Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [301]
The room was packed: delegates from all nations, secretaries, generals, admirals, journalists. “Only Indians and Australian aborigines were absent among the races of the earth,” said a German journalist. “Every shade of skin apart from these: the palest ivory yellow, coffee-coloured brown, deep black.” In the middle of the room, facing the Great Powers, was a table for the Germans. All eyes turned to the door as they entered, “stiff, awkward-looking figures.” Brockdorff-Rantzau, said a witness, “looked ill, drawn and nervous” and was sweating. There was a brief hesitation and the crowd, observing a courtesy from the vanished world of 1914, rose to its feet. Brockdorff-Rantzau and Clemenceau bowed to each other.11
Clemenceau opened the proceedings. Without the slightest sign of nerves he spoke coldly, outlining the main headings of the treaty. “The hour has struck for the weighty settlement of our account,” he told the Germans. “You asked us for peace. We are disposed to grant it to you.” He threw out his words, said one of the German delegates, “as if in concentrated anger and disdain, and . . . from the very outset, for the Germans, made any reply quite futile.” When the interpreters had finished the English and French versions, Clemenceau asked if anyone else wanted to speak. Brockdorff-Rantzau held up his hand.12
He chose the longer speech. Although he said much that was conciliatory, the ineptitude of his interpreters, his decision to remain seated and his harsh, rasping voice left an appalling impression. Clemenceau went red with anger. Lloyd George snapped an ivory paper knife in two. He understood for the first time, he told people afterward, the hatred the French felt for Germans. “This is the most tactless speech I have ever heard,” said Wilson. “The Germans are really a stupid people. They always do the wrong thing.” Lloyd George agreed: “It was deplorable that we let him talk.” Only Balfour, detached as always, failed to share the general indignation. He had not noticed Brockdorff-Rantzau’s behavior, he told Nicolson. “I make it a rule never to stare at people when they are in obvious distress.” As he left the Trianon Palace Hotel, Brockdorff-Rantzau stood for a moment on the steps and nonchalantly lit a cigarette. Only those close to him noticed that his lips were trembling.13
Back at their hotel, the Germans fell on their copies of the treaty. The separate sections were torn out and handed over to teams of translators. By morning, a German version had been printed and sent off. A delegate phoned Berlin with the main points: “The Saar basin . . . Poland, Silesia, Oppeln . . . 123 milliards to pay and for all that we are supposed to say ‘Thank you very much.’ ” He was shouting so loudly that the French secret service could scarcely make out the words. When the Germans met at midnight for a hasty meal, the dining room buzzed with comments: “all our colonies”; “Germany to be left out of the League”; “almost the whole merchant fleet”; “if that’s what Wilson calls open diplomacy.” One delegate, a former trade unionist, staggered into the room: “Gentlemen, I am drunk. That may be proletarian, but with me there was nothing else for it. This shameful treaty has broken me, for I had believed in Wilson until today.” (In the rumors that spread through Paris this incident was magnified: “the delegates, secretaries, and translators lying drunk, in all stages of dress and undress, in the rooms and even on the stairs of the Hotel.”) “The worst act of world piracy ever perpetrated under the flag of hypocrisy,” said the banker Max Warburg. Brockdorff-Rantzau himself merely said with disdain: