Mr. Keynes, in his remarkable description of
Mr. Wilson making peace, says that his mind was slow.
Doubtless it was slow in political trading about the council table,
just as a philosopher may be slow in the small talk of a five
o'clock tea.
Mr. Wilson was out of his element in the conference; Mr. Lloyd
George and M. Clemenceau were in theirs. Gradually the conviction
entered Mr. Wilson's soul that what was being destroyed at Paris
was Mr. Wilson. The figure of Senator Lodge began to rise across
the Atlantic, malevolent and evil, the Lodge against whom he had
wanted to appeal to the American people.
The strain was telling upon him. He had to sit beside his
destroyers with that smiling amiability which Mr. Lansing records
in his book. He had to deal with men on a basis of equality, a
thing which he had run away from doing in his youth, which all his
life had made too great demands upon his sensitive, arrogant
nature.
One whose duty it was to see him every night after the meetings of
the Big Three reports that he found him with the left side of his
face twitching. To collect his memory he would pass his hand
several times wearily over his brow. The arduousness of the labor
was not great enough to account for this. M. Clemenceau at nearly
eighty stood the strain and an assassin's bullet as well. Mr. Lloyd
George thrived on what he did.
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