ed as an organized body
until the latter part of March, 1919. Prior to that time the directing
body of the Conference was the self-constituted Council of Ten composed
of the President and the British, French, and Italian Premiers with
their Secretaries or Ministers of Foreign Affairs, and two Japanese
delegates of ambassadorial rank. This Council had a membership identical
with that of the Supreme War Council, which controlled the armistices,
their enforcement, and other military matters. It assumed authority over
the negotiations and proceedings of the Conference, though it was never
authorized so to do by the body of delegates. The Council of Four, when
later formed, was equally without a mandate from the Conference. They
assumed the authority and exercised it as a matter of right.

From the time of his arrival in Paris President Wilson held almost daily
conversations with the leading foreign statesmen. It would be of little
value to speculate on what took place at these interviews, since the
President seldom told the American Commission of the meetings or
disclosed to them, unless possibly to Colonel House, the subjects which
were discussed. My conviction is, from the little information which the
President volunteered, that these consultations were--certainly at
first--devoted to inducing the European leaders to give their support to
his plan for a League of Nations, and that, as other matters relating to
the terms of peace were in a measure involved because of their possible
relation to the functions of the League, they too became more and more
subjects of discussion.

The introduction of this personal and clandestine method of negotiation
was probably due to the President's belief that he could in this way
exercise more effectively his personal influence in favor of the
acceptance of a League. It is not unlikely that this belief was in a
measure justified. In Colonel House he found one to aid him in this
course of procedure, as the Colonel's intimate association with the
principal statesmen of the Allied Powers during previous visits to
Europe as the President's personal envoy was an asset which he could
utilize as an intermediary between the President and those with whom he
wished to confer. Mr. Wilson relied upon Colonel House for his knowledge
of the views and temperaments of the men with whom he had to deal. It
was not strange that he should adopt a method which the Colonel had
found successful in the past and