His speech, translated sentence by sentence, is received with cold hostility, aggravated by the seeming discourtesy of the man’s not rising to his feet. “Any more observations?” growls Clemenceau. “If not the meeting is closed.”
The German Government promptly complies with the Fourteen Points by making public the terms of the treaty. Many of the American delegates in Paris first read it when a clandestine translation is hawked about the streets. At home in the States the members of the Senate and House committees for foreign affairs are thrown into a fury because nobody has thought to furnish them with an official text. They have to read the details in the newspapers.
The more farseeing Americans in Paris receive the treaty with almost as much dismay as the Germans. Herbert Hoover writes in his memoirs of being waked up at four in the morning of May 7 by a messenger bringing him the text. In this Hoover is one of the favored few. He sits up in bed and reads it through. “I was greatly disturbed … It seemed to me the economic consequences alone would pull down all Europe and thus injure the United States.”
Hoover is so disturbed he has to get up. He dresses and goes out on the street to try to walk off his agitation. The sun is rising. The streets are deserted. “In a few blocks I met General Smuts and John Maynard Keynes … It flashed in all our minds why the others were walking about at that time of day … We agreed that it was terrible, and we would do what we could … to make the dangers clear.”
At the eleventh hour Lloyd George has an attack of conscience. He tries to get Wilson, Clemenceau and Orlando to agree to modifications and adjustments suggested by the saner men in all the delegations. Nicolson describes him as fighting “like a little Welsh terrier” in the Council of Four to set a limit to reparations, to revise the eastern frontiers, and to assure Germany of admission into the League. To the surprise of the specialists it is Wilson this time who refuses to budge. Litera scripta manet.
The day the new batch of German envoys arrives at Versailles with instructions from the Weimar Government to sign the treaty at any cost, the news comes out that the crews have scuttled the entire German fleet, interned, according to the armistice terms, under the eyes of the British, at Scapa Flow.
The French have spared no effort to make the signing of the peace treaty a mighty show. Above the heads of the crowd at Versailles the blue and white pennants on the lances of the cavalrymen lining the long avenue flutter in the sun of a fine summer’s day. The tallest of the Garde Republicain stand like statues in their horsehair helmets on either side of Louis XIV’s grand stairway as the plenipotentiaries and their delegations and their wives and families climb the steps to the Hall of Mirrors. Their sabers are at the salute.
At one end of the enormous gaudy hall the world press is packed in a motley throng. At the other the plenipotentiaries sit at a horseshoe table. Around them are all the uniforms of the Allied armies, embossed with every conceivable decoration. Between the tall mirrors and the tall windows shine the gilded curlycues and the encrusted capitals of the grand siècle. Overhead stretch painted ceilings in a whirligig of colors and shapes.
At the center of the table sit Wilson and Lloyd George, almost lost, in all the splendor, in their somber frock coats. Squat Clemenceau is hunched between them. Harold Nicolson, who likes to describe Clemenceau as looking like a gorilla carved out of ivory, notices that over the Tiger’s head on the flamboyant ceiling is a scroll which reads: LE ROI GOUVERNE PAR LUIMÊME.
When Clemenceau gestures for silence a sharp clank resounds through the thronged hall as the guards thrust their sabers back into their scabbards.
In the silence that follows Clemenceau’s voice croaks harshly: “Faites entrer les Allemands.”
Two ushers hung with silver chains enter from a door at the end of the hall. They are followed by four officers, one American, one English, one French, one Italian. After them totter two small civilians in glasses. Their feet plunk miserably on the strip of parquet between the carpets, as, in the heavy silence, under the stare of two thousand eyes, they walk the length of the hall to the little table where the texts of the treaty have been laid out for signature.
They sign. At that moment the guns start to roar outside. The crowds cheer. The sky is aflutter with frightened pigeons. Amid the ancient trees along the green prospects of the park spurt the legendary fountains.
In the hall the tension has snapped. People move about and crane their necks to see. The plenipotentiaries form a queue to sign like men buying tickets at a railroad station. President Wilson leads the Americans, next comes Colonel House.
From her seat Edith Wilson, who is wearing a gray picture hat, a gray gown and orchids, and carrying a gray and blue beaded bag her husband has just presented her to match her dress, can hear the whir of the motionpicture cameras that press about the plenipotentiaries.
From behind her she catches the apologetic Texas drawl of Loulie House who has jumped to her feet. “Please let me stand long enough to see my lamb sign.”
That night President and Mrs. Wilson undergo the final longdrawn ceremonies of a dinner at the Elysée Palace.
(When the invitation came from Poincaré Wilson flew off the handle. He vowed he would not sit down at table with the swine. It was as if all his resentment of the frustrations suffered in Paris were focussed into hatred of the stubby little President of the French Republic. It was all House and Henry White could do to convince him that not to accept the invitation would cause an international incident. Perhaps Mrs. Wilson had already clinched the matter by getting a special dress for the occasion designed for her by Worth.)
She describes it, with feeling, in My Memoir as a closefitting black charmeuse gown with a fishtail train, encrusted from the knees up with sequins shading in color from black through tints of gray “to glittering white at the bust and shoulders.” She carries a large ostrichfeather fan and, having been impressed by the diamond tiaras the court ladies wore in England, wears a special tiaralike headdress made up by Worth out of sequins and rhinestones.
From the banquet they hurry to the station.
“Everyone was in a holiday mood and happy, though a note of sadness too was felt … For one last time we found the red carpet stretched, the lines of soldiers to be inspected, the palms waving, and the French officers lined up to bid us bon voyage.”
Next day they are aboard the George Washington bound for home.
Chapter 24
THE SUPREMEST TRAGEDY
ON July 10, in the noonday glare of the Washington summer heat, Woodrow Wilson appeared in solemn mood before the Senate and saw the great bound volume of the Treaty of Versailles placed upon the clerk’s desk. Grayson, who was watching him carefully, found his step elastic, his eyes bright, his color good. His attitude was challenging:
“The united power of free nations must put a stop to aggression and the world must be given peace … Shall we or any other free people hesitate to accept this great duty? Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?… The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving but by the hand of God who led us into this way.”
He urged immediate ratification.
The document was rushed to the printers. That night copies were distributed throughout the Senate office building so that at last the senators could read the actual text of the commitments which the President had made in the name of the United States.
By the end of the month Henry Cabot Lodge was ready, as chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs, to inaugurate public hearings on the question of ratification. The Republicans, perhaps in somewhat mischievous deference to the President’s call for open covenants, openly arrived at, insisted on these hearings being open to the reporters and to the public. Sensationally reported in the press, the hearings brought dismay to the White House.