The Wilsonian Vision for a New Liberal International Order: Symbolic Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference

The Wilsonian Vision for a New Liberal International Order:
Symbolic Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference*
Naoko Shimazu**
Abstract
When the Allied Powers gathered in Paris in the first half of 1919, to discuss the peaceterms, President Woodrow Wilson was welcomed as “a prophet,” “a saviour,” who cameto rescue Europe from the ravages of the war, promising a brave new world where there
would be an equitable international order to engender peace for all peoples. The ParisPeace Conference represented the climax of the American war propaganda campaign as
the First World War was fought in the media as well as in the trenches. Wilsonian liberalism
as it became known, was a paradoxical mix of visionary idealism and political pragmatism.
The ʻsaviourʼ himself began to recognise his mortality and realise the limits of his ideals
during the Paris Peace Conference. Yet images of diplomacy constructed largely by themedia during the Paris Peace Conference tended to inform contemporar y perceptionsof the success of peace conference diplomacy at Paris. To this end, ʻpublic diplomacyʼconstituted an integral aspect of peace conference diplomacy. In the end, Wilson himself
faced a personal defeat in his own country which had failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles.
Nonetheless, the international order or the League of Nations which was born out of hisbrand of idealism survived its difficult birth, and ventured to live a short but eventful life.

It is opportune to reconsider the liberal international order of the interwar period, as weface the centenary of the end of the First World War. When the Allied Powers gatheredin Paris in the first half of 1919, to discuss the peace terms, President Woodrow Wilson
was welcomed as “a prophet,” “a saviour,” who came to rescue Europe from the ravagesof the war, promising a brave new world where there would be an equitable international orderto engender peace for all peoples. Some of the top brass in the American delegation worried thathis personal presence in Paris would break the sacred halo with which he had to come to beregarded by some of the people.
Wilsonian liberalism as it became known, was a paradoxical mix of visionary idealism andpolitical pragmatism. The “saviour” himself began to recognise his mortality and realise the limitsof his ideals during the Paris Peace Conference. In the end, Wilson himself faced a personal
defeat in his own country which had failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles. Nonetheless, theinternational order or the League of Nations which was born out of his brand of idealism survived
its difficult birth, and ventured to live a short but eventful life.
In this presentation, Iʼm going to focus on the symbolic diplomacy of Wilsonʼs at the ParisPeace Conference because it helps us shed an alternative light on Wilson and what “he” and hisThis article is based on a presentation made by the author at the symposium “Japan and the World inthe 20th Century” held by JIIA on March 29, 2018.
** Naoko Shimazu DPhil (Oxon), FRHist.S, is Professor of Humanities (Histor y) and Associate Deanof Faculty at Yale-NUS College, and Professor at the Asia Research Institute, National University ofSingapore.
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Naoko Shimazu

vision for a new world might have represented at Paris Peace Conference.1
Let us begin with a quotation from the New York Times on December 16, 1918“It is far worse than when the Czar of Russia visited Paris―you would think every Parisian
had determined not to rest happy until he had a close personal view of President Wilson.” Thespeaker was a veteran gendarme attached to the force guarding the entrances of the Rue deMonceau, where Prince Muratʼs house is situated, from the overcurious crowds.... Somehow
the news had spread yesterday... that the president had been to church and would return atabout noon. The result was an enthusiastic gathering before the police barriers―hundredsof people, quiet and well-behaved, in their Sunday clothes, but resolved not to leave the spot
before the President had passed.... Suddenly, the boy on the outskirts of the crowd cried: “Levoila!” as a limousine turned a corner. Hats came off, flags and handkerchiefs were waved,
and the air rang with shouts of “Vive Wilson! Vive le President!” Smiling with unaffected
pleasure, the members of the Presidential party passed through the hedge of spectators
down the street.... Not the least striking feature of the Presidentʼs popularity is Parisians havelearned how to cheer in order to greet him properly.... There has been another change in thecity during the last few weeks. Paris is recovering its old gayety.... Now with illuminations inWilsonʼs honor, confetti have reappeared on the boulevards, until the pavements are covered
with the bright-hued jetsam.
The above reporting tells us many things: the symbolic linking of Wilson with the French
aristocracy, heroic stature of Wilson amongst Parisians, and added to this was the smugness
evident that even the French have had to change their old ways and learn to do things in an
American way in order to please the president. Indeed, the media covered Wilsonʼs activities
with a paparazzi-like zealousness―such as Wilson was seen at the races, Wilson was seen on hisdaily round of motoring in the Bois de Boulogne, and so on. The amount of media attention that
Wilson attracted was a reflection, at one level, of how the world was changing and how Wilson
was seen to symbolise the new configuration of power in international relations that placed theUnited States at its helm.2 Most of all, the piece is an excellent example of how effectively theAmerican propaganda machine was working in Paris―in presenting Wilson and the influence ofthe US in Europe, by appealing to popular penchant for heroic figures. Arguably, the Paris Peace
Conference represented the climax of the American war propaganda campaign as the First World
War was fought in the media as well as in the trenches.3
What I attempt in this brief presentation is to suggest the importance of the symbolic indiplomacy; or more precisely, how images of diplomacy as constructed largely by the media
during the Paris Peace Conference tended to inform contemporary perceptions of the successof peace conference diplomacy at Paris.4 To this end, “public diplomacy” constituted an integral
1For the fuller treatment of the topic, refer to my ʻA Cultural History of Diplomacy: Reassessing theJapanese “Performance” at the Paris Peace Conferenceʼ, in Urs Matthias Zachmann, ed., Asia after
Versailles: Asian Perspectives on the Paris Peace Conference and the Interwar Order, 1919–33 (Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 2017), 101–123. I have excerpted a substantial part of this paper from myarticle above.

