A Journalist's Diplomatic Mission: Ray Stannard Baker's World War I Diary

17. May Day Riots in Paris

354 17 May Day Riots in Paris. Struggle to Get Press Representation at the Versailles Meeting with the Germans. We Prepare the Summary of the Treaty. MAY 1 We watched from the window of my office on the Rue Royal, just at the corner of the Place de la Concorde, the May Day riots in which cavalry, soldiery, police, and the fire department took turns in beating, sabering, and wetting down the crowds of working men out for their annual demonstration. We saw many bloody heads and one man with a finger cut off by a sword. What folly! What unutterable folly! It only shows the weakness of the French government, indeed the weakness of the old social order. The crowds of miserable-looking workmen, little red boutonnières with sprigs of white lilies of the valley, came by our window shouting, “À bas Clemenceau,” and “Vive Wilson.” All this cannot last. The old world is sick with tyranny and injustice. The Chinese decision has caused a regular furor. Our whole delegation, except Colonel House, who is for smoothing everything over, is for the Chinese case, and declare Wilson has made a terrible mistake. Williams, Hornbeck , and others of our experts are openly sympathizing with and helping the Chinese. I had a long talk with Secretary Lansing, while he drew his interminable grotesque pictures on his pad of paper. I found him quite inconsolable . He said he would not, under any circumstances, defend the decision. He would not attack it. He would remain silent. He was for the right of the matter, he said, regardless of consequences. “And break up the peace conference?” I asked. “Even that, if necessary.” Both Bliss and Henry White side with him. House is with the President; May Day Riots in Paris | 355 he favors all compromises, while the President knows when to compromise and when not to. I had to tell the Commissioners what the decision of the Big Three had been; the President had not informed any of them. Lansing’s secretary telephoned to me, asking about it. I saw the President this evening and told him of the effect on the Chinese and on the correspondents. William Allen White is writing a strong article defending the President’s position; and Charles Stephenson Smith of the Associated Press, who has been long in the Far East, says that this, after all, however hard for the Chinese, is the only practical solution. On the whole, I think we are getting over the whole of the problem, and that is my sole purpose. I do not try to make propaganda for the President’s position; but I have been trying to have our correspondents see the whole thing in proportion—the problem in its broadest aspects, just as the President has had to face it. This broad view, of course, is not possible to the narrow partisans of the Chinese, like Williams—and Lansing, for that matter. MAY 2 Busy, busy! Lunched at the Dufayel Club with Harris and other British correspondents; five o’clock, tea at the British Embassy with Lord Derby. Two Italians bored me with their everlasting propaganda. They are now nearly insufferable. They want to be invited back to Paris and are frightened to death at seeing the peace conference sailing along without them. “What are you going to do?” they asked me. “Why, make peace, and go home,” I said. “What about the Adriatic?” “Why, you’re settling that, aren’t you?” I asked. They want to be invited to come back. “But,” I said, “No one invited you to go away. You are still members of the peace conference, and Americans, to the last man of us, want you here and think you ought to be here. You have only to come.” Theythenwanted to knowwhethertheycan get a mandate in Syria to offerthe Italian people. Trading to the last, and now desperately trying to save their face. At five-thirty a conference with Mr. Lamont on the financial reorganization of the world. 356 | The Paris Peace Conference At six, Colonel House’s conference. Our new Ambassador to France, Mr. Hugh Wallace, was there, and I presented to him all of our correspondents by name and paper. At six-thirty I went to the President’s house. He is as firm as a rock on the Italian question. They fought over it most of the day in their conference, but...