Woodrow Wilson

by John Milton Cooper, Jr.

  9. On assembling the staff, see Arthur Walworth, America’s Moment, 1918: American Diplomacy at the End of World War I (New York, 1977).

  10. On the post-war situation at home, see Burl Noggle, Into the Twenties: The United States from Armistice to Normalcy (Urbana, Ill., 1974).

  11. WW address, Dec. 2, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  12. JDD, entry for Dec. 2, 1918, PWW, vol. 53; 65th Cong., 3rd Sess., Congressional Record 23 (Dec. 3, 1918); 189–197 (Dec. 6, 1918). On these attacks on the league idea in the Senate, see Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World.

  13. Memoir.

  14. CTGD, entry for Dec. 4, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  15. Henry White memorandum, Dec. [18], 1918, quoted in Allan Nevins, Henry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (New York, 1930); CTGD, entry for Dec. 8, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  16. William C. Bullitt diary, entry for Dec. 10, 1918, PWW, vol. 53; Isaiah Bowman memorandum, Dec. 10, 1918, PWW, vol. 53. For other accounts of this meeting, see Charles Seymour to family, Dec. 10, 1918, PWW, vol. 53; Clive Day to Elizabeth Day, Dec. 10, 1918, PWW, vol. 53; George Louis Beer diary, entry for Dec. 10, 1918, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University; and William Linn Westermann diary, entry for Dec. 10, 1918, William Linn Westermann Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. All these accounts agree on what Wilson said.

  17. Bullitt diary, entry for [Dec. 11, 1918], PWW, vol. 53; George Creel, The War, the World and Wilson (New York, 1920). See also Raymond Fosdick diary, entry for Dec. 11, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  18. Fosdick diary, entry for Dec. 14, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  19. EBGW to family, Dec 15 [and 17], 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  20. WW to Herbert B. Brougham, Dec. 17, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  21. Lord Derby to Arthur James Balfour, Dec. 22 and 24, 1918, PWW, vol. 53, 498.

  22. CTGD, entry for Dec. 26, 1918, PWW, vol. 53. For the encounter with Churchill, see Edith Benham Helm diary, entry for Jan. 27, 1919, PWW, vol. 54. The impression that Wilson cared only about the League comes from “Draft Minutes of a Meeting held at 10 Downing Street, S.W., on Monday, December 30, 1918, at 3:30 p.m.,” PWW, vol. 53. That was a meeting of the Imperial War Cabinet, and the record states that Wilson discussed such matters as intervention in Russia, financial reparations, disarmament, the Turkish straits, and the Dalmatian coast. See Imperial War Cabinet minutes, Dec. 30, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  23. WW speeches, Dec. 28, 1918, PWW, vol. 53; Frank Worthington, “Statements made by President Wilson to me on the evening of Saturday, the 28th of December, 1918,” PWW, vol. 53; C. P. Scott diary, entry for Dec. 29, 1918, PWW, vol. 53, n. 1.

  24. WW speech, Jan. 3, 1918, PWW, vol. 53.

  25. CTGD, entry for Jan. 4, 1919, PWW, vol. 53; “Digest of the President’s Conference with On. Bissolati,” [Jan. 4, 1919], PWW, vol. 53.

  26. State Department proclamation, Jan. 7, 1919, PWW, vol. 53. For WW’s rewriting the proclamation, see CTGD, entry for Jan. 7, 1919, PWW, vol. 53, and for his reading the essay about Roosevelt, see Edith Benham diary, entry for Jan. 10, 1919, PWW, vol. 53.

  27. On what Roosevelt’s death meant for the conflict over the League of Nations, see Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World.

  28. WW draft, [ca. Jan. 8, 1919], PWW, vol. 53. A facsimile copy of this draft is reproduced in PWW, vol. 53. Colonel House claimed that the draft embodied what “I wrote at Magnolia [his summer home], embellished with some of General Smuts’ ideas and a paragraph or two of the President’s own.” EMHD, entry for Jan. 8, 1919, PWW, vol. 53. House was both egotistic and mistaken. Wilson had written that earlier draft, and this “First Paris Draft” was largely his own.

