summoned to attend all further negotiations on the Armistice with the Central Powers. I added that our absence from these proceedings would make a very unfavourable impression in Bohemia and might produce results which would be unpleasant, both to us and to the Allies.
He proposed to deal with the matter unofficially, to which I agreed, and then returned to the Rue Bonaparte. Shortly afterwards I was invited by telephone to attend the meeting of the Great Powers at eleven o’clock that morning at the residence of Colonel House.
Berthelot’s assistance immediately produced satisfactory results in every respect. Besides the main session of the Inter-Allied Conference (Supreme Military Council), which was held on October 31st and on November 1st, 2nd, and 4th, and which was attended by the chief political and military representatives of the Allied States (among those present were Clemenceau, Pichon, Leygues, Klotz, Lloyd George, Bonar Law, Balfour, Lord Milner, Colonel House, Orlando, Sonnino, Matsui, Hymans, Venizelos, Vesnić, General Foch, General Wilson, General Bliss, and General Robillant), conferences of the four chief Great Powers were held regularly every morning which supplemented the proceedings of the main Conference, and to which a number of military authorities, Prime Ministers and Ministers of Foreign Affairs were co-opted. It was to these proceedings that, as a result of Berthelot’s intervention, I was invited by telephone, as I have mentioned above. At midday on November 4th a special messenger from the French Foreign Ministry came to the Rue Bonaparte with an official invitation from Pichon for me to attend the plenary meeting of the Supreme War Council which was to be held on the same afternoon at Versailles.
160
I must confess that I was highly excited when, on the afternoon of November 4th, I took my seat in a motor-car decorated with our flag, and drove through Paris by way of St. Cloud and Sèvres to Versailles. When for the first time I entered the hall at Versailles where all the mighty of this world were assembled—mighty especially at that moment when they were settling the destiny of three Empires in Europe and Asia—and when I took my seat besides Vesnić and Venizelos, I could scarcely believe in the reality of what was happening. Three years
