763.72119/9134: Telegram

The Special Representative ( House ) to the Secretary of State

107. Secret for the President. If the Peace Congress assembles in France Clemenceau will be presiding officer. If a neutral country had been chosen you would have been asked to preside.

Americans here whose opinions are of value are practically unanimous in the belief that it would be unwise for you to sit in the Peace Conference. They fear that it would involve a loss of dignity and your commanding position.

Clemenceau has just told me that he hopes you will not sit in the Congress because no head of a state should sit there. The same feeling prevails in England. Cobb cables that Reading and Wiseman voice the same view. Everyone wants you to come over to take part [Page 131] in the preliminary conferences. It is at these meetings that peace terms will be worked out and determined just as the informal conferences determined the German and Austrian armistices. It is of vital importance I think for you to come as soon as possible. For everything is being held in abeyance.

John Davis who is here gives as his offhand opinion that you need not be present the opening of Congress. However I am for your sailing December 3d but hoping you will consider it possible to come at an early date. Clemenceau believes that the preliminary discussion need not take more than 3 weeks. The peace conferences he believes may take as long as 4 months.

We will not know until we have a meeting to discuss the method of procedure just how many delegates each country may have but I am inclined to think that they will adopt my suggestion and appoint seven with only five sitting at one time. I believe it would be well to have seven delegates with two Republicans and one of those Root7 and the other McCall. This may avoid criticism and opposition. I doubt whether Justice Day would satisfy the Republicans any better than McCall and he would not be as useful. I believe it would be a mistake not to have labor represented.

If you do not deliver the valedictory lecture at Oxford I would suggest coming directly to France and going to Italy and England later. Pending your arrival we will take up the question of the method of procedure but Clemenceau promises me that no questions concerning peace terms will be brought up. He insists that you become the guest of the nation and in my opinion you cannot avoid this.

In announcing your departure I think it important that you should not state that you will sit in at the Peace Conference. That can be determined after you get here. There is reason enough for your coming because of the impossibility of keeping in touch and exercising a guiding hand at such a distance.

The French, English and Italian Prime Ministers will head their delegations.

House
  1. Elihu Root, Secretary of State, 1905–9.