  29. WW draft, [ca. Jan. 8, 1919], PWW, vol. 53.

  30. RL memorandum, Jan. 11, 1919, PWW, vol. 54; Tasker H. Bliss, “Suggestions in Regard to the Draft of the Covenant,” Jan. 14, 1919, PWW, vol. 54; Gustav Ador, interview with WW [Jan. 23, 1919], PWW, vol. 54.

  31. Edith Benham diary, entry for Jan. 10, 1919, PWW, vol. 53; CTGD, entry for Jan. 12, 1919, PWW, vol. 54.

  32. CTGD, entry for Jan. 13, 1919, PWW, vol. 54.

  33. [Sir Maurice Hankey], minutes of the Council of Ten, Jan. 17, 1919, PWW, vol. 54.

  34. Protocol of the plenary session of the Paris Peace Conference, Jan. 18, 1919, PWW, vol. 54.

  35. WW to JPT, Jan. 20, 1919, PWW, vol. 54; CTGD, entry for Jan. 19, 1919, PWW, vol. 54.

  36. Robert Cecil diary, entry for Jan. 19, 1919, PWW, vol. 54.

  37. WW quoted in minutes of the protocol of the Paris Peace Conference, Jan. 25, 1919, PWW, vol. 54. For a description of meetings of the Council of Ten, see Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York, 2002).

  38. CTGD, entry for Jan. 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 54; Charles Seymour to family, Jan. 30, 1919, PWW, vol. 54.

  39. EMHD, entry for Feb. 3, 1919, PWW, vol. 54. See also David Hunter Miller diary, entry for Feb. 2 [3], [1919], PWW, vol. 54.

  40. EMHD, entry for Feb. 3, 1919, PWW, vol. 54; Robert Cecil diary, entry for Feb. 3, [1919], PWW, vol. 54; Herbert Hoover quoted in Henry L. Stimson diary, entry for Mar. 18, 1920, Henry L. Stimson Papers, Department of Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library; HCL, quoted in Stephen Bonsal, Unfinished Business (Garden City, N.Y., 1944).

  41. EMHD, entry for Feb. 4, 1919, PWW, vol. 54; Robert Cecil diary, entry for Feb. 6, [1919], PWW, vol. 54. About Wilson himself, Cecil wrote, “I am coming to the conclusion that I do not personally like him. I do not quite know what it is that repels me: a certain hardness coupled with vanity and an eye for effect. He supports idealistic causes without being in the least an idealist himself.” PWW, vol. 54.

  42. WW, quoted in minutes of the League of Nations Commission, Feb. 11, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  43. Minutes of the League of Nations Commission, Feb. 13, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  44. Minutes of the Council of Ten, Feb. 6 and 13, 1919, PWW, vol. 54; vol. 55.

  45. CTGD, entry for Feb. 10, 1919, PWW, vol. 55; EMHD, entry for Feb. 11, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  46. New York World, Feb. 15, 1919.

  47. For the Draft Covenant as Wilson read it to the conference, see PWW, vol. 55.

  48. WW remarks, Feb. 14, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  49. WW to JPT, Feb. 14, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  21 PEACEMAKING ABROAD AND AT HOME

  1. William E. Borah, quoted in New York World, Feb. 1, 1919; CTGD, entry for Feb. 22, 1919, PWW, vol. 55. On reactions to the Draft Covenant, see John Milton Cooper, Jr., Breaking the Heart of the World: Woodrow Wilson and the Fight for the League of Nations (New York, 2001).

  2. WW speech, Feb. 24, 1919, PWW, vol. 55, n. 2.

  3. New York Times, Feb. 27, 1919; Mar. 1, 1919; New York World, Feb. 27, 1919; New York Sun, Feb. 27, 1919. See also 65th Cong., 3rd Sess., Congressional Record 4528–30 (Feb. 28, 1919), 4881 (Mar. 1, 1919). For Frank Brandegee’s account and complaints, see Chandler P. Anderson diary, entry for Mar. 13, 1919, Chandler P. Anderson Papers, LC. For a retrospective account of the meeting, see Tom Connally and Alfred Steinberg, My Name Is Tom Connally (New York, 1954).

