As the term drew to a close, Mrs. Wilson personally supervised the moving of their belongings--those from her own house in which she was married, and the new things purchased--so that the President might find his home all settled when he was taken to it from the Capitol after Mr. Harding’s installation. Feeble, worn, white, and thin, his helpless hands and wavering feet were placed for him when he took his seat beside Warren Harding for the ride to the Capitol on March 4th. His appearance brought an ovation, and Mr. Harding’s care of him was a matter of wide comment. Ex-President Wilson did not remain for all of the ceremony, but returned to his home, which became a mecca for pilgrimages of his followers until his death. Few of our Presidents have dipped more deeply into the well of experience in the short period of eight years than did Woodrow Wilson. His mental processes embraced every variety of emotion in the human category. Circumstance and ambition led a tortuous path through victory, defeat, sorrow, love, courtship, marriage, responsibility for plunging his nation into war, and an even greater one of pulling it out again and establishing it in the ways of peace and order. He knew the alternating triumph of being hailed the saviour of Europe and the god of peace, and of being hissed from people’s esteem; of being applauded as a prophet of a new order and denounced as an autocrat both in his own land and abroad. Hated and loved like Lincoln, he pursued the course he had mapped out, believing he had found the solution for lasting peace. Europe accepted his solution, but his own countrymen refused it. One of the great war Presidents of our land, he made a place in history a rightful judgment of which is beyond the powers of his contemporaries. It must be left to future generations. But with whatever historians accredit him of honour or censure, they must record his courage and independence in setting aside precedents that hampered his way. When, as President, he left the country, contrary to all established precedent, he was regarded as the saviour of Europe; he wielded power and dictated terms beyond the scope of kings. Under his leadership, the United States abandoned its tradition of isolation and entered the vast mêlée with five million of her men and many billions of her money, and placed an army on a battleline across three thousand miles of sea. [Illustration: DEMOCRACY AND ROYALTY _Left to right_: Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, President Woodrow Wilson, Mrs. Woodrow Wilson, and King Albert of Belgium]