November 22d

Now that we have an armistice of sorts a tremendous discussion has arisen as to why Paris has been chosen as the scene of the Great Assizes and why, apparently, President Wilson has decided to take part personally in the discussions which will follow. Many, including Lloyd George, regret the decision that has been made and are quite voluble in expressing the opinion that it is the worst possible choice. Perhaps it is advisable to set down the circumstances that led to the decision, in so far as they are known to me, although I do not regard the matter as having the paramount importance that so many attach to it.

When House was leaving Washington to initiate the Armistice negotiations the President suggested Lausanne as the most suitable place for the Conference. He emphasized the fact that while undoubtedly the people of this Swiss town were pro-Ally in sentiment they were well behaved, unpleasant scenes would not take place, and besides the hotel accommodations were ample. By the time he reached Paris, House leaned personally toward Geneva and at his first meeting with Orlando he found that the Italian Premier was also in favor of the city of Calvin. In the midst of the Armistice discussions, on October 29th, Clemenceau announced that he hoped that Versailles would be chosen. House told him that Lloyd George, Orlando, and he himself were in favor of Geneva. It was agreed, however, that discussion was premature, it was, after all, not at all certain there would be a peace conference, and so the matter went over.

A few days later, when it appeared that Geneva had been definitely settled upon (when and if), a cable came from the President indicating that he had changed his mind and had reached a decision that later he was to regret most poignantly. In this cable, under date of November 8th, the President urged House to leave nothing undone to have Versailles chosen, and the reasons he advanced were as follows: “At Versailles friendly influences are in control, while Switzerland is saturated with every poisonous element, and open to every hostile influence.”

While House confided to his diary that the President’s second choice was a great mistake and that “he does not appreciate the influences we shall have to contend with in Versailles-Paris,” he immediately set to work to carry out the President’s wishes. Lloyd George for some days proved obstinate, but House overcame his opposition in a characteristically adroit manner. Knowing the dislike of the great press lord for the little Welshman, House induced NorthclifTe to enter into the melee, and on November nth the Times of London (his paper) announced, “The Conference must be held in Paris.” The skirmishing continued for some, days, but on November 20th House was able to cable the President that “his choice had prevailed.”

The reasons why the President decided to take part personally in the Conference are more obscure. Undoubtedly, however, the President is mistaken in thinking that he came in response to the wishes of his friends. Many of them indeed ventured to dissuade the President from carrying out this purpose the moment they learned what was in his mind. As had been their custom during the last tense months of the war on every Wednesday afternoon the financial and economic advisors met with the President in the White House to confer with him on their current problems. On this particular Wednesday, three or four days after the Armistice, they were all on hand, and one after another they talked with Wilson. Vance McCormick had his talk, longer than usual, and Harry Garfield waited in a window embrasure with his memorandum in hand. “It was amazing, indeed magical it seemed to me, the way the President jumped from one problem to the next, always clearheaded and always with lucid thought and mind on the question presented,” was the comment of the Fuel Dictator.¹ On this day Garfield noticed that when McCormick left, the President looked out the window for a moment and then called him in. After the current fuel problems had been discussed Garfield lingered on until the President said, “What is on your mind, Harry?” (They had been professors together at Princeton and were on terms of close intimacy.) “I want to ask you not to go to Europe,” said Garfield. “Not to take an active part in the Peace Conference. I and many of your other friends for whom I am speaking fear that if you do go you will have to descend from your present position of world arbiter. You will necessarily become a combatant in the hurly-burly. You will become a contestant in the struggle, in the struggle of which you are the only possible referee.”

