From the time that the President arrived in Paris up to the time that the Commission on the League of Nations made its report—­that is, from December 14, 1918, to February 14, 1919—­the negotiations regarding the League were conducted with great secrecy.  Colonel House, the President’s collaborator in drafting the Covenant, if he was not, as many believed, the real author, was the only American with whom Mr. Wilson freely conferred and to whom he confided the progress that he was making in his interviews with the foreign statesmen, at many of which interviews the Colonel was present.  It is true that the President held an occasional conference with all the American Commissioners, but these conferences were casual and perfunctory in nature and were very evidently not for the purpose of obtaining the opinions and counsel of the Commissioners.  There was none of the frankness that should have existed between the Chief Executive and his chosen agents and advisers.  The impression made was that he summoned the conferences to satisfy the amour propre of the Commissioners rather than out of any personal wish to do so.

The consequence was that the American Commissioners, other than Colonel House, were kept in almost complete ignorance of the preliminary negotiations and were left to gather such information as they were able from the delegates of other Powers, who, naturally assuming that the Americans possessed the full confidence of the President, spoke with much freedom.  As Mr. Wilson never held a conference with the American Commission from the first meeting of the Commission on the League of Nations until its report was printed, his American colleagues did not know, except indirectly, of the questions at issue or of the progress that was being made.  The fact is that, as the Commission on the League met in Colonel House’s office at the Hotel Crillon, his office force knew far more about the proceedings than did the three American Commissioners who were not present.  As the House organization made no effort to hide the fact that they had inside information, the representatives of the press as a consequence frequented the office of the Colonel in search of the latest news concerning the Commission on the League of Nations.

But, in addition to the embarrassment caused the American Commissioners and the unenviable position in which they were placed by the secrecy with which the President surrounded his intercourse with the foreign statesmen and the proceedings of the Commission on the League of Nations, his secret negotiations caused the majority of the delegates to the Conference and the public at large to lose in a large measure their confidence in the actuality of his devotion to “open diplomacy,” which he had so unconditionally proclaimed in the first of his Fourteen Points.  If the policy of secrecy had ceased with the discussions preliminary to the organization of the Conference, or even with those preceding the meetings of the Commission on