ABSTRACT
Woodrow Wilson accepted with enthusiasm one piece of advice House gave him on the train: the suggestion that he should no longer attend meetings of the Council of Ten but should settle the terms of peace in secret conversations with Lloyd George and Clemenceau. When he faced Clemenceau and Lloyd George in House's office in the Hotel Cril-lon on March 14, 1919, the fate of the world hung on his personal character. The establishment of the League of Nations had not lifted Clemenceau to the plane of the Sermon on the Mount. He hoped to raise Clemenceau by the alliance. On March 17, 1919, at a meeting of the Supreme War Council, Wilson completed his annihilation of the preliminary treaty of peace for which he had argued at the meetings of the same Supreme War Council on February 12, 1919. He said that he had assumed that this preliminary Convention would only be temporary until the complete treaty was prepared.
