at the disposal of the present writer their own personal records, diaries, and letters; and, as important as any other single source, the writer has his own written records and clear remembrance of daily (sometimes twice-daily) conferences with the President in which the proceedings of the Four were fully discussed. It is possible, then, to present an account, which is probably nearly complete, of what happened.

It has already been remarked that the President's absence from February 15 to March 14 was highly perilous for his cause. Grave reasons for it indeed existed, but the results were serious. He had been winning all along the line before he departed; all the old forces of militarism and diplomacy surged forward into control the moment he turned his back and began to dig themselves in. When he returned he found his whole programme sidetracked, and at the same time he had still further to weaken his position by asking for American amendments to the Covenant in order to unify the support behind him at home.

It is as interesting as it is futile to speculate on what might have happened if Wilson had been able to remain straight through at Paris and carry forward the truly bold campaign he had started. It is probable that he might here and there have gained a point more in the long line of what we see now was never the fevered campaign of a few months at Paris, but the war of the century; improbable that the final results would have been far different. These were vast glacial forces moving upon the face of the world, between which pigmy leaders were ground to powder. Each leader could go only as far as he was carried by the impetus of the forces behind him; and the old was terribly strong, terribly obstinate. With all the world shouting its acceptance of his plans, Wilson

could think of turning out the Old Order; with all the world doubting, criticizing, attacking, and even his own support at home dropping sheepishly away behind him, Wilson was left almost alone to face enormous and overwhelming difficulties.

While the President was thus weakened in his position to meet the crisis of the Dark Period the old forces had grown stronger. They had been mobilizing while he was away, they had been developing and using all the vast agencies of public opinion against the American programme an insidious campaign to which the feverish atmosphere of Paris was peculiarly favourable. They were now ready to charge him (as they soon did) with delaying the peace unless he gave them the terms they wanted. He was indeed delaying the kind of peace they sought, but they were delaying still more the kind of peace he sought. And thus it was that he came to grapple with them there in the dark.

In studying this particular diplomatic situation with all the facts in hand, nothing appears more consummate than the skill with which the French prepared and massed their attack. As a strategist Clemenceau in diplomacy was more than the equal of Foch in war. It was the kind of thing-the art of it-that the French do better than any other people. Talleyrand at Vienna, though representing a beaten nation, achieved a dangerous diplomatic triumph. And at Paris, these dark days, in the whole technique of the old diplomacy they were perfect.

Long before the war closed the French programme had been thought out. Essential parts of it had been knit securely into the web of several of the secret treaties; certain elements of it had been shrewdly tucked away in the Armistice terms before the world awakened to the fact that this unprecedented Armistice was a part of the peace; it

REPUBLIQUE FRANÇAISE.

Le Pisident du Conseil.
Ministre de la Guerre

Paris lee. 17 Mars req

Mon Cher Président,

Comme suite à notre conversation de samedi je

Vous envoie sous ce pli une note que je crois de nature a préciser les idées échangées et à faciliter la solution. Croyez moi mon Cher Président, très cordialement

Monsieur WOODROW WILSON

Président de la République des Etats-Unis d'Amérique
Facsimile of letter from Clemenceau to Wilson transmitting a
French memorandum

had been outlined in such plans of procedure as those so eagerly transmitted to the White House, as early as November, 1918, by the French ambassador at Washington.1

It stood four-square and solid-seeming, this French programme, with each aspect-military, diplomatic, political, economic-firmly envisaged. It was carved out of such hard-appearing substance as the material fears, necessities, avarices, of a single nation, France. It was all outwardly so clever, so able, so perfect-so monumentally stupid and short-sighted underneath. It was calculated to make France alone the safest and strongest nation on the Continent; it resulted in making France the most isolated, with a growing conviction among the nations that French fear may prove to be as dangerous to world peace as German greed.

On March 14, the very afternoon of the President's arrival, the first ponderous gun was fired. This was a memorandum of Marshal Foch setting forth the first of the French projects: the military programme. This classic presentation of the French demand for the military frontier of the Rhine is of the utmost importance and has never yet been published in full. It had actually been prepared on January 10 and bears that date, but Foch, like the strategist he was, withheld his fire until the enemy was weakest.2

The essence of this proposal is easily summarized.

It is entirely based upon the postulate that Germany, though beaten, is still strong and France weak, that Germany is still predatory and unscrupulous, and that the menace which, as Foch says, France has been fighting "in the name of the principles of Right and Liberty of Peoples" is as great as ever, if not greater.

'See Volume III, Document 7, for full text.

2See Volume III, Document 25, for complete text.

Foch frankly argues the preponderance of Germany over France in numbers. Even though France holds the Rhine "there will always remain, on the eastern bank of the river, a German population of 64 to 75 millions naturally bound together by common language, and therefore by common ideas, as by common interest."

"To these German forces," continues the Marshal, "Belgium, Luxembourg, Alsace-Lorraine, and France can oppose only a total of 49 millions of inhabitants. Only with the coöperation of the countries on the other side of the sea can they reach the level of the enemy's figures, as they did in 1914-1918, and yet this help must be waited for especially for the United States."

The potential strength of Germany as against France had also been augmented, argues Foch, by the disappearance of Russia as a balancing military power in the East.

What is the remedy?

It is, according to Foch, simple enough. The preponderance of Germany must be permanently broken down, and this vast disparity of force permanently equalized. The primary and basic method of doing this is for France to make the Rhine her permanent strategic frontier.

"Henceforth the Rhine ought to be the western military frontier of the German countries." The "Wacht am Rhein," must now, the Marshal says, be the "rallying word" of France.

This will serve two purposes: first, it will hold Germany at arm's length and prevent a blow delivered by surprise; second, it will detach from Germany the rich and populous Rhine provinces, thus weakening her both politically and economically. He disclaims any purpose on the part of France to annex this German territory, but he proposes