In consequence they have sought out a copy of the first edition of these memoirs, and they take pleasure in offering it to him, with the request that he will keep it among his family papers." The signatures include those of Emile Loubet, A.Carnot, d'Estournelles de Constant, Aristide Briand, Sully Prudhomme, Jean Jaures, A.
Fallieres, R.Poincare, and two or three hundred others.
Of course what I had done in connection with the Portsmouth peace was misunderstood by some good and sincere people.

Just as after the settlement of the coal strike, there were persons who thereupon thought that it was in my power, and was my duty, to settle all other strikes, so after the peace of Portsmouth there were other persons--not only Americans, by the way,--who thought it my duty forthwith to make myself a kind of international Meddlesome Mattie and interfere for peace and justice promiscuously over the world.

Others, with a delightful non-sequitur, jumped to the conclusion that inasmuch as I had helped to bring about a beneficent and necessary peace I must of necessity have changed my mind about war being ever necessary.

A couple of days after peace was concluded I wrote to a friend: "Don't you be misled by the fact that just at the moment men are speaking well of me.

They will speak ill soon enough.