The President grew very thoughtful. “There is much in what you say, Harry. I am indeed confronted with a difficult decision.-But now listen to me and weigh my thought. Here in America I understand what is going on throughout the country. I know even before the public what is likely to happen at the Capitol. But Europe is far away, and the voices that come to me from there are so confusing. Half my time, and more, is occupied with decoding dispatches that come from Europe—and must come to me personally. So you see— at least I see—that by going abroad I would save time and would be helped by more direct contacts.” Garfield bowed and was about to withdraw and then he blurted out, “May I say, Mr. President, how greatly I admire your ability to face alone all the problems we have to submit to you!” The President smiled and drawing Garfield to the window said, “I’ll let you into a secret. Between each of the momentous interviews to which you refer I take, as you may have noticed, a peep out of the window. I watch the birds and the squirrels going about their daily tasks. I cannot tell you what refreshment there comes to me from watching them.”

Downstairs Garfield found that McCormick was waiting for him. “What did you talk about so long with the President?” he asked.

“I begged him not to go to Europe—to remain here on top of the uneasy world,” said Garfield.

“That is exactly what I talked to him about,” answered McCormick, and there were many others who in these days expressed similar views and fears.

When the Colonel reached France (October 26th) he had not the remotest idea that the President had any thought of coming to Europe, but soon from many sources he learned that the idea was uppermost in his mind and also that it was being hotly debated in Washington. Under his instructions to make contacts with European leaders and to keep the President advised as to their views, it was impossible for House to hold himself aloof from the controversy, much as he would have liked to. So on November 14th he cabled:

“Americans here whose opinions are of value are practically unanimous in the belief that it would be unwise for you to sit in the Peace Conference. They fear it would involve a loss of dignity and deprive you of your commanding position. Clemenceau has just told me that he hopes you will not sit in the conference because no head of state should sit there. Cobb wires from England that Reading and Wiseman voice the same view. Everyone wants you to come over to take part in the preliminary talks. It is at these meetings that peace terms will be shaped, just as the informal conferences of last month determined the German and Austrian armistices.”

A few hours later House cabled: “It is of vital importance, I think, for you to come as soon as possible for everything is being held in abeyance. Clemenceau assumes that the preliminary discussions will not last more than three weeks while he believes that the Peace Conference may take as long as four months. In announcing your departure I think it important that you should not state that you will sit at the Conference. That can be determined after you get here. The French, English, and Italian Prime Ministers will head their delegations.”

Even for such a trained diplomatist as House, here was presented a most difficult situation. Any suggestion that the President should not come to Paris, or if he did come should not take an active personal part in the negotiations, meant that the chief responsibility for American representation would devolve on the shoulders of House. And it must be admitted that at this juncture even House’s diplomacy failed to conciliate the President, and his reply, though cloaked in cable code, discloses his irritation. It ran:

“Your telegram upsets every plan we had made. I am thrown into complete confusion by the change of program (this is far from an accurate statement. No program had been settled upon, consequently none had been changed). The suggestion that I should not sit as a delegate but that I should be received with the honors due to the chief of state seems to me a way of pocketing me.” Then with evidently rising indignation the President continued: “I infer that the French and British leaders desire to exclude me from the Conference for fear that there I might lead the weaker nations against them. I play the same role in our Government as the Prime Ministers do in theirs. The fact that I am head of the state is of no practical importance. I object very strongly to the fact that dignity must prevent us from securing the results we have set our hearts upon. It is universally expected and generally desired here (?) that I should attend the Conference, but I believe that no one would wish me to sit by and try to steer from the outside. I hope you will be very shy of their advice and give me your own independent judgment after reconsideration.”

This cable put House in an even more difficult situation than before. He had been sent across the water to sound out the leaders of opinion in the countries with which we had been associated in the war and in conjunction with whom it was our task to make an honorable and durable peace. Now the President urged House to turn a deaf ear to their opinions and their advice and to send only his own independent judgment after reconsideration, which of course was tantamount to saying that his advice on the subject, hitherto expressed, had not been independently arrived at. Never had I seen the Colonel so perplexed, but with less than an hour’s delay he handled the situation so loaded with dynamite with his accustomed wisdom. He had now no doubt as to the coming of the President, so he cabled:

“My judgment is that you should determine upon your arrival here what share it is wise for you to take in the proceedings.” And then House sought to change the cable conversation into a field which he hoped would prove more advantageous, but here again he was unsuccessful. The illusion under which the President labored that all the European powers were banded together against America was, as the sequel shows, to become with him an obsession. “I do not note any signs of a reactionary conspiracy among the European powers,” House cabled. “As far as I can see all the powers are trying to work with us rather than with one another. Their disagreements (among themselves) are sharp and constant.”

