advice and he
directed me to confer with the Japanese and obtain their views. Just why
he adopted this course, for him unusual, I do not know unless he felt
that so far as the equity of China's claim was concerned we were all in
agreement, and if there was to be a departure from strict justice he
desired to have his colleagues suggest a way to do so. It is possible,
too, that he felt the question was in large measure a legal one, and
decided that the illegality of transferring the German rights to Japan
could be more successfully presented to the Japanese delegates by a
lawyer. In any event, in this particular case he adopted a course more
in accord with established custom and practice than he did in any other
of the many perplexing and difficult problems which he was called upon
to solve during the Paris negotiations, excepting of course the subjects
submitted to commissions of the Conference. As has been shown, Mr.
Wilson did not follow the advice of the three Commissioners given him in
General Bliss's letter, but that does not detract from the
noteworthiness of the fact that in the case of Shantung he sought advice
from his Commissioners.

This ends the account of the Shantung Settlement and the negotiations
which led up to it. The consequences were those which were bound to
follow so indefensible a decision as the one that was reached. Public
opinion in the United States was almost unanimous in condemning it and
in denouncing those responsible for so evident a departure from legal
justice and the principles of international morality. No plea of
expediency or of necessity excused such a flagrant denial of undoubted
right. The popular recognition that a great wrong had been done to a
nation weak because of political discord and an insufficient military
establishment, in order to win favor with a nation strong because of its
military power and national unity, had much to do with increasing the
hostility to the Treaty and preventing its acceptance by the Senate of
the United States. The whole affair furnishes another example of the
results of secret diplomacy, for the arguments which prevailed with the
President were those to which he listened when he sat in secret council
with M. Clemenceau and Mr. Lloyd George.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BULLITT AFFAIR

The foregoing chapters have related to subjects which were known to
President Wilson to be matters of difference between us while we were
together in Paris and whi