This massive collection includes all important letters, speeches, interviews, press conferences, and public papers on Woodrow Wilson. The volumes make available as never before the materials essential to understanding Wilson's personality, his intellectual, religious, and political development, and his careers as educator, writer, orator, and statesman. The Papers not only reveal the private and public man, but also the era in which he lived, making the series additionally valuable to scholars in various fields of history between the 1870's and the 1920's.

As this volume opens, the Supreme War Council holds a long session that results in an agreement on the military, naval, and aerial terms to be imposed on Germany. The harmony of this meeting is in stark contrast to the discord of the four heads of government recorded in the balance of the volume. In the weeks covered by these documents, controversy erupts over the disposition of the Rhineland and demands by France to annex the Saar Basin. The fight over reparations reaches a crescendo and is far from resolved as the volume ends.

Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando...

As this volume opens, Wilson faces new serious crises at the Paris Peace Conference: Italy demands not only territory along the Dalmatian littoral, but also sovereignty over the Adriatic port of Fiume, while Japan insists on the fulfillment of secret treaties that award her complete control of the Chinese province of Shantung. Achievement of these ambitions would in Wilson's opinion grossly violate the letter and spirit of the Fourteen Points. Debates in the Council of Four over Fiume reach a pitch of high emotion, and the victorious Western alliance seems on the verge of dissolution....

This volume begins coverage of that period of the Paris Peace Conference usually neglected by historians of the subject. It sees the lively interchange between the German government and the Council of Four over all aspects of the preliminary treaty of peace, but particularly over the Saar Basin, responsibility for the war, the fate of former German territory awarded to Poland, German membership in the League of Nations and the International Labour Organization, and reparations.

The question of Italian acquisitions in the Adriatic area, still unresolved, further embitters...

The opening of this volume finds the Big Four in the midst of the gravest crisis of the peace conference set off by the British cabinet's demand for drastic softening of the terms of the peace treaty to be concluded with Germany. In response to a wave of appeasement sweeping through the British Isles, Lloyd George says that he cannot and will not sign the peace treaty unless his colleagues agree to negotiate sympathetically with the Germans on their reparations obligations, their early admission to the League of Nations, and other matters.

For the entire period covered by this...

Beginning with Wilson's tour of Belgium, this volume then moves to the last days of the peace conference. A great wave of relief sweeps over council chambers in Paris when a new German government sends word that it will accept the peace treaty unconditionally: restoration of peace occurs with the signing of the treaty in the Hall of Mirrors in the Palace of Versailles on June 28. That same night Wilson boards his train for Brest to return to the United States on the George Washington. The voyage provides a period of leisure for Wilson, but there are signs that his strength has been...

This volume finds the United States in the first stage of full mobilization and Wilson beset by problems. On August 27, 1918, he replies warmly to the Pope's August 1 peace initiative. He sets prices for essential raw materials, intervenes to settle labor disputes, and tries to prevent suppression of civil liberties by federal agents.

Relations with the Allies are his major diplomatic concern. In response to an appeal from David Lloyd George, he relaxes his opposition to close cooperation and sends Colonel House and others to London to facilitate common action. Through...