Paris, 27 Years Later

Long before sunrise, the people of Paris started their pilgrimage. By daybreak, they had become a solid grey mass covering the Champs Elysees and the Place de la Concorde, solemnly waiting to pay homage to the American emissary. When finally they spied his carriage, behind its glittering escort of mounted, helmeted guardsmen, a shout of joy vaulted from their silence. Men who heard it said later that the cheer did not sound human, that the (lead must been been crying in it too. Children threw roses and violets. Sobbing men hid their faces and women knelt to pray. The American in the carriage tipped his silk hat and bowed stiffly.

That was how Woodrow Wilson came to Paris to make peace in 1919.

New Words. The hopeful people had called him "Wilson the Just"--but he failed to carry his dreams of justice into reality. In the years since his fatal failure, the world had learned many words which had never been in Wilson's extensive vocabulary. It learned "Fascism," "Aryan," "Hooverville," "Stalinism," "uranium." The things the new words stood for had already killed more millions than ever cheered Wilson. Could the peacemakers of 1946 prevent these words--or their successors--from killing still more?

The people gave the new demigods of Paris more fear than faith. Singed by cynicism, yet even more desperately concerned with the issues at stake, the world of 1946 had lost the loud and holy zeal with which it had hoped for eternal peace in 1919.

This time, as the arriving U.S. delegation quietly drove through Paris, there were no pilgrims to proffer prayers and roses. No one thought of cheering "Byrnes the Just." Whatever the Peace of Paris might bring, it would not cause the corrosive disillusionment which came in the wake of 1919's extravagant hopes. On the conference's opening day, police set up wooden barricades near the Luxembourg Palace to keep the crowds back--but there were no crowds. At lunchtime, the Prefect of Police personally inspected the whole palace to make sure that it contained no bombs. Then the delegates began to file past the honor guard's drawn swords (Molotov was the only delegate who did not tip his hat to the guard).

Premier-President Bidault served champagne in the Clemenceau Salon (recently named for the man who really won the game in 1919).

Old Bivouacs. In the hemicycle of the Senate Chamber, the men of 21 nations slowly walked to their red plush seats--incongruously, the Russians had been placed on the extreme right, the Americans on the left.

Bidault's opening speech was cautiously optimistic. Said he: "We have all suffered in trying to banish [war]. Gentlemen, it is now time to begin to succeed."

Many of the delegates were novice diplomats who were shy and nervous at the opening session. But a few were veterans who remembered the grand old days of '19, when they were gay, 'young third secretaries, and Paris was still Paris. Then Maxim's had still been open, and young Maurice Chevalier sang Madelon. Now they, like Chevalier, were getting old; there were no songs to replace the triumphant bugles of Madelon or the drums that rolled through Tipperary.

Nowadays, as Byrnes and Molotov got down to business, blue-voiced crooners sang a pallid plaintive Paris favorite: Dans les plaines du Far Quest quand vient la nuit, les cowboys dans leur bivouacs sont reunis ("When night comes to the plains of the Far West, the cowboys are assembled in their bivouacs"). In 27 years more had gone out of the world than Woodrow Wilson's vigorous sense of justice.

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