Paris Peace Conf. 811.001/10: Telegram
The Ambassador in France ( Sharp ) to the Secretary of State
For the President. The following is a translation of an advance copy of the address of welcome which President Poincaré expects to [Page 145] deliver at the luncheon which he will give in your honor on the 14th instant:
“Mr. President. Paris and France were impatiently expecting you. They were longing to welcome and hail you as the eminent democrat whose words and deeds are inspired by exalted thought, as the philosopher who delights in involving universal laws from private [?], as the prominent statesman, touching the highest political and moral truths have suggested formulas that bear the stamp of immortality.
They were also passionately yearning to convey, through your person, their thanks to the great republic whose chief you are, for the invaluable assistance it has spontaneously bestowed, during this war, on the defenders of right and liberty. Even before America had resolved to intervene in the contest she had shown to the wounded, to the widows, to the orphans of France, a beneficence and generosity, the memory of which shall never vanish from our hearts. The donations of your Red Cross, the innumerable contributions of your fellow citizens, the touching activities of American women have anticipated your military and naval action and evinced little by little which way your sympathies were leaning. And from the day when you threw yourselves into the midst of the battle [garbled groups].
A few months ago you cabled to me that the United States would send to invaded France ever increasing forces able to submerge the enemy under an overwhelming flow of new divisions. And, in fact, flowing more than a year a continuous tide of youth and energy has poured on to the shores of France. No sooner had they landed, than your gallant battalions fired by their chief, General Pershing, rushed into the fight with such manly contempt of danger, such smiling disregard of death, that our old experience of this terrific war often felt incited to counsel prudence.
They have come here with the enthusiasm of crusaders leaving for the Holy Land. They are now entitled to behold with elation of heart the common achievement and to deem their courage and faith a mighty help thereto.
Eager as they were to meet the enemy, they were yet unaware when they arrived of his monstrous crimes. To obtain a proper view of the German conduct of war, they had to witness the systematically burnt down cities, the flooded mines and the crumbling factories, the devastated orchards, of many shelled and fired cathedrals, the whole device of that savage war waged against national wealth, nature, beauty, which the imagination is unable to conceive at a distance from the men and things that have endured it and that still give evidence thereof. You will have the opportunity, Mr. President, to inspect with your own eyes the extent of that disaster. The French Government will also furnish you with authentic documents in which the German general staff develops with astounding cynicism its plan of plunder and industrial annihilation. Your noble conscience will return a verdict on its guilt.
Should it remain unpunished, could it be renewed, the most splendid victories would be useless. Mr. President, France has striven, has patiently toiled, during four long years she has bled at every pore, she has lost the best of her children, she mourns for her young sons. She aspires now even as you do to a peace of justice and safety.
[Page 146]She did not intend that such an aggression might be renewed, when she submitted to such sacrifices. Nor did you intend to allow uncondemned criminals to lift up their heads again and to prepare new murders when America, under your strong impulse, armed herself and crossed the ocean. Keeping a true remembrance of Lafayette and Rochambeau, she came to relieve France because France herself was true to her traditions. Our common ideal has conquered. Together we have stood for the vital principles of free societies, together we must now build such a peace as will not permit the deliberate and underhand reconstruction of organisms aiming at conquest and oppression. The peace must make amends for the general hardship and sorrows of yesterday; it must be a guarantee against the perils of tomorrow. The association which has been formed, in view of the war, between the United States and the Allies and which contains the germ of the permanent institution you have outlined with such eloquence, will, from this day find its decisions of profitable use in the concerted study of just decisions, in the mutual support we all need in order to make our rights prevail. Whatever precautions we may take for the future, no one, unfortunately, can assert that we shall forever spare to mankind the horrors of new wars. Five years ago, the progress of a science and the state of civilization ought to have led to hope that no government, however autocratic, would succeed in hurling nations in arms against Belgium and Servia. Without cherishing the illusion that posterity may forever be completely safe from such collective madness, we must introduce into the peace we are going to build all the conditions of justice and probabilities of duration that we can insert in it. To such a vast and magnificent task you have chosen, Mr. President, to come and to apply yourself hand in hand with France. France expresses its gratefulness to you. She knows America’s friendship. She is aware of your rectitude and nobility of thought. With full confidence she is ready to work with you.
I raise my glass, Mr. President, in yours and Mrs. Wilson’s honor. I drink to the prosperity of the republic of the United States, the great friend of yesterday and of the past, of tomorrow and of all times.”