The Press and the Paris Peace Conference (footnotes)
By Dino DelGallo

Blue Bar

1. Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A History (New York, 1994), 500-501.

2. The most comprehensive bibliography of literature about the conference has been compiled by Charles Evans. Dated bibliographical aids for the study of the Paris Peace Conference include: Nina Almond and Ralph H. Lutz, An Introduction to a Bibliography of the Paris Peace Conference (Stanford, 1935); Robert C. Binkley, "Ten Years of Peace Conference History," The Journal of Modern History 1 (December, 1929): 607-629; William L. Langer, Hamilton F. Armstrong, and Robert G. Woolbert, Foreign Affairs Bibliography: A Selected and Annotated List of Books on International Relations, vol. 1, 1919-1932; vol. 2, 1932-1942 (New York, 1933 and 1935).Some of the chief works on the conference include: Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective (New York, 1987); Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, 3 vols., (New York, 1922); Manfred F. Boemeke, The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment after 75 Years (New York, 1998); Lawrence E. Gelfand, The Inquiry: American Preparations for Peace, 1917-1919 (New Haven, 1963); Robert Lansing, The Peace Negotiations, A Personal Narrative (Boston, 1921); Charles T. Thompson, The Peace Conference Day by Day (New York, 1920); Charles L. Mee, Jr., The End of Order, Versailles 1919 (New York, 1980).

3. Mee, The End of Order: Versailles, xviii.

4. Harold Nicholson, Peacemaking, 1919(London, 1933), 123.

5. George Bernard Noble, Policies and Opinions at Paris, 1919 (New York, 1935), 4-9.

6. A fundamental assumption in modern society is that the presentation of news or related information occurs without consideration for the journalist's own beliefs and is absent from journalistic bias, although this has been challenged by many politicians. While this assumption may have directed the way in which individuals perceived the information presented in the print media, it had little validity when applied to the view of international politics surrounding the Paris Peace Conference. W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New York, 1983) touches on this phenomenon.

7. See, for example, the recent analyses of wartime propaganda in Peter Buitenhuis, The Great War of Words (Vancouver, 1987), and Michael Sanders, British Propaganda During the First World War (London, 1982).

8. Christopher Lasch, The Culture of Narcissism (New York, 1979), 11.

9. Emil Pain, "The Second Chechen War: The Information Component," Military Review 80, no. 4 (July/August 2000): 61. See also, John Eldridge, ed. Getting the Message: News, Truth, and Power (New York, 1993) for an examination of George Orwell's observations of the press and its propensity for intentionally manufacturing misleading accounts.

10. W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New York, 1983), 65.

11. Daniel M. Smith, "National Interest and American Intervention, 1917: An Historiographical Appraisal," The Journal of American History 52 (June 1965): 10.

12. New York Times, 20 August 1898; 18 February 18 1899.

13. Walter S. Meriwether, "Our Navy and Germany's," Munsey's Magazine 24 (March 1901): 861.

14. Times (London), 1 November 1918.

15. This system, part of the Longuyon-Sedan railroad, formed one of the two gateways between Germany and the German army.

16. New York Times, 1 November 1918.

17. New York Times, 2 November1918.

18. Le Temps (Paris), 3 November 1918.

19. Ibid.

20. One of the better biographical sketches of Clemenceau is contained in Mee, The End of Order: Versailles, 17-27.

21. David Lawrence, "Peace by Publicity," Scribner's Magazine, (June 1919), 704.

22. Noble, Policies and Opinions at Paris, 2.

23. Stephane Lauzanne, "Impressions of the Peace Conference," The North American Review, (March 1919), 298.

24. Winston S. Churchill, The Aftermath, Being a Sequel to the World Crisis (London, 1941), 137.

25. Oswald G. Villard, Fighting Years: Memoirs of a Liberal Editor (New York, 1939), 390.

26. Ibid.

27. Noble, Policies and Opinions at Paris, 9-11; House Papers, Diary, 20 May 1919, Manuscript Group no. 466, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

28. House Papers, Diary, 20 May 1919, Manuscript Group, no. 466, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. The diary does not specifically cite which Italian newspaper Dr. Mario Borsa represented but does indicated that Akimoto reported for the Yomiuri of Tokyo.

