MARGARET MACMILLAN
In February 1919, when the great peace conference in Paris had been in session for almost a month, Sir Robert Borden, prime minister and leader of the Canadian delegation, had a rare interview with David Lloyd George, the British prime minister. An aide, probably Loring Christie from External Affairs, prepared an aide mémoire. It listed twelve subjects, some, such as Canada’s representation on the allied food board or the date of Borden’s departure for Canada, relatively small matters. Number six, however, dealt with a matter Borden had complained about frequently: ‘Proceedings of Conference. Arrangement of work. Delay.’ Canada cared deeply about a lasting peace settlement after the worst war the modern world had known, a war in which Canadians had fought and died. Borden, like many of the statesmen in Paris, also saw dangers in delaying the peace settlements. The other subjects for discussion included the demobilization of the Canadian army corps, important to both Canadian public opinion and the restless Canadian troops themselves; British slowness in reopening trade, something that was hurting Canada as a nation with a large war debt and much to sell; and the withdrawal of Canadian troops from Russia. Two pieces of territory were listed: the Alaska panhandle, whose award to the United States in 1903 still rankled with Canadians, and the British West Indies, where there had been some discussion of Canada and the islands forming at the very least an economic union. Finally, there were the subjects that from Borden’s and Christie’s perspectives were the most important of all: the appointment of governors general, Canada’s representation on the council of the League of Nations, and its signature on the peace treaties and other international agreements.1
General Sir Arthur Currie, General Loomis, and officers in Grand Place, Mons, taking the salute of the march past, 11 November 1918 (National Archives of Canada, PA3524)
Canada’s delegation to the peace conference was relatively small, about fifteen delegates and experts (Serbia, by contrast, sent over 100), but it was the most the country could spare. In addition to Borden himself, Canada sent three cabinet ministers: C.J. Doherty, the minister of justice; Sir George Foster, from trade and commerce; Arthur Sifton of Customs and Inland Revenue; and Oliver Biggar, the judge advocate general. Sir Arthur Currie, already in Europe as commander of the Canadian army corps, handled military questions, and John Dafoe, editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, managed press relations. Although the Paris peace conference marked the eruption of the academic expert into international relations, George Wrong offered his services to Borden in vain.2
The Canadian delegates had a relatively free hand in Paris, but they kept a wary eye on public opinion at home. Sir Thomas White, the acting prime minister, regularly cabled Borden with his concerns over the economic and political situation in Canada (and with requests that Borden hasten back to deal with it). ‘Since women took such an enormous part in the war in every respect,’ the Women’s Party wrote to Borden from Toronto, ‘they feel that in making peace and all that this infers [sic] in reconstruction, in which they will take their part, that they should have a voice through which to express their views.’ Saskatchewan Ukrainians petitioned for Canadian support for Ukraine’s independence, and in Paris Canadian Ukrainians called on Borden to ask for recognition by the powers, a request he duly passed on to Lloyd George. Send our husbands home, Canadian women wrote to Borden, or, at the very least, free them from the clutches of French women.3
Borden dominated his delegation. Lord Milner, British colonial secretary, wrote to the Duke of Devonshire, governor general of Canada, ‘He is the only one of the Dominion P.M’s, who, without ceasing to be a good Canadian, is capable of taking the wider view and whose judgement and influence are really useful on Imperial and International questions. He is not a showy man, but he is a man of weight. Not a provincial, as most of the Dominion Ministers still, almost inevitably are. And he is perfectly straight. Foster is very good too, but he belongs to an older school, and has not the same breadth of outlook.’4 Borden, who had a well-developed sense of his own importance, would have agreed. When the new Royal Institute of International Affairs in London brought out a multi-volume history of the peace conference in the early 1920s, Borden was furious to discover that his name did not appear in the index, even though those of other dominion statesmen did. He demanded that Christie complain: ‘I think I may safely claim that no Prime Minister of any British Dominion took more conspicuous or important a part in the work of the Peace Conference than I did.’5
