While I was engaged in the preparation of these articles for discussion, which were based primarily on the equality of nations and avoided a mutual guaranty or other undertaking necessitating a departure from that principle, M. Clemenceau delivered an important address in the Chamber of Deputies at its session on December 30, 1918.  In this address the French Premier declared himself in favor of maintaining the doctrine of “the balance of power” and of supporting it by a concert of the Great Powers.  During his remarks he made the following significant assertion, “This system of alliances, which I do not renounce, will be my guiding thought at the Conference, if your confidence sends me to it, so that there will be no separation in peace of the four powers which have battled side by side.”

M. Clemenceau’s words caused a decided sensation among the delegates already in Paris and excited much comment in the press.  The public interest was intensified by the fact that President Wilson had but a day or two before, in an address at Manchester, England, denounced the doctrine of “the balance of power” as belonging to the old international order which had been repudiated because it had produced the conditions that resulted in the Great War.

A week after the delivery of M. Clemenceau’s address I discussed his declarations at some length with Colonel House, and he agreed with me that the doctrine was entirely contrary to the public opinion of the world and that every effort should be made to prevent its revival and to end the “system of alliances” which M. Clemenceau desired to continue.

During this conversation I pointed out that the form of affirmative guaranty, which the President then had in mind, would unavoidably impose the burden of enforcing it upon the Great Powers, and that they, having that responsibility, would demand the right to decide at what time and in what manner the guaranty should be enforced.  This seemed to me to be only a different application of the principle expressed in the doctrine of “the balance of power” and to amount to a practical continuance of the alliances formed for prosecution of the war.  I said that, in my judgment, if the President’s guaranty was made the central idea of the League of Nations, it would play directly into the hands of M. Clemenceau because it could mean nothing other than the primacy of the great military and naval powers; that I could not understand how the President was able to harmonize his plan of a positive guaranty with his utterances at Manchester; and that, if he clung to his plan, he would have to accept the Clemenceau doctrine, which would to all intents transform the Conference into a second Congress of Vienna and result in a reversion to the old undesirable order, and its continuance in the League of Nations.

It was my hope that Colonel House, to whom I had shown the letter and memoranda which I had sent to the President, would be so impressed with the inconsistency of favoring the affirmative guaranty and of opposing the doctrine of “the balance of power,” that he would exert his influence with the President to persuade him to find a substitute for the guaranty which Mr. Wilson then favored.  It seemed politic to approach the President in this way in view of the fact that he had never acknowledged my letter or manifested any inclination to discuss the subject with me.