Wilsoniana

To the rich larder of documents, reports, memoirs, novels on the War and its aftermath which future historians must digest, a new titbit was added last week. William Randolph Hearst's able, convivial

Editor Ray Long published in Cosmopolitan the letters of Miss Edith Benham, social secretary to President Woodrow Wilson and his second wife, written to her fiance Rear Admiral James M. Helm. Social Secretary Benham reported almost daily to her Admiral the progress of the Paris Peace Conference as she observed it from the Wilson's Paris headquarters, the ornate Bischoffsheim house at 11 Place des Etats Unis.

Excerpts: "March 15, 1919: Contrary to the French custom, and the custom everywhere for that matter, the bedroom suites for the President and Mrs. Wilson are on the ground floor which opens on a pretty little garden.

"The President was convulsed with laughter by the bathing arrangements in his room. A large green tub partly in the room and partly built into the wall. Over this is a mezzanine gallery where he could have musicians play while he bathed! But the President had his clothes pressed there instead.

"March 22: Last night the President came in tired out. . . , The French are behaving badly and he says he really thinks they want to begin the War again. They want to do just what Germany did in '70: annex some of Germany and then stir up bad feeling.

"March 27: . . . The President is getting so outdone that he says that he will suggest to Lloyd George that he and Lloyd George draw up the peace terms and if France refuses them, publish the fact and the terms and go home.

"March 31: . . . Mr. Lloyd George is a man of great charm and very amusing. He held forth on the Irish question and said when he had the various leaders before him he could never get from them what they wanted. The President said he would simply turn the whole matter over to the Irish people if he were the British Government and reserve the motion picture rights!

"April 9: After luncheon a former secretary at the Rumanian court for several years told me he had heard that the Queen [Marie] of Rumania is most anxious to meet the President. . . .

"April 18: Conversation at the table is not so interesting as it was because one of the servants is undoubtedly a spy.

"April 21: Today the President said that Orlando* for whom he says he has not only a liking but a real affection . . . read a speech which was really Italy's ultimatum of what she must have or withdraw, and then, when the end came, he sobbed piteously. . . . The Italians are refusing to sign the peace negotiations with Germany if they cannot have Fiume.

"April 24: ... I have just gone to the window in time to see our President come out. If he had yielded one thing about Fiume [to Italy], the world would never believe in us or our idealism.

"April 26: Secret advices today are to the effect that the Italian fleet is ordered to Fiume and the army is told to advance toward it. Our navy there is advised to hold all their men aboard ship. . . . The question came up of Herbert Hoover as a Presidential candidate--Democratic. Mr. Baruch seems to think he wants to run."

*Vittorio Emanuele Orlando, Prime Minister and leader of the Italian delegation to the Peace Conference, lost his Government in June 1919 for failure to obtain better terms for Italy.

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