Paris Peace Conf. 182/11
Dr. S. E. Mezes to the Secretary of State
[Received June 13.]
My Dear Mr. Secretary: Thank you for the French outline of preparatory work. I am having it compared with our own and with similar British outlines which we have, in order to extract from it such suggestions as it may offer.
We were very glad of the opportunity for a conference with you last Thursday. It clarified our ideas in a number of important respects.
I am also glad to see that our insistence, on the prime necessity of being open-minded and unbiased, accords with your ideas. We look upon ourselves as engaged in forging instruments in aid of judgment; that is, in gathering for each region and problem a thorough, well proportioned [Page 99] and well organized body of facts which will aid you and other officers of the Government in determining policies. Naturally, we have had difficulty from time to time in keeping the theories of our collaborators out of the work, and in some cases it has not been wholly possible to do so. Indeed, there are regions, Austria-Hungary, for instance, and the Balkans, where it sometimes seems best to get the facts from two or more antagonistic points of view, as such points of view will be urged at the Conference, and it is well to know what they are. But that, of course, is different from admitting our own prepossessions into the study of regions and problems.
Very sincerely yours,