The Paris Peace Conference and the Versailles Treaty 629de-emphasize. Furthermore, the Allies had made terri-
torial commitments to one another in secret treaties that
ran counter to the principle of self-determination, and
they were not ready to give up all claims to Germany’s
colonies. Freedom of the seas in wartime posed another
problem; the British flatly refused to accept the idea. In
every Allied country, millions rejected the idea of a peace
without indemnities. They expected to make the enemy
pay for the war, hoping, as Sir Eric Geddes, first lord of
the Admiralty, said, to squeeze Germany “as a lemon is
squeezed—until the pips squeak.”
Wilson assumed that the practical benefits of his
program would compel opponents to fall in line. He
had the immense advantage of seeking nothing for his
own country and the additional strength of being
leader of the one important nation to emerge from the
war richer and more powerful than it had been in 1914.
Yet this combination of altruism, idealism, and
power was his undoing; it intensified his tendency to
be overbearing and undermined his judgment. He had
never found it easyto compromise. Once, when he
was president of Princeton, he got into an argument
over some abstract question with a professor while
shooting a game of pool. To avoid acrimony, the pro-
fessor finally said: “Well, Doctor Wilson, there are two
sides to every question.” “Yes,” Wilson answered, “a
right side and a wrong side.” Now, believing that the
fate of humanity hung on his actions, he was unyield-
ing. Always a preacher, he became in his own mind a
prophet—almost, one fears, a kind of god.
In the last weeks of the war Wilson proved to be
a brilliant diplomat, first dangling the Fourteen
Points before the German people to encourage them
to overthrow Kaiser Wilhelm II and sue for an
armistice, then sending Colonel House to Paris to
persuade Allied leaders to accept the
Fourteen Points as the basis for the
peace. When the Allies raised objections,
House made small concessions, but by
hinting that the United States might
make a separate peace with Germany, he
forced them to agree. Under the
armistice, Germany had to withdraw
behind the Rhine River and surrender its
submarines, together with quantities of
munitions and other materials. In return
it received the assurance of the Allies
that the Wilsonian principles would pre-
vail at the Paris peace conference.
Wilson then came to a daring deci-
sion: He would personally attend the
conference as a member of the United
States Peace Commission. This was a
precedent-shattering step, for no president had ever
left American territory while in office. (Taft, who had
a summer home on the St. Lawrence River in Canada,
never vacationed there during his term, believing that
to do so would be unconstitutional.)
Wilson probably erred in going to Paris, but not
because of the novelty or possible illegality of the act.
By going, he was turning his back on obvious domes-
tic problems. Western farmers believed that they had
been discriminated against during the war, since wheat
prices had been controlled while southern cotton had
been allowed to rise unchecked from seven cents a
pound in 1914 to thirty-five cents in 1919. The
administration’s drastic tax program had angered many
businessmen. Labor, despite its gains, was restive in the
face of reconversion to peacetime conditions.
Wilson had increased his political difficulties by
making a partisan appeal for the election of a
Democratic Congress in 1918. Republicans, who had
in many instances supported his war program more loy-
ally than the Democrats, considered the action a gross
affront. The appeal failed; the Republicans won majori-
ties in both houses. Wilson appeared to have been repu-
diated at home at the very moment that he set forth to
represent the nation abroad. Most important, Wilson
intended to break with the isolationist tradition and
bring the United States into a league of nations. Such a
revolutionary change would require explanation; he
should have undertaken a major campaign to convince
the American people of the wisdom of this step.The Paris Peace Conference and the Versailles Treaty
Wilson arrived in Europe a world hero. He toured
England, France, and Italy briefly and was greeted
ecstatically almost everywhere. The reception tendedThe “Big Four” world leaders meet at the Hotel Crillon in Paris, 1919.
From left to right (front row): Vittorio Emanuele Orlando of Italy,
David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France,
and Woodrow Wilson of the United States.