April 16, 1919

Some of the President’s “liberal minded” admirers (last year in Washington by many they were denounced as parlor Bolsheviks) are today, I find, criticizing him severely. They assert that he has entirely abandoned his policy of “open covenants, openly arrived at” which endeared him to them and that now in consultation with the three war lords of Britain and France and Italy he is, in “Star-Chamber” proceedings, reshaping the world and that the hundreds of millions of people who are involved are not having “a look in” much less a say about it.

The evidence they advance is based on the undoubted fact that the famous Council of Ten, composed of the foreign ministers of the Allied and Associated Powers, which filled the scene in January, has to all intents and purposes been dissolved. Yet in reality it has not been dissolved; from time to time a contentious bone is thrown to its members. But the great and vital problems are reserved for the Big Four. The President is made responsible for this change in course or method, and there is some truth in the charge. On several occasions he became very angry because of the leaks that emerged from the Council of Ten, which some of the correspondents insisted on calling the “cave of the winds.” It was soon apparent that ten foreign ministers, each with an axe to grind, accompanied by at least two secretaries and an unlimited number of “experts,” could not be expected to maintain strict secrecy.

As a matter of fact, the original resounding slogan which traveled around the world was greatly misunderstood. The President had never proposed that publicity should be given to the proceedings of the Conference until decisions had been arrived at. While not an able negotiator like House, and averse to caucus proceedings which House favors and enjoys, the President probably knew how unpalatable it would be to a minister of foreign affairs to have it heralded at home and abroad that he had failed to put over a point of view which was dear to his government and which he had been instructed to insist upon. One might imagine that such knowledge was rudimentary, but the history of the Ten demonstrates that it is a lesson which many of its members found difficult to digest. As House knew, “face saving” was only possible in secret sessions. All the delegates have to recede at times from their original stand and accept compromises (and this will also be the fate of the President of the United States who, since November u, is no longer the undisputed lord of the world).

“The result of our labors we shall trumpet to the world,” says House, “but the details of how they are arrived at should be, and must be, veiled out of consideration for those who have failed to secure all that they wanted. In my political experience I have found it difficult to persuade a statesman to accept defeat while the light of publicity beats upon his fevered brow, but privately, most of them are quite reasonable.”

To meet this situation the Big Four was invented. Here the danger of leaks is greatly reduced but there is another danger. Practically no record is kept of the discussions; the four great personages are likely to recall only what they wish to remember, and when it comes to registering the decisions arrived at, disputes may arise. As a matter of fact this very thing has happened, and House fears that in escaping the frying pan the negotiators may have fallen into the fire. However, only one thing is certain, a world settlement cannot be arrived at in a few hours or overnight. It is going to take time and most certainly it will not please everybody. The birth pangs will prove painful and the ordeal will leave scars.

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Undeniably for some days the ship of international state has been wallowing in the doldrums. “All our quartermasters are whistling for a sail-filling wind,” confessed the Colonel today, “but unfortunately they each want it to come from a different direction.” The press, national and international, is in an angry mood, and while the Conference is really doing nothing the charge is heard in many quarters that with Star-Chamber procedure the Big Four or the Big Three are plotting atrocious things. Agreement there is on one point in the newspapers, and that is to the effect that the slogan of only a few short weeks ago, “Open covenants openly arrived at,” has been thrown overboard.

This is far from being the truth, but perhaps it is not more disastrous than a frank confession of the truth would be, for the fact is that the unhappy pilots who were expected to steer the craft bearing the comity of nations into a restful haven after the storms and turmoil of war are at their wits’ end and at the ragged end of their patience too. Although the reefs ahead, and indeed on every quarter, are plainly visible, most of the delegates are wrangling over selfish interests, and all thought of the common good would seem to have fled.

But the charge of undue secrecy is absurd. Here in Paris are entrenched some thirty or forty discordant peace delegations (and as many more who have not been invited to participate), and each and every one of the recognized delegations has been given its day in court and some of them have had at least a week. The spokesmen of these delegations before they appear before the perplexed Peace Tribunal issue copious communiqués to the press setting forth their desiderata, the maximum that they hope for, and at times the minimum that they will accept. And after the hearings are over the impressions received, which they are to carry home, are also given the widest publicity. It is true that much of this is not printed in the popular political press because apparently it is all so complicated and because there is so little interest in the details. London, Paris, Rome, and Washington are indeed united in a desire for peace, but alas, each wants, as is said so often and with truth, a peace à son guise.

Le Temps and several of the other more serious papers here try to be helpful but they are not overly successful. Each afternoon Le Temps runs three or four columns under the invariable rubric, “La Organisation de la Paix.” Even a hasty glance at the Conference table reveals the fact that the doves of peace that assembled here in January are fast developing into veritable fighting cocks, and most of them sport on all occasions their steel spurs. For every difficulty that is ironed out a score of complications resulting from a clash of what are held to be vital interests puts in appearance.

The Colonel is not dismayed. “Full speed ahead” is still his cheerful slogan, but he is well aware that little progress is being made. In the sessions of the Great Four discussions are increasingly violent and there have been several “squarings off” which with lesser men would be regarded as altercations. The truth is everyone would like to go home and President Wilson is not the only one who has threatened to do so with his request to be informed when the George Washington could reach Brest. Yes, the weary statesmen would like to go home, but they cannot bring themselves to confess failure or to admit that all the high hopes with which they came together have gone a-glimmering. That must not be, and the Colonel is determined that all present must make fast their moorings to the Covenant and trust that those who come after will be able to clean up the mess. “Even reduced to bare poles,” he argues, “the Covenant will give the world a chance to reflect before plunging into the abyss of war again.”