November 7, 1918

I have been so busy during the past seven days, fetching and carrying, translating notes, condensing interminable conversations, and talking over the Paris telephone (alas, and getting nowhere), that I find I have not been able to make a daily record of the many happenings of this momentous week. How I wish I could resume my familiar role of a detached observer and be relieved of the subordinate but exacting tasks that now fall to my lot.

Today, however, there is a breathing spell, and I shall endeavor to recall what it seems to me has happened. After the preliminary skirmish on the morning of October 29th, in Colonel House’s apartment on the Rue de l’Université, the great men came together once again at the Quai d’Orsay in the afternoon. It was evident that the plenipotentiaries, Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Balfour, and Sonnino, were one and all disinclined to accept the Wilson program as a whole. Lloyd George opened the ball by asking House a very pointed question.

“If we agree to this armistice,” he asked, “do you think we are accepting Wilson’s terms—all of them?”

“I certainly do,” answered House.

Then the Fourteen Points were read and reread. Now Lloyd George would read one with a wry face, and then Clemenceau would take a hand in the discussion. After each point had been brought out, House would read the explanatory remarks, the “commentary,” as it was called, that had been drawn up by Cobb and Lippmann under the guiding hand of the Colonel, and which, when cabled to Washington, had met with the President’s approval. The discussions that followed clearly revealed the points of difference and the fact that the plenipotentiaries, far from getting together, were drifting farther apart. House finally intervened, making, as he afterwards admitted, the longest speech of his life. He said:

“If the Allies are unwilling to accept the Fourteen Points upon which Germany has based her request for an armistice, there can be, as far as I can see, only one course for the President to pursue. He would have to tell the Germans that the conditions which they had accepted are not acceptable to the powers with which America has been associated.”

The words “has based” and “has been” fell upon the little group like a cold douche. And then House continued:

“America would then have to take up direct negotiations with Germany and Austria.”

Lloyd George sprang to his feet, his eyes ablaze.

“Would that mean a separate peace between America and the Central Powers?”

“It might well,” said House.

Now that the deep rift—indeed the yawning abyss—became apparent, everybody tried to back away from it. Everybody talked but said nothing; finally Lloyd George suggested that the meeting adjourn and that the delegates, each in his own way, should attempt to draw up changes and reservations to the Points that it was hoped might be found acceptable to all at the next meeting. An hour later House sent to Washington a full account of the delicate situation that was developing and in an almost incredibly short time received the following cable instruction from Mr. Wilson:

“I feel it my solemn duty to authorize you to say that I cannot consent to negotiations that do not include the Freedom of the Seas and the League of Nations. I hope I shall not be compelled to make this, our final decision, public.”

That night House put on his thinking cap to excellent purpose, and on the morning of the thirtieth, as arranged, he conferred with the plenipotentiaries assembled at the War Ministry, Clemenceau presiding. Again everybody wanted to talk, but House expressed the opinion that the subject had been fully threshed out, that both standpoints had been fairly and fully developed, and, as a result, he said:

“I have decided to advise the President to lay before Congress the peace terms which he has approved, and also the terms that England and France and Italy apparently insist upon. In this way he would be giving the war-making powers all the facts, and ask for their decision. The question I think he would present is this: ‘Should we make peace with Germany, now that she has accepted our terms, or should we go on fighting Germany until she is forced to accept the terms that France, England, and Italy apparently insist upon?’”

Appreciating the gravity of the situation and how disastrous an open debate on the question of war aims would prove, and in full knowledge of the prestige that Wilson enjoyed in the liberal and democratic groups of the allied countries involved, an adjournment was proposed and agreed to, and a few hours later the British reservations on the debated questions reached House. They differed greatly both in spirit and letter from the verbal objections which Lloyd George had made. Lloyd George now asked merely that the question of the Freedom of the Seas be not regarded as settled, but that he and others should be permitted to discuss it at the sessions of the Peace Conference “in the light of the new conditions which have arisen in the course of the present war,” he explained in an informal note to House several hours later.

Lloyd George wrote: “There may be confusion here. Freedom of the Seas—what does it mean? The Tiger says it means that we shall have to abjure our inalienable right of waging war and he will have none of that. But we do know what a blockade is and what a blessing it has proved to be. It is the weapon to which we owe our lives and our victory. If I broke it or even blunted it Parliament would vote me out of office in twenty-four hours. And Parliament would be quite right.¹”

Now that Germany is crumbling and the end of the war is evidently in sight, attacks on the President’s policy which after all paved the way to peace are appearing in the Paris press. The first volley, at least the first that has caught my eye, was fired (October 26th) in the Echo de Paris and it is signed by the industrious Pertinax. He writes, “The Allies are bound by nothing that Mr. Wilson wrote or even typed on his famous typewriter.” Many of the jackals have taken up the cry of this scurvy pack that Pertinax leads, but their campaign is serving a purpose which most certainly they did not foresee. Many important French groups are rallying to the President and expressions of good will are flooding the Colonel’s mail. Included are letters from the Grand Confederation of Labor, from the League of the Rights of Man, and the Republican Coalition. They have sent in a joint resolution warning the Government not “to lend its ear to the excitations of the Chauvinist Press that is often more responsive to the spirit of conquest than to the desire for justice.” It is clear that Pertinax has builded better, much better, than he knew. He is helping the President with very important sections of the French people.