Wilson

by A. Scott Berg

  “As a matter of fact,” Wilson said, “if I had my way I’d adjourn the Peace Conference for one year, and let all these people go home and get the bile out of their systems.” But he knew, of course, that a world of starvation and instability demanded immediate attention. Bolshevism fed off such conditions, and there was no time to lose. That very week, police in Lausanne arrested several German and Russian Bolsheviks carrying false passports on their way to Paris, where they had plotted to assassinate Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Wilson. Rumors implicated the People’s Commissar of War, Leon Trotsky, in this criminal cell. Communism was becoming not just a contagious sociopolitical movement with which democratic leaders disagreed; it was turning into an international terrorist threat.

  At the next meeting of the Council of Ten, on January 21, Wilson read a proclamation he had prepared in an effort at least to acknowledge the Conference’s greatest deficiency—namely, the absence of Russia. “The Associated Powers are now engaged in the solemn and responsible work of establishing the peace of Europe and of the world,” he said, “and they are keenly alive to the fact that Europe and the world cannot be at peace if Russia is not.” Recognizing the “absolute right of the Russian people to direct their own affairs without dictation or direction of any kind from outside” and not wishing to exploit the country in any way, Wilson proposed that all the political factions in Russia declare a truce and send delegates to a conference on the Princes Island—Prinkipo—in the Turkish Sea of Marmara, where representatives of the Associated Powers would help them sort out their differences enough to seat them at the table in Paris.

  It was not a well-laid scheme, and it quickly went awry. Anti-Bolshevik forces refused to attend, and there was dissension among the Bolsheviks themselves. Furthermore, the invitation spurred Latvians, Letts, and Estonians to request audiences, in order to establish their own states, separate from whatever government might end up ruling Russia. In the meantime, the Allied Powers themselves disagreed on the merits of such a conference. British troops were still fighting alongside the White armies of Russia, and Lloyd George could not ignore the vociferous anti-Bolshevik rhetoric at home. “A poisoned Russia, an infected Russia, a plague-bearing Russia; a Russia of armed hordes . . . preceded by swarms of typhus-bearing vermin which slew the bodies of men, and political doctrines which destroyed the health and even the souls of nations,” was how Bolshevik Russia had recently been described by the new War Secretary, Winston Churchill. In a few weeks Churchill would add, “Of all tyrannies in history the Bolshevist tyranny is the worst, the most destructive, and the most degrading. It is sheer humbug to pretend that it is not far worse than German militarism.” French diplomat Paul Cambon thought the idea of summoning a horde of Russian dissidents to an island in the Sea of Marmara was little more than the “idealistic promptings of President Wilson’s mind.”

  At their second plenary session, on January 25, 1919, the delegates considered the creation of a League of Nations. Wilson took the floor. “We have assembled for two purposes,” he explained, “—to make the present settlements which have been rendered necessary by this war, and also to secure the peace of the world.” The League of Nations, he said, “seems to me to be necessary for both of these purposes.” With his longtime penchant for humanizing institutions, Wilson asked his audience to remember that “we are not representatives of government, but representatives of peoples.” He reminded the others present that the United States had not engaged in the war out of fear of enemy attack or with thoughts of “intervening in the politics . . . of any part of the world” and that the maintenance of future harmony required “the continuous superintendence of the peace of the world by the associated nations of the world.” The League of Nations must be established not as some occasional organization “called into life to meet an exigency” but as one “always functioning in watchful attendance . . . that it should be the eye of the nations to keep watch upon the common interest, an eye that does not slumber, an eye that is everywhere watchful and attentive.” Without that League, he said, “no arrangement that you can make would either set up or steady the peace of the world.”

  Ever since that day in Paris, many have considered Woodrow Wilson’s idée fixe an idealistic pipe dream. For him, it was anything but. He did not consider the League part of a peace settlement so much as its very foundation—the chassis on which the framework of the peace could sit and the future of international cooperation could advance. To act otherwise meant perpetuating the ancient feuds over the same patches of territory.

  Wilson still sought no gains for his country—other than the desire not to return to war. That, he said, required the creation of a League of Nations, for he regarded it “as the keystone of the whole programme which expressed our purpose and our ideal in this war and which the Associated Nations have accepted as the basis of the settlement.” He insisted it was the mandate of his people, the reason for America’s soldiers having shed blood; and his return to the United States without having made every effort to realize that program would only invite “the merited scorn of our fellow-citizens.” Wilson spoke of the American doughboys he saw every day on the streets of Paris. “Those men came into the war after we had uttered our purposes,” he said. “They came as crusaders, not merely to win the war, but to win a cause; and I am responsible to them, for it fell to me to formulate the purposes for which I asked them to fight.” Wilson’s oration played well. Colonel House said it was “the very best speech” the President had ever delivered. The delegates voted for the Commission to frame the League’s constitution.

