Cabled home, these words attracted some attention, yet the views that they expressed were not based entirely upon my own observations. I had talked with General Bliss, the military member of our Peace Commission, and with other American officers of high rank: they held opinions similar to mine.

Bliss, on several occasions, told me that he thought we had just ended the first seven years of another Thirty Years’ War which had begun with the Balkan conflict of 1912.

Was he right? The answer rests hidden in the years immediately ahead of us.

Whatever that answer may be, I saw the signing of the Peace Treaty intended to end the latest war. General Pershing and I sat next to each other, and I discussed these very matters with him at Versailles on that momentous 28th of June. The affixing of the signatures was not an impressive spectacle. There was no enthusiasm, and but little excitement. People moved about and chatted in subdued voices. Mrs. Wilson, Mrs. Lansing, and Colonel House sat in the row next to me, and I talked to Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Presidents Poincaré and Wilson. The only solemn moment was that when the Germans walked to the table; they betrayed mental suffering, and one of them showed the results of physical hardship: his clothes hung on him so loosely that it was apparent he must have lost quite forty pounds since they were made. After the signatures had been affixed, we all walked up to the Treaty and looked at it, like mourners taking farewell of a corpse—but we were mourners without tears.

That night the negotiations for the appointment of the memorable Harbord Commission to Armenia were concluded. In these I had played a considerable part; their termination marked the end of my semi-official activities before embarking on my Polish expedition.

Passing mention has been made of the arduous study of the Turkish question, which our Commissioners had asked me to undertake jointly with W. H. Buckler. This task brought me again into contact with Mr. Hoover, because of the relief work of his Commission in Armenia, and, besides renewing my pleasant relations with Sir Louis Mallet, who had been the British Ambassador to Constantinople while I was there, it involved, among a mass of other details, many interviews with the Armenian and French representatives and the spokesmen of the other interested parties. The French were determined to have Cilicia; the Armenians would not consider my advice that they should surrender it, and, by this concession, win French support for their other ambitions. Buckler, Professor Philip M. Brown, and I made a report[1] to President Wilson, recommending a triple mandate: one to cover Armenia, another Anatolia, and a third the Constantinople district, where the chief administrator would reside, with an administrator in each of the other territories; we expressed the opinion that there should be an Armenian parliament in Armenia and a Turkish parliament in Anatolia, with the probable Turkish capital at Konia. Thus we would banish the Turk from Europe and limit him to Anatolia, where, however, he would be permitted to govern himself. The triple mandate, we recommended, should be assumed by the United States.

Our report was submitted in the latter part of June. Nevertheless, the conflicting claims of the French and the Armenians and the woeful conditions of the districts involved, left something more to be done. I favoured the appointment of an American Army officer to go to Armenia as Commissioner for the Allied and Associated Nations, and to protect the Armenians. I had a high regard for the ability of Major-General Harbord, General Pershing’s Chief-of-Staff, and thought him exactly the man for such a post; but I was told that he was not in Paris, and nobody seemed to know just where he was or when he would return.

At the last moment, fate played into my hands. On Tuesday, June 24th, I went to a dinner given by Homer H. Johnson to Assistant Secretary of War Benjamin Crowell, and found General Harbord there. To my great satisfaction I was seated next to him. This gave us several hours to discuss the Armenian question, and I urged him to undertake the task. Next morning he sent me a remarkable letter, which showed his masterly grasp of the situation, but ended with the statement that he would not care to accept the Commissionership unless he could have a proper military staff to aid him.

On Thursday, I had an appointment with the President to discuss the Polish Mission. We disposed of this very quickly, as I shall tell later on. I then seized upon the remaining minutes allotted me to present to the President our proposal of a Commission to Armenia. The President was profoundly interested and told me that he had but little time left to do anything in the matter, as the Peace Treaty was to be signed on Saturday. And he added:

“As you probably know, I shall sail for home that evening, but if you can come to an agreement with Hoover and let me have what you two recommend by nine o’clock to-morrow morning, I will try to put it through.”

