WAYS OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE
On Friday, December 13, 1918, the George Washington steamed slowly into Brest harbor through a long double line of gray battleships and destroyers, greeted by the thunder of presidential salutes and the blare of marine bands. Europe thrilled with emotion, which was half curiosity and half genuine enthusiasm: it was to see and applaud the man who during the past eighteen months had crystallized in speech the undefined thought of the Allied world, who represented (at least in European eyes) the strength and idealism of America, and who stood, for the moment, as the political Messiah to liberals in every country of the Old World, victors or defeated. The intensity of the curiosity as well as the sincerity of the enthusiasm was attested on the following day, when President Wilson drove through the streets of Paris, welcomed by the vociferous plaudits of the close-packed crowd. It was for him a public triumph, no greater than that accorded to King Albert of Belgium and certainly less demonstrative than the jubilations of armistice night, but nevertheless undeniably sweet to the President, who looked to popular opinion as the bulwark upon which he must rely during the difficult days ahead.
Further triumphs awaited him in his trips to England and to Italy. In London and Rome, as in Paris, he was the object of demonstrations which at times became almost delirious; more than once his admirers must have been reminded of the Biblical phrase that alludes to the honor of a prophet outside his own country. The emotion of Europe is not difficult to understand. The man in the street was ready to shout, for the war was finished and the miseries of the peace that was no peace were not yet realized, Wilson stood for Justice above everything, and the people of each country believed whole-heartedly that their particular demands were just; the President, therefore, must stand with them. To Frenchmen it was obvious that he must approve the "simple justice" of the claim that Germany pay the entire cost of the war; Italians were convinced that he would sanction their "just" demand for the annexation of Fiume. So long as Justice remained something abstract his popularity remained secure. Could he retain it when concrete issues arose? As early as the beginning of January ebullitions of approval became less frequent. Discordant voices were audible suggesting that Wilson was too prone to sacrifice the material necessities of the war-burdened nations to his idealistic notions. People asked why he failed to visit Belgium and the devastated regions of France, so as to see for himself what sufferings had been endured. And the historian may well inquire if it were because he had not gauged the depth of feeling aroused by German war practices, or because he had determined to show the Germans that he would not let his judgment be clouded by emotion. Whatever the explanation, his popularity suffered.
Without question the original strength of President Wilson's position, resting in part upon the warmth of popular feeling, which is ever uncertain, was undermined by the delays that marked the opening of the Peace Conference. Such delays may have resulted in part from the purpose of the Allied leaders, who wished to permit public enthusiasm for Wilson to cool; they may also have been caused in part by the differences that developed over the incorporation of the League of Nations in the Treaty. But a prime cause of delay is to be found in the fact that a Peace Conference of this character was a new experience and the statesmen assembled were not quite sure how to conduct it. Too little thought had been given to the problem of organization, and the plans which had been drawn up by the French and Americans were apparently forgotten. The host of diplomatic attachés and technical advisers, who crowded the Quai d'Orsay and the hotels of Paris, had only a vague notion as to their duties and waited uneasily, wondering why their chiefs did not set them to work. In truth the making of peace was to be characterized by a looseness of organization, a failure to coördinate, and a waste of time and energy resulting from slipshod methods. In the deliberations of the Conference there was a curious mixture of efficiency and ineffectiveness; a wealth of information upon the topics under discussion and an inability to concentrate that information. Important decisions were made and forgotten in the welter of conferential disorganization.
No one could complain that delays were caused by the kind of gay frivolity that characterized the Vienna Congress a hundred years ago. The atmosphere of the Paris Conference was more like that of a convention of traveling salesmen. The Hotel Crillon, home of the American Commission, was gray and gaunt as the State, War, and Navy Building in Washington. Banquets were rare; state balls unheard of. The President who had separate headquarters, first in the Parc Monceau and later on the Place des États Unis, avoided the orthodox diversions of diplomacy and labored with an intensity that was destined to result in physical collapse. The very dress of the delegates mirrored their businesslike attitude: high silk hats were seldom seen; Lloyd George appeared in the plainest of bowlers and Colonel House in his simple, black felt. Experts worked far into the early morning hours in order that principals might have statistics; principals labored even on Easter Day, and were roused from their beds at four in the morning to answer telegrams. Unique departure in the history of diplomacy: this was a working Peace Conference!
Each of the different commissions had brought to Paris a staff of attachés and experts, upon whom the principal delegates were to rely in questions of fact, and who were themselves to decide points of detail in drafting the economic and political clauses of the treaties and in determining new boundaries. The expert staff of the American Commission had been carefully selected and was generally regarded as equal to that of any other power. Compared with the foreign experts, its members lacked experience in diplomatic methods, no doubt, but they were as well or better equipped with exact information. There is an instance of an American expert on a minor commission asking that a decision be altered in view of new facts just brought to light, and offering to place those facts in detail before the commission. "I suggest," said a foreign delegate, "that we accept the amendment without investigation. Hitherto the facts presented by the Americans have been irrefutable; it would be waste of time to investigate them."