Borden usually represented Canada in the meetings of the British Empire delegation and dealt with the leaders of the other delegations. Although the Canadian delegation met frequently, he did not always bother to brief it. ‘Another of his inexplicable methods,’ Foster complained.6 Although Borden nominated Foster for committees, including the Supreme Economic Council, he had never taken his views seriously.7 Sifton he found rather excitable.8 Doherty, ‘good-looking, but with an expression of limited intelligence,’ in the view of Georges Clemenceau, the French prime minister, was in poor health and tended to fall asleep at meetings. He was generally regarded as a lightweight.9
As a number of participants noted later, the peace conference was good training for international affairs.10 Paris, after all, was for the first six months of 1919 the world’s centre of power, gathering together presidents, prime ministers, foreign secretaries, and generals from over thirty countries. The Canadians found themselves taking on new responsibilities. When neither Lloyd George nor Balfour turned up to a meeting of the British Empire delegation, which the British customarily chaired, Borden was asked to fill in, the first time a dominion premier had done so. He took the chair at the next eight meetings. Borden also chaired the commission determining Greece’s borders, and Sifton was vice-chair of the one attempting to set up an international regime for ports, waterways, and railways. Biggar worked as one of the team under Maurice Hankey, the formidably efficient British secretary to the cabinet and the peace conference. As noted in the official history of the British Empire delegation, ‘in all their functioning, the Canadian representatives were practically indistinguishable from the other national representatives present.’11
While the Canadians established some contacts with the French, their most lasting connections were with other English speakers. In the Hotel Majestic, where they were housed with the rest of the British Empire delegates, they sat at meals with their South African, Australian, New Zealand, Indian, and British colleagues. Biggar and Christie chatted about the German peace or the dangers of Bolshevism with Hankey, Philip Kerr, Lloyd George’s personal assistant, and Lord Robert Cecil, a leading British expert on the League.12 Borden played bridge regularly with the South African prime minister, Louis Botha, ‘a fine noble sincere figure.’13 Although several of the Canadians had mixed feelings about the Americans – Biggar complained to his wife about their ‘pigheaded obstinacy and intellectual conceit’ and ‘their stupidity and a refusal to admit any view but their own’14 – they usually got on well with individuals. ‘We had a delightful time,’ said Colonel Edward House, Woodrow Wilson’s trusted adviser, after an hour with Borden, ‘discussing governmental matters and the future of the Dominions.’15 The Canadians often shared the Americans’ impatience with Europe. In the future, Christie told one of the Americans at a particularly tense moment of the peace conference, ‘America will let Europe stew in its own juice.’16 The chief impression that he brought back from Paris, Dafoe told an audience in Canada, was that he was glad he was separated from Europe by the Atlantic Ocean.17
Most of the Canadians took the almost obligatory trip to the battlefields. ‘Trop triste,’ said Foster.18 They bought souvenirs and the latest fashions for their wives. Biggar and Borden worked on their French with Mademoiselle Fifi Perret. (Borden switched to French in his diary and ventured a speech; according to Foster, ‘There was about the space of one minute between the words and altogether it was a pretty crude attempt.’19) They went to restaurants and theatres and complained of the prices in the former and the scandalous nature of the latter. He and Christie saw one piece at the opera, so Biggar told his wife, which concluded with a young man embracing a married woman near a bedroom. ‘Charming ideas the French have, have they not?’ Better not mention it to Mrs Christie, he added, in case Christie had not owned up.20 Borden and Dafoe took the normally sedate Foster out on the town with the Duchess of Sutherland for what Borden said was ‘one of the friskiest evenings of Foster’s life.’21 They started with snails at a well-known restaurant (‘I ate one plate full,’ said Dafoe, ‘so as not to be a quitter’22), attended a performance of Cyrano de Bergerac, and ended with a midnight dinner at the house of the leading actress. ‘I can assure you that nothing outré or unusual took place,’ wrote Foster to his wife.23
