Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking,

1919–1920
PREPARING FOR THE CONFERENCE

2023

It was a measure of his quirky independence of mind that he thought

that Friday the thirteenth was a lucky day for him

Abstract
Woodrow Wilson arrived in Brest, France, aboard the George Washington on Friday,
December 13, 1918. The president did not appear to be a superstitious man, but maybe he
should have drawn a different lesson from the date of his arrival than the one he did. It was
a measure of his quirky independence of mind that he thought that Friday the thirteenth
was a lucky day for him. His name had thirteen letters, so why should not thirteen be his
number? Others might say that he was whistling past the graveyard.

Findings
Harding himself was not sure. He swamped Cox with a majority of over 60 percent of the
votes, seven million more than the Democrat received

Scholarcy Highlights
 Woodrow Wilson arrived in Brest, France, aboard the George Washington on Friday,
December 13, 1918
 The president did not appear to be a superstitious man, but maybe he should have
drawn a different lesson from the date of his arrival than the one he did
 It was a measure of his quirky independence of mind that he thought that Friday the
thirteenth was a lucky day for him
 His name had thirteen letters, so why should not thirteen be his number? Others might
say that he was whistling past the graveyard. After his mission to remake world politics
had failed and his presidency lay in ruins, journalists and historians wondered why
Wilson decided to go to the peace conference in the first place
 No other American leader, President Wilson believed, had the prestige among ordinary
Europeans to force their diplomats to yield to the New Diplomacy of the United States,
nor did Wilson trust any other American diplomats to come up with a peace agreement
Scholarcy Summary

PREPARING FOR THE CONFERENCE

Woodrow Wilson arrived in Brest, France, aboard the George Washington on Friday,
December 13, 1918.

Others might say that he was whistling past the graveyard

Years later, after his mission to remake world politics had failed and his presidency lay in
ruins, journalists and historians wondered why Wilson decided to go to the peace
conference in the first place.

After his mission to remake world politics had failed and his presidency lay in ruins,
journalists and historians wondered why Wilson decided to go to the peace conference in
the first place

If only he had stayed home and remained above the political battles, he would not have
been so wounded by the defeat of the Treaty of Versailles in the U.S Senate.

Once the powers reached agreement and presented their work to the Germans for their
signature and the defeated empire made a good faith effort to uphold the treaty, Germany
would be invited to join the new international organization as a full member

THE FEAR OF REVOLUTION

The head of the Berlin police, Socialist minister Gustav Noske, gathered an army of several
thousand conservative officers and soldiers

They marched on Berlin the night of January 10 and began a campaign of terror against the
left.

“The coalition between Government, Socialists, the middle classes, Pan Germans, and the
militarists is for the moment perfect, and Germany is under control of the same elements
which applauded and carried out the war.

They have crushed, or are in a fair way of crushing, the political sections which combatted
the German war party for years.

WRITING THE TREATY

The diplomats at Paris reasoned that the quickest path to a treaty was to have it drawn up
by the major powers and presented to the entire assembly.

(Library of Congress) cil of Four including the heads of government of the obvious big
powers: David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Georges Clemenceau of France, Vittorio
Orlando of Italy, and Woodrow Wilson of the United States.
One member of the British delegation, Harold Nicolson, confided that when Wilson was
confronted with “the swift arrows of Clemenceau’s Latin intellect” or with “the king-fisher
darts of Mr Lloyd George’s intuition,” he seemed “a trifle slow witted.”

Others in the Allied delegations were less squeamish as they crowded around the German
representatives to ask for their autographs

Findings
He swamped Cox with a majority of over 60 percent of the votes, seven million more than
the Democrat received

THE TREATY COMES HOME

When Woodrow Wilson brought the agreement home in July, he expected the Senate would
ratify it quickly and give him credit for having negotiated it.

The thirty-nine held that before they would approve the work of the peace conference, it
would have to pass their scrutiny as not violating the basic national interests of the United
States

They wanted to see guarantees of American superiority in the Western Hemisphere

expressed in acknowledgment of the Monroe Doctrine.

With Wilson on the sidelines, the Republican opposition mounted

Lodge announced that he would vote yes only if reservations guaranteeing the Monroe
Doctrine and the right of Congress to declare war and repudiating the Shandong agreement
giving the peninsula to the Japanese went into law.

The treaty came up again on March 19, 1920

This time Senate Democratic leaders begged the president to allow the loyal Democrats to
vote for a version containing the Lodge reservations, but Wilson was adamant.

For half a century after the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, Wilson’s attitudes
toward Europe, Latin America, and Asia, his hopes for international organizations, and his
fears of revolution set the tone of American foreign policy