  4. HCL to Henry White, Apr. 8, 1919, HCLP; John Jacob Rogers to White, Mar. 3, 1919, quoted in Allan Nevins, Henry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (New York, 1930). See also WW to Thomas J. Walsh, Feb. 26, 1919, PWW, vol. 55, and New York Times, Feb. 28, 1919.

  5. 65th Cong., 3rd Sess., Congressional Record 4520-28 (Feb. 28, 1919); 4687–94 (Mar. 1, 1919). For an analysis of these speeches, see Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World.

  6. WW speech, Feb. 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 55. On the promise to bring up the Monroe Doctrine, see WW to Samuel McCall, Feb. 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 55; on changes in the Draft Covenant, see John Jacob Rogers memorandum, [ca. Mar. 1, 1919], Henry White Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, box 1.

  7. 65th Cong., 3rd Sess., Congressional Record 4974 (Mar. 4, 1919). On the round-robin, see Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World, 67–68.

  8. See New York Times, Mar. 4 an
d 5, 1919; New York World, Mar. 4 and 5, 1919. On Lodge’s motives, see HCL, The Senate and the League of Nations (New York, 1925), and HCL to Robert E. Annin, Apr. 4, 1924, HCLP.

  9. CTGD, entry for Mar. 4, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  10. WHT speech, Mar. 4, 1919, in WHT, Taft Papers on League of Nations, ed., Theodore Marburg and Horace Flack (New York, 1920).

  11. WW speech, Mar. 4, 1919, PWW, vol. 55. For Republican criticisms of the speech, see Nicholas Murray Butler to Alfred Holman, Mar. 4, 1919, Nicholas Murray Butler Papers, Rare Book and Manuscrip Library, Columbia University, and George W. Wickersham to Henry White, Mar. 9, 1919, Henry White Papers, LC, box 40.

  12. CTGD, entry for Mar. 5, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  13. New York Times, Mar. 15, 1919.

  14. EMHD, entry for Mar. 14, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  15. Root quoted in enclosure, Thomas W. Lamont to WW, Mar. 19, 1919, PWW, vol. 56.

  16. HCL to Henry White, Mar. 15, 1919, HCLP. On these contacts, see Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World.

  17. Georges Clemenceau, quoted in Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (New York, 2002); EMHD, entry for Feb. 14, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  18. For the speculations of the editors of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson about this proposal, see PWW, vol. 55, n. 1. For an exhaustive examination of House’s activities during this time, see Inga Floto, Colonel House in Paris: A Study of American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (Princeton, N.J., 1980).

  19. Memoir; CTGD, entry for Mar. 14, 1919, PWW, vol. 55. For evaluations of this incident and relations between Wilson and House, see PWW, vol. 55, n. 2, and Floto, Colonel House in Paris.

  20. Memoir; CTGD, entry for Mar. 14, 1919, PWW, vol. 55.

  21. CTGD, entry for Mar. 22, 1919, PWW, vol. 56; EMHD, entry for Mar. 22, 1919, PWW, vol. 56; RL memorandum, Mar. 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 56.

  22. For a description of the Council of Four, see MacMillan, Paris 1919. On Mantoux’s notes, see Paul Mantoux, Author’s Preface, in Paris Peace Conference, the Deliberations of the Council of Four (March 24–June 28, 1919): Notes of the Official Interpreter, trans. and ed. ASL and Manfred F. Boemeke (Princeton, N.J., 1992), vol. 1; To the Delivery to the German Delegation of the Preliminaries of Peace; and “Mantoux and His Notes,”.

  23. Mantoux notes, Mar. 24 and 27, 1919, PWW, vol. 56. Mantoux’s notes are reproduced in this and successive volumes of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson and in Paris Peace Conference, the Deliberations of the Council of Four. Wilson was in the habit of telling his wife and Grayson about the meetings, and his view of what transpired is often reproduced in the excerpts from Grayson’s diary, in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson.

  24. EMHD, entry for Mar. 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 56; CTGD, entry for Mar. 29, 1919, PWW, vol. 56. For Mantoux’s notes of the afternoon meeting.

