Office of the Historian

Note Concerning the Minutes of the Meetings of the Council of Four1

The minutes of the Council of Four published in this volume and volume VI are, with two exceptions,2 those prepared by Sir Maurice Hankey of the British delegation and received by the American delegation from the Secretariat of the British delegation. Other meetings of the Council of Four for which no minutes appear in the Department’s files are known to have been held.

The minutes of the meetings of the Council of Four appear in two series. The first series is known as the “I. C. A.” series and in it the minutes of meetings are designated by the letters “IC” followed by a serial number and a letter. The minutes in this series extend from IC–163A of March 20, 1919, 3 p.m., through IC–181G of May 7, 1919, 4:15 p.m.

In the second series the minutes are designated by the letters “CF” followed by a serial number. The CF series extends from CF–1 of May 8, 1919, 11 a.m., through CF–99A of June 28, 1919, 6 p.m.

In addition to the notes taken by Sir Maurice Hankey, notes of certain of the meetings were taken in Italian by Count Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti, Secretary General of the Italian delegation, and have been published in two volumes, as follows: (1) for the periods April 17–24 and May 7–June 2, 1919, in Guerra diplomatica; ricordi e frammenti di diario (1914–1919) (Milan, 1936), pp. 211–460; (2) for the period June 3–28, 1919, in Nuovi ricordi e frammenti di diario (Milan, 1938), pp. 13–113. The first of these volumes has been translated into French by Mile. F. Cravoisier: Guerre diplomatique (Paris, no date); and into German by Dr. Eugen Dollmann-Rom: Der Krieg der Diplomaten; Erinnerungen und Tagebuchauszüge, 1914–1919 (Munich, 1940).

  1. Occasionally referred to as the Council of Five when a Japanese representative was present (see, e. g., CF–94, vol. vi, p. 716), but in such cases to be distinguished from the Council of Foreign Ministers known regularly as the Council of Five; also occasionally referred to as the Council of Three when the Italian representative was absent (see appendix to IC–180C, p. 440).↩
  2. These exceptions are the minutes of meetings CF–18 of May 17 and CF–48 of June 5, 1919, at which Mr. C. L. Swem, President Wilson’s stenographer, was present, and which are described as “stenographic notes” of these meetings.↩