The President was adamant under the bitterest criticism. His attitude brought down on him a shower of personal abuse and vituperation from Irish organs and from a group of newspapers which presently were to appear as the chief supporters of Germany. The arguments against the repeal were unusually bitter, and even though Elihu Root, leading Republican senator, in a brilliant and effective speech took his stand by the President and against the recent Republican Administration, partisan criticism seized upon the opening. Nevertheless, the tolls exemption was repealed in June and the events of July and August, 1914, and especially after Von Bethmann-Hollweg stood up in the German Reichstag and characterized the treaty between Germany and Belgium as a mere scrap of paper, gave a certain satisfaction to those who stood by the President for the sanctity of treaties. Sir Edward Grey, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, commenting upon the action in the House of Commons said: "It has not been done to please us, or in the interest of good relations, but I believe from a much greater motive—the feeling that a government which is to use its influence among nations to make relations better must never, when the occasion arises, flinch or quail from interpreting treaty rights in a strictly fair spirit." CHAPTER XXII REFORMING THE CURRENCY I have bitterly resented at times the imputation and charge that Woodrow Wilson is so egotistical, self-willed, and so wedded to his own ideas that he not only does not invite suggestion from the outside but that he resents it and refuses to be guided by it. I feel that my daily intimacy with him for eleven years gives me the right to speak frankly in the matter. Of course, like every great man, he is firmly set in his opinions. He holds and cleaves to them with a passionate devotion and tenacity but only after the fullest consideration of all the facts and information upon which he bases a final conviction. Time and again I have seen him gallantly retreat under the fire of a better argument in a matter that he had been previously disposed to favour.