The collecting and sifting of such information for the Conference had begun years before. The French, systematic as always, had appointed governmental commissions, economic, military, geographic, and had also a special university committee with Professor Lavisse as chairman, the Comité d’Etudes, which prepared two admirable volumes, with detailed maps, on the European problems of the conference. The British had printed two considerable series of Handbooks, one got out by the Naval Intelligence Division under the guidance of Professor W. McNeil Dixon of Glasgow, the other prepared in the Historical Section of the Foreign Office under the editorship of Sir George Prothero. The United States had put little into print, but more than a year before the armistice, by direction of the President, Colonel Edward M. House had organized a comprehensive investigation, known as the ‘Inquiry,’ with its headquarters at the building of the American Geographical Society in New York City, whose secretary, Dr. Isaiah Bowman, served as executive officer. It enlisted throughout the country the services of a large number of geographers, historians, economists, statisticians, ethnologists, and students of government and international law; and carloads of maps, statistics, manuscript reports, and fundamental books of reference accompanied the American Commission to Paris. The specialists who went along or were later brought together were organized into a group of economic advisers—Messrs. Baruch, Davis, Lamont, McCormick, Taussig, Young, and their staffs—; two technical advisers in international law—Messrs. David Hunter Miller and James Brown Scott—with their assistants; and a section of territorial and political intelligence.
Peace conferences are always represented as sitting around green tables, and this pleasant fiction is perpetuated with reference to Paris in the widely circulated advertisement of a well known fountain pen. Now the Paris Conference never sat around a table. It is true that for certain formal sessions of the whole Conference there was arranged a long table lining three sides of the principal room in the French Foreign Office on the Quai d’Orsay, and that the delegates could be packed in here twice as close as nature meant them to sit. But there were very few formal meetings of this sort, and they could not by any stretch of the imagination be thought of as round-table conferences, if indeed as conferences at all. Certain leaders delivered prepared speeches, and rarely did lesser lights venture to break the prearranged course of the proceedings.
It was early apparent that the Conference could not profitably meet and do business as a whole. Twenty-seven different states were represented, besides the five British dominions. There were seventy authorized delegates. Such a body would have become a debating society; it would still be in session, its labors scarcely begun. Some guiding or steering executive committee was obviously required, and it was early found in the delegates of the five chief Powers: America, England, France, Italy, and Japan.
The five Great Powers themselves had thirty-four delegates, and it was plain that this also was too large a body for doing ordinary business. So there was early organized a Committee or Council of Ten, each state having two members, ordinarily the chief delegate and the foreign secretary; and this became the active agency of the Conference. It had a secretariat; and expert advisers, civil or military, attended as they were needed. If a military matter came up, Marshal Foch would be on hand, member of the Conference in his capacity of Commander-in-Chief, with his curving shoulders, fine face, and clear eye. A naval question brought in the British sea lords, Admiral Benson, and a keen-looking lot of Japanese. When economic questions were to the fore, the American delegation bulked large, with the square jaw of Mr. Herbert Hoover well in evidence.
Even the Council of Ten was not seated about a table, although it is so imagined in an ‘inside history’ of the Conference by one who was never inside.[6] Nor did the American delegation meet around a table, notwithstanding the preparation of an official picture which represents the members in a room where they never met, seated at one end of a table and backed by an imposing array of secretaries and assistants. The Council of Ten sat along three sides of the pleasant office of M. Pichon, the French Foreign Secretary, its walls covered with bright tapestries after the style of Rubens, its windows looking out over a beautiful French garden which tempted the roving eye while a long speech was being translated. M. Clémenceau presided, a tiger at rest, his eyes mostly on the ceiling, sometimes bored but always alert and never napping. Others sometimes appeared to sleep or to distract themselves as best they could; but no one lost touch with the proceedings. Certainly the President of the United States, long trained by golf, kept his eye steadily on the ball.
The Council of Ten met almost daily at three. Each special interest, each minor nationality, had a chance to come forward and state its case, usually at considerable length. Whatever was said in French was translated into English, and vice versa. The sessions grew long and tiresome, and progress was slow. More and more people were called in. One of them remarked that he would not have missed his first meeting for a thousand dollars, but would not give ten cents to see a second! For its last two sessions the Council moved into the large room reserved for the plenary sessions of the Conference. One of these meetings was reported at length in the Paris papers, and it was alleged that undue publicity, as well as undue prolixity, was responsible for the sudden change on March 24. After that date the Council of Ten ceased to meet. Cartoonists represented it as seeking a bomb-proof shelter. At times thereafter the foreign ministers met as a Council of Five. But the real power rested with a new body, the Council of the four principal delegates of England, France, Italy, and the United States—Messrs. Lloyd George, Clémenceau, Orlando, and Wilson.
The Council of Four left the spacious quarters of the Quai d’Orsay. Sometimes it met in M. Clémenceau’s office at the Ministry of War, sometimes at Mr. Lloyd George’s apartment, most frequently at President Wilson’s residence, either in his study, or, when several outsiders were present, in the large drawing-room. The meetings in the study were not always “private and unattended,” nor were the occasional conferences upstairs the confused gatherings which an infrequent spectator has pictured.[7] Outsiders were called in as needed, but ordinarily the Four met by themselves, with a confidential interpreter, Captain Mantoux, very able and very trustworthy. There was no stenographer, not even a secretary, though secretaries were usually outside the door to execute orders. The meetings were quite conversational, and the records necessarily fragmentary. But the Council at least worked rapidly, sometimes perforce too rapidly. Steadily the main lines of the treaty emerged.
By March the expert work of the Conference had been largely organized into commissions, not systematically and at the outset, as the French had proposed in January, but haltingly and irregularly, as necessity compelled. Foresight and organizing ability were not the strong points of the congress. One by one there were created commissions on Poland, on Greece, on Morocco, on Roumania, etc., on reparation, finance, waterways, and the principal economic problems of the conference. Ordinarily a commission consisted of two members from each of the five great powers, with a secretary from each and special advisers as required. Their proceedings were regularly noted, and formal minutes of each session were approved in print. Each country expressed its opinion, but efforts were made to reach and report a unanimous conclusion. On one occasion a Japanese delegate, perplexed by a detailed problem of local topography, gave as his vote, “I agree with the majority.” As the commission had just divided, two to two, he scarcely clarified the situation.
Some of the best work of the Conference was done in these commissions, and it is to be regretted that the system was not organized earlier and used more widely. Some matters were never referred to commissions, delicate questions like Fiume and Dalmatia and the Rhine frontier being reserved for the exclusive consideration of the Four. Problems of an intermediate sort were sent to special committees, extemporized and set to work at double speed. Such were the Saar valley and Alsace-Lorraine, referred to a committee of three, Messrs. Tardieu, Headlam-Morley, and Haskins. Not being an organized commission, this body had no secretariat. Economic and legal advisers might be present, but often there were only the three. This committee met for a certain period very steadily, sometimes twice a day. It reported unanimously the chapters of the treaty on the Saar and Alsace-Lorraine, and was present at the meetings of the Council of Four each time these questions came up.