February 10th

The President showed today unmistakable signs of irritation with his co-workers on the Peace Treaty. Attempts are being made, and they are many and subtle, to separate the Treaty from the Covenant, but they are not as many or quite as Machiavellian as the President chooses to assume. Much can be said in favor of rushing ahead with a settlement of territorial and reparation matters. Foch reports, no doubt correctly, that the Germans are “welshing” on all the disarmament clauses of the Armistice protocol; on the other hand, our information is that the Spartacist uprising in Germany is by no means quelled and that should Moscow send the promised munitions and above all the money that has also been promised, the Weimar people would have their work cut out for them.

Since the President has come to grips with Balfour and Lloyd George, not to speak of Clemenceau and Orlando, plus the cynical Sonnino, he is more and more convinced, as he unwisely announced before he arrived in Paris, that only he and some, not even all, of his delegates are on the side of the angels! If he gets a treaty, and now he must be convinced that no treaty would be worse than the treaty that is within his grasp even if it falls far short of the ideal he dreamed in faraway America, it will contain provisions of which he does not approve, but if the treaty is intertwined with his Covenant, now practically finished, then a step forward will have been taken and the wicked predatory powers will be at least pledged to assist in its improvement.

Of course those in favor of a quick preliminary treaty can and do advance many plausible reasons in favor of at least two solemn but separate compacts to start the world upon its new course, but the President is adamant and will not yield an inch, and in the circumstances I think he is right. The two compacts must be “intertwined”; that is his favorite word, and it is a descriptive one. He will sign the Treaty even if, as he fears, it will contain things of which he cannot approve but only if it is “intertwined.” Those who say that the two documents will have equal force even when signed and ratified separately the President denounces as sophists and sometimes I hear he uses an uglier word. Even a blind man could see the disadvantages of further delay, which the President’s plan entails, and truly the danger of the present state of uncertainty is very great, but still I am convinced that the President is right. He is dealing with men who are not entirely trustworthy, and from what he has learned by bitter experience in the last six weeks he knows that any treaty they sign will be in great need of copious libations of holy water such as will flow, it is hoped, from the font of the Covenant.