I went straight to Hoover’s office from my interview and we drafted a letter to the President containing the following joint recommendations to be brought by him to the attention of the Big Four before his departure:

Two days later, the President sailed for America. As he was taking the Brest train from Paris, he turned to Harbord, who had come to the station:

“We have passed that matter about you,” he said.

What matter he referred to, Harbord could not guess. There was no time to inquire of Mr. Wilson, and the General being wholly in the dark, did not think of inquiring of me. For some days, I was to remain in ignorance.

On June 30th, though it was dated “June 28th,” there arrived at the American Peace Commission’s headquarters a cable addressed to Mr. Wilson—now at sea—which, in the light of future events, bore signatures that appear rather startling in such a connection. How differently people act when seeking power than they do when in authority! The message called “immediate” relief for Armenia “a sacred duty” and urged upon Woodrow Wilson:

The first three signatures were those of Charles Evans Hughes, Elihu Root, and Henry Cabot Lodge! The next was John Sharp Williams. How strange it would be if Oscar Underwood had been asked and had signed in his place. We would then have had all four American delegates to the Disarmament Conference.

Mr. Hoover called on me with a copy of this message in his hands. He said that Lansing, House, and White wanted us to draft a reply to it.

In the composition of that reply, Hoover’s opinions as to details again diverged from mine. He continued in his antagonism to an American Regular Army officer on the active list, as an administrator of Caucasus relief-work and evinced firm opposition to America taking a mandate. He argued good-temperedly, but strongly, to win me to his point of view; I was not convinced, and we at last reached another compromise, settling on such statements as we could both subscribe to. The reply was dated July 2nd, and was in part:

At about this point, Hoover’s opposition to America assuming a mandate manifests itself in the message. We agreed that he should add a few lines, expressly and explicitly on his own responsibility. So the message, after the joint signature of “Hoover-Morgenthau,” continued:

When that portion of the message was suggested, I said to Mr. Hoover:

“The inclusion of Mesopotamia in the proposition would absolutely destroy all chances of America taking the mandate.”

“Well,” said Hoover, “I wouldn’t object if that was the effect of it.”

The “effect” has now long since passed into history.

Mandate or no mandate, the matter of a commission to Armenia suffered no retarding except in the detail of personnel. I was still in the dark about what President Wilson had done regarding it, but an odd chance soon enlightened me.

It was after one o’clock when I rushed from Hoover’s office to 23 Rue Minot to attend a luncheon given by the Hon. Arthur J. Balfour. At the table were Lord d’Abernon who, as Sir Edgar Vincent, had been manager of the Imperial Ottoman Bank at Constantinople, and now is British Ambassador in Berlin; Sir Maurice Hankey and his wife; and Mr. Balfour’s niece. We at once plunged into a discussion of Turkish affairs. Mr. Balfour said he favoured the United States taking a mandate over the Constantinople district and Armenia, but not over Anatolia. A general discussion of the economic difficulties followed, and I outlined the plan of a triple mandate that I had submitted to the President, and went so far as to hope that it might lead to a Balkan federation. Then, to our great surprise, Sir Maurice turned to Mr. Balfour:

“Why, Mr. Balfour,” he said, “don’t you know that the Hoover-Morgenthau plan for a resident commission in the Caucasus was acted upon by the Big Four on Saturday at Versailles just after the signing of the Peace Treaty? They passed it in principle and referred it to you to work out the details. It is on your desk now on top of that pile of papers with a red slip on it.”

We now beheld Balfour in one of his well-known attitudes, when he slightly raises his eyebrows, drops his right shoulder, and looks at you with a smile that almost talks. He then said to me: “You see how Lloyd George does things. This information that Hankey has given us is absolutely as new to me as it is to you.”

Sir Maurice offered to stay over and help Balfour arrange the details. The latter said that it would not be necessary, but asked me to request Mr. Lansing to do his part toward putting the affair into shape.

