April 30th

House had a long talk with Clemenceau today and they made me sit in with them. House told the Tiger that while Wilson thought it was quite unnecessary, the matter of possible invasion being fully covered by the terms of the Covenant, he would fight for the Rhine Agreement. In a general way he told the Tiger that the President was heartsick over some of the compromises he had been compelled to make, but that now he would not yield another inch either at home or abroad. The Tiger then went on to admit that we Europeans “are a tough bunch” and again he insisted, as often before, that the preparation des Ames for the Wilson creed had not been very thorough and certainly far from complete. “You most certainly have not indoctrinated little Hymans with your beautiful ideas,” he said. “He wants to annex Limburg, where the strong cheeses come from, and both banks of the Scheldt, and he scowls when I say, ‘But, mon Ami, do they not belong to the Dutch?’ How he scowls when I say that.” After a pause the Tiger continued, “Hymans is a small man physically, and in many other ways, but his imagination is simply prodigious. He is confident that Belgium put ten million men in the field and saved the Great Powers from enslavement by the Huns, but if we don’t give him Limburg he may not intervene another time. Yes! take it from me, dear friend, some of the litde pups are just as bad as the great black bears, and if the Lodge group in the Senate succeeds in abandoning Mr. Wilson’s beautiful creation on our doorstep we shall hear from them.” House laughed and pooh-poohed the possibility and the Tiger said, “I hope you are right.”

I have never been as confident of the outcome of the Crusade as House certainly was, and may be yet. I recall with misgiving what the President said in that great speech to Congress in joint session, on December 4th, I think, in 1917. He said:

“Statesmen must by this time have learned that the opinion of the world is everywhere wide-awake and fully comprehends the issues involved. No representative of any self-governed nation will dare disregard it by attempting any such covenants of selfishness and compromise as were entered into at the Congress of Vienna. . . . The Congress that concludes this war will feel the full strength of the tides that run now in the hearts and consciences of free men everywhere. Its conclusions will run with those tides.”

Certainly he cannot believe that now. Certainly little Hymans does not feel that tide, or if he does he minimizes its strength, and certainly the subtle and slippery Scialoja, the back-stage brains of the Italian delegation, does not; and these Founding Fathers (!) will assuredly be on hand when the League meets next November and will seek to reshape it and to nullify many of its provisions that were nearest to the heart of the man who inspired it and gave it the breath of life. Suppose the prophets who say that the pendulum is swinging away from Europe, and that America is about to withdraw into her shell, are justified by the course of events, what will become of the Covenant? True it is that Bourgeois, although the most obstinate opponent of some of its provisions, told House today that while he regarded it as pitifully insufficient he would fight for its ratification in the Senate, of which he is an influential member, “as a step, although a short step, in the right direction.” And of course Cecil and Smuts, the able lieutenants to whom the President owes so much, will put up a good fight for what he fought for and for what they believe, but will they be there? Their duties may call them to distant fields in their far-flung Empire. But Hymans and Scialoja will be there and judging by their past activities with no helpful purpose.¹

One question is on every lip: have we made the world safe for Democracy? Time alone will bring the answer. Fresh from my contacts with the peacemakers, I am not optimistic. I recall the eloquent words with which the President announced to Congress in February 1918 the purpose and the plan of his world crusade. He said: “We fight for a new International Order; without that new Order at the end of the war the world would be without peace.” Well, it can only be asserted while the battle is not won the struggle continues.

True, as the President said in the clarion note with which he later opened the battle for peace. There is abroad “a great compulsion of the Common Conscience,” and he has spoken as he promised to do with the “Great Voice of Humanity.” Unless these words are heeded at home, and abroad, generations yet unborn will rue the day they came into a war-ridden world.