how France has suffered, how she has been devastated, her industries destroyed—who am I to refuse to assent to this provision, designed, wisely or unwisely, to assist in lifting France again to her feet." The question has often been asked, whether the President freely consulted his experts on the other side, or ignored them. The experience of the gentlemen who conferred with him is the best refutation of this insinuation against the President. Charles Homer Haskins, Chief of the Division of Western Europe, a member of the American Peace Conference, answers this question in these words: The President was anxious to have the exact facts before him in every situation. Doubtless, there were a number of occasions when he could not consult with experts at a particular moment, but, in general, the President sought such advice, although he naturally had to use his own judgment whether that advice was to be adopted in any particular case. Answering this same question, Mr. Douglas Wilson Johnson, Chief of the Division of Boundary Geography, and a member of the Peace Commission, says: Whenever we, in our capacity as specialists, thought we had found something that the President ought to know about, and believed we could not get it across effectively in any other manner, we could ask for a personal conference with him. He was, of course, a very busy man because, unlike the experts who usually had only one problem to consider, he had to do not only with all the territorial problems but in addition with all the problems bearing on the League of Nations, the economic problems, and many other aspects of the peace. Despite this fact I wish to state that while I repeatedly asked for personal conferences with the President on this and certain other problems, he never failed to respond immediately with an appointment. He had a private wire and on occasion he would call us at the Crillon to make appointments on his own initiative or to secure papers, maps, or other documents that he needed in his studies. I will not forget that in one instance he called me on the telephone late at night in my bedroom, asking for some papers which I had promised to supply him, and which had not reached him with sufficient promptness. You can judge from this that he kept closely in touch with the problems he was called upon to consider. Another question that has been asked is: Did the President have an intimate knowledge of the complicated questions that came before him like the Adriatic problem, for instance? That criticism was answered by Mr. Douglas Wilson Johnson in these words: