Great Inter-Allied conference in Paris

At 10.30 a.m. on 29 November 1917, in the Salon de l’Horloge of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the Quai d’Orsay, the great Inter-Allied Conference assembled. In March 1916 representatives of eight states had met in the same building. Now there were roughly twice as many. Alongside France, Britain and Italy, representatives of the United States sat at the Allies’ common table for the first time. There were delegates of Belgium and Serbia, Greece, Romania and Portugal, Japan and China, and also of Cuba, Montenegro, Liberia and Brazil. Even Russia was there, represented by diplomats and officers appointed by the Provisional Government that had just been overthrown. The British shipping official Arthur Salter later wrote that the conference was perhaps the most impressive expression of both the scale and the unity of the Allied effort.

A short opening

The conference had been planned for mid-November but was postponed twice: first because of the Italian defeat, after which Prime Minister David Lloyd George went to Italy and to the Rapallo conference, and then because of the fall of the Painlevé government in Paris. The host was therefore the new French Prime Minister, Georges Clemenceau, who had taken office two weeks earlier. The American delegation was led by Colonel Edward House, President Wilson’s personal adviser. He was accompanied by the Army Chief of Staff, General Tasker Bliss, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral William Benson, the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Oscar Crosby, a member of the Shipping Board, Bainbridge Colby, and representatives of the war trade, food and industry boards.

House persuaded Clemenceau to dispense with the long speeches many delegates had prepared and to go straight to work in committees. Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour would have preferred speeches, but the French Prime Minister sided with the American. His speech of welcome lasted only a moment. He spoke of the “supreme solidarity of nations” who were to win on the battlefields the right to peace, and of an alliance that “no intrigue, no weakness” would shake. He concluded: “Our order of the day is work. Let us get to work.” The Foreign Minister, Stéphen Pichon, presented five committees: finance, munitions together with aviation, maritime transport, food and supply, and blockade. Each was chaired by the relevant French minister. At about 11 a.m. the session was closed. Liberia and Brazil entrusted their representation on the committees to the Americans.

Ships, money and Russia

The most important talks concerned shipping. The maritime transport committee took as the basis for its discussions a British memorandum on the disastrous state of tonnage after the losses to submarines and the poor harvests in France and Italy. It developed the agreement of 3 November and the arrangements reached in the London talks with the House mission. The committee rejected the idea of an international executive that would dispose of a common pool of ships, because no country, and especially not the United States and Britain, wanted to place its ships under the authority of a body in which it might be outvoted. It was agreed instead that the import programmes of all the Allies would be examined jointly and cut by a single standard, and ships allocated on that basis. This was to be overseen by a council of ministers from France, Italy and Britain together with American representatives, with a permanent secretariat. Thus was born the Allied Maritime Transport Council, which met for the first time in March 1918. The Americans were expected to speed up shipbuilding and to give part of their tonnage to France and Italy. On money matters there were talks about the Inter-Allied Council on War Purchases and Finance proposed by Washington, which was to put order into Allied purchases paid for out of American loans. Crosby stayed in Europe after the conference to work on this council, which was finally constituted in December.

At the same time the prime ministers and foreign ministers held their own meetings. The biggest dispute concerned Russia, where the Bolsheviks had taken power and the new government had proposed an armistice. House wanted the conference to declare that the Allies were not waging war for conquest or indemnities, which in his view would be well received in Russia and around the world. Balfour even proposed releasing Russia from its promise to continue the war, which the Italian Foreign Minister Sidney Sonnino vehemently opposed. No joint declaration was agreed. The committees worked for several days, and at the beginning of December the conference was formally closed with speeches by House and Clemenceau. As early as 1 December the Supreme War Council, set up at Rapallo, met for the first time at Versailles.