But in the Conference at Versailles--Paris--
I was in another world: the shouting died out, and I was alone.... I
hadn't expected to be alone--in there, I mean. I had reckoned--was it
wrong?--on honour counting among those in high places of authority for
more than it did. We went in pledged up to the hilt: not in detail, not in
legal terms, not as politicians, perhaps; but as men of honour--speaking
each for the honour of our own nation. And that wasn't enough; for whom
people stand pledged twice over--first in secret, then publicly--it's
difficult to make them face where honour lies.
TUMULTY. You mean the secret treaties, Governor. That's been a puzzle to
many of us: what you knew about them, I mean.
EX-PRES. Tumulty, I willed not to know them. Rumour of them reached me, of
course. Had I then given them a Hearing, I might have been charged with
complicity, the silence which gave consent. Many were anxious that I
should know of them--at a time when opposition would have been very
difficult--premature, outside my province. And so--by not knowing--I was
free: and when I stated the basis of the Peace terms, I stated them (and I
was secure then in my power to do so) in terms which should in honour have
made those secret treaties no longer tenable. There was my first great
error--I acknowledge it, Tumulty: that I believed in honour.
TUMULTY (_reluctantly)._ Yes ... I see that. But it's the sort of
thing one can only see after it has happened.
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