Henry B. Fine to Woodrow Wilson

COPY
My dear Tommy:
Your letter of Feb. 24th reached me on Sunday Mar. 9th. Yesterday came your cablegram of March 10th to which I cabled a reply and then began a letter which was not finished when your second cablegram arrived asking me not to decide until letter reached me.
I can not express the pleasure I felt that you should think me the proper man for so important and distinguished a post as the German Ambassadorship and that you should desire me to fill it. In making me the offer you may have paid me one of the greatest compliments it is in the power of the President to pay one of his fellow citizens and you do not need to be assured that I appreciate it and am gratified to you for it.
But while I shall consider your letter with an open mind when it arrives the reasons against my accepting the appointment now seem to me so weighty that I doubt whether I can arrive at any other conclusion than the one already cabled you.
In the first place, I am convinced that you can find a better man than I for the post. All that can be said for me is that I am a scholar of some reputation in a field rather remote from general human interests, that I possess a fair amount of judgment and tact, and that in university work I have shown good administrative ability. I have had no training in statecraft and have no real knowledge of jurisprudence, economics, or international law. My German, on which I fear you may have reckoned , answers well enough for conversational purposes, but would not show to advantage in public speech.
Again, while I do not know the salary attaching to this ambassadorship, I have often heard that it is insufficient to meet the requirements of the representative of the American Government in such a European capitol as Berlin, even when these requirements in mode of life, entertaining, and so on, are reduced to terms as simple as it is reasonable to make them. If my understanding of these conditions be correct, I can not financially afford to be the Ambassador.
Nor can I afford to resign my Princeton professorship which carries with it an assured income for life to accept such an appointment. But would it not be necessary for me to resign the professorship if I did accept the appointment? The trustees of Princeton might be willing to grant me leave of absence for a brief period, but to ask them to hold my professorship open for a period long enough to enable me to render any real service at Berlin would be unreasonable.
And finally, and this is the chief consideration, so far as the question of my own personal happiness is concerned, I am more deeply interested in mathematics than in anything else. To be compelled to terminate my career as a mathematician would be to me a catastrophy. To interrupt it for a few years to enter upon a life which seems to me too full of social obligations to be attractive and my fitness for which I regard as problematical is a step which I could only be persuaded to take from a sense of duty. And I can not imagine any public service which I am better qualified to render, as ambassador to Germany, than other men whom you could appoint.
I have stated the case as it now lies in my mind. When I have read your letter it is possible that I may feel differently. At all events I shall think the whole question out again in the light of what you say before cabling you my final decision.
I can not conclude this letter, full as it is of myself, without telling you how proud we all are of the magnificent way in which you have begun your administration.
With love from us all to you all, as ever,
(Signed) President Woodrow Wilson,