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294 11 Return Voyage to Paris with the Presidential Party. Interesting Conversations upon Many Subjects with Mr. Wilson. AT SEA, MARCH 7 We left New York on the George Washington on Wednesday morning, the 5th, at eight o’clock, the President’s party, of which I was one, taking ship late Tuesday night after the great meeting at the Metropolitan Opera House with speeches by Mr. Wilson and Mr. Taft. I attended this meeting and was on the stage so that I could see the wonderful audience. There was no question at all that these people were with the speakers and for the League of Nations. AT SEA, MARCH 8 I had quite an interesting talk, in company with Attorney General Gregory , with the President today. At the Metropolitan meeting the other night he looked much worn, his face gray and drawn, showing the strain of his heavy work at Washington—a really terrific week—but a little rest has put him in good condition again. His physical endurance is remarkable. I asked him about his interview the other night after the Metropolitan meeting with the Irish committee. No question has more dynamite in it now than the Irish question and the Irish-Americans have been trying to “smoke out” the President upon it. They want him, quite candidly, to come out for the independence of Ireland . He said he told the committee in language so plain and loud that it could be heard by the Tammany policemen who stood about that he regarded Judge Daniel Cohalan53 as a traitor and refused to meet him. The Representatives withdrew and finally they reappeared without Cohalan. 53. Daniel Cohalan (1865–1946) was a judge of the Supreme Court of New York State and Return Voyage to Paris | 295 “They were so insistent,” said the President, “that I had hard work keeping my temper.” He believes that the Irish question is now a domestic affair of the British Empire and that neither he nor any other foreign leader has any right to interfere . He said he did not tell them so, but he believed that when the League of Nations Covenant was adopted and the League came into being, a foreign nation—America if you like—might suggest, under one of its provisions, that the Irish question might become a cause of war and that therefore it became the concern of the League—but that time had not yet arrived. The President has a good deal of the red Indian in him—and his dislikes of certain men (like Cohalan) are implacable. Once, in Paris last month, he refused to receive a group of newspaper men because of one of them whom he would not, under any circumstances, meet. In amplification of the memorandum I gave the President on public opinion in America regarding the League of Nations, I argued that it was necessary to explain more fully the problems presented to the committee (the President’s committee) that drew up the League’s Covenant—my idea being that the average American would come to the same conclusions embodied in the Covenant if he had access to the same facts. What was needed now, I argued, was not so much to convince our people of the necessity for a League, the great majority being already convinced, but to assure them that the League of the Paris Covenant is the best obtainable. The President said that this specific knowledge would be valuable in most cases, but not in all. He gave this example. In his original draft of the Covenant (a copy of which he gave me) there was a provision (article VI of the Supplementary Agreements) that provided that all new states must bind themselves to accord “to all racial or national minorities within their separate jurisdiction exactly the same treatment and security, both in law and in fact, that is accorded the racial or national majority of their people.” This was a valuable provision, making for more democracy in the world; but it was violently opposed by Dmowski,54 the Polish leader, who is bitterly anti-Semitic and who feared the Jewish issue in a prominent Irish-American political leader. He strongly opposed the League of Nations after delegates at the Paris peace conference denied the Irish Republic self-determination. 54. Roman Dmowski (1864–1939) was the head of Poland’s right-wing National Democratic Party and a prominent leader of Poland’s struggle for national liberation. He served as...

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