2Lloyd C. Gardner, Safe for Democracy: The Anglo-American Response to Revolution, 1913–1923 (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1984), 6.

3

For an interesting account of American war propaganda, cf. James R. Mock and Cedric Larson, Words
that Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information 1917–1919 (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1939).

4

For a fuller treatment of the idea of ʻperformanceʼ in diplomacy, cf. Naoko Shimazu, ʻDiplomacy as
Theatre: Staging the Bandung Conference of 1955ʼ, Modern Asian Studies, 48:1 (January 2014), 231–4.

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The Wilsonian Vision for a New Liberal International Order: Symbolic Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference

aspect of peace conference diplomacy.
A brief analysis of the American delegation will provide us with helpful insights into how
the most powerful state in the world saw the workings of symbolic power. Americans were very
aware of the symbolic importance of their representation at the peace conference, and this can beseen in many details of the American presence. Paris was being “liberated” by the Americans, as
the American Mission to Negotiate Peace, with a vast entourage of well over 1,000 staff, occupied
the geographical centre of Paris, taking Hotel Crillon which faced Place de la Concord as its
headquarters. And the above-mentioned mansion of Prince Murat, that is, Wilsonʼs temporary
5“home,” became known as the “Paris White House.” The positioning of Americans in the centreof Paris is significant because it reveals much about their self-perception. What is important toemphasise here is that even the physical positioning of the American headquarters can project
its sense of national power. Moreover, the fact that Wilson was hosted at the mansion of a French
aristocrat was doubly significant if not ironic.
It was reported that the arrival of Wilson as a “saviour” of war-ravaged Europe was symbolic
not only for Americans and Europeans but also for the many oppressed peoples of the world.6
The Italian minister, Francesco Saverio Nitti later wrote of Wilson: “I have seen Wilson come toEurope in 1918 acclaimed as the apostle of the new civilisation and the liberator of the peoples...”An American press photograph of Rue Royale immediately after the passing of Wilsonʼs cavalcade
illustrates the fervour which gripped Paris on his arrival, and acts as a visual testimony to thepress write-up. Even the choice of the location in the photograph that includes the sign of Maximʼswith “Vive Wilson” blazoned across the photograph is significant as the restaurant is synonymouswith Parisian high life.7 Moreover, the entire pictorial composition suggests not only the victorʼsentry into the city but, even a moral victory of the New World over the Old World. The frequent
biblical allegor y used to capture popular enthusiasm for Wilson implied that the Americanpresident was represented as an embodiment of “sacred” political values of contemporary times.
One could even argue that traditional notions of monarchical sanctity were being put into use to“legitimise” the political authority of Wilson. In some sense, it was ironic that the Old World had
to rely on the idioms of traditional, monarchical absolutism to privilege the political leader fromthe New World.
The decision taken by Wilson to attend the peace conference was not without its problems.
Wilson was personally ver y keen to come to Paris as he believed that he alone commanded
the moral authority necessar y to create the League of Nations. However, there were thoselike Secretar y of State Robert Lansing, who argued strongly against it on the grounds thathis personal presence would diminish the near-mythical quality of Wilsonian idealism.8 As
the main part of the peace conference lasted the first six months of 1919, there was also theproblem of dual track diplomacy which began to evolve at Paris: the last two months of the peace
conference was characterised by the summit diplomacy of the Big Four where the major politicaldecisions were made (more on this later), and in parallel, “peace conference diplomacy” throughbureaucrats and diplomats who laboriously panned out the details in the special commissions. Not
surprisingly, the lack of diplomatic knowledge by the Big Four led to behind-the-scene criticisms5ʻInterview with President Wilsonʼ, The Times (London), 21 December 1918. 7.

6Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of AnticolonialNationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

7

Princeton University Library, Woodrow Wilson Coll., box 42, folder 5.

8Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative (London: Constable, 1921), 14; Inga Floto,Colonel House in Paris: A Study of American Policy at the Paris Peace Conference (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1980), 70.

