Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [16]
It was easy to mock Wilson, and many did. It is also easy to forget how important his principles were in 1919 and how many people, and not just in the United States, wanted to believe in his great dream of a better world. They had, after all, a terrible reference point in the ruin left by the Great War. Wilson kept alive the hope that human society, despite the evidence, was getting better, that nations would one day live in harmony. In 1919, before disillusionment had set in, the world was more than ready to listen to him.
What Wilson had to say struck a chord, not just with liberals or pacifists but also among Europe’s political and diplomatic élites. Sir Maurice Hankey, secretary to the British War Cabinet and then the Peace Conference itself, always carried a copy of the Fourteen Points in the box he kept for crucial reference material. They were, he said, the “moral background.” Across Europe there were squares, streets, railway stations and parks bearing Wilson’s name. Wall posters cried, “We Want a Wilson Peace.” In Italy, soldiers knelt in front of his picture; in France, the left-wing paper L’Humanité brought out a special issue in which the leading lights of the French left vied with each other to praise Wilson’s name. The leaders of the Arab revolt in the desert, Polish nationalists in Warsaw, rebels in the Greek islands, students in Peking, Koreans trying to shake off Japan’s control, all took the Fourteen Points as their inspiration. Wilson himself found it exhilarating but also terrifying. “I am wondering,” he said to George Creel, his brilliant propaganda chief, who was on board the George Washington, “whether you have not unconsciously spun a net for me from which there is no escape.” The whole world was turning to the United States but, he went on, they both knew that such great problems could not be fixed at once. “What I seem to see—with all my heart I hope that I am wrong—is a tragedy of disappointment.” 31
The George Washington reached the French port of Brest on December 13, 1918. The war had been over for just a month. While the president stood on the bridge, his ship steamed slowly in through a great avenue of battleships from the British, French and American navies. For the first time in days, the sun was shining. The streets were lined with laurel wreaths and flags. On the walls, posters paid tribute to Wilson, those from right-wingers for saving them from Germany and those from the left for the new world he promised. Huge numbers of people, many resplendent in their traditional Breton costumes, covered every inch of pavement, every roof, every tree. Even the lampposts were taken. The air filled with the skirl of Breton bagpipes and repeated shouts of “Vive l’Amérique! Vive Wilson!” The French foreign minister, Stéphen Pichon, welcomed him, saying, “We are so thankful that you have come over to give us the right kind of peace.” Wilson made a noncommittal reply and the American party boarded the night train for Paris. At three in the morning, Wilson’s doctor happened to look out the window of his compartment. “I saw not only men and women but little children standing with uncovered head to cheer the passage of the special train.”32
Wilson’s reception in Paris was an even greater triumph, with even greater crowds: “the most remarkable demonstration,” said an American who lived in Paris, “of enthusiasm and affection on the part of the Parisians that I have ever heard of, let alone seen.” His train pulled into the Luxembourg station, which had been festooned with