Office of the Historian

Paris Peace Conf. 184.1/9

The Secretary of the Commission to Negotiate Peace ( Grew ) to the Secretary of State

Paris , January 10, 1919.

Dear Mr. Lansing: The appended telegram was wrongly routed to me, and I send it down to you without delay.46

In connection with Mr. Baker’s statement that he hears much comment to the effect that there are already too many military men attached to the Commission, I think it advisable to make the following comment, in case you wish at any time to be in a position to reply to criticisms of this nature:

(1)
In accordance with the wishes of the Commissioners, General Churchill recently made a survey of the entire organization with a view to reporting on the necessity of every individual now assigned to the Commission, and his preliminary report states that [Page 193]

“No appreciable reduction in personnel can be made without interfering with the work of the Commission as it is organized at present or as it is proposed to reorganize it.”

(2)
The officers attached to the Commission are assigned chiefly to the Executive Offices, the Secretariat, the Intelligence Section, and the Liaison Office.
(a)
No one who has not seen the necessary plant of the Commission, including two hotels and an office building, can understand the great amount of administrative work handled by the Executive Offices, including the management of the hotels, transportation, courier service, mail service, requisitions and supplies, construction and repair, assignment of rooms and offices, printing, telephone service, supervising of guards, orderlies, &c, &c. I do not hesitate to say that we are understaffed rather than overstaffed in this division.
(b)
The military personnel assigned to the Secretariat as translators, clerks, stenographers, etc., were almost exclusively assigned to us by direct instructions of the War Department in Washington.
(c)
If there is any doubt as to the essential character of the Liaison Office—which is composed of eight officers on duty with the Commission and five giving only part of their time to the Commission’s work—the answer is to be found in the appended list of requests47 which have been made of that office within the last few days, and which indicate the importance of the work it is doing.
(d)
The Intelligence Section is the only division of the organization which may perhaps be regarded as overstaffed, and this is due solely to the fact that twenty officers were assigned to us by the Secretary of War, himself, without our being consulted. We are now dispensing with the services of some of them, and requesting that they be relieved from duty with the Commission.

Respectfully yours,

J. C. Grew
  1. Telegram No. 146, Jan. 8, 1919, 6 p.m., from the Acting Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace, for Lansing from Secretary of War Baker (not printed). An extract from this telegram reads: “I, of course, want to do what is necessary to facilitate the work of the Commission but am extremely reluctant to add needless military men to the Commission’s personnel as I hear much comment to the effect that there are already too many.”↩
  2. Not attached to file copy of this letter.↩