and parties be able to forget past conflicts and controversies? Very soberly I weighed the pros and cons, and examined the principles on which I should have to act. More than once I reviewed the whole list of men with whom I should have to deal and to work, for I knew them all pretty well. Upon the policy needful for our restored State I felt no manner of doubt, and I was quite certain that I must not give way on the most important issues or on matters of principle; but I closed emphatically the whole chapter of my personal dislikes.
Paris, Padua—and Home.
Reaching Paris on December 7, I paid my first official visit to the President of the French Republic, M. Poincaré, in order to thank him by word of mouth for all the help he and France had given us; and, at an official dinner, I saw him again. Then I spent some hours with our troops at Darney, inspected them, visited the wounded and, on the way back to Paris, drafted my first Presidential Message. From morning to night I paid and received visits. The Foreign Minister, M. Pichon, showed the utmost cordiality, and I met a large number of the principal public men, including the President of the Chamber, M. Deschanel, and the Prime Minister, M. Clemenceau. Though Clemenceau had long interested me I had never met him in person. His acquaintances had told me that he had, at first, been somewhat pessimistic about the war and the future of France. Therefore it was, psychologically, the more noteworthy that he should have found the energy to work as he worked, not merely to conquer his own pessimism and scepticism but to serve France. True, there is more than one sort of sceptic. Clemenceau’s speeches and Parliamentary activity had attracted my attention long before, as had his literary work—his novel “Les Plus Forts” and his philosophy of history “Le Grand Pan,” in which his alleged scepticism stands out in high relief. In the early stages of the war he was not particularly well-disposed towards us, and Austrian and Magyar propagandists spread the report that he was pro-Austrian. When he became Prime Minister on November 16, 1917, a part of the French press reproduced Magyar statements that he would be pro-Magyar because his daughter was alleged to have married a Magyar and his sister-in-law was a Viennese But the vigorous, matter-of-fact way in which he dealt with the affairs of Prince Sixtus of Parma belied these stories; and, as he had disapproved of my policy in Russia because I refused
