Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [130]
Wilson felt the French were simply being obstructive. “I feel terribly disappointed,” he told Grayson. “After arguing with Clemenceau for two hours and pushing him along, he practically agreed to everything, and just as he was leaving he swung back to where we had begun.” 10 Wilson was showing the strain, but so were they all. The Council of Four was meeting virtually nonstop, the weather was frightful and the bad news kept coming in: from Hungary, where the communists were firmly in control; from Russia, where the Bolsheviks appeared to be winning the civil war; from Danzig, where the German authorities were refusing to allow Polish troops to land.
On March 28 Clemenceau yet again raised France’s claim to the Saar. Wilson said, unfairly, that the French had never mentioned it as one of their war aims and that, in any case, giving it to France was contrary to the Fourteen Points. Clemenceau accused the president of being pro-German and threatened to resign rather than sign the peace treaty. Wilson said this was a deliberate lie and that it was quite clear that Clemenceau wanted him to go back to the United States. Clemenceau, equally angry, marched out of the room. He had not expected, he told Mordacq, such immovable opposition to French demands.
Lloyd George and Orlando, who had watched with consternation, did their best to smooth things over in that afternoon’s meeting. Lloyd George chuckled appreciatively when Wilson replied to his apology for being late by saying, “I would hate to have to use the term the late Mr. Lloyd George.” When Tardieu tactlessly went on at length about the ancient links between the Saar and France, Orlando pointed out that Italy, under such reasoning, could claim the lands of the former Roman empire; it would be awkward, though, for his good friend Lloyd George. Everyone laughed heartily, except Clemenceau. Lloyd George suggested a compromise: an autonomous Saar, with the French owning the coal mines. It was agreed that the experts would look into it. Clemenceau made an apology of sorts and spoke of the chains of affection that bound France to the United States; later, to his circle of advisers, he spoke of Wilson’s extraordinary intransigence. Wilson made a graceful reference to the greatness of France. In private he complained bitterly that the French were holding up the whole Peace Conference. Clemenceau, he said, was like an old dog: “He turns slowly around & around, following his tail, before he gets down to it.”11
Two days later it snowed. April in Paris that year started badly and rapidly got worse. Although the Council of Four was meeting in strictest secrecy, details of its discussions filtered out. Foch was in despair, Henry Wilson confided to his diary: “He prophesied that within a week from now the Paris Conference would crash.” The rumors spread outward, “in a blue and sulphurous haze,” said one American delegate. Germany would have a revolution, a Canadian wrote home. “Drifting to destruction,” said the Paris edition of the Daily Mail. “The League of Nations is dead and the Peace Conference a failure,” its correspondent cabled The New York Times.12
Wilson, said Baker, his press aide, looked “grayer & grimmer all the time.” The president felt alone in his struggle to build a just peace. Lloyd George was too much the politician; Wilson longed to tell him that “he is to stay put when he agrees with me on a subject and that he is not going to be permitted to agree with me when he is with me and then to change his position after he leaves me and joins the