  The rest of the plenary session was devoted to forming committees dealing with “the personal guilt and responsibility of the authors of the war,” the internationalization of waterways, and reparation and damages, as well as one on the League of Nations. Wilson had no way of knowing that, just two days prior, England’s Lord Curzon had written Lord Derby that the League of Nations held no more interest to him than writing rules about the freedom of the seas—that the League had “nothing whatever to do either with the war or with the immediate task of concluding peace.” French diplomat Paul Cambon granted that Wilson possessed certain rhetorical gifts but said privately that he was “out of touch with the world, giving his confidence to no one, unversed in European politics, and devoted to the pursuit of theories which had little relation to the emergencies of the hour.” The longer-serving combatants in the war held a shorter view of the world than Wilson’s. “The business of the Peace Conference,” said Cambon, is “to bring to a close the war with Germany, to settle the frontiers of Germany, to decide upon the terms which should be exacted from her, and as soon as possible to conclude a just peace.”

  Feeling one step closer to his goal, Wilson awakened early the next morning to visit some of the “devastated” areas between Paris and Rheims. It was not meant to be an in-depth tour, just a chance to add a dimension to names that had already become part of military history. A caravan of eight motorcars stopped fifty miles northeast of Paris on the highway overlooking Belleau Wood. As a military aide explained the battle there, the President exited his car, climbed the hill, and visited a trench that Marines had occupied before advancing on the enemy. To the right, Wilson saw his first American graveyard since his arrival in France. He uncovered his head and gazed upon the lines of crosses. Then they proceeded to Château-Thierry. As it began to snow, Wilson and his party stopped for lunch in a special train that had followed them. Afterward, the party drove through one destroyed town after another. They stopped at Rheims, which the Germans had systematically bombarded, block by block, until its population of 250,000 had scattered, leaving just 3,000 people burrowing in cellars. Snow blanketing the city, the Presidential party boarded the train back to Paris at five o’clock. When asked, the President uttered, “No one can put into words the impressions received amid such scenes of desolation and ruin.” Speaking later to a delegation from the Federation of Protestant Churches of France, he
said, “Happily, I believe in God’s providence. Simple human intelligence is incapable of taking in all the immense problems before it at one time throughout the whole world. At such a juncture if I did not believe in God I should feel utterly at a loss.”

  The leaders of the Conference realized that President Wilson had to return to America in time for the closing of Congress on March 4 and that he would need something to show his people. After his stirring performance on January 25, they recognized the value in pacifying him with his League just so they might proceed to their own territorial wish lists. In allocating pieces of the German and Ottoman Empires, the only arrangement Wilson could countenance was the concept of “mandates,” which South African General Jan Smuts had suggested. Under this arrangement, pieces of the fallen Central empires would be placed in the trust of the entire family of nations, the League. Wilson was most concerned that these mandates not be treated as colonies. In explaining to one journalist America’s natural aversion to acquiring “outlying” new territory, he referenced the Philippines and how “impatient” the United States was until “we could give them autonomy.” By the end of January, the Council of Ten had delineated three classes of mandates: those of countries whose populations were civilized but not yet organized, such as Arabia; distant tropical colonies, such as New Guinea, that were not an integral part of any mandatory country; and countries that formed “almost a part of the organization of an adjoining power.” One after the other, each country lodged its complaints and staked its ground.

  Baron Makino of Japan reminded the Council that at the outbreak of the war, the German military and naval base at Kiaochow in China constituted a serious threat to international trade and shipping, to say nothing of the peace in that corner of the world. The Japanese government, in concert with the British, had given notice to the Germans to surrender that territory to China, and when it failed to reply, Japan had fought with the British and succeeded in taking hold of the region as well as its significant railway lines. He now justified his government’s claims to the unconditional cession of territory in Shantung Province (including its railways) as well as all the German-owned islands in the North Pacific.

  China saw things differently. Wellington Koo, the Columbia University–educated Chinese Minister to the United States, delivered an impassioned speech, insisting that Japanese domination of the railroad lines would give them “absolute control over all of China’s natural resources.” He demanded that they be returned to China with compensation. On most issues of “dividing the swag,” Wilson found himself in the minority, insisting that captured colonies should be controlled by the League of Nations and administered under the mandatory system, whereby the nations best fitted to do so would control the territories, which could, in turn, always appeal directly to the League to remedy any injustice. The Japanese had already grabbed some of China’s “most sacred soil,” including the Tomb of Confucius. Wilson sided with the Chinese.

  The principles of the League of Nations aside, Lloyd George questioned whether Wilson had thought through its practicalities. Developing colonies, he said, was less about dividing spoils than multiplying debt. “Great Britain had no Colony from which a contribution towards the national expenditure was obtained,” he said; and he thought the same situation would apply to Mesopotamia, Syria, and other parts of the Ottoman Empire should the mandatory system be applied there. “Whoever took Mesopotamia would have to spend enormous sums of money for works which would only be of profit to future generations,” he said; and he wondered who was to bear the costs in the present. “Was the League of Nations to pay?” he asked. “How would it be possible to raise sufficient money to carry out all the necessary works for the development of these countries from which no returns could be expected for many decades?” He asked if the League would be levied to make good on the annual deficit of any nations under a mandate. Wilson granted that certain expenses—such as defense—would be borne by the League.

