On the following morning I went by appointment at 10.30 to see President Harding. After driving to several wrong doors at the White House I was shown into an ante-room full of press-men talking and smoking round an open fire. The President's secretary was extremely courteous, and I was not kept waiting. Ushered into Mr. Harding's fine circular room we shook hands and sat down. A large black and tan Airedale terrier sniffed round my skirts, and was ordered to sit in a chair by his master. President Harding has a large bold head with well-cut features and an honest, fearless address. He is tall, perfectly simple, and extraordinarily easy and pleasant to talk to. He told me he also had lectured and gave me an account of how lecturing had first started in America. There was a sort of club or society which began round Lake Chautauqua and spread all over the country. It was the only way that either pleasure or information could reach distant and dreary little towns inhabited by thousands of men and women who had neither the fortune or opportunity to meet famous people. While he was telling me this I looked at the big writing table in front of him. I noticed a faded photograph of an extremely pretty, refined, middle-aged woman, and a framed engraving of George Washington; on the top of a book case I observed an interesting print of Abraham Lincoln. A fire in an open grate and large windows looking out upon a garden with trees completed the room. Our talk was interrupted by a secretary asking the President to speak on the telephone, and he left me after a courteous apology. On his return he found me looking at the photograph on his table, and informed me that it was his mother. We spoke of Arthur Balfour and I told him how pleased my husband and all of us in England were that he had been able to go to Washington; that his quick mind, fine intellectual manners, and lack of insularity gave him an unrivalled understanding. The President responded with genuine warmth. "I am very glad," he said, "that he attended our Conference. As you are aware, Mrs. Asquith, he was known and liked here before the Conference, and I can only say that he has added two hundred per cent to his former popularity by the patience, tact, straightforwardness and ability he showed throughout our proceedings."