Lansing like House was a careful diarist. He made his entries in a small precise hand. On January 10 he recalled the hour’s conference with the President and the commissioners in General Bliss’s room, at which he presented his memorandum. “A very unsatisfactory session,” wrote Lansing. “Pres’t apparently resents anybody offering suggestions or doing anything in the way of drafting a treaty for a league of nations except himself … He said he did not want lawyers to engage in that.”
Lansing was proud of his knowledge of international law. It was his whole career. This remark of the President’s cut him to the quick. Years later, when he published his apologia for his part in the drama he wrote a whole chapter about it. From that moment he made no further suggestions about the covenant or the league.
He unburdened himself to his diary. “Auchincloss has shown me the President’s draft. It is most inartistically drawn and I believe will be riddled in its present form.”
Secretary Lansing had disagreed with the President once too often. From now on he was held at arm’s length. “Lansing is a man one cannot grow enthusiastic over,” House noted, “but I do think the President should treat him with more consideration.”
Two days later House was taken ill with a kidney ailment. He had a high fever and was in great pain. He had two nurses in attendance. The story got about that he was dying. Obituaries were actually published in the American press.
With Lansing mortally offended and his confidential colonel incapacitated, Wilson, who paid scant attention to the prolixities of General Bliss or to Henry White’s diplomatic anecdotes, and who didn’t even have a competent secretary, was left to struggle singlehanded in his initial bout with a group of the most astute political operators in Europe and Asia.
The leaders of the British delegation arrived in Paris on January 11. Lloyd George, fresh from his smashing victory at the polls, came surrounded by some of the ablest men in the United Kingdom. All political factions were represented except for Asquith’s Liberals. Arthur Balfour embodied the philosophy of the Conservative gentry in its most rarified form. Bonar Law could speak for the financial and manufacturing and mercantile interests, George Barnes for the trade unions. Cecil and Smuts, who were to be the godfathers of the British Commonwealth of Nations, stood for an international idealism as radical as Woodrow Wilson’s.
As a second string, Lloyd George, who was as skilled, as Wilson was deficient, in the art of using other men for his own purposes, had the premiers of the selfgoverning dominions: Hughes from Australia, Massey from New Zealand, Sir Robert Borden from Canada. Each of them represented the majority parties of their respective electorates. Smuts and Botha, at that moment, had all factions in South Africa behind them. In the background was a bevy of emirs and maharajahs, each animated by a knowledgeable Foreign Office adviser, from India and the Oriental protectorates. To organize and synchronize the work of the delegations came the accomplished Sir Maurice Hankey, fresh from a similar job for the Imperial War Cabinet. Largely because the Americans could not present anyone equally competent, Hankey became confidential secretary of the inner circle of the Peace Conference, and the only reporter of the most secret meetings of the Allied leaders.
The British prime minister arrived in Paris at the head of one of the most formidable groups of negotiators ever assembled. “On the other hand,” as Winston Churchill, who was then serving as Secretary of State for War put it, “he reached the Conference somewhat dishevelled by the vulgarities and blatancies of the recent general election. Pinned to his coat tails were the posters ‘Hang the Kaiser,’ ‘Search their pockets,’ ‘Make them pay’; and this sensibly detracted from the dignity of his entrance on the scene.”
The French, as hosts of the British and American delegations, had the advantage of being on their home ground. The Quai d’Orsay was almost as wellfurnished with brains as the Foreign Office. Clemenceau had the Chamber of Deputies under his thumb. Through Mandel’s alternating censorship and subsidy, he could play like an organist on all the varied political pipes, right, left and center, of the French press.
Though the Tiger found Foch and his generals even more troublesome in victory than they had been in defeat, he could give them their heads from time to time when he needed a fait accompli.
British observers noticed how much slower the Americans were than the Europeans in the give and take of repartee in committee work.
Although the prime ministers had been meeting right along in the guise of the Supreme War Council or at less formal interallied conferences, and had already established a set of rules by which they hoped to keep control of proceedings, the British and French looked forward with misgivings to the first plenary meetings of the representatives of all the Allied and Associated Powers. They knew that Lansing’s project was for the United States to marshal the smaller nations against what the Americans considered the evil designs of the Europeans, and they feared that, in the absence of the understanding Colonel House, he might carry President Wilson along with him.
Since Lansing’s crowd from the State Department commandeered all the tickets available for Americans, the members of House’s Inquiry, temporarily bereft of their guardian, had to content themselves on January 18 with watching the arrival of the dignitaries from the courtyard of the Foreign Office. Each arrival was greeted by a fanfare and a roll of drums as the plenipotentiary descended from his automobile or carriage. President Wilson removed his silk hat and bared his horseteeth in a good long smile for the benefit of the motionpicture cameras.
The arrival of the plenipotentiaries was a lengthy parade. The United States, Great Britain and France each had five delegates and, to the surprise of the bystanders, so had Japan. The Japanese diplomats had taken advantage of the Americans neglecting to attend a somewhat surreptitious meeting of the interallied council held in London before Christmas, while House was laid up with the flu, to insist that the British stand by their alliance. At a period in the war when Japanese torpedoboats were desperately needed for convoy service in the Mediterranean, the British had made further promises. So now five Japanese delegates, smiling and bowing and hissing through their teeth, filed in towards the seats allotted to the great powers. Without anybody’s knowing exactly how it happened the Big Four had become the Big Five.
Next in importance came Belgium, and Brazil, which had also furnished a few torpedoboats; and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, with three delegates each. Then came China, Greece, the Hedjaz, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, Siam and the brandnew Czechoslovak Republic, with two. A crowd of nations that had been merely “technical belligerents” followed: Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Liberia, Nicaragua, Panama, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador and Peru had one delegate apiece.
The confirmation of Japan’s admission to the inner circle, during the confused skirmishing of the final week before the Peace Conference opened, was a defeat for Woodrow Wilson. Another was the admission of five British dominions, which were also represented on the British Empire delegation, to the sessions in their own right. That afternoon at the Quai d’Orsay, two delegates were seated for Canada, Australia, South Africa and India, and one for New Zealand. As balm for President Wilson’s hurt feelings, he was allowed to remove Costa Rica, ruled by a dictator of whom he disapproved, from the list of technical belligerents.
When all the delegates were seated in the splendor of diplomatic uniforms or the gravity of frock coats amid the scarlet damask and the ormoulu, under the glittering chandeliers reflected in the long mirrors, amid the smell of furniture polish and musty hangings and pomade and cologne, President Poincaré arrived with a welcoming speech. Amid the applause that followed he waddled from delegate to delegate until he had shaken every hand. Some of the British amused themselves by noting that Mr. Wilson wore oldfashioned highbuttoned shoes.