Spender's Bungle

Like the last flames of a mighty conflagration, an international argument flared up to excite a neurasthenic world and then died down as suddenly as it had begun.

Accusation. (Flame like a meteor to the troubled air.)

One Harold Spender, British journalist and biographer of ex-Premier Lloyd George, made the statement (in a signed article in The New York World and other papers) that the late ex-President Wilson and ex-Premier Clemenceau of France took advantage of his temporary absence in England to sign a secret agreement at Paris, allowing France to occupy the Rhineland for 15 years. Mr. George was quoted as adding: "Yet I have always been attacked by many people in England as the villain of that piece." After a pause Mr. George was alleged to have continued: "Yes, I have just received the documents from the Foreign Office. The French now wish to publish the agreement between Wilson and Clemenceau and desire me to agree. It is a little late to ask for my consent. 1 have never seen the documents before."

Disputation. (The flame that lit the battle's wreck.)

"TIGER" CLEMENCEAU: "If Lloyd George will produce a secret agreement between Wilson and me, I will pay the reparations."

M. TARDIEU, French Deputy: "Lloyd George has lied and lied, without intelligence. . . . The interview is the fruit of a delirious imagination. There never was a secret agreement between Clemenceau and Wilson. . . . To qualify as a secret agreement a project which was for six weeks in the hands of the British delegation as well as the American delegation . . . is either an inept or malevolent procedure--perhaps both. . . ."

BERNARD M. BARUCH, adviser to President Wilson on financial questions at Paris: "President Wilson never made any secret compact with anybody about anything at the Paris Peace Conference. . . . I don't know just what Mr. Lloyd George refers to. Let him produce the documents, if he believes there was a 'secret compact.' But I do not hesitate to make explicit denial, because I know Mr. Wilson never was a party to and never had any secret compacts whatever over there."

EX-PREMIER VITTORIO E. ORLANDO, Italian Plenipotentiary at the Paris Peace Conference (who "resentfully refused to comment" on Mr. Wilson's death): "President Wilson gave up his opposition to M. Clemenceau's plan with regard to the Rhineland in order to buy Clemenceau's support for Wilson's schemes against Italy's aspirations. The fact that an agreement was reached between President Wilson and M. Clemenceau on the Rhine was common knowledge at the Paris Conference. I knew of its existence only to the same extent as Mr. Lloyd George knew of it."

ROBERT LANSING, ex-U. S. Secretary of State: "I don't know anything about it."

QUAI D'ORSAY, French Foreign Office, in an official communique: "The French Government reserves its reply to the allegations of Mr. Lloyd George until it is in possession of the exact text." ... There was concluded no secret compact between M. Clemenceau and Mr. Wilson, and if there were conversations between them during the absence of Mr. Lloyd George, the latter knew of the result as soon as he returned."

Refutation. (Yet from those flames, no light. . . .)

HAROLD SPENDER: "What I wrote for the American paper was a description of Mr. Lloyd George's house and grounds and of his life there, with a few observations thrown in--which they appear to have cut--after spending a weekend there. The observation which has attracted so much attention was only a few lines out of the whole article, but still I thought it was desirable that it should be known. . . . If there is any carelessness in the matter it is entirely mine. I take all the blame. I did not ask his permission to use anything he said, and if I have gone beyond what I should have repeated I am extremely sorry."

Later Mr. Spender issued this statement:

"I stick by every word I said in my article for The World, and, if anything, what I wrote was an understatement of what Mr. Lloyd George said."

LLOYD GEORGE, in a statement published by The Daily Chronicle, London Liberal journal allegedly part-owned by him: "I did not give the interview referred to. . . . I cannot accept the views attributed to me. . . . I was called away from Paris to London . . . to take part in important discussions. . . . I found on my return to Paris that an agreement had been arrived at between President Wilson and Premier Clemenceau on two very important issues. One was the military occupation of the Rhineland. . . . To describe this agreement as a 'secret compact' between the late President Wilson and M. Clemenceau is ridiculous. President Wilson, I need hardly say, acted with perfect loyalty."

THE BRITISH PRESS commented thus:

The Times: "Mr. Lloyd George has nothing of significance to add to that troubled story. Someone has bungled, that is all. We cannot see that it need have any effect on policy."

The Morning Post: "Nobody now takes Lloyd George very seriously either in this country or abroad, with the exception, perhaps, of Mr. Hearst and Mr. Harold Spender."

The Evening Standard printed an anonymous article: "The document does exist. I have seen it. 'Secret pact' may or may not be the best description of it. It bears their signatures. It refers specifically to the military occupation of the Rhine."

PREMIER MACDONALD expressed to the French Government, through the British Ambassador in Paris, his regret for the whole incident.

THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT regarded the matter as "a closed incident."

The flame flickered and went out.