The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-05-17
Chief Executive Makes Pub- lie Remarkable Address Delivered Before Press Club Monday Night
GIVES IMPRESSIONS
 OF FOREIGN AND
 DOMESTIC PROBLEMS
Kept Awake at Nights Con- sidering European Situa- ti0n-N0t Elected to Do as He Pleased, He Says

Washington, May 16.-President Wilson tonight made public a frank and inti-
 mate review of his three years in the
 White House and his impressions of for- eign and domestic problems, delivered confdentially last night before Washing
 ton correspondents gathered at the Ma
 tional Press club. He spoke of the diff faculties of the presidency and particu- larly of the motives which have guided
 his handling of the European situation. America, the President said, is for peace because she loves peace and believes the present war has carried the nations en- gagged "so far that they cannot be held to ordinary standards of responsibility 2 But, he added, the United States has grown to be one of the great nations of the world and, therefore. must act more or less from the point of view of the rest of the world"
 If I cannot retain my moral influence over a man except by occasionally knock ing him down." he said, If that is the only basis on which he will respect me. | then for the sake of his soul have got
 to occasionally knock him down." The president declared he had been kept
 awake nights considering the European situation, because there might come a. time when the United States would have to do what it did not desire to do and "the great burden on my spirits has been that it has been up to me to choose when 1 that time came" He added that he did
 not conceive that he had been elected President to do as he pleased. "If [ were it would have been very much moro linteresting,'' he said.
 | ON PUBLIC MEN
 | Impressions of public men as a c,ass
 were given frankly by the President, with l the comment that some grew and some ; swelled. He also discussed the relations of the newspapers to the affairs of the nation, and sounded WI -..lng that false information about foreign affairs was
 more than likely to lead to trouble. The Presidents remarks as originally
 delivered were read by him carefully be- fore it was made public, but no irnpor- tant portions were eliminated, and tho wording was not changed substantiaI.S The text of the Presidents speech Ed lows:
 'I am both glad and sorry to be hvFes glad because I am always happy to with you, and know and like so many of you, and sorry because have to make a speech. One of the leading faults of you gentlemen of the press is your in- | ordinate desire to hear other men talk, to draw them out upon all occasions, whethsr they wish to be drawn out or not. I remember being in tnIs press club once before. making many unpremeditated disclosures of myself and then having you with your singular instinct for pub | licity insist that should give it away l to everybody else.
 FORECAST WAS VERIFIED q was thinking as was looking for- ward to coming here this evening of that ! other occasion when I stood very nearly 1 at the threshold of the duties that 1 have since been called upon to perform, and I was going over in my mind the ] impressions that I then had by way of forecast of the duties of President and comparing them with the experiences that have followed. I must say that the foie- cast has been very largely verified. and 1 that the impressions had then have been deepened rather than weakened. 1 "You may recall that I said then