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JAN 17 1923

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES
AT

THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.

First Edition

PREFACE

THIS volume, it is hoped, will contribute vitally to the documentary record of America at Paris, illuminating not only the inside history of the Peace Conference, but exhibiting in the form of original letters, memoranda, and minutes, the underlying processes through which the final decisions were reached. Nothing could more clearly present the workings of the President's mind, or his intimate relationships with his advisers, than many of these documents; here are exposed the veritable procedures by which the Americans worked out their policies and came to their decisions. Relatively few of the sixtynine documents here included have been published before; and all are referred to or quoted from in Volumes I and II of this book. They are all from Woodrow Wilson's private files, his own records preserved at Paris, except the following:

From Norman H. Davis:

Documents 49, 54, 55.

From Bernard M. Baruch:

Documents 29, 47, 60.
From Professor Douglas Johnson:

Documents 31, 32, 40.

From Dr. Isaiah Bowman:

Document 36.

From Major General Mason M. Patrick:

Document 61.

From Ray Stannard Baker:

Documents 4, 5, 6, 16, 21, 35, 38, 39, 43, 68, 69.

It is a matter of great regret that the minutes of the Councils of Four, Ten, and Five, upon which so much of the narrative in Volumes I and II is based, have not yet been published. Their great bulk makes it wholly im

possible, of course, to include them here, except for a few annexed reports and memoranda. The minutes of one important meeting of the Heads of States, however, that of March 20, before the Council of Four began functioning formally, is here presented in full in Document I. It will serve as an excellent specimen of the voluminous minutes of the Four as kept by the Secretary, Sir M. P. A. Hankey.

Since the League of Nations was so peculiarly an enterprise of the Americans at Paris with President Wilson as its chief sponsor the record of the origin and development of the Covenant is of special interest. The President methodically preserved every scrap of memoranda connected with the League, including not only his his own original notes, made upon his typewriter or in shorthand, but letters and memoranda from Colonel House, General Bliss, and other American advisers; and these are here presented as completely as possible.

A number of important unpublished documents of foreign origin-British, French, and Italian-are here included not only for the light they throw upon the methods of the Peace Conference, but more especially for the influence they had upon American policies at Paris.

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