open sessions of the Conference were
arranged beforehand. They were formal and perfunctory. The agreements
and bargains were made behind closed doors. This secrecy began with the
exchange of views concerning the League of Nations, following which came
the creation of the Council of Ten, whose meetings were intended to be
secret. Then came the secret sessions of the Commission on the League
and the numerous informal interviews of the President with one or more
of the Premiers of the Allied Powers, the facts concerning which were
not divulged to the American Commissioners. Later, on Mr. Wilson's
return from the United States, dissatisfaction with and complaint of the
publicity given to some of the proceedings of the Council of Ten induced
the formation of the Council of Four with the result that the secrecy of
the negotiations was practically unbroken. If to this brief summary of
the increasing secretiveness of the proceedings of the controlling
bodies of the Peace Conference are added the intrigues and personal
bargainings which were constantly going on, the "log-rolling"--to use a
term familiar to American politics--which was practiced, the record is
one which invites no praise and will find many who condemn it. In view
of the frequent and emphatic declarations in favor of "open diplomacy"
and the popular interpretation placed upon the phrase "Open covenants
openly arrived at," the effect of the secretive methods employed by the
leading negotiators at Paris was to destroy public confidence in the
sincerity of these statesmen and to subject them to the charge of
pursuing a policy which they had themselves condemned and repudiated.
Naturally President Wilson, who had been especially earnest in his
denunciation of secret negotiations, suffered more than his foreign
colleagues, whose real support of "open diplomacy" had always been
doubted, though all of them in a measure fell in public estimation as a
consequence of the way in which the negotiations were conducted.

The criticism and condemnation, expressed with varying degrees of
intensity, resulted from the disappointed hopes of the peoples of the
world, who had looked forward confidently to the Peace Conference at
Paris as the first great and decisive change to a new diplomacy which
would cast aside the cloak of mystery that had been in the past the
recognized livery of diplomatic negotiations. The record of the Paris
proceedings in this particular is a sorry one. It is