Bonsal, Stephen
Stories
2
Chapters
255
Words
240.5 K
Comments
0
Reading
20 h, 2 m
In war there are always mysteries, and the Great War is no exception to the rule. The all-engrossing mystery here, in military circles at least, is why the High Command detached two army corps from the Western Front just before the Battle of the Marne, where they might well have exercised a decisive influence. Even more mysterious is the fact that they were sent to the Eastern Front, where, evidently, they were not needed and certainly not asked for. By this step, the right wing, the famous right wing of…- 128.6 K • Completed
- Count Bernstorff, former German Ambassador in Washington, called upon me on Monday afternoon. He was looking well. He said he had enjoyed his nearly three months’ vacation in the country. He had left Berlin on the last day of June, after his party, the so-called National Democrats, had split upon the question of signing the Peace Treaty. He said to me that he, himself, had been in favor of signing, but as the majority of his party voted against it, he felt he could not accept the post of Permanent…
- 128.6 K • Completed
- The first man I ran into today as I surveyed the wreckage of Berlin “after the whirlwind of war” was poor old XYZ. He would have a fit if he thought I put his name in my diary. Ten years ago I knew him as a daring rider at Baden-Baden, once at least the winner of the famous steeplechase. He was a gallant regimental officer three years ago; today he drags one leg and there is a curious tic to his left cheek, which suggests something quite serious that is to come. He was cold and standoffish when I ran…
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- M. Larnaude, while admitting that his dear colleague, M. Bourgeois, had talked for two hours yet merely skimmed the surface of the vital subject, now whirled in with, “We shall astonish and depress an expectant world if we say, or merely imply, that we are making an experiment for a period of ten years. The world wants something definite and final.” Wilson: “I—none of us have the most remote idea of limiting the life or the duration of the League. Yet Sovereign States cannot be permanently…
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- Note (Late in May Colonel Bonsal was sent from Paris to Washington to secure certain information as to the situation there. Early in July he rejoined Colonel House in London and with his chief worked with the commissioners of the powers there assembled to shape, classify, and allocate the mandates over countries that as yet could not stand alone, as had been agreed in general terms, by the Peace Conference. As the possibility of America failing to accept any of the mandates, in view of the increasing…
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- House had sent to Mr. Root some weeks ago the draft of the racial-equality provision which Baron Makino wishes to have inserted in the Preamble, or attached to some appropriate Article of the Covenant. Here is Root’s answer, at least in paraphrase: “Don’t let it in, it will breed trouble. In any event, you’re going to have hard sledding, but with the racial provision, you will get nowhere in the Senate. And the people . . . ? On the Pacific coast, at least, they would think there lurked…
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- 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…
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- Some of the French writers, and this is natural enough, and some of the American correspondents, and this I think is not as it should be, are making labored jokes over the quick work of the Covenant Commission. They admit that the world, according to Genesis, was created in six days, but they contend in those days supernatural assistance was available. “Things are different now, but all the same Wilson and House have been fast workers. In ten committee meetings they have reshaped the world.” In view…
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- Today, to our immense relief, the Conference in Plenary Session approved the amended Covenant with the Monroe Doctrine reservation. The great salle was chockablock with dynamite, but thanks to the masterly handling of the situation by Clemenceau none of it was touched off. Hughes, the weird little Prime Minister of Australia, was simply bursting with an anti-League, anti-Japanese speech, and M. Bourgeois was all primed to advance once again his demand, so frequently rejected in the Commission, for an…
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- The President secured, in the Committee at least, the Monroe Doctrine reservation and also the amendment to the Covenant which permits the powers to withdraw from the League and escape its responsibilities on two years’ notice. It is a victory which Senators in Washington, both supporters and opponents of the Treaty, say will smooth the path to ratification, but it cannot be denied that both these changes have weakened the President’s position here. It is true, of course, that none of the powers…
- 128.6 K • Completed
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