  Sensing the sentiments in the room, Wilson added that the world would not accept many of the actions being discussed—such as “the parcelling out among the Great Powers of the helpless countries conquered from Germany.” Such actions, he said, would make the League of Nations “a laughing stock.” Orlando asked if Wilson intended all questions relating to the disposal of conquered territories to be referred to the League. If so, he suggested the world would think “that this Conference had done nothing, and a confession of impotence would be even more serious than disagreement amongst the delegates.”

  By the end of the month, the Allies were turning on one another. Premier William Morris Hughes of Australia “bitterly opposed” any agreement that did not transfer New Guinea to his nation—a position that galled Wilson, for Hughes appeared to hold the world hostage for his country’s personal gain. “Australia and New Zealand with 6,000,000 people between them,” he said, “could not hold up a conference in which, including China, some twelve hundred million people were represented.” And that was just one dispute that had to be settled. On January 30, 1919, alone, the Council of Ten also heard positions regarding the disposition of Samoa, Smyrna, Adalia, the north of Anatolia, Armenia, Syria, Mesopotamia, Palestine, Arabia, Uganda, Nigeria, Algeria, Morocco, Kurdistan, the Caucasus, Baku, Lebanon, Odessa, Persia, the Czechoslovak Republic, the Congo, the Cameroons, Romania, and Serbia. Delegates began to realize the necessity of abandoning singular national desires in favor of a worldview.

  Through patient and eloquent reasoning, Wilson was able to sway Lloyd George and then Japan and Italy to his side, resulting in the approval of the mandatory system for African and Pacific territories. He granted that many of these mandates were more duty than privilege; and while he was disinclined to see the United States reap any advantage from the war, he was equally against letting his nation shirk any duty. But any demand for America to share in that burden, he said, would require a postponement until he could explain the matter to his people, most particularly the Senate. Charles Seymour of the American Peace Commission found it discouraging to see the Council of Ten wasting so much time on details of technical disputes that should be left to subordinates; and with Wilson’s departure impending, Colonel House thought the President should devote his time to the League. “I urged him,” House wrote in his diary on January 31, 1919, “to . . . make it his main effort during the Conference. I thought he had a great opportunity to make himself the champion of peace and to change the order of things throughout the world.”

  On the afternoon of February 3, Wilson opened the first meeting of the Commission on the League of Nations at the Hôtel de Crillon. Although he was the first world leader to support such an organization, Wilson readily acknowledged it was the work of many heads and many hands. A few academicians and Liberal politicians in England had actually devised just such an international society in the middle of the war; and a few American associations—including the League to Enforce Peace, which former President Taft had led—organized simultaneously. Wilson had authorized David Hunter Miller, a law partner of House’s son-in-law, Gordon Auchincloss, to work with British adviser Cecil Hurst in putting together a draft of a constitution that would incorporate suggestions from General Smuts and Great Britain’s Lord Robert Cecil. Being the last and foremost proponent of the document, Wilson would forever be acknowledged as its “author,” despite his earnest efforts to correct the record.

  From February 3 to 13, the Commission—representing fourteen nations—met ten times, parsing every word of the document and perfecting its fine points. At almost every turn, the French attempted to interject their need to scold Germany. The Covenant had thirteen articles of governance and organization and ten Supplementary Agreements, which defined the structure of mandates, called for “humane conditions of labor,” promised “to accord to all racial or national minorities . . . exactly the same treatment and security” accorded the majorities, and insisted upon “no law prohibiting or interfering with the free exercise of re
ligion.” The document contained several more utopian elements: Article IV, for example, required “the reduction of national armaments to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety”; Article V maintained that disputes among the “Contracting Powers” would be subjected to arbitration before armed force would be considered.

  The backbone of the League Covenant came in Article X with its establishment of collective security. It asserted that hostile actions by a nonsignatory party against any of the League members would result in a united effort of members to blockade the infractor—“closing the frontiers of that Power to all commerce or intercourse with any part of the world, and to employ jointly any force which may be agreed upon to accomplish that object.” The member nations would agree to unite in coming to the aid of their colleagues “against which hostile action has been taken, and to combine their armed forces in its behalf.”

  The French were paranoid about a rearmed Germany; and at the February 11 meeting of the Commission, they questioned whether they should enter into the League if it lacked an international army. Wilson explained that the only method by which the organization could achieve its ends was through a “cordial agreement” and goodwill. “All that we can promise, and we do promise it,” he said, “is to maintain our military forces in such a condition that the world will feel itself in safety. When danger comes, we too will come, and we will help you, but you must trust us. We must all depend on our mutual faith.” After the meeting, Lord Cecil privately warned one of the French diplomats that the League of Nations was “their only means of getting the assistance of America and England, and if they destroyed it they would be left without an ally in the world.” At another formal gathering of diplomats, Cecil had spoken to the French off the record, saying that “America had nothing to gain from the League of Nations”—that she could ignore European affairs and look after her own—and that “the offer . . . for support was practically a present to France.” The Commission spent the entire next day reading each of what had become twenty-seven Articles of the Covenant as reported back from the Drafting Committee.