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of the bosses by their diplomats.9 In a political cartoon entitled “Diplomats and the Shadow onthe Blind” featured on 21 December 1918 in The Herald it underlines bureaucratic jealousies felt
by diplomats who must have resented being marginalised by the presence of their top statesmen
who would invariably turn the peace conference into a political pageantry and “hog” the limelight.
Strikingly, it is Wilson himself who was portrayed as a “problem of peace” by diplomats.
What becomes evident is that the role of the media in the new age of “public diplomacy” was ofparamount importance, necessitating state actors to either create their own news agencies and/or to cultivate good working relations with commercial presses. To this end, the United States
government was well ahead of the game, having created the Committee on Public Informationin April 1917 with George Creel as its head. As the work of CPI has been covered in the existing
literature, it will suffice here to emphasise that the successful “packaging” of Wilson underlined
the success of the CPI ʼ s propaganda activities.10 Woodrow Wilson even had his own press
secretary at the peace conference in Ray Stannard Baker. Excessive reliance on press campaigns
was not altogether without its own problems either. The fact that the American delegation wasdivided internally resulted from time to time to the dispatching of separate and ill-coordinatedmessages between the offices of Wilson, Colonel House and Robert Lansing.11
Visual images of Wilson in press photographs and newsreels distributed globally came toassume great importance, often becoming the key reference point of the event for the public atlarge. Indeed, it is not an overstatement to say that “the power of images [worked] as substitutes
for reality.”12 The over-exposure of Wilson resulted in over-expectations―and this meant that hisdownfall was so much greater when he failed to deliver the “goods”―national self-determination―to the colonised world.
For one, the rising importance of “public diplomacy” at Paris can be accounted for by thechange in the political environment of the states represented. One of the most impor tantcharacteristics of the Paris Peace Conference, which marked it out from previous peace
conferences such as the Congress of Vienna, was that it was predominantly a gathering of the top
elected representatives of the newly emerging liberal democratic world. In Woodrow Wilsonʼs very
own words, Vienna was “a Congress of ʻbossesʼ” whereas “Versailles...must be a meeting of theservants of the peoples represented by the delegates.”13 By 1919, apart from Japan, all the othergreat powers had universal male suffrage, the oldest being France in 1792 (re-enacted in 1848),
the US in 1869, Britain and Italy in 1918, and Japan in 1925. Added to the fact that the First WorldWar had mobilised and resulted in such an enormous number of casualties, a sense of crisis
pervaded in many Western polities, aggravated by the threat of communism in the Bolshevik
Revolution. As the first total war, the First World War was a paradigm-shifting experience at leastin so far as political accountability was concerned, as popular expectations placed on politicalleaders were much greater than at any other time. Greater media scrutiny of their political leadersin 1919 reflected the changing nature of the relationship between the political elite and the everexpanding electoral body.
9Curzon to Derby, 2 April and 7 April 1919, FO 608/124, f 6445, National Archives, London.

10George Creel, Complete Report of the Chairman of the Committee on Public Information, (Washington,D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Of fice, 1920); George Creel, How We Adver tised America: TheFirst Telling of the Amazing Story of the Committee on Public Information that Carried the Gospelof Americanism to Every Corner of the Globe (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920); Manela, TheWilsonian Moment, 48–52. 13.

11I discuss the American delegation and its internal division in my Japan, Race and Equality: The RacialEquality Proposal of 1919 (London: Routledge, 1998), especially Ch. 6.

12Robert Elwall, Building with Light: The International History of Architectural Photography (London:Merrell, 2004), 9.

13

ʻInterview with President Wilsonʼ, The Times, 21 December 1918, 17.

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The Wilsonian Vision for a New Liberal International Order: Symbolic Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference

Therefore, all statesmen at Paris were, to varying degrees, “performing” for the benefit ofdomestic audience back home. In lieu of monarchical pageantry, the public became interested ina new diplomatic pageantry of the grandest kind as it unfolded in Paris, and climaxed symbolicallyin the Hall of Mirrors of the Palace of Versailles, now filled with politicians and bureaucrats who
were the new ʻroyaltiesʼ in the age of popular democracy.14
Conclusions:
What we can see from the explanations of how Wilson and the US delegation attempted to exert
the symbolic importance of their representation at Paris, in the way Wilson himself was presented
as a media narrative, underlined the significance which American diplomacy attached to theirsymbolic presence at the Peace Conference. In the end, Wilson became too vested with symbolic
power, and his “demise” exposed, partly, an overly ambitious CPIʼs bid to stake out USʼs newly
acquired superpower status.

14

Ursula Stark Urrestarazu, ʻ“Theatrum Europaeum” or: the Presentation of International Identity
Relations at Peace Congressesʼ, working paper presented at the workshop, ʻAnthropology meets IR:
potentials, prospects and pitfallsʼ, 29–30 November 2012, Peace Research Institute Frankfurt, 25–32.

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