Was the Treaty really as bad as it seemed?
What had happened to the President?
What weakness or what misfortune had led to so extraordinary, so unlooked-for a betrayal?
Yet the causes were very ordinary and human.

The President was not a hero or a prophet; he was not even a philosopher; but a generously intentioned man, with many of the weaknesses of other human beings, and lacking that dominating intellectual equipment which would have been necessary to cope with the subtle and dangerous spellbinders whom a tremendous clash of forces and personalities had brought to the top as triumphant masters in the swift game of give and take, face to face in Council,--a game of which he had no experience at all.
We had indeed quite a wrong idea of the President.

We knew him to be solitary and aloof, and believed him very strong-willed and obstinate.
We did not figure him as a man of detail, but the clearness with which he had taken hold of certain main ideas would, we thought, in combination with his tenacity, enable him to sweep through cobwebs.
Besides these qualities he would have the objectivity, the cultivation, and the wide knowledge of the student.

The great distinction of language which had marked his famous Notes seemed to indicate a man of lofty and powerful imagination.

His portraits indicated a fine presence and a commanding delivery.