After a short cooling-off period there came the following answer from Washington which as I decoded it with Gordon Auchincloss I found reassuring: “The President,” it read, “will sail for France, immediately after the opening of the regular session of Congress, for the purpose of taking part in the discussions and the settlement of the main features of the Treaty of Peace. It is not likely that it will be possible for him to remain throughout the formal Peace Conference, but his presence at the outset is necessary in order to obviate the manifest disadvantages of discussion by cable in determining the larger outlines of the final treaty about which he must necessarily be consulted. He will of course be accompanied by delegates who will sit as the representatives of the United States throughout the Conference. The names of the delegates and the date of the meeting will be presently announced.”

I thought, of course, that the Colonel’s wise counsels had prevailed, but the Colonel shook his head. “I hope you are right, but I fear that nothing is definitely settled.”

No one had been more eager to learn what course the President had decided to pursue than Clemenceau, and so I was not surprised when he turned up with Tardieu an hour after this fairly definite cable, at least as I considered it, had arrived. He was gratified that our President would be pleased to propose him for the presidency of the Congress (which he had offered to do in a separate cable), but added it would not be necessary. As the Congress convened in France, automatically, the French Prime Minister would be called upon to preside. But Clemenceau was very persistent in trying to find out whether the President would sit in with the delegates. To his repeated inquiries the Colonel could only answer that after reaching Paris the President would decide. The persistence of the Tiger in making these inquiries revealed an angle of the situation which few had suspected. He knew that President Poincare was most desirous of being called to the French peace delegation. And if this could be arranged, as the Chief Magistrate of France, he would have to be chairman. To his intimates Clemenceau stated that he would resign rather than submit to association with a man he so cordially disliked and distrusted. If the Chief of the American state sat in the Conference his presence would offer something like a precedent for the presence there also of the French President. As long as this cloud hung over the Conference, Clemenceau would have been delighted had Wilson remained in America, but once this danger was removed, and with Poincare definitely out of the running, he greatly preferred, as he often stated, to have Wilson within reach rather than at the end of the cable. . . .

House, realizing that Wilson’s mind was made up, did not argue the matter further. He did not even send on to the President the friendly, if strong, remonstrance of Masaryk against the President’s coming to Paris (in the interview with House on December 7th, at which I was present). He merely said, “Evidently the President is convinced that his presence here is absolutely necessary if liberal forces are to win through, and he may be right.” But on one position the Colonel stood by his guns. By cable he repeated his previous advice to Wilson not to reveal what action he proposed taking until his arrival in Paris. “I think it best that only on your arrival should you determine what share it is wise for you to take in the proceedings.” Then once again he added, with the purpose of dispelling the President’s suspicions, “As far as I can see all the powers are trying to work with us rather than with one another. Among themselves their disagreements are sharp and constant.” To this the President merely answered he was coming to Paris, but on November 19th another cable from him came although this time it was couched, in part at least, in the third person. It read:

“It is not likely that it will be possible for the President to remain throughout the formal sessions of the Peace Conference. If the French Prime Minister is uneasy about the presidency of the Conference I will gladly propose that he preside.”

This settled part of the problem but, in my judgment at least, not the part that most interested and indeed harassed Clemenceau. He feared that if Wilson had insisted upon presiding Poincare would have been in some measure justified in saying that in this case France also must be represented by the Chief of State—and the diplomatic archives of the nations furnish, I believe, some support for this view. However, the Tiger made it quite clear that he would be the kingpin of the French delegation or he would not sit as a delegate at all. So Poincare did not insist upon what may, after all, have been merely the plan of his too-zealous friends.