It was in a conference with members of the Banking and Currency Committee that I first saw the President in action with the gentlemen of the Senate and House. He had invited the Democratic members of the Banking and Currency Committee to confer with him in the Cabinet Room in the White House offices. From my desk in an anteroom I heard all the discussions of the bill. There was full, open discussion of the bill in all its phases at this conference in which were collected the conservatives of the East, the radicalists of the West, and those who came to be known as the "corn tassel" representatives of the South, all holding widely divergent views and representing every shade of opinion, some of it sharply antagonistic to the President's views. Some of the members were openly hostile to the President, even in a personal way, particularly one representative from the South, and some of the questions addressed to the President were ungracious to the verge of open insult. It was an exasperating experience, but Mr. Wilson stood the test with patience, betraying no resentment to impertinent questions, replying to every query with Chesterfieldian grace and affability, parrying every blow with courtesy and gentleness, gallantly ignoring the unfriendly tone and manifest unfairness of some of the questions, keeping himself strictly to the merits of the discussion, subordinating his personal feelings to the important public business under consideration, until all his interrogators were convinced of his sincerity and fair-mindedness and some were ashamed of their own ungracious bearing. It was clear to me as I watched this great man in action on this trying occasion that in the cause he was defending he saw, with a vision unimpaired and a judgment unclouded by prejudice or prepossessions, far beyond the little room in which he was conferring. He saw the varied and pressing needs of a great nation labouring now under a currency system that held its resources as if in a strait-jacket. He saw in the old monetary system which had prevailed in the country for many years a prolific breeder of panic and financial distress. He saw the farmer of the West and South a plaything of Eastern financial interests. And thus, under the leadership of Woodrow Wilson was begun the first skirmish in the great battle to free the credit of the country from selfish control, a movement which led to the establishment of a financial system that ended for all time the danger or possibility of financial panic.