As I say, he worked everybody at the Peace Conference to a standstill. He worked not only the American delegates, but the way he drove the leisurely diplomats of Europe was often shameful to see. Sometimes he would actually have two meetings going on at the same time. Once I found a meeting of the Council of the Big Four going on in his study, and a meeting of the financial and economic experts—twenty or thirty of them—in full session upstairs in the drawing room—and the President oscillating between the two. It was he who was always the driver, the initiator, at Paris: he worked longer hours, had more appointments, granted himself less recreation, than any other man, high or low, at the Peace Conference. For he was the central figure there. Everything headed up in him. Practically all of the meetings of the Council of Four were held in his study in the Place des États-Unis. This was the true capitol of the Peace Conference; here all the important questions were decided. Everyone who came to Paris upon any mission whatsoever aimed first of all at seeing the President. Representatives of the little, downtrodden nationalities of the earth—from eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa—thought that if they could get at the President, explain their pathetic ambitions, confess their troubles to him, all would be well. While the President was struggling in Europe, his friends in America had cause for indignation against the course adopted by the Republican obstructionists in the Senate, which course, they saw, must have a serious if not fatal effect upon developments overseas. Occurrences on both sides of the Atlantic became so closely interwoven that it is better not to separate the two narratives, and as Mr. Creel, upon whose history I have already drawn, tells the story with vigour and a true perception of the significance of events, I quote at length from him: The early days of February, 1919, were bright with promise. The European press, seeming to accept the President's leadership as unshakable, was more amiable in its tone, the bitterness bred by the decision as to the German colonies had abated. Fiume and the Saar Basin had taken discreet places in the background with other deferred questions, and the voice of French and English and Italian liberalism was heard again. On February 14th the President reported the first draft of the League constitution—a draft that expressed his principles without change—and it was confirmed amid acclaim. It was at this moment, unfortunately, that the President was compelled to return to the United States to sign certain bills, and for the information of the Senate he carried with him the Covenant as agreed upon by the Allies.