From Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta to Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton at Camp David, American presidents have sat down to draw borders and hammer out peace agreements. The question of whether or not he should have gone to Paris, which exercised so many of his contemporaries, now seems unimportant.

The preliminary conference turned, without anyone's intending it, into the final one, and Wilson stayed for most of the crucial six months between January and June 1919. It was not likely that he would remain for the formal Peace Conference with the enemy. Wilson expected, he wrote to his great friend Edward House, who was already in Europe, that he would stay only to arrange the main outlines of the peace settlements. 'It is now my duty,' he told a pensive Congress just before he left, 'to play my full part in making good what they gave their life's blood to obtain.' A British diplomat was more cynical Wilson, he said, was drawn to Paris 'as a debutante is entranced by the prospect of her first ball.' He owed it to the peoples of Europe, who were crying out for a better world. Would he lose his great moral authority by getting down to the hurly-burly of negotiations? Wilson's own view was clear: the making of the peace was as important as the winning of the war. His opponents accused him of breaking the Constitution even his supporters felt he might be unwise. No other American president had ever gone to Europe while in office. On board were the best available experts, combed out of the universities and the government crates of reference materials and special studies the French and Italian ambassadors to the United States and Woodrow Wilson. The ship, a former German passenger liner, slid out past the Statue of Liberty to the Atlantic, where an escort of destroyers and battleships stood by to accompany it and its cargo of heavy expectations to Europe. Robert Lansing, the American secretary of state, released carrier pigeons with messages to his relatives about his deep hope for a lasting peace.

Guns fired salutes, crowds along the waterfront cheered, tugboats hooted and Army planes and dirigibles circled overhead.

On december 4, 1918, the George Washington sailed out of New York with the American delegation to the Peace Conference on board.

Margaret macmillan 1919