Harbord was still unwilling to go without the assistance of a military staff, for which he had originally stipulated. President Wilson had left word that in such an event, Hoover and I were to name a substitute. Hoover suggested Colonel William N. Haskell, who had represented the American Relief Commission in Roumania; and as Haskell was to also represent the Near East Relief, of which I was then vice-chairman, I assented to his selection in both capacities, and Haskell set out for Armenia shortly thereafter.

That appointment, I felt, would help to take care of the relief phase of the situation, but there was left the need of a report of a strictly army man on the military side of the Armenian matter before the question of America assuming the proposed mandate could be thoroughly answered. Harbord was, therefore, doubly welcome when, within a few days, he came to me with a suggestion:

“Don’t you think,” he asked, “it would be advisable that either Pershing or myself, or both, be sent to investigate and report on the conditions in the Trans-Caucasus, because the question of an American mandatory in Turkey promises almost immediately to become urgent, and we should know military conditions there before the Government acts in the matter.”

As this completely coincided with my views, I immediately consulted Hoover, and we jointly sent a wireless to President Wilson, which elicited a prompt approval of the idea, and the order that it be left to Pershing to decide who should make the trip.

The Harbord Mission and its very able report on Armenia resulted. Complete impartiality, and a total lack of prejudice, were shown by the manner in which he ended his report. He stated thirteen reasons for the United States adopting a mandate and thirteen reasons against it, and they were placed in parallel columns, so that everyone who read them could come to his own conclusions, and with General Harbord’s permission I am including them here.

The Harbord Commission constituted itself attorney for both sides to the controversy, and expected the people of America to act as the jury to determine this question.

My own opinion as to the duties of the United States toward Turkey is elaborately outlined in an article on “Mandates or War?” which I contributed to the New York Times on November 9, 1919, and which appears in the appendix of this volume, and I hope that those of my readers who are really interested in this problem will take the trouble to read it.

CHAPTER XVIII

MY MISSION TO POLAND

When this great conference was in the making, the Jews in America had decided to join the Jews of other nations in a representative commission at Paris, to make an appeal to secure in the Treaty of Peace an assurance of the religious and civil rights of the Jews, in the countries in which they resided in large numbers, particularly in Roumania, Poland, and Russia. The Jews of the United States held elections of representatives to a congress in Philadelphia, which was in turn to select their members of the Commission.

I was elected a representative from my district. When, however, I reached Philadelphia and conferred with some of the delegates, I found that the elections had, in general, been so skilfully manipulated by the Zionists that they were in complete control, although their views were shared by only a small percentage of the Jews in America.

As I immediately realized that the plans of some of the most aggressive members of this controlling minority were Nationalistic, which was absolutely contrary to the convictions of the vast majority of Jews in America, including myself, I declined to qualify as a member of the congress, and left Philadelphia without attending any of its sessions.

Subsequently, two hundred and seventy-five prominent Jews, residing in thirty-seven states of the Union, signed a statement which had been prepared by Dr. Henry Berkowitz, Rev. Dr. David Philipson, the late Professor Morris Jastrow, and Max Senior. This statement declared amongst other things that:

Of this statement I was one of the signers. Congressman Julius Kahn and I were asked to present these views to the Conference; Rabbi Isaac Landman, editor of The American Hebrew, joined us, and the original text was duly filed with the American Commission at Paris.

There the representatives of the Jews were well organized. Their delegation included men from all the countries likely to be affected by the Treaty; it had a large general commission, a secretariat, committees and sub-committees, and it had an Inner Council. The majority of the French and British Jews—as represented by the Alliance Israelite and the Joint Foreign Committee of the Anglo Jewish Association and the Board of Delegates, which Claude Montefiore and Lucien Wolff headed—felt as did the two hundred and seventy-five American protesters and their adherents, whereas the central European Jews strongly advocated the Nationalistic idea—and when I talked with the delegates from the Philadelphia congress, I discovered that even some of those who were not Zionists supported the aims of the Nationalists.

