On Thursday, I had an appointment with the President to discuss the Polish Mission. We disposed of this very quickly, as I shall tell later on. I then seized upon the remaining minutes allotted me to present to the President our proposal of a Commission to Armenia. The President was profoundly interested and told me that he had but little time left to do anything in the matter, as the Peace Treaty was to be signed on Saturday. And he added:
“As you probably know, I shall sail for home that evening, but if you can come to an agreement with Hoover and let me have what you two recommend by nine o’clock to-morrow morning, I will try to put it through.”
I went straight to Hoover’s office from my interview and we drafted a letter to the President containing the following joint recommendations to be brought by him to the attention of the Big Four before his departure:
1. We suggest that a single temporary resident Commissioner should be appointed to Armenia, who will have the full authority of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy in all their relations to the de facto Armenian Government, as the joint representative of these Governments in Armenia. His duties shall be so far as he may consider necessary to supervise and advise upon various governmental matters in the whole of Russian and Turkish Armenia, and to control relief and repatriation questions pending the determination of the political destiny of this area.
2. In case the various Governments should agree to this plan, immediate notification should be made to the de facto Governments of Turkey and of Armenia of his appointment and authority. Furthermore, he will be appointed to represent the American Relief Administration and the American Committee for Relief in the Near East, and take entire charge of all their activities in Russian and Turkish Armenia.
The ideal man for this position would be General Harbord, as we assume under all the circumstances it would probably be desirable to appoint an American. Should General Harbord be unable to undertake the matter, we are wondering whether you would leave it to us to select the man in conjunction with General Pershing.
Two days later, the President sailed for America. As he was taking the Brest train from Paris, he turned to Harbord, who had come to the station:
“We have passed that matter about you,” he said.
What matter he referred to, Harbord could not guess. There was no time to inquire of Mr. Wilson, and the General being wholly in the dark, did not think of inquiring of me. For some days, I was to remain in ignorance.
On June 30th, though it was dated “June 28th,” there arrived at the American Peace Commission’s headquarters a cable addressed to Mr. Wilson—now at sea—which, in the light of future events, bore signatures that appear rather startling in such a connection. How differently people act when seeking power than they do when in authority! The message called “immediate” relief for Armenia “a sacred duty” and urged upon Woodrow Wilson: