the League of Nations, criticism and complaint would doubtless have ceased, but as the negotiations progressed the secrecy of the conferences of the leaders increased rather than decreased, culminating at last in the organization of the Council of Four, the most powerful and most seclusive of the councils which directed the proceedings at Paris.  Behind closed doors these four individuals, who controlled the policies of the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy, passed final judgment on the mass of articles which entered into the Treaties of Peace, but kept their decisions secret except from the committee which was drafting the articles.

The organization of the Council of Four and the mystery which enveloped its deliberations emphasized as nothing else could have done the secretiveness with which adjustments were being made and compromises were being effected.  It directed attention also to the fact that the Four Great Powers had taken supreme control of settling the terms of peace, that they were primates among the assembled nations and that they intended to have their authority acknowledged.  This extraordinary secrecy and arrogation of power by the Council of Four excited astonishment and complaint throughout the body of delegates to the Conference, and caused widespread criticism in the press and among the people of many countries.

A week after the Council of Ten was divided into the Council of the Heads of States, the official title of the Council of Four, and the Council of Foreign Ministers, the official title of the Council of Five (popularly nick-named “The Big Four” and “The Little Five"), I made the following note on the subject of secret negotiations: 

“After the experience of the last three months [January-March, 1919] I am convinced that the method of personal interviews and private conclaves is a failure.  It has given every opportunity for intrigue, plotting, bargaining, and combining.  The President, as I now see it, should have insisted on everything being brought before the Plenary Conference.  He would then have had the confidence and support of all the smaller nations because they would have looked up to him as their champion and guide.  They would have followed him.

“The result of the present method has been to destroy their faith and arouse their resentment.  They look upon the President as in favor of a world ruled by Five Great Powers, an international despotism of the strong, in which the little nations are merely rubber-stamps.

“The President has undoubtedly found himself in a most difficult position.  He has put himself on a level with politicians experienced in intrigue, whom he will find a pretty difficult lot.  He will sink in the estimation of the delegates who are not within the inner circle, and what will be still more disastrous will be the loss of confidence among the peoples of the nations represented here.  A grievous blunder has been