February 14th

Absit omen! Some do think it ominous, but the Colonel and I are determined to laugh it off. Yet, it cannot be denied that yesterday, within a very few hours after signing the pact of peace and the Covenant, the members of the League of Nations Commission fell openly into inharmonious groups. The question that divided them was how and where their “counterfeit presentment” should be achieved. Of course this is an important matter. The faces of those who have fought for peace in this the first Parliament of Man must be preserved through the world press to enjoy the respect and perhaps the veneration of generations to come who, profiting by their labors, will assuredly rise up and call them blessed. For at least ten days the photographic division of the Signal Corps had been badgering the Colonel on this subject. Its ranking photographer maintained—and not without reason—that the League for the most part was made in America, that its acceptance was made possible by the presence of our President, further that the discussions which have now come to a happy conclusion took place on American territory. (In view of the price which Uncle Sam is paying for the Hotel Crillon this temporary lease should carry with it extraterritorial rights, and perhaps it does.) Insisting on these facts, the Lieutenant of the Lens claims that it is an American show and consequently that the Signal Corps is entitled to the first picture. He also fears—and I happen to know that his fears are not entirely without foundation—that some enterprising newspaper photographer may steal a march on the corps and get the first picture. “It will go over big at home,” he claims; “it will be published from coast to coast, from Pole to Pole. It is a document that will live in history like the Magna Charta and the Declaration. We are entitled to the first show—anyhow we must get it.”

The Colonel agreed, and yesterday the photographers came in with all their formidable paraphernalia. When strange smells emerged from cans and filled the great council chamber, no one looked his best; and when it was reluctantly admitted that the picture would have to be taken by flashlight, the President put his foot down, and he put it down quite energetically. “I hate flashlight or calcium pictures,” he protested. “Everybody looks as though they were laid out in a morgue and besides the flashes hurt my eyes.” The Colonel hit upon a compromise scheme to meet the emergency, but he was not very enthusiastic about it. He, too, thought that the picture of the Peacemakers should be taken in the historic chamber where they had concluded their preliminary labors, but as this was impossible, except with the artificial agency which the President vetoed, the Colonel thought the best thing that could be done, perhaps in the circumstances the only thing that could be done, was to shoo all the delegates out of the Council room and have a picture taken by flash of the historic table where they had labored. Then move the delegates into another apartment where heaven-given light alone would suffice to preserve their features for all time.

This movement of the mighty men was not easy; it had to be explained in many tongues, and some thought it foolish, and then the picture of the empty table without the documents piled mountains high and with no one sitting around it they thought a travesty on their labors. “I call it misrepresentative,” said the Portuguese Minister, and he without more ado slipped away. The rest I herded into the new apartment which they had never seen before, and in a few moments with his magician touch the Colonel had placed them in clusters about the President and all seemed satisfied. I thought I had nothing further to do in the matter and was making an unobtrusive getaway when the President, who for some minutes had shown signs of irritation, called me back with, “You mustn’t leave me in this Tower of Babel.” So I stood by him, but as far as possible in the background, as became my subordinate position. Also behind the great men lowered a Belgian and a Polish secretary, but I cannot recall their names probably because I never knew them. Today a proof of the picture has come, and the Signal Corps promises to supply it to the press of the world. The Colonel says that I look as if I was trying to run away. That feature is certainly a true picture of the scene. I was.

But House found consolation in the counterfeit presentment of the empty table. “It is an historic scene,” he contended. “It presents a picture of a greater Independence Hall in which the representatives of the enlightened powers will draft the Covenant that should, we hope, safeguard the world from war and all the misfortunes that follow in its train. And you should faithfully record how the Greater Charter of the emancipation of a war-stricken world was hammered out.” Among the reasons why I suggested I was incapable of filling this role was the fact that even the phonographic duties of interpreting the speeches of the delegates were far beyond my powers and certainly most fatiguing.