The reader will see how frankly critical some of these notes are. The mere fact that the President permitted me to continue to write to him in a vein of candour that was frequently brusque and blunt, is the conclusive answer to the charge that he resented criticism. Contrary to the misrepresentations, he had from time to time many advisers. In most instances, I do not possess written reports of what others said orally and in writing, and therefore in this record, which is essentially concerned with my own official and personal relations with him, I may seem to represent myself as a preponderating influence. This is neither the fact nor my intention. The public acts of Mr. Wilson were frequently mosaics, made up of his own ideas and those of others. My written notes were merely stones offered for the mosaic. Sometimes the stones were rejected, sometimes accepted and shaped by the master builder into the pattern. It was a habit of Mr. Wilson's to meditate before taking action, to listen to advice without comment, frequently without indicating whether or not the idea broached by others had already occurred to him. We who knew him best knew that often the idea had occurred to him and had been thought out more lucidly than any adviser could state it. But he would test his own views by the touchstone of other minds' reactions to the situations and problems which he was facing and would get the "slant" of other minds. He was always ahead of us all in his thinking. An admirer once said: "You could shut him up in an hermetically sealed room and trust him to reach the right decision," but as a matter of fact he did not work that way. He sought counsel and considered it and acted on it or dismissed it according to his best judgment, for the responsibility for the final action was his, and he was boldly prepared to accept that responsibility and conscientiously careful not to abuse it by acting rashly. While he would on occasion make momentous decisions quickly and decisively, the habitual character of his mind was deliberative. He wanted all the facts and so far as possible the contingencies. Younger men like myself could counsel immediate and drastic action, but even while we were advising we knew that he would, without haste and without waste, calmly calculate his course. What, coming from us, were merely words, would, coming from him, constitute acts and a nation's destiny. He regarded himself as the "trustee of the people," who should not act until he was sure he was right and should then act with the decision and finality of fate itself.