Although they chafed at the slow pace of the peace deliberations and worried about what was happening in Canada, the Canadians were aware that they were taking part in an epoch-making event. The peace conference was dealing with the mess left by the collapse of four empires; it was coping with new nations, such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, and re-emerging ones, like Poland. It was trying to adjudicate competing claims for territory and stop a score of small wars. Above all, it was trying to make a lasting peace. ‘So here I am in the midst of things,’ wrote Foster on 19 January, the day after the peace conference officially opened, ‘representing Canada which takes a place on perfect equality of expression and direction with all the other nations.’24
The Canadian role in the peace settlements, for all Foster’s enthusiasm, was modest. Canada supported the League of Nations, seen by many on both sides of the Atlantic, as the keystone of the peace settlements, but no Canadian delegates took part in the drafting of the League Covenant. When Borden mildly reproved Lloyd George for allowing four other small nations to sit on the League Commission and suggested that Doherty, who had devoted ‘much study’ to the issues be added, Lloyd George declined to act, using the excuse that the commission’s work was too far along.25 Doherty, like other dominion statesmen, resented his relative insignificance in Paris. As Biggar noted, ‘They have been important people. Here they comparatively speaking do not matter in the slightest.’26 Borden himself largely ignored Doherty’s lengthy memorandum on the Covenant, turning instead to Biggar and Christie, whose advice he valued, for the final draft of the Canadian position.27
Canada had little hope of making its voice heard partly because the great powers – Britain, France, Italy, the United States – were not prepared to share their authority with the two dozen smaller nations that were represented in Paris. ‘We have had dead, we have wounded in millions,’ said Clemenceau, when Canada, among others, complained. ‘I make no mystery of it – there is a Conference of the Great Powers going on in the next room.’28 While the formal structure of the peace conference had plenary sessions with votes, the real work was done by the Big Four, meeting with Japan as the Supreme Council. After the middle of March, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, Vittorio Orlando of Italy, and Wilson met as the Council of Four. The sheer volume of work and the range of crises before them, from the German peace terms to the fighting in the centre of Europe, added to their reluctance to complicate matters by consulting the lesser powers.
In any case, many of the issues did not affect Canada. ‘With the defeat of Germany,’ Milner wrote to Devonshire, ‘Canada’s interest in the European scene is visibly and rapidly wearing out.’29 Canada’s main concerns in Paris, Christie told Newton Rowell, acting secretary of state for External Affairs, were the League, disarmament, economic proposals, and reparations from the enemy.30 Like the British, the Canadians wanted to punish Germany, but they also came to fear that too severe a punishment would drive the Germans to despair, even to Bolshevism, and, equally important, would damage British trade. The French, they agreed, were grasping and short-sighted in their insistence that Germany must pay up.31 There was a danger, too, that the French would scoop the lion’s share of reparations. ‘Fear quite impracticable,’ Borden cabled to White, when the latter pressed for including the Halifax explosion in a claim for Canadian war damages. ‘If we put forward Halifax claims as suggested it would strengthen French demand that their extraordinary reparation claims shall have complete precedence.’32 For the rest – the new borders in Europe and the Middle East, for example – the Canadian delegates were prepared to go along with the British.