  25. Mantoux notes, Mar. 27, 1919; Apr. 1, 1919, PWW, vol. 56; WW statement, [May 6, 1919], PWW, vol. 57. The dating of the statement in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson is speculative.

  26. RSBD, entry for Mar. 31, 1919, PWW, vol. 56.

  27. CTGD, entry for Apr. 3, 1919, PWW, vol. 56. There would be speculations that the president suffered a small stroke or an attack of encephalitis, but medical specialists who recently examined his symptoms concluded that the illness was almost certainly a viral infection and probably a strain of influenza. For the examination of his symptoms by physicians and review of previous speculations, see PWW, vol. 56, n. 2.

  28. CTGD, entry for Apr. 6, 1991, PWW, vol. 57; RSBD, entry for Apr. 7, 1919, PWW, vol. 57. On the press leak about the George Washington, n. 1.

  29. WW to EMH, [ca. Apr. 7, 1919], PWW, vol. 57; RSBD, entries for [Mar. 31, 1919]; Apr. 4, [1919], PWW, vol. 56. On Colonel House’s dealing with reporters, n. 2. On his performance as Wilson’s substitute, see Floto, Colonel House in Paris.

  30. CTGD, entries for Apr. 6, 7, and 8, 1919, PWW, vol. 57.

  31. CTGD, entry for Apr. 8, 1919, PWW, vol. 57; notes of the Council of Four, Apr. 8 and 9, 1919, PWW, vol. 57.

  32. League Commission minutes, Apr. 10, 1919, PWW, vol. 57; Robert Cecil diary, entry for Apr. 11, [1919], PWW, vol. 57. For the debates, see League Commission minutes, Apr. 11, 1919, PWW, vol. 57.

  33. WW remarks, [Apr. 11, 1919], PWW, vol. 57.

  34. On Keynes’s resigning and writing The Economic Consequences, see Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, vol. 1, Hopes Betrayed, 1883–1920 (New York, 1986).

  35. WW memorandum, [Apr. 14, 1919], PWW, vol. 57; RSBD, entry for May 28, [1919], PWW, vol. 57.

  36. EMHD, entries for Apr. 14, 15, and 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 57; vol. 58.

  37. Notes of the Council of Four, Apr. 15, 1919, PWW, vol. 57. On the Chinese memorandum, see, n. 1.

  38. CTGD, entry for Apr. 17, 1919, PWW, vol. 57.

  39. RSBD, entries for April 19 and 20, [1919], PWW, vol. 57; Memoir.

  40. WW statement, [Apr. 21, 1919], PWW, vol. 57.

  41. Minutes of the Council of Four, Apr. 22, 1919, PWW, vol. 57.

  42. RSBD, entries for Apr. 25 and [Apr. 30], 1919; May 1, [1919], PWW, vol. 58, 270–71, 327.

  43. WW remarks, Apr. 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 58; minutes of the Council of Four, Apr. 22, 1919, PWW, vol. 57. On possible physical causes for the shortcomings of the remarks, see PWW, vol. 58, n. 1, and for three neurologists’ speculation about a small stroke, see Bert E. Park, “The Impact of Wilson’s Neurologic Disease during the Paris Peace Conference,” PWW, vol. 58; Edwin A. Weinstein, “Woodrow Wilson’s Neuropsychological Impairment at the Paris Peace Conference,” PWW, vol. 58; and James F. Toole, “Some Observations on Wilson’s Neurological Illness,” PWW, vol. 58.

  44. Minutes of the Council of Four, May 1, 1919, PWW, vol. 58.

  45. CTGD, entry for May 2, 1919, PWW, vol. 58; RSBD, entry for May 3, 1919, PWW, vol. 58.

  46. Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff-Rantzau remarks, [May 7, 1919], PWW, vol. 58. For firsthand accounts of the session, see RSBD, entry for May 7, [1919], PWW, vol. 58; CTGD, entry for May 7, 1919, PWW, vol. 58; and EMHD, entry for May 7, 1919, PWW, vol. 58. For a description of the session, see MacMillan, Paris 1919.