These men argued that Jewish nationalism in Poland and Roumania would not be the same as it would be in America; that in the United States there would be no state-within-a-state, but that recognition of the Jews as separate nationals was essential to their well-being in central Europe; that even the Germans remaining in Poland would have to be protected as separate nationals. and that the general principle must be formally recognized.

Every man has his master-passion: mine is for democracy. I believe that history’s best effort in democracy is the United States, which has rooted in its Constitution all that any group of its citizens can legitimately desire. Yet here were Americans willing to coöperate with central Europeans who wanted to establish in their own countries a “nation within a nation”—a proposition fundamentally opposed to our American principles.

I pointed this out. I said that, under this plan, a Jew in Poland or Roumania, for example, would soon face conflicting duties, and that any American who advocated such a conflict of allegiance for the Jews of central Europe would perhaps expose the Jews in America to the suspicion of harbouring a similar desire. Minorities everywhere, I maintained, would fare better if they protected their religious rights in the countries where they resided, and then joined their fellow countrymen in bettering for all its inhabitants the land of their common citizenship.

Meanwhile, excesses had occurred in Poland and Jews had suffered cruelly. There was genuine resentment coupled with real fear that the trouble might develop into Kiev or Kishineff disasters. There was the feeling that Poland, who had just emerged from her yoke of tyranny, should be reminded of the world’s expectation that she should grant to her minorities the same privileges which her centuries of oppression had taught her to value for herself.

The Jews emphasized their expectations by holding mass meetings, parades, and demonstrations in the United States and England. In New York, 15,000 Jews packed Madison Square Garden, and many thousands more, including 3,000 in uniform, stood in the surrounding streets. The leading address was delivered by Charles E. Hughes. Resolutions were passed calling upon President Wilson to stop these outbreaks, and to secure permanent protection.

That was in May, 1919. In early June, Hugh Gibson, who had been our Minister at Warsaw for a few weeks only, was asked for a report. He made a necessarily hasty investigation. The conclusions he arrived at in his report were greatly resented by some Jews, who charged him with unduly favouring the Poles. Gibson came to Paris, and was joined by Herbert Hoover, then managing the American Relief Work in Poland, and by Paderewski representing Poland at the Peace Conference, to urge President Wilson to appoint an investigating commission to ascertain the truth. The President designated a commission composed of Colonel Warwick Greene, Homer H. Johnson, and myself. As Colonel Greene declined, General Edgar Jadwin was appointed in his place.

My reluctance to serve was great, my position difficult, and the American members of the Jewish delegation did not attempt to diminish the one or ease the other. My announced opposition to the Nationalist theory and my attitude toward Zionism were against me; they unanimously disapproved of my acceptance; and the arguments they presented to me were forcible. In one breath, they said that they wanted a Zionist on the Commission; in the next, they told me that it should include no Jew; in the third, they would express the conviction that nobody could be successful: a report in favour of one side was sure to displease the other.

On my part, I felt that I must give some consideration to these men who had devoted so much of their lives to the Jewish question and to administering so many of the relief activities in America. Until this period, I had always heartily coöperated with them, yet I realized the absolute need of a fearless, impartial investigation and that, preferably, with the participation therein of a Jew.

My hesitation is shown in the following message from the Secretary-General of the American Peace Delegation to the Under-Secretary of State at Washington:

I even told Louis Marshall and Dr. Cyrus Adler that I would second their efforts against my appointment, and I kept my word. When I found that my messages to the President failed to move him, I insisted on a personal interview with him, hoping then to dissuade him, and, on June 26th, two days before the signing of the Treaty and the President’s return to America, this was secured. When I stated to him that I wanted to be relieved from the Commission, and suggested that no Jew should be put on same, he replied, with great emphasis, that he had definitely concluded to put a Jew on the Commission, so as to secure for the Jews in Poland a sympathetic hearing, and that he had selected me to be entrusted with this task and hoped that I would not refuse to serve.

