Persia is one of the original members of the League of Nations,[315] and as such was entitled, the French argued, to a hearing at the Conference.  She had grievances that called for redress:  her neutrality had been violated, many of her subjects had been put to death, and her titles to reparation were undeniable.  President Wilson, the comforter of small states and oppressed nationalities, having proclaimed that the weakest communities would command the same friendly treatment as the greatest, the Persian delegates repaired to Paris in the belief that this treatment would be accorded them.  But there they were disillusioned.  For them there was no admission.  Whether, if they had been heard and helped by the Supreme Council, they would have contrived to exist as an independent state is a question which cannot be discussed here.  The point made by the French was that on its own showing the Conference was morally bound to receive the Persian delegation.  The utmost it obtained was that the Persian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Monalek, who was head of the delegation, had a private talk with President Wilson, Colonel House, and Mr. Lansing.  These statesmen unhesitatingly promised to help Persia to secure full sovereign rights, or at any rate to enable her delegates to unfold their country’s case and file their protests before the Conference.  The delegates were comforted and felt sure of the success of their mission.  They told the American plenipotentiaries that the United States would be Persia’s creditor for this help and that she would invite American financiers to put her money matters in order, American engineers to develop her mining industries, and the American oil firms to examine and exploit her petrol deposits.[316] In a word, Persia would be Americanized.  This naive announcement of the role reserved for American benefactors in the land of the Shah might have impressed certain commercial and financial interests in the United States, but was wholly alien to the only order of motives that could properly move the American plenipotentiaries to interpose in favor of their would-be wards.

The promises made by Messrs. Wilson, House, and Lansing came to nothing.  For months the Persian envoys lived in hope which was strengthened by the assurances of various members of the Conference that the intervention of Mr. Wilson would infallibly prove successful.  But events belied this forecast, whereupon the head of the Persian delegation, after several months of hopes deferred, quitted France for Constantinople, and his country’s position among the nations was settled in detail by the new agreement.