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The French Ambassador said to me here in the
presence of others: "If it had not been for Wilson,
we would have annexed all the German territory west
of the Rhine; and that would have guaranteed
European peace." But I said: "Tf It had not been
for American assistance, the Germans would have
annexed all eastern France and Belgium." The con-
versation was given another turn. And as to England,
I have not the slightest doubt that, but for the
United States, Wilhelm II. would have dictated a
worse peace than Versailles in London, and taken
possession of all the British fleet. He would have
called himself the second William the Conqueror.
The one thing for which the United States entered
the war was to stop this mediaeval method of set-
tling difficulties among peoples. Wilson said to
me on August 15, 1915: "We may have to enter the
war to save all Europe from Berlin domination"
But when the peace of 1918 was about to be
drawn, our politicians, like Lodge, united resent-
ful German-Americans, Irish enemies of England and
Italian imperialists to take from Wilson the power
the real Americans voted to give him, and as a
result, the Treaty of Versailles took such a form
that only a cooperative League of all nations could
give any promise of world peace; and the American
Senate, for party reasons, rejected the League
idea, quoting Washington and Jefferson, whose very
existence once depended upon international assist-
ance and whose administrations also depended upon
international attitudes.
But the German masses in 1918-20 were ready
for cooperation, receiving millions of dollars
from Americans to enable them to recover some-
what. But 40 billions of indemnity demanded by
France plus the refusal of France to disarm,
slowly brought the population back to their faith
in militarism, and the Hitler-Goring-Goebbels
triumvirate is the result. Practically every
young German, including some women, wears a
butcher