“Your putting it that way,” I answered, “makes it a command, and as a good citizen, I will not disobey it.”

Just returned from Lithuania and anxious to see his suggestions in regard to that country pushed to realization, Colonel Greene begged to be relieved from serving on the Polish Mission, and the President left it to General Pershing and myself to secure some other army officer. I went to the General’s residence on the momentous morning of the signing of the Peace Treaty.

“Let’s step into the garden,” he said, and, turning to General Harbord, added: “You come along.”

It was a bright spring morning. The acres of garden, hidden from the streets of the Boulevard St. Germain district, and rich from centuries of care, stretched green and quiet before us. We sat on an old stone seat, and Pershing drew out a memorandum from his pocket.

“Here,” he told me, “are the names of the general officers that I have picked out for some recognition. Now, Morgenthau, tell me what sort of officer it is that you want.”

In a most comprehensive way he ran through the names and explained the special attainments and attributes of each man mentioned. Here was the honour list of the A. E. F., and the man who was explaining it to me was he whose name was entitled to stand in capitals at its top. The experience was like going through a picture gallery with an expert pointing out the best in every portrait, and Harbord throwing in an illuminating remark every now and then, was a connoisseur at the expert’s elbow. I realized that the portraits were all real masterpieces—no antiques—all moderns. They were the select of the selected, but the two that apparently best suited our present purpose were Mason M. Patrick and Edgar Jadwin.

“Our commission,” I repeated, “is expected to conduct a real search for the truth, without prejudice; to be well balanced, the third member should be a man who will work judicially, but be unencumbered with a legal education and the quibbles that usually accompany it.” And, I added: “Both Johnson and I are lawyers.”

Pershing replied: “If you mean a man who will balance facts mathematically and then arrive at a conclusion, as an engineer does, then Jadwin is the man for you.”

“Very well,” I said, “we’ll take Jadwin. Where is he?”

“I’ll have him meet you at the Crillon this afternoon,” said Pershing, and he kept his word.

Johnson, Jadwin, and I organized our commission at the Crillon before sunset that day. I left it to Jadwin to choose our executive secretary; he chose Lieutenant-Colonel M. C. Bryant; we borrowed Major Henry S. Otto from Hoover, and selected as Counsel, Captain Arthur L. Goodhart who had been Assistant Corporation Counsel of New York.

That same night, Paderewski gave a dinner at the Ritz. In its potentialities, in the sharp contrasts of character presented by the guests, it was one of the most dramatic events connected with the preparations for my trip to Poland.

The Versailles Conference was over. President Wilson, to whom the world still looked for leadership, was starting home within an hour, taking with him the Covenant of the League of Nations. The Treaty had just been signed; the ink was scarcely dry on the signatures to that document containing Article 93:

And now, around that dinner-table sat, among others, Paderewski, Dmowski, and Lansing, signers of the Treaty, and Hugh Gibson and myself: Lansing, who as ranking member of the Peace Commission, represented the government that held the balance of the world-power; Paderewski, Poland’s Premier, who realized that the very life of his native land depended on peace at home and good opinion abroad, and that these could be secured only by a satisfactory settlement of the Jewish problem within the Polish boundaries; Hugh Gibson, American Minister to Warsaw, whose report on that problem had increased the storm of Jewish protest; Roman Dmowski, the leader of Anti-Semitism in Poland, admittedly its fomenter, who had found Article 93 a bitter pill; and I, who had been appointed to go to Poland to find out the absolute truth.

Far from depressing me, this juxtaposition had a stimulating effect. More than ever, I realized the delicacy of the task with which I had been entrusted. In the respect paid to me at this dinner Dmowski’s Anti-Semitism had obviously received quite a jolt, and I wanted to have a talk with him. Paderewski, Lansing, and Gibson dramatically left the table to hurry to the railway station and bid good-bye to President Wilson. When they had returned and the dinner was over, I said to Lansing:

“Here is your chance to tell Dmowski how the American Peace Commission feels about our proposed work in Poland.”

