moved from office, the country was astounded
to learn that he was to be succeeded by Bainbridge Colby. The
President communicated his decision first to one of the few who
then had access to his sick room. This adviser ventured to
expostulate.

"Mr. Colby," he said, "is brilliant, but he is uncertain. His whole
career has lacked stability. He is not known to have the qualities
which the Nation has been taught to expect in a Secretary of
State."

"At any rate," replied the President sharply, "he is loyal."

At any rate, Colonel House was loyal.

The ego of Mr. Wilson demanded and received utter loyalty from him,
a loyalty that forbade thinking, forbade criticism, forbade
independence of any sort. Moreover, Colonel House was in contact
with a mind much stronger than his, with a personality much more
powerful than his. He was caught into the Wilson orbit. He revolved
about Mr. Wilson. He got his light from Mr. Wilson, who had that
power, which Colonel Roosevelt had, of irradiating minor
personalities. Colonel House was nothing until he gravitated to Mr.
Wilson. He is going back to be nothing to-day, nothing but a kind,
lovable man, a gentle soul rather unfitted for the world, with an
extraordinary capacity for friendship and sympathy, and that fine
pair of eyes.

I remember at Paris the affecting evidences of the little man's
loyalty to his great friend, of whom he could not speak without
emotion. He was never tired of dilating upon the wonder of
President Wilson's mind:

"I never saw," he would say, "so quick a mind, with such a capacity
for instant understanding. The President can go to the bottom of
the most difficult question as no one else in the world can."

House's endless "formulae" always bore the self-effacing condition,
"if Mr. Wilson approves." "If Mr. Wilson approves" was the D. V. of
Colonel House's religion. Too much awe of another mind is not good
for your own, or carries with it certain implications about your
own.

Colonel House's loyalty to Mr. Wilson did not, however, make him
hate the men at Paris who stood across the President's path. The
personal representative's heart was too catholic for that. He--

Liked what e're he looked on
And his looks went everywhere.

He had a kindly feeling for the "old man," Clemenceau. He was a
warm friend of Orlando, with whom Mr. Wilson had his quarrel over
Fiume. He though well of Lloyd George, whom Mr. Wilson went abroad
hating.

The Peace Confer