The American Story by Garet Garrett
Author:Garet Garrett
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781610161763
Publisher: Henry Regnery Company
II
The Wily Old World
BUT THEY WERE WISE AND THEY MADE A PLOT. IF THEY COULD get Mr. Wilson to come in person to Europe for the Peace Conference (an unheard of thing for a President to do), exhibit him there to his adoring multitudes and then maneuver him into making a few speeches touching some of the treacherous sore spots—if they could do that they might be able to dim out his halo. Lord Northcliffe, owner of The London Times, came over to sell the idea, first to newspaper editors and then to the President, with the subtle argument that European statesmen had always botched the peace and would probably do it again if the moral leader of the world were not there to keep their eyes to the light.
That argument won. The President decided to go.
He put himself at the head of a Peace Commission that could have but one will, and that was his own. In naming the members of it he ignored both the Senate and the Republican Party, which was a fatal error, because many Republicans, including ex-President Taft, were for something like a league of nations and might have turned the Senate for the treaty when the time came. Along with the Peace Commission went a fine body of economic and political advisers, including Bernard M. Baruch and Herbert Hoover.
What the wily Old World statesmen expected did happen, as they intended, and it was tragic.
In Paris the President was received with tremendous enthusiasm—more perhaps than could in any case have been sustained. It followed him to London and Rome and back to Paris. Then his speeches on the realities of peace began to be destructively examined. For one thing, it was soon evident that his formula of self-determination for little nations led to enormous difficulties and that national aspirations were too conflicting to be all satisfied. And why had he refused to visit Belgium and to look at the devastated regions of France? Did justice require him to close his eyes to what the Germans had done?
The cruel treatment was yet to come. On the day the Peace Conference was to have opened the British, the French, and the Italians were not there. For a month they did not come, and sent notes of cool apology; and all that time the President was left to sit alone with his retinue and nothing to do, looking rather ridiculous. Meanwhile the idea was rising that Germany should be made to pay for the war, whereas Mr. Wilson had said no indemnities.
When at last the Peace Conference got to work it was clear that the President’s mind was unalterably fixed on one thing, namely, the Covenant of the League of Nations. If he got that he would yield at many points on the peace treaty itself and justify himself with the thought that his League of Nations could in time correct even an iniquitous peace treaty. The British and the French, on the other side, realized that if they gave him what he most wanted they would be freer to make the kind of peace they wanted.
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