Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [22]
The rest of the American delegation was housed some distance away, also in considerable luxury, at the Hôtel Crillon. “I was assigned an enormous room,” wrote an American professor to his wife, “high ceiling, white paneling, fireplace, enormous bathroom, very comfortable bed, all done in rich old rose.” The Americans were delighted with the food, impressed by the meticulous service and amused by the slow old hydraulic elevators, which sometimes hung suspended between floors until enough water had moved from one tank to another. Because the hotel itself was small, their offices were scattered nearby, some in what had once been private dining rooms at Maxim’s and which still smelled of stale wine and food. Over the months, the Americans added their own touches to the Crillon: a barbershop, a network of private phone lines and a hearty American breakfast in place of the French one. And, of course, the guards at the doors, and the sentries who paced back and forth on the flat roof. “The whole place is like an American battleship,” said Harold Nicolson, the young British diplomat who left one of the most vivid descriptions of the Peace Conference, “and smells odd.” British visitors were also struck by how seriously the Americans took rank: unlike their own delegation, the important men never sat down to meals with their juniors.17
Lansing and his fellow plenipotentiaries White and Bliss had rooms on the second floor, but the true hub of power was on the floor above them, where House had his large suite of heavily guarded rooms—more, he smugly noticed, than anyone else. There he sat, as he loved to do, spinning his plans and drawing in the powerful. Prime ministers, generals, ambassadors, journalists: they almost all came by to see him. His most important relationship was always that with his president. The two men talked daily, either in person or on the direct private line the Army engineers had installed. Sometimes Wilson strolled down to the Crillon; he never stopped on the second floor, but always went directly upstairs.18
3
Paris
PARIS WAS SAD and beautiful as the peacemakers began to assemble from all parts of the world in January 1919. Its people were subdued and mournful but its women were still extraordinarily elegant. “Again and again,” wrote a Canadian delegate to his wife, “one meets a figure which might have stepped out of La Vie Parisienne, or Vogue in its happier moments.” Those with money could still find wonderful clothes and jewels. The restaurants, when they could get supplies, were still marvelous. In the nightclubs, couples tripped the new fox-trots and tangos. The weather was surprisingly mild. The grass was still green and a few flowers still bloomed. There had been a lot of rain and the Seine was in flood. Along the quais the crowds gathered to watch the rising waters, while buskers sang of France’s great victory over Germany and of the new world that was coming.1
Signs of the war that had just ended were everywhere: the refugees from the devastated regions in the north; the captured German cannon in the Place de la Concorde and the Champs-Elysées; the piles of rubble and boarded-up windows where German bombs had fallen. A gaping crater marked the Tuileries rose garden. Along the Grands Boulevards the ranks of chestnuts had gaps where trees had been cut for firewood. The great windows in the cathedral of Notre-Dame were missing their stained glass, which had been stored for safety; in their place, pale yellow panes washed the interior with a tepid light. There were severe shortages of coal, milk and bread.
French