of the treaties and in determining new boundaries. The expert staff of the American Commission had been carefully selected and was generally regarded as equal to that of any other power. Compared with the foreign experts, its members lacked experience in diplomatic methods, no doubt, but they were as well or better equipped with exact information. There is an instance of an American expert on a minor commission asking that a decision be altered in view of new facts just brought to light, and offering to place those facts in detail before the commission. "I suggest," said a foreign delegate, "that we accept the amendment without investigation. Hitherto the facts presented by the Americans have been irrefutable; it would be waste of time to investigate them.”

Such men as Hoover, Hurley, and Gompers were at hand to give their expert opinions on questions which they had mastered during the course of the war. Norman Davis and Thomas Lamont acted as financial advisers. Baruch and McCormick brought the wealth of experience which resulted from their administration of the War Industries and War Trade Boards. The foresight of Colonel House, furthermore, had gathered together a group of men who, organized since the summer of 1917 in

what had been called "The Inquiry," had been studying the conditions that would determine new political boundaries on the basis of justice and practicability. The principal delegates could not be expected to know the details that would decide the disposition of Danzig, the fate of Fiume, the division of the Banat of Temesvar. They would need some one to tell them the amount of coal produced in the Saar Basin, the location of mines in Teschen, the ethnic character of eastern Galicia, the difference between Slovaks and Ruthenians. It was all very well to come to the Conference with demands for justice, but our commissioners must have cold facts to support those demands. The fact that exact information was available, and played a rôle in the decisions of the Conference, marks a step forward in the history of diplomatic relations.

Contrary to general expectation and rumor, Wilson, although he disregarded the American Commissioners, except Colonel House, made constant use of the various experts. On the George Washington he had told a group of them that he would rely absolutely upon the results of their investigations. "Tell me what's right," he had said, "and I'll fight for it. Give me a guaranteed

position." During the negotiations he called in the experts for daily consultations; they sat behind him at the sessions of the Council of Ten and on the sofa beside him in the Council of Four. Their advice was not always followed to the letter; in the Shantung issue it was reluctantly discarded; but in such important matters as the Fiume problem, Wilson rested his case wholly upon the knowledge and opinions of the experts.

In defiance of the example of the Congress of Vienna, which never formally gathered in plenary session, the Paris Conference met with all delegates for the first time, on January 18, 1919. It was a picturesque scene, cast in the long Clock Room of the Quai d'Orsay, the conventional black of the majority of delegates broken by the horizon-blue uniform of Marshal Foch, the natty red-trimmed khaki of British staff officers, and the white flowing robes and golden headdress of the Arabian Emir Faisal; down the center of the room ran the traditionally diplomatic green baize tables behind which sat the delegates; attachés and press correspondents crowded into the corners or peered around the curtains of adjoining rooms; at the end, in front of the white marble fireplace, sat the dominating personalities of the Allied world. But

such plenary sessions were not to witness the actual work of the Conference, nor was Wilson's demand for "open covenants openly arrived at” to be translated literally into accomplishment. To conduct the Peace Conference by sessions open to the public was obviously not feasible. There were too many delegates. Time, which was, precious beyond evaluation, would be lost in the making of speeches for home consumption. More time would be lost in translation of the Babel of languages. Frankness and directness of negotiation would be impossible, for if the papers should print what the delegates said about each other there would be a national crisis every day. Finally, a congress is by nature ill-adapted for the study of intricate international problems, as was later to be illustrated in the history of the United States Senate.

The representatives of the larger European Powers had assumed that the direction of the Conference would be taken by a small executive committee, corresponding to the Supreme War Council, and to this President Wilson agreed. Such a committee would necessarily meet in secret, in order that it might not be hampered by formalities and that there might be frank speech. Only a brief communiqué, stating the subject of discussion

and the decision reached, would be issued to the press. The committee would provide for the executive measures that must be taken to oppose the growth of economic and political anarchy in central and southeastern Europe, would distribute the problems that were to be studied by special commissions, and would formulate or approve the solutions to those problems. It would supervise the drafting of the treaties and present them to the plenary conference in practically final form. Since the bulk of the fighting had been carried by the major powers and since they would guarantee the peace, this supreme council of the Conference was composed of two representatives of the major five, France, Great Britain, the United States, Italy, and Japan, the last-named now entering the sacred coterie of "Great Powers." Among the delegates of the smaller powers there was lively dissatisfaction at the exclusion from the inner council of such states as Belgium and Serbia, which had been invaded by the enemy and had made heavy sacrifices in the war; they complained also that the number of delegates allotted them was insufficient. Already, it was whispered, the phrases that dealt with the "rights of small nations" were being forgotten, and this peace congress was to be but a