Even after Mr. Wilson returned to Paris and resumed his place as head of the American delegation he was apparently without a programme.  On March 20, six days after his return, I made a note that “the President, so far as I can judge, has yet no definite programme,” and that I was unable to “find that he has talked over a plan of a treaty even with Colonel House.”  It is needless to quote the thoughts, which I recorded at the time, in regard to the method in which the President was handling a great international negotiation, a method as unusual as it was unwise.  I referred to Colonel House’s lack of information concerning the President’s purposes because he was then and had been from the beginning on more intimate terms with the President than any other American.  If he did not know the President’s mind, it was safe to assume that no one knew it.

I had, as has been stated, expressed to Mr. Wilson my views as to what the procedure should be and had obtained no action.  With the responsibility resting on him for the conduct and success of the negotiations and with his constitutional authority to exercise his own judgment in regard to every matter pertaining to the treaty, there was nothing further to be done in relieving the situation of the American Commissioners from embarrassment or in inducing the President to adopt a better course than the haphazard one that he was pursuing.

It is apparent that we differed radically as to the necessity for a clearly defined programme and equally so as to the advantages to be gained by having a draft-treaty made or a full statement prepared embodying the provisions to be sought by the United States in the negotiations.  I did not attempt to hide my disapproval of the vagueness and uncertainty of the President’s method, and there is no doubt in my own mind that Mr. Wilson was fully cognizant of my opinion.  How far this lack of system in the work of the Commission and the failure to provide a plan for a treaty affected the results written into the Treaty of Versailles is speculative, but my belief is that they impaired in many particulars the character of the settlements by frequent abandonment of principle for the sake of expediency.

The want of a programme or even of an unwritten plan as to the negotiations was further evidenced by the fact that the President, certainly as late as March 19, had not made up his mind whether the treaty which was being negotiated should be preliminary or final.  He had up to that time the peculiar idea that a preliminary treaty was in the nature of a modus vivendi which could be entered into independently by the Executive and which would restore peace without going through the formalities of senatorial consent to ratification.