The President was not equipped with this simple and usual artfulness.

His mind was too slow and unresourceful to be ready with _any_ alternatives.
The President was capable of digging his toes in and refusing to budge, as he did over Fiume.

But he had no other mode of defense, and it needed as a rule but little manoeuvering by his opponents to prevent matters from coming to such a head until it was too late.

By pleasantness and an appearance of conciliation, the President would be manoeuvered off his ground, would miss the moment for digging his toes in, and, before he knew where he had been got to, it was too late.

Besides, it is impossible month after month in intimate and ostensibly friendly converse between close associates, to be digging the toes in all the time.