Like most other people, the Canadians worried about the future. ‘The world has drifted so far from its old anchorage,’ Borden confided to his diary the day the German armistice was signed, ‘and no man can with certainty prophesy what the outcome will be. I have said that another such war would destroy our civilization.’33 Bolshevism was going to take Poland next, then Germany, and probably France and Britain as well, Biggar told his anxious wife.34 The delay in getting peace settlements, Borden wrote to Lloyd George was ‘fraught with the possibility of evil and even of disaster’35 On the other hand, the Canadians were lukewarm about the allied intervention against the Bolsheviks and more than lukewarm about using Canadian troops. By the time the peace conference opened, Borden, with White’s encouragement from Ottawa, had come to the conclusion that the Canadian contingents already in Siberia should be withdrawn.36
As far as the League of Nations was concerned, the Canadian delegation took a cautiously optimistic approach, but like many of their fellows in the British Empire delegation, they wondered whether such an organization would work. They pointed out that its success would depend on strong public support.37 Borden warned House against putting too much detail in the covenant, because it would give the French and Billy Hughes of Australia, a leading critic, room to attack.38 Borden and Doherty, informed by their legal training, easily picked holes in the draft Covenant and the Canadian delegation put a huge amount of effort into its memorandum on the League Covenant. Canada strongly opposed Article X, which obliged all League members to protect each other’s territory and independence against outside aggression. The Canadians argued that this obligation would affect the future ability of members to determine their own foreign policy and, more specifically, their entry into a war (an issue that had particular resonance, since Canada had for some time been disputing the assumption that Canada inevitably was at war when Britain was).39 The Article makes, said Doherty quoting the Times, ‘a mutual guarantee society of unlimited Liability,’ and he demanded that the offending article be taken out altogether.40 Although one of the leading American experts on the League found the Canadian attack ‘the most forcible argument against Article 10,’ the Canadian criticisms had little impact.41 Cecil, the British expert, said politely that the Canadian contribution was ‘useful.’42
Canada’s voice was also muted because it was not yet clear about what it was or what it wanted as an international player. Canada’s move to independence was slow and tentative.43 Unlike the United States, it had not had a defining act of rebellion to launch it onto the world stage as a fully independent force. Unlike Poland, it had not fought for generations against oppressors. In their first fifty years as a federation, Canadians had remained uncertain as to what they wanted. Was Canada to remain part of the British Empire, although with greater control over its own internal policies? Was the British Empire itself to become a tighter union, perhaps even with its own imperial parliament, bureaucracy, and cabinet? Among the Canadian delegates, opinions ranged from those of Foster, who took enormous pride in being part of the British Empire, to those of Dafoe, who looked forward to the eventual breakup of that empire and a fully independent Canada.44 The majority had not yet made up their minds. Borden, who could write in his memoirs that he had ‘a profound belief in the integrity of the Empire, in its future destiny, and in its influence for good,’ could also say in his diary, after a dispute with the British, ‘In the end and perhaps sooner rather than later, Canada must assume full sovereignty. She can give better service to G.B. & U.S. & to the world in that way.’45
Full independence was not something to be undertaken lightly. Membership in the British Empire was a useful counterbalance to the United States, and ambiguity had certain advantages. When there was some discussion about inserting provisions on freer trade in the German treaty (the idea was subsequently dropped), the Canadians hastily checked to make sure that they would still be entitled to imperial preference.46 ‘The position was difficult and in some respects delicate,’ according to Borden. ‘On the one hand we wished to be regarded as a unit for particular purposes, such as Imperial preference, and on the other hand we wanted to secure for the Dominions the right of separate representation in the Council and Assembly of the League. There was some danger of arousing the sensibilities of other nations.’47
Membership in the British Empire also gave Canada a status it would not otherwise have had. Ever since 1917, when Lloyd George had established the Imperial War Cabinet, the Canadian government, like those of its sister dominions and India, had been briefed fully on the conduct of the war and proposals for the peace. During the peace conference the Canadians had full access to the papers provided by the British foreign office and by Lloyd George’s secretariat. In the words of Lloyd George himself, ‘the Dominions were at the heart of the machine and would count.’48 ‘The world was pretty well gone over,’ Christie told Wrong, in the meetings of the British Empire delegation, thirty-five in all between January and June 1919. ‘All this experience certainly accounts in large measure for the prominent part taken by the Dominions at Paris. No small Power was in their class.’49
