course attends the
routine state dinners and receptions, as a matter of required duty. But
as for any social recognition of his existence--he had never received a
hint or nod. Nor does any member of the Cabinet (except, no doubt, Mr.
McAdoo, his son-in-law). There is no social sense nor reason in this. In
fact, it works to a very decided disadvantage to the President and to
the Nation.

By the way, that a notable man in our educational life could form such a
habit does not speak well for our educational life.

What an unspeakably lamentable loss of opportunity! This is the more
remarkable and lamentable because the President is a charming
personality, an uncommonly good talker, a man who could easily make
personal friends of all the world. He does his own thinking, untouched
by other men's ideas. He receives nothing from the outside. His domestic
life is spent with his own, nobody else, except House occasionally. His
contact with his own Cabinet is a business man's contact with his
business associates and kind--at his office.

He declined to see Cameron Forbes[41] on his return from the
Philippines.

The sadness of this mistake!

Another result is--the President doesn't hear the frank truth about the
men about him. He gives nobody a chance to tell him. Hence he has
several heavy encumbrances in his official family.

The influence of this lone-hand way of playing the game extends very
far. The members of the Cabinet do not seem to have the habit of
frankness with one another. Each lives and works in a water-tight
compartment. I sat at luncheon (at a hotel) with Lansing, Secretary of
State; Lane, Secretary of the Interior; Gregory, Attorney-General;
Baker, Secretary of War; Daniels, Secretary of the Navy; and Sharp,
Ambassador to France; and all the talk was jocular or semi-jocular, and
personal--mere cheap chaff. Not a question was asked either of the
Ambassador to France or of the Ambassador to Great Britain about the war
or about our foreign relations. The war wasn't mentioned. Sharp and I
might have come from Bungtown and Jonesville and not from France and
England. We were not encouraged to talk--the local personal joke held
the time and conversation. This astounding fact must be the result of
this lone-hand, water-tight compartment method and--of the neutrality
suppression of men. The Vice-President confessed to his neighbour at a
Gridiron dinner that he had read none of the White Papers, or Orange
Papers, e