Paris 1919 - Margaret Macmillan [96]
On January 29, Wilson told House that he thought it would be a good idea for the American experts to work closely with the British. House, whatever his own reservations, obediently passed this on to both the Americans and the British. Lloyd George, who valued good relations between Britain and the United States highly, was delighted. So were the Canadians. “Our relations with the British, who are the only people here who are not playing chauvinistic politics (a fact that it took Wilson about a week to discover),” said Seymour, the American expert, “are so close that we are exchanging views with absolute frankness on the territorial settlement of Europe.” Members from the two delegations fell into a pattern of frequent consultation, exchanging confidential memoranda and talking on the secure telephone lines that American army engineers rigged up to link the Crillon and the Majestic. “Our unanimity,” wrote Nicolson later, “was indeed remarkable. There—in what had once been the cabinets particuliers of Maxim’s—was elaborated an Anglo-American case covering the whole frontiers of Jugo-Slavia, Czecho-Slovakia, Rumania, Austria and Hungary. Only in regard to Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and Turkey in Europe did any divergence manifest itself. And even here the divergence was one of detail only, scarcely one of principle.” 2
As relations between Britain and the United States flourished, those of each country with France deteriorated. The British saw the French as competitors for Ottoman and Russian territory in the Middle East and Central Asia. They also suspected that once Wilson had left for his brief trip home, the French would try to shape the German terms to suit themselves. “I find them full of intrigue and chicanery of all kinds, without any idea of playing the game,” wrote Hankey. When France faced a financial crisis, with downward pressure on the franc in February, the British reaction was cool. They could not, they told the French, make a loan to tide them over. It was only when House interceded with Lloyd George that some funds were made available. The French accepted the loan but remembered the delay. The British and the Americans shook their heads over what they saw as French incompetence and irresponsibility.3
Relations between the French and the Americans were especially poor. French diplomats blamed Wilson for holding up the real business of the conference—the punishment of Germany—with his League. The French finance minister, Louis-Lucien Klotz, told his colleagues that the Americans were trying to sell their excess food to Germany in return for cash payments, which would, of course, make it more difficult for the French to collect the reparations due to them. The Americans in return complained that the French were stinging them for their accommodation in Paris and for the expenses of their army. In the cinemas, French audiences, which had once cheered every appearance of Wilson on the screen, now stayed silent. French policemen and American soldiers brawled in the streets. Some of the Americans were overheard to say that they had been fighting on the wrong side. The Parisians made fun of Mrs. Wilson, and the French papers, which had been generally favorable to the American president, now started to criticize him.4
The attacks infuriated Wilson, who was convinced that they were orchestrated by the French government. His voice trembling with indignation, he showed a visitor a confidential document which told French newspapers to exaggerate the chaos in Russia, to stress the strong possibility of a renewed offensive from Germany and to remind Wilson that he faced a strong Republican opposition back home. Increasingly, in private, Wilson poured out his bitterness: the French were “stupid,” “petty,” “insane,” “unreliable,” “tricky,” “the hardest I ever tried to do business with.” He still thought the ordinary French people were all right, he told his doctor, but their politicians were leading them astray. “It was due entirely to the fact that the French politicians had permitted so many