Darkest Hours of Peace Conference Saw World Near Panic Last March

Darkest Hours of Peace Conference Saw World Near Panic Last March

Baker, Ray Stannard, 1870-1946

WWP16069

1919 November 4

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

English

BY RAY STANNARD BAKER.

It was in the month following his return from America on March 14 that the President had his fiercest ordeal. This was the darkest hour of the entire peace conference, when a break-up seemed most imminent. It was in this month that the President, worn out with the strain of the conflict and by the unremitting attacks upon him both in front and from behind, fell ill—the forerunner of the present breakdown. And it was in this month, his patience utterly worn out, that he finally ordered the George Washington to sail immediately from New York, and American withdrawal from the conference became one of the generally considered possibilities.

In the latter half of March the conditions throughout Europe reached the lowest ebb of demoralization. Bolshevism was everywhere spreading like an infection from Russia. The new German government was scarcely able to maintain itself against the attacks of the radicals; it was doubted by some good judges whether there would be any government in Germany to sign the treaty when it was ready to sign. On March 23 a bolshevist revolution took place in Hungary, and Bavaria was setting up a soviet government. A desperate rebellion broke out in Egypt. Great strikes were in progress or threatened in England; the want of food, and the consequent unrest, was acute in Austria and all through southeastern Europe. At one time we counted up fourteen small wars in various parts of Russia, Poland and the Balkans. A wave of pessimism which Americans, so far away and so safe, never felt swept over Europe and found its blackest expression at Paris. No one who was there could escape it; it seemed that the world was in a race between peace and anarchy—with anarchy winning.

A kind of unreasoning panic developed over the delay in completing the treaty. It did no good to argue that the problems were of unparalleled difficulty—involving a resettlement of the whole world—or that other peace conferences, having less serious questions to settle, had required a far longer time—the people saw bolshevism, starvation, industrial revolution, sweeping like a black cloud over Europe and turned upon the only center of power then existing in the world—four harassed old men toiling terribly there at Paris.

President Wilson had to bear the brunt of the criticism. He was not only the outstanding figure, but because of his action in reasserting the decision made in January by the conference to incorporate the covenant of the league with the treaty he was charged with delaying the peace. Part of this criticism was due to the unreasoning popular fear of which I have spoken—the utter weariness of Europe with the war and the desire to get the soldiers home again—but a large part was also due to reactionary forces which deliberately used this popular impatience in order to stampede the President—drive him from his unfaltering determination to make the treaty express in some measure the principles of justice adopted by everyone when the armistice was signed.

These reactionary forces despised the President’s “idealism,” disliked the whole idea of a league of nations and the new mandatory system of colonial control, and they wanted quite frankly to divide the spoils of war, seize all they could of German territory, and then form a military alliance of the allies to guarantee their gains.

It became a more or less organized campaign to down the President, and reactionary forces in both France and England (cheered on by the attacks in America) had a part in it. A secret document showing how the French press—a large part of which is notoriously controlled by the government–was being marshaled against the influence of the President and in support of French interests actually came into the possession of one of the American commissioners. It was in the form of official suggestions of policy to French newspaper editors, and it contained three items:

Although the conferences were supposed to be secret—so that American correspondents could get little or nothing about what was happening—the news traveled swiftly by some underground channel to various French editors and was used by them as the basis of unfavorable comment on the actions of the various conferees. One day, for example, Lloyd George made a hot protest because the French papers had published a full account of what had happened regarding the Polish situation (including the publication of a secret map), so working the news as to put him in an unfavorable light. It even happened, so perfect were these underground channels in their operation, that a member who expressed an opinion in the secret conference would sometimes be visited the next day by some outsider who was interested in the question involved, and requested to change his attitude. And the whole of the secret report on military, naval and air terms was published one morning in the British newspapers. All of these leaks, the sharp differences of opinion among the allied delegates, and the attacks in America on the President, were promptly republished in the German press, making every step toward a reasonable settlement more difficult. It was this state of affairs which drove the conference finally into holding sittings confined to the big four—Wilson, Clemenceau, Lloyd George and Orlando—in the President’s study.

So fierce finally became the onslaughts upon the President that his friends urged him to make a statement of the real reason for the delay. The demand came especially from American newspaper correspondents, who were much concerned over the situation, and I referred it to the President, emphasizing the danger it had in it for his influence at the conference.

“I know it,” he said, “I know it perfectly well.”I

told him that he personally was being blamed on all sides for the delay.

“I know that, too, but if I were to make a statement of the real reasons for the delay it would break up the peace conference—and we cannot risk that until every other resource has been tried.”

So he kept his temper, bore the misrepresentations and tried to meet the unreasoning criticism by speeding up the work of the conference. He felt keenly the danger of complete anarchy in the world, and the need above everything of maintaining a going organization of the nations to hold things together and get the world somehow back to normality. He knew that if America let go the most powerful prop to good order and steady purpose in the world would disappear. On the other hand, he would not and could not consent to the cynical kind of peace which the reactionaries in Europe—at that moment at their boldest—were clamoring for. It was a terrible task he had before him; anything he might do seemed wrong.

It was hard not only for the President, but for all of the four. Clemenceau was getting over the revolver wound in the shoulder inflicted by a would-be assassin, and often went into alarming paroxysms of coughing during the sessions, and both Lloyd George and Orlando were distracted with their home political problems, then at their very worst. The Northcliffe press was conducting a new attack on Lloyd George, and a vote in the Italian parliament about this time was near to unseating Orlando. The four held, usually, two long meetings every day, and the President, besides, in order to discount the criticism that the consideration of the covenant of the league of nations was delaying the peace, was holding meetings of the league of nations commission in the evening, which more than once lasted beyond midnight. He had also innumerable other engagements that he was forced to meet—conferences with all kinds of delegations, meetings with experts, home affairs. No slave ever worked harder than he did in those days.

But no matter how hard he toiled, the criticism grew steadily worse, and on March 27the President, finally, dictated a statement denying that the discussions of the covenant were delaying the treaty. “The conferences of the commission (or the league of nations),” he said, “have invariably been held at times when they could not interfere with the consultations of those who have undertaken to formulate the general conclusions of the conference with regard to the many other complicated problems of peace.”Unfortunately, however, while this statement did not help appreciably in quieting the popular criticism, it seemed even to increase the more insidious and dangerous attacks of the reactionaries who were trying to stampede the President. His explanation seemed to them a kind of confession of weakness. They therefore redoubled their efforts. It was in those days of late March that the French put up their hardest fight for the possession of the Saar valley, when Foch was most insistent upon making the Rhine the controlled frontier of France, when Italy began to demand most insistently the recognition of her extreme claims in the Adriatic and in Asia, and when the demands for reparation by both the French and the British threatened to make it impossible ever to arrive at any reasonable settlement. Mr. Wilson never for a moment lost sight of his declarations that “there shall be no annexations, no contributions, no punitive damages” and that “peoples are not to be handed about from one sovereignty to another by an international conference”; and never for a moment stopped fighting to realize them.

Not only were the territorial demands pressed forward, but Lloyd George had made promises to the British people in the December elections regarding the amount of money they must have from Germany which he and every one else who was on the inside knew well enough could never be obtained; and the French, who had suffered beyond measure, had a bill which the entire wealth of Germany—if it had been possible to get it—could not have paid; and besides this Belgium had to be restored.

The American position, strongly supported all along not only by the President, but by all economic and financial experts, was that an exact sum of money be levied on the Germans so that all nations would know what the world financial problem really was; but neither Clemenceau nor Lloyd George would consent to this lest the unexpectedly limited amount should cause explosions in their own countries.

Day after day they argued and disputed upon this and other questions and there was nothing to report but talk. It was well understood that Wilson was standing against some of these French claims, as he stood afterward against extreme Italian claims, as he had stood before against certain British colonial claims, and attacks in the French press became more pointed and bitter. The Echo de Paris, for example, even charged a conspiracy between America and Great Britain to keep France from getting her just rights in order that an Anglo-Saxon entente might dominate the world commercially.

The President was attacked, indeed, by both extremes of opinion; not only by the reactionaries who wanted to divide the spoils of war and who were against any league of nations whatsoever, but by the extreme radicals who wanted to use the President in advancing their own revolutionary desires, and turned on him when he did not serve their purpose.

Over and over again at Paris we saw groups which had come to the conference to secure some special interest or advantage turn bitterly upon the President the moment they found he would not support them in their extreme ambitions. It was so with the Egyptian group and the Irish group, it was so with the Italians, it was so with the Greeks who wanted the whole Aagean coast, and with certain of the Belgians who wanted the seat of the league of nations at Brussels. He disappointed the extremists, and he disappointed all those who wanted special privileges or had greedy interests by following an implacable and clearly marked course of his own. He had to adjust and compromise, he could not get all he wanted, but he was never used by anybody or any interest at the peace conference; and to the very end he was the man who was sought out and trusted; it was felt, despite everything, that he was the one leader there who was disinterestedly, patiently, under vast difficulties, trying to do what was right, trying to get some measure of justice into the peace. It was his influence, and his alone, that held up the moral tone of the conference.

