The Slovak League in America had given him certain instructions; but, as they had been drawn up at a distance and in ignorance of actual conditions, they could scarcely be binding upon him. In 1917 he thought of joining the army. In July of that year he went, however, for a while to Switzerland where, he believed, anti-Austrian propaganda could be carried on more effectively than in Paris, inasmuch as letters from Austria and Hungary reached Switzerland more regularly than France. When, in October 1917, the news reached Paris that the Hungarians, Count Károlyi and Dr. Jászi, would attend a Peace Conference which was being