  47. RSBD, entry for May 3, [1919], PWW, vol. 58; William C. Bullitt to WW, May 17, 1919, PWW, vol. 59; Nation, Apr. 26, 1919; New Republic, Mar. 29, 1919; May 24, 1919. See also Herbert Hoover, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1958). For other examples of disappointment with the terms, see MacMillan, Paris 1919. On the resignations, see also Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World. On progressives’ attacks on the League and the peace terms, see Thomas J. Knock, To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1992), and Cooper, Breaking the Heart of the World, 97–100.

  48. These matters are all covered in MacMillan, Paris 1919; my views agree largely with hers.

  49. On the mandates, see MacMillan, Paris 1919. For DuBois’s assessment, see Crisis, May 1919, and also Manning Marable, W. E. B. DuBois, Black Radical Democrat (Boston, 1986), and David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. DuBois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York, 1993).

  50. Despite John Maynard Keynes’s stature as one of the greatest economists in history, his analysis of the settlement has not gone without attack. See Etienne Mantoux, The Carthaginian Peace; or, the Economic Consequences of Mr. Keynes (New York, 1946).

  51. WW speeches, May 9 and 10, 1919, PWW, vol. 58; vol. 59. Two of the neurologists consulted by the editors of The Papers of Woodrow Wilson detect in the May 9 speech signs of a serious underlying condition. See Park, “Wilson’s Neurological Disease,” PWW, vol. 58, p., 627, and Weinstein, “Wilson’s Neuropsychological Impairment,” PWW, vol. 58.

  52. CTGD, entry for May 24, 1919, PWW, vol. 59.

  53. RSBD, entry for May 21, 1919, PWW, vol. 59; WW message to Congress, [May 20, 1919], PWW, vol. 59; CTGD, entry for May 13, 1919, PWW, vol. 59.

  54. WW speech, May 30, 1919, PWW, vol. 59; RSBD, entry for May 30, 1919, PWW, vol. 59.

  55. See RSBD, entry for May 28, [1919], PWW, vol. 59. For speculation about
the significance of Ray Stannard Baker’s observations, n. 1.

  56. On David Lloyd George and the meeting of the British delegation, see MacMillan, Paris 1919.

  57. Transcript of the meeting of the American delegation, [June 3, 1919], PWW, vol. 60. For eyewitness descriptions of this meeting, see Vance McCormick diary, entry for June 3, [1919], PWW, vol. 60; Charles Seymour to family, June 3, 1919, PWW, vol. 60; and RSBD, entry for June 3, 1919, PWW, vol. 60.

  58. William Orpen, An Onlooker in France, 1917–1919 (London, 1921). For evidence of how well known Colonel House’s loss of influence was, see William Linn Westermann diary, entry for June 13, [1919], PWW, vol. 60, and RL memorandum, Aug, 21, 1919, PWW, vol. 62.

  59. RSBD, entry for June 19, [1919], PWW, vol. 60. See also Memoir.

  60. WW speech, June 19, 1919, PWW, vol. 60.

  61. On the events and conflict in Germany, see MacMillan, Paris 1919.

  62. On the visit to Versailles, see CTGD, entry for June 24, 1919, PWW, vol. 61.

  63. WW speech, June 26, 1919, PWW, vol. 61.

  64. Walter E. Weyl, notes of press conference, June 27, 1919, PWW, vol. 61. Other accounts of the conference are in CTGD, entry for June 27, 1919, PWW, vol. 61, and Charles T. Thompson report, [June 27, 1919], PWW, vol. 61.

  65. For eyewitness accounts of the scene, see EMHD, entry for June 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 61; William Linn Westermann, “The Signing of the Treaty of Versailles,” PWW, vol. 61; and New York Times, June 29, 1919. For a historian’s description, see MacMillan, Paris 1919.

  66. RL memorandum, June 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 61; Orpen Onlooker in France.

  67. WW statement, June 27, 1919, PWW, vol. 61.

  68. CTGD, entry for June 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 61.

  69. WW to JPT and JPT to WW, June 28, 1919, PWW, vol. 61; EMHD, entry for June 29, 1919, PWW, vol. 61.

  22 THE LEAGUE FIGHT