Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [20]
Past practice offered little guidance, though, for the new order that Wilson wanted. The rights of conquest and victory were woven deeply into European history, and previous wars—the Napoleonic, for example— had ended with the victors helping themselves to what they wanted, whether land or art treasures. Moreover, the defeated had been expected to pay an indemnity for the costs of the war and sometimes reparations for damages as well. But had they not all turned their backs on that in the recent war? Both sides had talked of a just peace without annexations. Both had appealed to the rights of peoples to choose their own rulers, the Allies more loudly and persuasively than the Central Powers. And even before the United States had come into the war, terms such as “democracy” and “justice” had peppered Allied war aims. Wilson had taken hold of the Allied agenda and made it into a firm set of promises for a better world. True, he had allowed for some recompense for the victors: France to get its lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, or Germany to make good the damage it had caused Belgium. The French wanted more, though: land from Germany possibly, guarantees of security against attack certainly. The British wanted certain German colonies. The Italians demanded part of the Balkans, and the Japanese part of China. Could that be justified in terms of the new diplomacy? Then there were all the nations, some already formed but some still embryonic, in the center of Europe, who demanded to be heard. And the colonial peoples, the campaigners for women’s rights, the labor representatives, the American blacks, the religious leaders, the humanitarians. The Congress of Vienna had been simple by comparison.
In their first discussions with Wilson, both Clemenceau and Lloyd George pointed out the need for the Allies to sort out their own position on the peace, in a preliminary conference. Wilson was unhelpful. If they settled all the peace terms in advance, then the general peace conference would be a sham. On the other hand, he was prepared to have informal conversations to work out a common Allied position. “It really came to the same thing,” Lloyd George reported to his colleagues, “but the President insisted definitely on his point of view.” It was agreed that they would meet in Paris, have their preliminary discussions—a few weeks at the most—and then sit down with the enemy. Wilson, or so he thought, would probably go back to the United States at that point.12
After these first encounters with the men who were going to become his closest colleagues in Paris, Wilson continued on to Italy, to more ecstatic welcomes. But the cheers, the state receptions, the private audiences, could not conceal that time was passing. He began to wonder whether this was not deliberate. The people, he thought, wanted peace; their rulers seemed to be dragging their feet, for who knew what sinister motives. The French government tried to arrange a tour of the battlefields for him. He refused angrily. “They were trying to force him to go to see the devastated regions,” he told his small circle of intimates, “so that he might see red and play into the hands of the governments of England, France and Italy.” He would not be manipulated like this; the peace must be made calmly and without emotion. “Even if France had been entirely made a shell