When the President and I discussed the visit of his daughter, Margaret, to notify him of his reëlection, he informed me that he was just beginning to enjoy the reaction of defeat when he was notified that the tide had turned in his favour. This will seem unusual, but those of us who were close to the man and who understood the trials and tribulations of the Presidency, knew that he was in fact for the first time in four years enjoying the freedom of private life. Mr. Wilson's imperturbability on election night was like that of sturdy Grover Cleveland, though temperamentally the men were unlike. Mr. Cleveland used to tell his friends how in 1884 he had gone to bed early not knowing who was elected, and how he learned the news of his election next morning from his valet, after having first made inquiries about the state of the weather. In 1892 Mr. Cleveland, his wife, and two friends played a quiet game of cards while the returns were coming in. In reciting these reminiscences, the old warrior used to say that he never could understand the excitement of candidates on election nights. "The fight is all over then," he would say, "and it is merely a matter of counting the ballots." Mr. Wilson preserved the same calmness, which appeared almost like indifference. In 1912 he sat in the sitting room of his little cottage in Cleveland Lane in Princeton quietly reading from one of his favourite authors and occasionally joining in the conversation of Mrs. Wilson and a few neighbours who had dropped in. In a rear room there was a telegraphic ticker, an operator, and some newspaper boys who at intervals would take an especially interesting bulletin in to Mr. Wilson, who would glance at it casually, make some brief comment, and then return to his book. One of the guests of the evening who read in a newspaper next day a rather melodramatic and entirely imaginative account of the scene, said: "The only dramatic thing about the evening was that there was nothing dramatic." CHAPTER XXVII NEUTRALITY While President Wilson was giving his whole thought and effort to the solution of exacting domestic tasks, the European war broke upon him and thus turned his attention and study to the age-long and complicated political struggle between Germany, France, and England.