April 4, 1919

The attacks on the President, and what is more important the misrepresentation of the peace policies which he pursues, have broken out again with vitriolic force in both the provincial and the metropolitan newspapers. There was, it is true, an outbreak of this nature toward the end of January but, with the consent of the President, House put an end to it by announcing in one of his newspaper conferences that as apparently his views were not understood, Mr. Wilson was thinking of making a full statement of his hopes and his fears in a Plenary session of the Conference to which the world press would be admitted. As this was the very last thing that the French government wished to have happen, the brakes were put on and the anti-Wilson philippics vanished from the front pages. Today, however, as it is known that the President does not view the situation on the Rhine in the same light as does Clemenceau and that he is most reluctant to sanction the three five-year periods of occupation by the Allied armies which Foch insists on, columns of billingsgate are filling the papers once again.

Today we placed the collection of these diatribes which Frazier and I had culled before the Colonel. He was more angry than I have ever seen him and having arranged a call on Clemenceau by telephone he went to see him at the War Ministry. He was back an hour later and evidently greatly pleased with the result of his talk. “I told the Tiger that as far as they aimed at the President or myself these attacks left us both indifferent, but as the United States was also misrepresented and her motives aspersed this press campaign was damaging the good relations between our respective countries and that was serious—something I was sure he could not countenance. The Tiger agreed with me and called in General Mordacq and his young secretary, Jean Martet. In my presence he told them that the relations between America and France were excellent, indeed they were the hope of saving the world from anarchy. ‘You must call up every paper and press agency in Paris and inform them that these attacks must cease.’”

Then the Tiger and the Colonel talked about more agreeable matters for ten minutes or so and as he left the Ministry we heard the uproar from the telephone booths. “Figaro alloo! Alloo! Matin alloo!”