Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [176]
PART SIX
A TROUBLED SPRING
21
The Council of Four
SPRING CAME LATE to Paris in 1919, but by the middle of April the magnolias were in full bloom and the chestnut trees along the boulevards were starting to flower. The Ethiopian delegates straggled in, tall and handsome in their white robes. The great museums gradually reopened and the children played in the parks. On May Day, the city closed down as the left brought out thousands of demonstrators for the annual socialist rally and the government responded by calling out the troops. All over the center of Paris there were clashes; rumor had it that more than two thousand had been taken to hospital seriously injured.1
By May, the German terms were largely completed, many of the borders in Central and Southern Europe had been drawn, at least on paper, and a start had been made on the treaties with Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman empire. A sour joke ran around Paris that they were preparing a “just and lasting war.”2 At the heart of the conference was the new Council of Four—Clemenceau, Lloyd George, Orlando and Wilson—which had been formed in the last week of March. The idea was to meet without the customary entourage of experts and secretaries, to settle the big questions among themselves. Lloyd George was concerned about the repeated leaks from the Supreme Council and by the slowness of the peacemaking. Clemenceau agreed: the conference had achieved little in two months. So did Wilson, who had always preferred small, informal groups where he could speak freely and, if necessary, change his mind. Cynics said that the council was also a convenient excuse to get rid of the Italian foreign minister, Sonnino, whose dour intransigence had antagonized everyone by this point, not excepting his own prime minister. 3
The Four usually met twice a day, including on Sundays if there was a particular crisis. They occasionally sat in Clemenceau’s dank, uncomfortable office at the Ministry of War, but most of the time they were in Wilson’s study. There Wilson sat stiffly in an armchair, looking, said Tardieu, who was an occasional observer, “like a college professor criticizing a thesis.” While Wilson spoke slowly and deliberately, Lloyd George, his knee clasped in his hands, dashed at his subject, sometimes angry, sometimes full of good humor, “wrapped in the utmost indifference to technical arguments, irresistibly attracted to unlooked-for solutions, but dazzling with eloquence and wit.” Clemenceau lay back in his chair, his gloved hands lying by his side. He spoke less often than the other two, with more passion than Wilson and more logic than Lloyd George. Occasionally, to hear better, he perched on the padded fireguard. Orlando normally sat on one side of the fireplace, facing the other three. He was isolated in other ways; preoccupied with Italy’s claims, he took little part in other discussions and often got lost when the others spoke English quickly together. Once, when a friend asked him about a recent meeting, he replied morosely that he had finally begun to understand a joke involving blacks that Wilson had told for the sixth time.4
The Japanese, who were now excluded, protested mildly. They were pushed off to the Council of Five, where they met with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Italy and the United States to discuss the issues left them by the Four. The professional diplomats were scandalized at the disappearance of the Supreme Council and its replacement by the two new bodies. “Worthless schemes and improvised ideas,” said Paul Cambon. The press, which was already chafing under restrictions on its reporting, were vociferous in complaint. The Figaro correspondent said