Office of the Historian

023.1/9–743

The Secretary of State to the President

[Washington,] September 9, 1943.

Memorandum for the President

In your memorandum of September 71 you requested that I speak with you about our publishing the notes of the conversations between Wilson, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau at Paris in 1919. You stated that you had a “distinct hestitation” in that regard.

We planned the publication of the Paris Peace Conference records in 1938 only after receiving assurances from the British Foreign Office that it had no objection in principle to the project. The minutes of the Council of Four (Big Four or Big Three) were expressly mentioned at the time as being included in the plan. We announced the project to the public and requested funds of Congress. Funds have been received, two volumes are published already; more are in preparation, and those containing the Wilson–Lloyd George–Clemenceau conversations [Page 1335] were to have appeared this year, had the British not offered certain objections. Several influential associations, including those of the international lawyers, the political scientists, and the historians, have urged acceleration of the work in the belief that the country should know the complete story of the last great conference as soon as possible.

Mr. Lloyd George is indeed still alive but he himself published over fifty pages of extracts from the Big Four minutes back in 1938.2 The Italian Aldrovandi published voluminously from those minutes3 as did Baker in Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement4 and Tardieu5 to a lesser extent. So many have used them that nonpublication here could hardly be excused on the ground that Lloyd George is still living.

We are now so committed to the project that withdrawal would be embarrassing. Some Congressmen and other proponents of the program would ask why it had been stopped. It would not be possible long to conceal the real reason and our Anglophobes might well capitalize upon the situation. Certainly we would not wish to accept responsibility for nonpublication and risk the assumption in the public mind that we had some ulterior motive for withholding publication.

Most of the minutes of the Big Four are not verbatim but are summaries prepared in dignified and restrained language. They are not explosive. We have submitted copies to the British with an invitation that they suggest deletions where publication would obviously be unfortunate. I wish we might work out the problem on that basis.

If, unfortunately, we cannot publish these minutes, I shall appreciate your suggestions as to what explanation is to be made to Congressmen and other persons who inquire as to the reason.

  1. Supra.↩
  2. In David Lloyd George, The Truth About the Peace Treaties (2 vols., London: V. Gollancz, 1938).↩
  3. In Luigi Aldrovandi Marescotti, Guerra diplomatica: Ricordi e frammenti di diario (1914–1919) (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1936); Nuovi ricordi e frammenti di diario per far seguito a Guerra diplomatica (1914–1919) (Milan: A. Mondadori, 1938).↩
  4. Ray Stannard Baker, Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, Written From His Unpublished and Personal Material (3 vols., Garden City: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1922).↩
  5. Andre Tardieu, La paix (Paris: Payot et Cie, 1921); The Truth About the Treaty (Indianapolis: The Bobbs–Merrill Company, 1921).↩