29. Stephen Bonsal, Suitors and Supplicants: The Little Nations at Versailles (New York, 1946), 235.

30. Churchill, The Aftermath, 137; Andre Tardieu, The Truth about the Treaty (Indianapolis, 1921), 108.

31. Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, vol. 1, 117.

32. Thompson, The Peace Conference Day by Day, 152-153, 189.

33. Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, vol. 1, 152-153; George Creel, The War, The World, and Wilson (New York, 1920), 175.

34. Tardieu, The Truth about the Treaty, 111-112.

35. Ibid.

36. Daily Mail (London), 3 March 1919.

37. Thompson, The Peace Conference Day by Day, 152-153.

38. Daily Mail (London), 17 March 1919.

39. William Allen White, The Autobiography of William Allen White (New York, 1946), 554.

40. When the council first considered publicity, Clemenceau favored controlling press reports; Britain and Italy agreed to a policy of official secrecy; and Wilson acquiesced after some discussion. See Reginald Coggeshall, "Was There Censorship at the Paris Peace Conference?," Journalism Quarterly, 16 (June 1939): 135.

41. James T. Shotwell, At the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1937), 164.

42. Daily Mail (London), 3 March 1919.

43. Ibid.

44. Daily Mail (London), 16 January 1919.

45. Henry W. Steed, Through Thirty Years, 1892-1922, vol. 2(New York, 1924), 267.

46. For scholarly treatments of these leaders, see Kendrick A. Clements, The Presidency of Woodrow Wilson (Lawrence, 1992); Josephus Daniels, The Life of Woodrow Wilson (Philadelphia, 1924); Robert H. Ferrell, Woodrow Wilson and World War I, 1917-1921 (New York, 1985); Herbert Hoover, The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson (New York, 1958); Thomas J. Knock, To End all Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order (New York, 1992); Robert Lansing, The Big Four and Others of the Paris Peace Conference (Boston, 1921); Arthur S. Link, Woodrow Wilson and a Revolutionary World, 1913-1921 (Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1982); Peter Rowland, David Lloyd George: A Biography by Peter Rowland (New York, 1976).

47. Wilson's address of 8 January 1918 outlined the Fourteen Points. His speech, doubtless because of its precision, comprehensiveness, and lofty values, aroused great pubic interest. It became the center of controversy in relation to peace objectives. See Noble, Policies and Opinions at Paris, p. 30.

48. Lansing, The Peace Negotiations, 214.

49. "The Difficulties of a European Correspondent," The Outlook, 121, no. 2 (January 8, 1919), 48.

50. Lincoln Steffens, The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens (New York, 1931), 779.

51. Le Figaro (Paris), 13 December 1918.

52. President Wilson selected Secretary of State Robert Lansing, confidential adviser Colonel Edward M. House, General Tasker H. Bliss, and Republican Henry White, an experienced diplomat and former ambassador. Wilson's choices have been greatly criticized. The absence of any member of the Senate as a peace delegate may have played a role in the final rejection of the Treaty by that body. See Ferdinand Czernin, Versailles, 1919 (New York, 1964), 61.

53. Lansing's personal narrative, The Peace Negotiations, is his chronology of events from the Declaration of the Fourteen Points through his resignation as Secretary of State, 12 February 1920. Lansing and Wilson disagreed over terms of the Treaty. The diplomat was also unwilling to abide by Wilson's plan to negotiate in secret with principal European statesmen to prevent proceedings and decisions from becoming known "even to the delegates of the smaller nations which were represented at the Peace Conference." See Lansing, The Peace Negotiations, 213-242.

54. Robert Lansing Papers, "Confidential Memoranda and Notes, January 2 to December 27, 1919, Inclusive," 4-5, Manuscript Section, Microfilm Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

55. Edward M. House Papers, Diary, 4 January 1919.

56. Lansing Papers, Desk Diaries, 10 June 1919.

57. Lansing Papers, Desk Diaries, 21 January 1919.

58. Ibid., 7 April 1919.

59. Ibid., 16 April 1919.

60. House Papers, Diary, 4, 5, 6, and 8 January 1919.

61. House Papers, Diary, 14, 18, and 28 February 1919; 8 March 1919.

62. Villard, Fighting Years: Memoirs of a Liberal Editor, 396; Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, Vol. 1, 131.

