onferential disorganization.

No one could complain that delays were caused by the kind of gay frivolity
that characterized the Vienna Congress a hundred years ago. The
atmosphere of the Paris Conference was more like that of a convention of
traveling salesmen. The Hotel Crillon, home of the American Commission,
was gray and gaunt as the State, War, and Navy Building in Washington.
Banquets were rare; state balls unheard of. The President who had separate
headquarters, first in the Parc Monceau and later on the Place des Etats
Unis, avoided the orthodox diversions of diplomacy and labored with an
intensity that was destined to result in physical collapse. The very dress
of the delegates mirrored their businesslike attitude: high silk hats were
seldom seen; Lloyd George appeared in the plainest of bowlers and Colonel
House in his simple, black felt. Experts worked far into the early morning
hours in order that principals might have statistics; principals labored
even on Easter Day, and were roused from their beds at four in the morning
to answer telegrams. Unique departure in the history of diplomacy: this
was a working Peace Conference!

Each of the different commissions had brought to Paris a staff of attaches
and experts, upon whom the principal delegates were to rely in questions
of fact, and who were themselves to decide points of detail in drafting
the economic and political clauses of the treaties and in determining new
boundaries. The expert staff of the American Commission had been carefully
selected and was generally regarded as equal to that of any other power.
Compared with the foreign experts, its members lacked experience in
diplomatic methods, no doubt, but they were as well or better equipped
with exact information. There is an instance of an American expert on a
minor commission asking that a decision be altered in view of new facts
just brought to light, and offering to place those facts in detail before
the commission. "I suggest," said a foreign delegate, "that we accept the
amendment without investigation. Hitherto the facts presented by the
Americans have been irrefutable; it would be waste of time to investigate
them."

Such men as Hoover, Hurley, and Gompers were at hand to give their expert
opinions on questions which they had mastered during the course of the
war. Norman Davis and Thomas Lamont acted as financial advisers. Baruch
and McCormick brought the wealth of experience which resulted fro