PARIS 1919 by Margaret MacMillan Page A

quietly as Wilson did most of the talking, intervening only to express approval of the League of Nations. Wilson was favorably impressed, and House, who hoped that France and the United States would make a common front against Britain, was delighted. The Wilsons spent Christmas Day with General John Pershing at American headquarters outside Paris and then left for London. 9
    In Britain, Wilson was again greeted by large and adoring crowds, but his private talks with British leaders did not initially go well. The president was inclined to be stiff, offended that Lloyd George and senior British ministers had not rushed over to France to welcome him and annoyed that the British general election meant the start of the Peace Conference would have to be delayed. Wilson was, like many Americans, torn in his attitude to Great Britain, at once conscious of the United States’ debt to its great liberal traditions but also wary and envious of its power. “If England insisted on maintaining naval dominance after the war,” Wilson told André Tardieu, Clemenceau’s close colleague, “the United States could and would show her how to build a navy!” At a gala reception at Buckingham Palace, Wilson spoke bluntly to a British official (who at once passed on the remarks to his superiors): “You must not speak of us who come over here as cousins, still less as brothers; we are neither.” It was misleading, he went on, to talk of an Anglo-Saxon world, when so many Americans were from other cultures; foolish, also, to make too much of the fact that both nations spoke English. “No, there are only two things which can establish and maintain closer relations between your country and mine: they are community of ideals and of interests.” The British were further taken aback when Wilson failed to reply to a toast from the king to American forces with a similar compliment to the British. “There was no glow of friendship,” Lloyd George commented, “or of gladness at meeting men who had been partners in a common enterprise and had so narrowly escaped a common danger.” 10
    Lloyd George, who recognized the supreme importance of a good relationship with the United States, set out to charm Wilson. Their first private conversation began the thaw. Lloyd George reported with relief to his colleagues that Wilson seemed open to compromise on the issues the British considered important, such as freedom of the seas and the fate of Germany’s colonies. Wilson had given the impression that his main concern was the League of Nations, which he wanted to discuss as soon as the Peace Conference opened. Lloyd George had agreed. It would, he said, make dealing with the other matters much easier. The two leaders had also talked about how they should proceed at the Peace Conference. Presumably, they would follow the customary practice and sit down with Germany and the other defeated nations to draw up treaties. 11
    Past practice offered little guidance, though, for the new order that Wilson wanted. The rights of conquest and victory were woven deeply into European history, and previous wars—the Napoleonic, for example— had ended with the victors helping themselves to what they wanted, whether land or art treasures. Moreover, the defeated had been expected to pay an indemnity for the costs of the war and sometimes reparations for damages as well. But had they not all turned their backs on that in the recent war? Both sides had talked of a just peace without annexations. Both had appealed to the rights of peoples to choose their own rulers, the Allies more loudly and persuasively than the Central Powers. And even before the United States had come into the war, terms such as “democracy” and “justice” had peppered Allied war aims. Wilson had taken hold of the Allied agenda and made it into a firm set of promises for a better world. True, he had allowed for some recompense for the