Such men as Hoover, Hurley, and Gompers were at hand to give their expert opinions on questions which they had mastered during the course of the war. Norman Davis and Thomas Lamont acted as financial advisers. Baruch and McCormick brought the wealth of experience which resulted from their administration of the War Industries and War Trade Boards. The foresight of Colonel House, furthermore, had gathered together a group of men who, organized since the summer of 1917 in what had been called "The Inquiry," had been studying the conditions that would determine new political boundaries on the basis of justice and practicability. The principal delegates could not be expected to know the details that would decide the disposition of Danzig, the fate of Fiume, the division of the Banat of Temesvar. They would need some one to tell them the amount of coal produced in the Saar Basin, the location of mines in Teschen, the ethnic character of eastern Galicia, the difference between Slovaks and Ruthenians. It was all very well to come to the Conference with demands for justice, but our commissioners must have cold facts to support those demands. The fact that exact information was available, and played a rôle in the decisions of the Conference, marks a step forward in the history of diplomatic relations.
Contrary to general expectation and rumor, Wilson, although he disregarded the American Commissioners, except Colonel House, made constant use of the various experts. On the George Washington he had told a group of them that he would rely absolutely upon the results of their investigations. "Tell me what's right," he had said, "and I'll fight for it. Give me a guaranteed position." During the negotiations he called in the experts for daily consultations; they sat behind him at the sessions of the Council of Ten and on the sofa beside him in the Council of Four. Their advice was not always followed to the letter; in the Shantung issue it was reluctantly discarded; but in such important matters as the Fiume problem, Wilson rested his case wholly upon the knowledge and opinions of the experts.
In defiance of the example of the Congress of Vienna, which never formally gathered in plenary session, the Paris Conference met with all delegates for the first time, on January 18, 1919. It was a picturesque scene, cast in the long Clock Room of the Quai d'Orsay, the conventional black of the majority of delegates broken by the horizon-blue uniform of Marshal Foch, the natty red-trimmed khaki of British staff officers, and the white flowing robes and golden headdress of the Arabian Emir Faisal; down the center of the room ran the traditionally diplomatic green baize tables behind which sat the delegates; attachés and press correspondents crowded into the corners or peered around the curtains of adjoining rooms; at the end, in front of the white marble fireplace, sat the dominating personalities of the Allied world. But such plenary sessions were not to witness the actual work of the Conference, nor was Wilson's demand for "open covenants openly arrived at" to be translated literally into accomplishment. To conduct the Peace Conference by sessions open to the public was obviously not feasible. There were too many delegates. Time, which was precious beyond evaluation, would be lost in the making of speeches for home consumption. More time would be lost in translation of the Babel of languages. Frankness and directness of negotiation would be impossible, for if the papers should print what the delegates said about each other there would be a national crisis every day. Finally, a congress is by nature ill-adapted for the study of intricate international problems, as was later to be illustrated in the history of the United States Senate.
The representatives of the larger European Powers had assumed that the direction of the Conference would be taken by a small executive committee, corresponding to the Supreme War Council, and to this President Wilson agreed. Such a committee would necessarily meet in secret, in order that it might not be hampered by formalities and that there might be frank speech. Only a brief communiqué, stating the subject of discussion and the decision reached, would be issued to the press. The committee would provide for the executive measures that must be taken to oppose the growth of economic and political anarchy in central and southeastern Europe, would distribute the problems that were to be studied by special commissions, and would formulate or approve the solutions to those problems. It would supervise the drafting of the treaties and present them to the plenary conference in practically final form. Since the bulk of the fighting had been carried by the major powers and since they would guarantee the peace, this supreme council of the Conference was composed of two representatives of the major five, France, Great Britain, the United States, Italy, and Japan, the last-named now entering the sacred coterie of "Great Powers." Among the delegates of the smaller powers there was lively dissatisfaction at the exclusion from the inner council of such states as Belgium and Serbia, which had been invaded by the enemy and had made heavy sacrifices in the war: they complained also that the number of delegates allotted them was insufficient. Already, it was whispered, the phrases that dealt with the "rights of small nations" were being forgotten, and this peace congress was to be but a repetition of those previous diplomatic assemblies where the spoils went to the strong. But Wilson, who was regarded as the defender of the rights of the small states, agreed with Clemenceau that practical necessity demanded an executive council of restricted numbers, and felt that such a body could be trusted to see that effective justice was secured. In truth the President was almost as much impressed by the extreme nationalistic ardor of the small powers, as a source of future danger, as he was by the selfishness of the large.