PARIS 1919 by Margaret MacMillan Read Free Book Online Page A

The war had been over for just a month. While the president stood on the bridge, his ship steamed slowly in through a great avenue of battleships from the British, French and American navies. For the first time in days, the sun was shining. The streets were lined with laurel wreaths and flags. On the walls, posters paid tribute to Wilson, those from right-wingers for saving them from Germany and those from the left for the new world he promised. Huge numbers of people, many resplendent in their traditional Breton costumes, covered every inch of pavement, every roof, every tree. Even the lampposts were taken. The air filled with the skirl of Breton bagpipes and repeated shouts of “Vive l’Amérique! Vive Wilson!” The French foreign minister, Stéphen Pichon, welcomed him, saying, “We are so thankful that you have come over to give us the right kind of peace.” Wilson made a noncommittal reply and the American party boarded the night train for Paris. At three in the morning, Wilson’s doctor happened to look out the window of his compartment. “I saw not only men and women but little children standing with uncovered head to cheer the passage of the special train.” 32
    Wilson’s reception in Paris was an even greater triumph, with even greater crowds: “the most remarkable demonstration,” said an American who lived in Paris, “of enthusiasm and affection on the part of the Parisians that I have ever heard of, let alone seen.” His train pulled into the Luxembourg station, which had been festooned with bunting and flags and filled with great masses of flowers. Clemenceau, the French prime minister, was there with his government and his longtime antagonist, the president Raymond Poincaré. As guns boomed across Paris to announce Wilson’s arrival, the crowds started to press against the soldiers who lined the route. The president and his wife drove in an open carriage through the Place de la Concorde and on up the Champs-Elysées to their residence, to the sound of wild cheers. That night, at a quiet family dinner, Wilson said he was very pleased with his reception. “He had carefully watched the attitude of the crowd,” he reportedly told the table, “and he was satisfied that they were most friendly.” 33

2
    First Impressions
    THE AFTERNOON of his arrival in Paris, Wilson had a reunion with his most trusted adviser. Colonel Edward House did not look like the rich Texan he was. Small, pale, self-effacing and frail, he often sat with a blanket over his knees because he could not bear the cold. Just as the Peace Conference was starting, he came down with flu and nearly died. House spoke in a soft, gentle voice, working his small delicate hands, said an observer, as though he were holding some object in them. He invariably sounded calm, reasonable and cheerful. 1 People often thought of one of the great French cardinals of the past, of Mazarin perhaps.
    He was not really a colonel; that was only an honorary title. He had never fought in a war but he knew much about conflict: the Texas of his childhood was a world where men brought out their guns at the first hint of an insult. House was riding and shooting by the time he was three. One brother had half his face shot off in a childish gunfight; another died falling off a trapeze. Then House too had an accident when he fell from a rope and hit his head. He never fully recovered. Since he could no longer dominate others physically, he learned to do so psychologically. “I used to like to set boys at each other,” he told a biographer, “to see what they would do, and then try to bring them around again.” 2
    He became a master at understanding men. Almost everyone who met him found him immediately sympathetic and friendly. “An intimate man,” said the son of one of his enemies, “even when he was cutting your throat.” House loved power and politics, especially when he