edge of the situation, but what I have sketched they knew.
They knew also that the Allied Governments were bound by a series of engagements that in letter and in spirit ran counter to the popular conception of what the war was about. The resolutions of the Paris Economic Conference were, of course, public property, and the network of secret treaties had been published by the Bolsheviks in November of 1917.[1] Their terms were only vaguely known to the peoples, but it was definitely believed that they did not comport with the idealistic slogan of self-determination, no annexations and no indemnities. Popular questioning took the form of asking how many thousand English lives Alsace-Lorraine or Dalmatia were worth, how many French lives Poland or Mesopotamia were worth. Nor was such questioning entirely unknown in America. The whole Allied cause had been put on the defensive by the refusal to participate at Brest-Litovsk.
Here was a highly sensitive state of mind which no competent leader could fail to consider. The ideal response would have been joint action by the Allies. That was found to be impossible when it was considered at the Interallied Conference of October. But by December the pressure had become so great that Mr. George and Mr. Wilson were moved independently to make some response. The form selected
- ↑ President Wilson stated at his conference with the Senators that he had never heard of these treaties until he reached Paris. That statement is perplexing. The Fourteen Points, as the text shows, could not have been formulated without a knowledge of the secret treaties. The substance of those treaties was before the President when he and Colonel House prepared the final published text of the Fourteen Points.
