Review of Ray Stannard Baker's Book Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement
Title
Review of Ray Stannard Baker's Book Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement
Creator
Victor S. Clark
Identifier
WWP16463
Date
1922 December 31
Source
Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia
Language
English
Text
These reviews of recent books of unusual value are based upon lists furnished through the courteous coöperation of such trained judges as the following: American Library Association Book List, Wisconsin Free Library Commission, and the staffs of the public libraries in Springfield (Massachusetts), Newark, Cleveland, Kansas City, and St. Louis.
Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement: Written from his Unpublished and Personal Material, by Ray Stannard Baker. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1922. 2 vols. 8vo. xxxv+432, xii+561 pp. $10.00.
Three qualities make this the most important account of the Peace Conference that has appeared. It is based upon records of the decisive proceedings at Paris probably as nearly complete as any that exist in a single body; pertinent portions of them—those in the President’s shorthand notes—are understandable only with his personal elucidation; and these are supplemented by a vast quantity of private material, illustrating such matters as the President’s peculiar world-position before and during the Conference. ‘He never discarded a scrap of paper.’ The author, whose relations with Mr. Wilson had long been intimate and confidential, was immediately conversant with almost every step in the Conference proceedings, both as director of press arrangements for the American Commission and as a sort of liaison official between Mr. Wilson and the public. In the third place, these complex materials are presented to the reader luminously, with a clarity of style that holds his attention, and a dramatic order that enchains his interest. Indeed, the dramatic unity of the story makes the press installments that have previously appeared an unsatisfactory anticipation of the completed volumes.
To those for whom the Paris negotiations afford mainly material for exploiting their likes and dislikes of public characters this book may prove disappointing. It does not describe the Conference as a diplomatists’ School for Scandal. The caustic piquancy of Keynes and the special pleading and convenient oversights of Tardieu are lacking. In general, of course, Mr. Baker is a defender of the President’s policies—though not always of his tactics. His tone is one of honest and painstaking exposition, and the theme is of such tremendous importance that this handling sets it forth more impressively than any other could. We observe a great historical phenomenon through the least-distorted medium that has so far been vouchsafed us.
The period covered by the narrative begins with the sailing of the George Washington and ends with the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Only incidental allusions are made to political developments at home while the President was abroad, and none to the treaty fight in the Senate. This is a history of the Battle of Paris, not of the Battle of Washington.
Even the briefest summary of the topics is impossible within the present limits. At the beginning two important interpretative points are substantiated: in the fight over the secret treaties that had been concluded among the Allies, ‘and not in discussion of the League of Nations, was where the time was lost’; and ‘not a single idea in the covenant of the League was original with the President. His relation to it was mainly that of editor or compiler.’
The evils of the old diplomacy are illustrated by many examples, of which Paris afforded a superabundance. ‘The most disreputable intrigue of the Conference,’ when President Wilson, apparently despairing of any other check on the Italians, secretly planned with Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Venizelos the Greek landing at Smyrna, has just avenged itself on its chief promoters. The weakest and last phase of the Peace Settlement is not ignored: ‘When the President was crossing the Atlantic for the first time he told a member of the American delegation that he was “not much interested in the economic questions,” but before the Conference was over his chief advisers were the economists.’
With the supporting documents, published in a third volume not here reviewed, this work may be counted practically final as a contemporary record of the genesis of the League. It will be a source book of the whole Conference for all future historians. It is professedly ‘an American narrative, from an American point of view.’ But what the people of the United States call the American point of view was the most significant thing at Paris; and their intuitive consciousness that the President lost their cause at Paris, though, as this record shows, he fought manfully for it, goes far to explain the resentment they visited upon him personally, their absence from the League, and the present aversion for Europe that actuates their foreign policy.
Victor S. Clark.
Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement: Written from his Unpublished and Personal Material, by Ray Stannard Baker. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page & Co. 1922. 2 vols. 8vo. xxxv+432, xii+561 pp. $10.00.
Three qualities make this the most important account of the Peace Conference that has appeared. It is based upon records of the decisive proceedings at Paris probably as nearly complete as any that exist in a single body; pertinent portions of them—those in the President’s shorthand notes—are understandable only with his personal elucidation; and these are supplemented by a vast quantity of private material, illustrating such matters as the President’s peculiar world-position before and during the Conference. ‘He never discarded a scrap of paper.’ The author, whose relations with Mr. Wilson had long been intimate and confidential, was immediately conversant with almost every step in the Conference proceedings, both as director of press arrangements for the American Commission and as a sort of liaison official between Mr. Wilson and the public. In the third place, these complex materials are presented to the reader luminously, with a clarity of style that holds his attention, and a dramatic order that enchains his interest. Indeed, the dramatic unity of the story makes the press installments that have previously appeared an unsatisfactory anticipation of the completed volumes.
To those for whom the Paris negotiations afford mainly material for exploiting their likes and dislikes of public characters this book may prove disappointing. It does not describe the Conference as a diplomatists’ School for Scandal. The caustic piquancy of Keynes and the special pleading and convenient oversights of Tardieu are lacking. In general, of course, Mr. Baker is a defender of the President’s policies—though not always of his tactics. His tone is one of honest and painstaking exposition, and the theme is of such tremendous importance that this handling sets it forth more impressively than any other could. We observe a great historical phenomenon through the least-distorted medium that has so far been vouchsafed us.
The period covered by the narrative begins with the sailing of the George Washington and ends with the signing of the Versailles Treaty. Only incidental allusions are made to political developments at home while the President was abroad, and none to the treaty fight in the Senate. This is a history of the Battle of Paris, not of the Battle of Washington.
Even the briefest summary of the topics is impossible within the present limits. At the beginning two important interpretative points are substantiated: in the fight over the secret treaties that had been concluded among the Allies, ‘and not in discussion of the League of Nations, was where the time was lost’; and ‘not a single idea in the covenant of the League was original with the President. His relation to it was mainly that of editor or compiler.’
The evils of the old diplomacy are illustrated by many examples, of which Paris afforded a superabundance. ‘The most disreputable intrigue of the Conference,’ when President Wilson, apparently despairing of any other check on the Italians, secretly planned with Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Venizelos the Greek landing at Smyrna, has just avenged itself on its chief promoters. The weakest and last phase of the Peace Settlement is not ignored: ‘When the President was crossing the Atlantic for the first time he told a member of the American delegation that he was “not much interested in the economic questions,” but before the Conference was over his chief advisers were the economists.’
With the supporting documents, published in a third volume not here reviewed, this work may be counted practically final as a contemporary record of the genesis of the League. It will be a source book of the whole Conference for all future historians. It is professedly ‘an American narrative, from an American point of view.’ But what the people of the United States call the American point of view was the most significant thing at Paris; and their intuitive consciousness that the President lost their cause at Paris, though, as this record shows, he fought manfully for it, goes far to explain the resentment they visited upon him personally, their absence from the League, and the present aversion for Europe that actuates their foreign policy.
Victor S. Clark.
Files
Collection
Citation
Victor S. Clark, “Review of Ray Stannard Baker's Book Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement,” 1922 December 31, WWP16463, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.