Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [114]
Tardieu’s memorandum of February 25, which he had drawn up on Clemenceau’s instructions, asked for Germany’s western borders to stop at the Rhine and for Allied forces to occupy the bridgeheads permanently. France, he insisted, did not have the slightest interest in annexing any part of the Rhineland, but Tardieu did not say how it was to be governed. The response from France’s allies was firm. “We regarded it,” said Lloyd George, “as a definite and dishonourable betrayal of one of the fundamental principles for which the Allies had professed to fight, and which they blazoned forth to their own people in the hour of sacrifice.” Always the realist, he also pointed out that trying to divide Germany up probably would not work in the long run; “meanwhile it would cause endless friction and might provoke another war.” Wilson, in the United States, was equally firm. “This could not be,” he told Grayson. “The desires of the people were German in character. Taking this territory away from Germany would simply give a cause for hatred and a determination for a renewal of the war throughout Germany that would always be equal to the bitterness felt by France against Germany over the lost provinces.” The president ordered House not to make any commitments on the Rhineland. He would deal with the issue in person when he returned to Paris.24
In an attempt to come up with a compromise, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and House set up a secret committee a few days before Wilson’s boat docked. Tardieu, who represented France, now came out openly for an independent Rhine state. “France,” he said, “would never be content unless it was secured against a repetition of 1914 and . . . this security could only be given by drawing the frontier along the Rhine. France had the right to expect that if there was to be another war, it should not take place on French soil.” Kerr replied that Britain could not see either separating the Rhineland from Germany or stationing troops there permanently. British public opinion was against it; so were the dominion governments, whose wishes could not be ignored. On the other hand, British forces would, of course, come to France’s aid if Germany attacked again. Tardieu pointed out that they would probably not arrive in time. (The French did not take seriously Lloyd George’s offer to build a tunnel under the Channel.) The American representative said very little. The talks produced nothing useful.25
By the time Wilson was due back in Paris, considerable progress had been made on the military clauses of the Germany treaty, but Germany’s borders, including the Rhineland, were far from settled and the tricky issue of reparations was completely deadlocked. When Wilson’s ship reached Brest on the evening of March 13, House came down to meet him. He brought discouraging news. There was only the outline of a German treaty.
The colonel thought he had simply briefed the president. Mrs. Wilson and her supporters, who had never liked House, declared that the president was shattered. “He seemed to have aged ten years,” she said twenty years after the event, “and his jaw was set in that way it had when he was making a superhuman effort to control himself.” He exclaimed, according to Mrs. Wilson, “House has given away everything I had won before we left Paris.” Grayson later added his embellishment: the president was horrified to discover that House had not only agreed to the establishment of a separate Rhine republic but had gone along with the nefarious scheme of the British and the French to play down the significance of the League of Nations by taking the covenant out of the German treaty. House had done neither, but Wilson’s suspicions were aroused, and those