Versailles Plus Sixty

Never since ancient times,” wrote Frank Dilnot for the New York Times, “has a Continent received an individual with the expectation and interest that Europe will receive President Wilson….” The assessment was accurate. When Woodrow Wilson arrived in France on December 13, 1918, a month before the opening of the peace conference at Versailles, he came as the savior of Europe and was welcomed as such.The trip to Europe was a gamble, one he himself had said would be the “greatest success or the supreme tragedy” of history. He realized that the statesmen of Europe did not want him at the peace conference, and for that reason alone he felt he must go. For him the conference would be a struggle between the forces of good, of the New Diplomacy, and the forces of the Old Diplomacy, which had brought about the Great War and were still being pursued by the statesmen of Europe. “Europe is still governed by the same reactionary forces which controlled this country until a few years ago. But I am satisfied that if necessary I can reach the peoples of Europe over the heads ortheir Rulers.” During the war itself Wilson's methods and goals had been resented by Allied leaders, but he had gone ahead in spite of them and had succeeded in obtaining an armistice based on the Fourteen Points. In securing the peace, he would use the same methods.