Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1919-06-29
Ought He to Have Gone?

! And this raises the last point. with
! which | shall deal here. Was it wise
| for the President to go to Paris
! should he have Staid away" The Paris
View. the view of al Americans in
| laris on this question was | think.
! unanimous With all the great and
! little nations of the alliance repre-
scented h" their executives by their
! prime ministers. how could the United
! States have been represented except
by the President" We might have
: made a separate peace. we might
| have chosen to let Europe make its
! terms. since we had no demands of
our own to make and then have ac-
| cepted them. perhaps il would have
| been wiser. but if we chose to go to
! Paris at all. We had to go repre-
/ scented by the officer of the country
! who ranked with the representatives
! 81 the other great and small powers
! of the world
Criticise NJ. Wilson as one NAV. it
! is Stili necessary to retognize that
| At a task which. IL be sure. was
! self chosen he worked with an en-
"rey and fidelity beyond question He
was d = night and day. His was. in
q sense, d pathetic figure. Popularity
| such as hai come to him in the first
! hours of hi stay disappeared He
| was remote. He had not the capacity
TOR making friends and he had an in
| finite capacity Tor being misunder-
stood. Paris by turns laughed at him
and pass .ol.at-!y criticised him mis-
| interpreting his adhesion to academic
notions IS in fact actual Champion
ship of Germany.
Little by l.;i:c most of what he ha Il
hoped for slipped away He saw Eu-
rope as 1t M'.:, nut as he had ina gin ed
IT. Inc lltt4c group in Grillon Hotel
passed II part from open sycophancy
% equally open criticism. He found
tn politicians. v hose fervor for his
.. 1t
! sta eiEcnts, Lad convinced him of their
faith IN them, suddenly ranged
SainSt him in disputes on which no
Two MEN could honestly differ as a
matter OF principle. In such political
adventure j. was 70 match for LLOYD
George ana could neither understand
! Tor FOLLOW tn" agility with which the
Br fish prim. minister leaped from
one slde OF Il question to the other,
az the direction OF British public
| opinion seemed to change
In the end the treaty terms which
were made amounted to d recognition
, of the reasonable and the rejection of
the extreme claims of all the nations
| at war with Germany, SO far as Ger
many was concerned. Had the Presi-
| dent had his way they would have
been miider; had he not been at the
peace conference ! am certain they
| would have been more severe. But
| they were European terms. pure and
simple. as they We're always bound to
| be- The President had not dominated
the conference. He could not domi-
nate it. He had found himself in the
presence of an unyieldifg opposition
when he threatened to go home if his
associates did not yield. He then de-
clined tire opportunity to turn the
world over to bolshevism because he
could not have his own way. and for
this he is now being assailed by
American paTlor bolshevism, which
begins and ends with the assertion
| that Mr. Wilson could have had his
own way and that he is to be blamed
therefore, for not producing that mil
lennium. To be sure, he more or less
promised this thing. but it was i'm
possible a ali times for reasons which
are themselves the explanation of a
thousand years and more of European
and for that matter human history