63. Wilson Papers, 17 December 1918, Manuscript Section, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

64. Bliss Papers, "Personal File," Diary, 18 December 1918, Manuscript Section, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

65. Ibid.

66. Wilson Papers, 22 December 1918.

67. Reginald Coggeshall, "Paris Peace Conference Sources of News, 1919," Journalism Quarterly, vol. 17 (March, 1940): 3.

68. Edward M. House and Charles A. Seymour, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House, vol. 4 (Boston, 1928), 317.

69. U.S. Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1918. Supplement I, The World War, vol. 1 (Washington, D.C.,1933), 15.

70. Ibid., 14.

71. White, The Autobiography of William Allen White, 566.

72. Villard, Fighting Years, 395.

73. See Charles S. Maier, Recasting Bourgeois Europe (Princeton, 1975); Marc Trachtenberg, "Reparation at the Paris Peace Conference," The Journal of Modern History, vol. 51, no. 1 (March 1979).

74. Tardieu, The Truth about the Treaty, 109.

75. Wythe Williams, The Tiger of France: Conversations with Clemenceau (New York, 1949), 184.

76. House Papers, Diary, 12 April 1919.

77. These matters included the writing of treaties with the Central Powers, erecting a league of nations, and restoring order in Russia. Details are contained within State Department, Paris Peace Conference, vol. 1, 388-389.

78. Tardieu, The Truth About the Treaty, 108.

79. Ibid.

80. State Department, Paris Peace Conference, vol. 3, 505-506.

81. Ibid., 493.

82. Daily Mail (London), 13 January 1919. This newspaper carried both communiques. The British named those present at the Sunday meeting; the French omitted the names.

83. Tardieu, The Truth about the Treaty, 109-110.

84. Ibid.

85. State Department, Paris Peace Conference, vol. 3, 576.

86. Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, vol. 1, 140.

87. New York Times, 16 January 1919. Concerning publicity, the Times of London printed the official communique, which stated that "From today it has been decided to issue a joint communique, of which the following is the English text."

88. New York Times, 17 January 1919.

89. Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, vol. 1, 140.

90. Villard, Fighting Years, 387-388.

91. New York Times, 17 January 1919.

92. Times (London), 17 January 1919.

93. Times (London), 16 January 1919; New York Times, 16 January 1919.

94. Daily Mail (London), 16 January 1919.

95. Noble, Policies and Opinions at Paris, 304.

96. Le Temps (Paris), 17 January 1919.

97. But not all French newspapers agreed. For example, socialist publications demanded a literal application of Wilson's principles.

98. Le Figaro (Paris) 17 January 1919.

99. For background information of Sino-Japanese relations at the peace conference see A. Whitney Griswold, The Far Eastern Policy of the United States (New York, 1938); T. E. LaFargue, China and the World War (Stanford, 1937).

100. Paul S. Reinsch, An American Diplomat in China (New York, 1922), 339-340.

101. Mee, The End of Order, 189.

102. Ibid.

103. Thompson, The Peace Conference Day By Day, 299.

104. Lansing, The Peace Negotiations: A Personal Narrative, 243.

105. Ibid., 244-245.

106. New York Times, 4 May 1919.

107. Ibid. Wilson clearly exhibited unclear behavior in denying Fiume to the Italians, yet allotting Shantung to the Japanese. A clear description is found in Lloyd E. Ambrosius, Woodrow Wilson and the American Diplomatic Tradition, 122-123. Here, Wilson refused to compromise with Italy over Fiume and affirmed that "the League would provide guarantees for Italy's interests."

108. New York Times, 5 May 1919.

109. New York Times, 7 May 1919.

110. New York Times, 9 May 1919.

111. Tasker Bliss Letter, 8 May, 1919 [archive on-line], edited by Charles T. Evans; available online

112. Lansing, The Peace Negotiations, 266-267.

113. Archibald C. Coolidge, Ten Years of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA, 1927), 110.

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