763.72119/3820: Telegram
The Commission to Negotiate Peace to the Acting Secretary of State
[Received February 21—1:24 a.m.]
836. For Honorable H. Cabot Lodge20 [from Henry White]. Respecting irritation at delay in concluding peace, mentioned second page your letter February 1st,21 I sent you yesterday by courier documents containing military peace terms urged by General Bliss on Supreme War Council with President’s approval for original Armistice, November 11th, which Foch declined to accept.22 They involved complete disarmament and demobilization of German Army. Have reason to hope efforts we have been steadily making to push settlement of peace terms with Germany may before long be successful. Delay not our fault. President landing Boston because Mayor Peters urging him to come there for more than a year and certain reasons render landing New York undesirable. Papers announce he will speak Boston, which I believe erroneous. When leaving he had no such intentions at Boston or elsewhere before meeting Foreign Relations Committees. Condition Clemenceau precarious next few days owing to advanced age. His absence from Conference even short time very unfortunate just now. Attack symptomatic of unrest, general uneasiness and discontent. Lieutenant Condon, my military secretary, intelligent, discreet, arriving and returning with President, will visit you my request for impressions you may confide to him. Henry White.
- Senator from Massachusetts.↩
- Not found in Department files; for a summary of its contents, see Allan Nevins, Henry White: Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (New York, Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1930), p. 373.↩
- For General Bliss’ account of these negotiations, see Foreign Relations, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, vol. ii, pp. 284–297.↩