The treaty is far from being a perfect document, it was made in a time of world demoralization—“shell shock”—it represents the fears and greeds of the nations as well as the hopes and aspirations. But the hopes and aspirations are there—put there by President Wilson and no one else—the treaty does contain the new machinery, the new principles, for world reconstruction on a broader basis of justice and right than was ever known before—if the world is now civilized enough to go ahead and use them.

One hesitates to think what the treaty would have been if the President had not been there. But he wore himself out in the struggle, and on April 3 the break came, and the President fell ill. It was a task beyond human endurance. No man could have stood it. Dr. Grayson insisted that he remain in bed and rest, but the council of four (with Col. House taking the President’s place) continued to meet in the next room, so that the President, though unable to leave his bed, never lost intimate touch with the proceedings.

This was perhaps the darkest moment of the entire peace conference; for the dissensions among the conferees, and the opposition to the President’s demands for a peace of justice, became even more acute with his illness. Now that he was down it seemed still easier to ride over him. The Italians seized this moment to threaten to bolt the conference if they were not instantly assured of being given Fiume. The French were still insistent upon getting the Saar valley. And unrest was everywhere increasing. On April 6, while the President still lay ill, there was an ominous red flag parade in Paris, ostensibly to protest against the acquittal of the assassin of Jaures, but really to exhibit the strength of the revolutionary forces in France.But in spite of his illness—and a terrible kind of aloneness, for it seemed at this time that every one in the world was against him—he would not give in. His physical illness seemed only to harden his determination. I went up to see him the first day that he was up. I found him in his study, fully dressed, but looking thin and somewhat pale. A slight hollowness of the cheeks emphasized the extraordinary size and luminosity of his eyes. It was clear, from what he said, that a crisis had been reached, and that he was determined now to stop further delay and bring the questions in the conference to a final issue. The allies had agreed among themselves and agreed with Germany upon certain general principles of justice to be observed in the settlement, and the whole course of the conference up to that time had been made up of a series of attempts to break over these agreements, to impose harder terms, get territory, levy impossible indemnities. The time had now arrived when there had to be a decision as between the two struggling purposes of the conferences.He was very quiet in expressing his final decision, but gave an impression of unalterable determination. I felt, at the moment, that nothing but a supreme faith in Almighty God and in rightness of his course could have sustained him at that moment.

And when he has made up his mind he can strike—as he did a number of times at Paris—with stunning boldness, audacity. On April 7 he acted—and the action fell like a thunderbolt bolt. It was so unexpected, so challenging, so final, that half the newspapers would not at first believe it. He ordered the George Washington, which was then under repair at Brooklyn, to sail immediately to Brest. Our press bureau was directed to make the bare announcement without explanation. But no explanation was necessary; it was clear to every one that the President had reached the extreme limit of his patience and that he was demanding a “show-down.” It was no bluff: either the settlement was to be on the principles laid down or else he was prepared to sail for home.

The effect was astonishing. After the first outburst of agitated comment it produced a sudden hush in the world. For a moment the criticism in Europe suddenly and almost completely ceased. Here was a man who couldn’t, after all, be stampeded, who couldn’t be talked to death. What could be done with such a man?

On April 8 appeared one of those extraordinary little items in Le Temps which every one recognized at once as inspired from above, as a kind of final decision upon a great policy. It was headed, “France’s Claims,” and was as follows:

“Contrary to the assertions spread by the German press and taken up by other foreign newspapers, we believe that the French government has no annexationist pretentions, openly or under cover, in regard to any territory inhabited by a German population. This remark applies particularly to the regions comprised between the frontier of 1871 and the frontier of 1914.”

This latter region was, of course, the Saar valley. And this statement symbolized a turning point in the conference. There was an immediate toning down of the demands, and a new effort on every hand to get together. Above all, there was a marked change in the attitude of the press toward the President. His bold gesture had cleared the air, and from that moment forward the progress was much more rapid and decisive. A week later, on April 14, so advanced was the work on the treaty that the Germans were summoned to Versailles.

The next great crisis at the conference centered around the Italian question, and was precipitated by President Wilson’s appeal to the Italian people, which caused the Italian delegation to leave the conference. This will be treated in the next article.

The next article in the series of six describing President Wilson’s labors in Paris will be printed next Sunday. It will be on “The Italian Crisis at the Peace Conference. How President Wilson Met It.”