"I said to the Senator," said the President, "do they think I am a damned fool?" ... Yet Senator Kellogg says that Ashurst told the Senators that the President talked most pacifically, as if inclined to peace, and that Ashurst was "afraid that he would commit the country to peace," so afraid that he wanted all the pressure possible brought to bear on the President by other Senators. At any rate, the Note when it came had no pacificism in it, and the President gained the unanimous approval of the country and the Allies. But all this was a week ago. Germany came back with an acceptance of the President's terms--a superficial acceptance at least--hence the appeal to the Cabinet yesterday. This was his opening, "I do not know what to do. I must ask your advice. I may have made a mistake in not properly safe-guarding what I said before. What do you think should be done?" This general query was followed by a long silence, which I broke by saying that Germany would do anything he said. "What should I say?" he asked. "That we would not treat until Germany was across the Rhine." This he thought impossible. Then others took a hand. Wilson said the Allies should be consulted. Houston thought there was no real reform inside Germany. McAdoo made a long talk favoring an armistice on terms fixed by the military authorities. Strangely enough, Burleson, who had voted against all our stiff action over the Lusitania and has pleaded for the Germans steadily, was most belligerent in his talk. He was ferocious--so much so that I thought he was trying to make the President react against any stiff Note--for he knows the President well, and knows that any kind of strong blood-thirsty talk drives him into the cellar of pacifism. ...