Lansing assented, and after a brief talk with Dmowski, drew him, Gibson, and myself aside, and I had my first man-to-man talk with the organizer of the anti-Jewish economic and social boycott in Poland.

Dmowski was a heavy, domineering figure, with a thick neck and a big, close-cropped head bearing the bulldog jaw and the piercing eyes of the ward-boss. I had learned his story: in the days of Russian domination he had tried to force the Jews of his Warsaw district to support his machine’s candidate for a seat in the Fourth (1912) Douma; they refused to vote for his man, who was an Anti-Semite, threw their influence in favour of the Socialist candidate Jagellan, and elected him. Dmowski ever after, through his newspaper and in his position as a leader of the National Democratic Party of Poland, pursued the cunning policy of making Anti-Semitism a party issue. It was a wilful plot, based on personal spite, to destroy the Polish Jews.

“Mr. Dmowski,” I said, “I understand that you are an Anti-Semite, and I want to know how you feel toward our Commission.”

He replied in an almost propitiating manner:

“My Anti-Semitism isn’t religious: it is political. And it is not political outside of Poland. It is entirely a matter of Polish party politics. It is only from that point of view that I regard it or your mission. Against a non-Polish Jew I have no prejudice, political or otherwise. I’ll be glad to give you any information that I possess.”

He then sketched, with vigour, the arguments against Jewish nationalism and touched on the Socialist activities of one section of the Polish Jews. He also said: “There never was a pogrom in Poland. Lithuanian Jews, fleeing Russian persecution in 1908, spoke Russian obtrusively and banded together to employ only Jewish lawyers and doctors; they started boycotting; the Poles’ boycott was a necessary retaliation. On the other hand, the Posen Jews speak German and the others Yiddish, which is based on German: we want the Polish language in Poland.”

I arranged to have him meet General Jadwin and myself. He did so and frankly explained his attitude toward the Jews and his participation in the Economic Boycott. He had no moral qualms as to his using so destructive a method in his political fight. He said that unless the Jews would abandon their exclusiveness, they had better leave the country. He wanted Poland for the Poles alone—and made no secret of this desire.

Dmowski admitted his unfamiliarity with financial conditions and referred us to Grabski whom he brought to see us. We also conferred with the Pro-Semite, Dr. Tsulski, and a number of other Poles and Polish Jews in Paris. I immediately encountered the clash of views that was to continue throughout my entire investigation.

The more I talked with the different factional leaders, the more I felt that they were speaking not so much from deep conviction as from political expediency. Out of that feeling I evolved my ideal of what our Commission ought to accomplish.

Here was Poland, who was expected to prevent a German-Russian combination—a new family in the Clan of Progressive Peoples; and no sooner had it entered the Clan than it developed a family feud. Now, the welfare of the separate families is the welfare of the Clan. For the Clan’s sake, Poland must be saved; otherwise, it would be an easy prey to the common enemy. The investigator’s duty was not merely to ascertain, if that were possible, which of the two contending factions had told the truth, or which exaggerated; we were the representatives of the most powerful participant in the Conference that projected the League of Nations; it was for us to see whether the quarrel could not be amicably settled, and the new family saved to do its part for the Clan.

Nor was that all. Our experiment was a new one in history. We were not a delegation of conquerors dictating to the parties of a newly subdued province. We believed that if internecine wars were to be prevented in the future, one of the best methods might now be proved to be investigations and recommendations, made as early in the quarrel as possible by disinterested outsiders, who would represent an international tribunal with power to act.

Accordingly, Gibson and I decided that the Polish Commission must set out armed with instructions that would carry it far. We consulted Mr. Lansing, and the following letter resulted: