ABSTRACT
Wilson accepted with enthusiasm one piece of advice House gave him on the train: the suggestion that he should no longer attend meetings of the Council of Ten but should settle the terms of peace in secret conversations with Lloyd George and Clemenceau. In spite of Wilson’s advocacy of “open covenants of peace, openly arrived at,” on the afternoon of his arrival in Paris, March 14, 1919, he met Lloyd George and Clemenceau alone, in House’s office in the Hotel Crillon. He met them determined to lift the negotiations to the plane of the Sermon on the Mount, determined to make no compromises, determined to convert the leaders of the Allies to righteousness or, if they would not be converted, to wield the weapons of Jehovah, to withdraw the financial support of the United States from England, France and Italy, to leave the conference and to denounce Lloyd George and Celmenceau as the enemies of mankind.
