I do not propose to tell the story of the Conference, and it is as well to say at once that I do not intend to make use of any document placed in my hands for official purposes.  But the story of the Paris Conference can now be told with practical completeness after what has been published by J.M.  Keynes in his noble book on the Economic Consequences of the War and by the American Secretary of State, Robert Lansing, and after the statements made in the British and French Parliaments by Lloyd George and Clemenceau.  But from the political point of view the most interesting document is still Andre Tardieu’s book La Paix, to which Clemenceau wrote a preface and which expresses, from the point of view of the French Delegation at the Conference, the programme which France laid before itself and what it obtained.  This book explains how the principal decisions were taken, and indeed can be fairly considered to show in a more reliable way than any other publication extant how the work of the Conference proceeded.  For not only was M. Tardieu one of the French Delegates to the Conference, one of those who signed the Versailles Treaty, but also he prepared the plan of work as well as the solutions of the most important questions in his capacity of trusted agent of the Prime Minister.

The determination in the mind of President Wilson when he came to Paris was to carry through his programme of the League of Nations.  He was fickle in his infallibility, but he had the firmest faith that he was working for the peace of the world and above all for the glory of the United States.  Of European things he was supremely ignorant.  We are bound to recognize his good faith, but we are not in the least bound on that account to admit his capacity to tackle the problems which with his academic simplicity he set himself to solve.  When he arrived in Europe he had not even prepared in outline a scheme of what the League of Nations was to be; the principal problems found him unprepared, and the duty of the crowd of experts (sometimes not too expert) who followed him seemed rather to be to demonstrate the truth of his idea than to prepare material for seriously thought out decisions.

He could have made no greater mistake than he did in coming to Europe to take part in the meetings of the Conference.  His figure lost relief at once, in a way it seemed to lose dignity.  The head of a State was taking part in meetings of heads of Governments, one of the latter presiding.  It was a giant compelled to live in a cellar and thereby sacrificing his height.  He was surrounded by formal respect and in some decisions he exercised almost despotic authority, but his work was none the less disordered; there was a semblance of giving in to him while he was giving away his entire programme without being aware of it.

In his ignorance of European things he was brought, without recognizing it, to accept a series of decisions not superficially in opposition to his fourteen points but which did actually nullify them.