In 1912 came the presidential election. The split in the Republican forces promised if it did not absolutely guarantee the election of a Democrat, and when the party convention met at Baltimore in June, excitement was more than ordinarily intense. The conservative elements in the party were divided. The radicals looked to Bryan for leadership, although his nomination seemed out of the question. Wilson had stamped himself as an anti-machine progressive, and if the machine conservatives threatened he might hope for support from the Nebraskan orator. From the first the real contest appeared to be between Wilson and Champ Clark, who although hardly a conservative, was backed for the moment by the machine leaders. The deciding power was in Bryan's hand, and as the strife between conservatives and radicals waxed hot, he turned to the support of Wilson. On the forty-sixth ballot Wilson was nominated. With division in the Republican ranks, with his record in New Jersey for legislative accomplishment, and winning many independent votes through a succession of effective campaign speeches, Wilson more than fulfilled the highest of Democratic hopes. He received on election day only a minority of all the votes cast, but his majority in the electoral college was overwhelming. * * * * * The personality of an American President has seldom undergone so much analysis with such unsatisfactory results; almost every discussion of Wilson's characteristics leads to the generation of heat rather than light. Indeed the historian of the future may ask whether it is as important, in this age of democracy, to know exactly what sort of man he was as to know what the people thought he was. And yet in the case of a statesman who was to play a role of supreme importance in the affairs of the country and the world, it is perhaps more than a matter of merely personal interest to underline his salient traits. Let it be premised that a logical and satisfactory analysis is well-nigh impossible, for his nature is self-contradictory, subject to gusts of temperament, and he himself has pictured the struggle that has gone on between the impulsive Irish and the cautious Scotch elements in him. Thus it is that he has handled similar problems in different ways at different times, and has produced upon different persons diametrically opposed impressions.