Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [19]
The way the armistice was made left much room for later recrimination. The Germans were able to say that they had only accepted it on the basis of the original Fourteen Points and that the subsequent peace terms were therefore largely illegitimate. And Wilson and his supporters were able to blame the wily Europeans for diluting the pure intentions of the new diplomacy.
When House and Wilson had their first conversation in Paris on the afternoon of December 14, 1918, they were already suspicious of European intentions. Although the Peace Conference was not to start officially for another few weeks, the maneuvering had begun. Clemenceau had already suggested to the British that they come up with a general agreement on the peace terms, and the Europeans, including the Italians, had met in London at the beginning of the month. Wisely, Clemenceau took out insurance. He visited House on his sickbed to assure him that the London meetings had no importance whatsoever. He himself was only going over because it might help Lloyd George in his forthcoming general election. As it turned out, between disagreements over Italy’s territorial demands in the Adriatic and squabbling between Britain and France over the disposition of the Ottoman empire, the meetings failed to produce a common European approach. All three European powers also hesitated, not wishing to give Wilson the impression that they were trying to settle things before he arrived.8
House, who shared Wilson’s view that the United States was going to be the arbiter of the peace, believed, without much evidence, that Clemenceau was likely to be more reasonable than Lloyd George. Conveniently, Wilson met Clemenceau first. The wily old statesman listened quietly as Wilson did most of the talking, intervening only to express approval of the League of Nations. Wilson was favorably impressed, and House, who hoped that France and the United States would make a common front against Britain, was delighted. The Wilsons spent Christmas Day with General John Pershing at American headquarters outside Paris and then left for London.9
In Britain, Wilson was again greeted by large and adoring crowds, but his private talks with British leaders did not initially go well. The president was inclined to be stiff, offended that Lloyd George and senior British ministers had not rushed over to France to welcome him and annoyed that the British general election meant the start of the Peace Conference would have to be delayed. Wilson was, like many Americans, torn in his attitude to Great Britain, at once conscious of the United States’ debt to its great liberal traditions but also wary and envious of its power. “If England insisted on maintaining naval dominance after the war,” Wilson told André Tardieu, Clemenceau’s close colleague, “the United States could and would show her how to build a navy!” At a gala reception at Bucking-ham Palace, Wilson spoke bluntly to a British official (who at once passed on the remarks to his superiors): “You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither.” It was misleading, he went on, to talk of an Anglo-Saxon world, when so many Americans were from other cultures; foolish, also, to make too much of the fact that both nations spoke English. “No, there are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests.” The British were further taken aback when Wilson failed to reply to a toast from the king to American forces with a similar compliment to the British. “There was no glow of friendship,” Lloyd George commented, “or of gladness at meeting men who had been partners in a common enterprise and had so narrowly escaped a common danger.”10
Lloyd George, who recognized the supreme importance of a good relationship with the United States, set out to