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decades before they reached the White House and had acquired graduate degrees in political sophistication over the years. Edith Galt Wilson’s interest in politics was so minimal that she did not even know who was running in the presidential election of 1912, when her future husband won the White House. Even more minimal was her education—only two years of formal schooling. Her adult life had been largely involved with business. Her late husband had owned a jewelry store known as “the Tiffany’s of Washington. ” After his death, she managed the business with the help of a hardworking brother.
    Nevertheless, the recently widowed Wilson, in his passionate pursuit of Mrs. Galt, undertook to convert her into a partner in the most confidential aspects of his presidency. He conferred with her about his letters to the German government and his problems with Haiti, Mexico and the Republican opposition. Soon she was telling him,“Much as I love your delicious love-letters . . . I believe I enjoy even more the ones in which you tell me . . . of what you are working on . . . for then I feel I am . . . being taken in to partnership as it were.” 42
    After their marriage on December 18, 1915, this partnership became even more explicit. Each morning, Edith joined the president in inspecting “the Drawer,” the place in his Oval Office desk where aides placed reports from the State Department or other parts of the government requiring the president’s immediate attention. Edith regularly converted into code Wilson’s letters to ambassadors or to House when the colonel was conferring with political leaders in London and Paris, and decoded letters from them. She frequently remained in the Oval Office while Wilson dictated answers to urgent letters. When Colonel House returned from Europe, he was amazed when Wilson invited Edith to join them to hear about his supersecret negotiations with the British and French. 43
    This crash course in power politics made Edith Galt Wilson presume a political wisdom she did not possess. The illusion would have a deleterious impact not only on Joe Tumulty and Colonel House, but also on Woodrow Wilson’s presidency and the history of the world.

XIII
    Elsewhere in the country, the news that the United States had gone to war landed with a dull thud. No one danced or demonstrated in the streets. In New York, newsboys sold extras to the usual crowds in Times Square. But there was no visible response. About a hundred people read the bulletin boards in Herald Square, where the latest news flashes were posted, without the slightest sign of excitement. The contrast between the way the war had begun in Europe, with tens of thousands of Germans, French, and Russians cheering the news, was stark. 44
    There was some mild interest in a New York Times story about a hearing before the New York State Senate in Albany to resolve a dispute between Mayor John Purroy Mitchel of New York City and State Senator Robert F. Wagner. The senator had demanded the hearing to clear his name when the mayor accused him of being an agent of the German government. The Times reported that the senate gave Wagner a clean bill of patriotic health.
    Another story reported that the pro-war president of Columbia University, Nicholas Murray Butler, had expelled one Morris Ryskind of the School of Journalism for writing an article in the college magazine, The Jester , calling him a warmonger. Ryskind had also lampooned the pompous president in a poem. The Times claimed that the entire university supported the decision to give Ryskind the boot. The opinionated young man went on to Broadway and Hollywood fame as the writer of Marx Brothers comedies and hit plays in collaboration with George S. Kaufman. 45
    Only in the Metropolitan Opera House was there any political drama. That was mostly supplied by the former ambassador to Berlin, James W. Gerard, who was violently anti-German. During intermission, he heard the newsboys shouting on the