Nevertheless, even before the Great War, Canadians had realized that Canada’s interests did not always coincide neatly with those of the empire or those of the mother country. In the Alaska panhandle dispute, for example, Britain had abandoned Canada’s claims for the sake of better relations with the Americans. The Canadian government increasingly looked out for its own interests when it came to dealings with the United States. In the Great War, Canadians’ awareness of their contribution as well as their disillusionment with the ability of the British to run a war properly altered permanently the relationship with Britain. As Borden told Lloyd George in 1917, ‘The Dominions have fought in this war upon the principle of equal nationhood. It would be desirable to say that this principle has been consecrated by their effort and sacrifice and that it must be maintained.’50 With Borden as mover, the Imperial Conference of that year called for a special meeting after the war to readjust the constitutional relations of the empire, ‘based upon a full recognition of the Dominions as autonomous nations of an Imperial Commonwealth.’51
Borden sailed for Europe shortly after the armistice, determined that what had been achieved for Canada must not be lost in peacetime. He was taken aback (as was the irascible Hughes of Australia) to discover that the British government had already decided to accept Wilson’s Fourteen Points as a basis for the negotiations.52 He was more than taken aback when he realized that the British simply assumed that they would represent their dominions.53 ‘I had not come,’ he told Hankey, ‘to take part in light comedy.’54 He threatened ‘to pack his trunks, return to Canada, summon Parliament, and put the whole thing before them.’55 The British suggested that Borden become one of their five plenipotentiaries, who, as the prime minister of the senior dominion, would represent the others. This offer in turn annoyed Hughes, who started to talk of separate representation for Australia. General Jan Smuts, foreign minister of South Africa, suggested that the dominions take turns as one of the British plenipotentiaries. Borden, who was under pressure from his own government, started to echo Hughes.56 ‘It would be regarded as intolerable in Canada,’ he told the Imperial War Cabinet, ‘that Portugal should have a representation in the Peace Conference which was denied to that Dominion.’57 The Canadian press was full of references to the sacrifices Canada had made in the war and the recognition that it was owed.58 ‘Council today further considered Canadian representation at Peace Conference,’ White cabled from Ottawa, ‘and is even more strongly of opinion than when you left that Canada should be represented.’59
The final compromise, which Lloyd George worked out with the other great powers at the end of December 1918, was that the British Empire delegation (the name was a victory in itself for the dominions) should have five plenipotentiaries, one of whom would be chosen from a panel of dominion representatives, and that, in addition, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and India would have two plenipotentiaries and New Zealand one at the peace conference. Although Britain’s allies objected that this plan simply would give the British extra votes, others took the longer view. The French colonial ministry noted that the dominions had changed, ‘de nations protégées à celui de nations participantes.’ Britain was being forced out of its pre-war isolationism: if it wanted to protect its empire, it would have to do deals with its allies.60 House hoped that, by granting a separate role to the dominions, the British Empire had moved closer to disintegration.61
When Serbia and Belgium were allowed extra representatives in January on the basis of their contribution to the war, the Canadian response was swift.62 It was ‘most unfortunate’ Borden wrote to Lloyd George, that there had been no consultation with the dominions. ‘It is hardly to be anticipated that Canadians will consider that their country is suitably recognized by being placed on an equality with Siam and Hedjaz.’63 He permitted himself a joke with Botha: Canada must hold its own at least with Patagonia. Since the plenary sessions rarely held a serious vote, the dominions’ struggle has sometimes been seen as a waste of time, but in international relations symbolism also plays a part. As Borden recorded in his diary, ‘It was largely a question of sentiment. Canada got nothing out of War except recognition.’64
Borden remained alert for any suggestion that Canada (or he himself) was being slighted. He refused to go to the opening plenary session on 18 January 1919 because Lloyd George chose the prime minister of Newfoundland to represent the British Empire.65 Canadian relief organizations, he grumbled, were not getting proper credit, because their donations were simply being lumped together with those of the British. Later that spring he wrote in dignified reproof to Cecil to complain that a morning newspaper had failed to list Foster as a Canadian representative on the Supreme Economic Council. ‘I hope that something may be done to prevent such mischances in the future, as I am sure you will realise the unfortunate effects that might follow.’66
The Canadians did not test the limits as much as some of their dominion counterparts did. Hughes, for example, said openly in the Supreme Council (the remark was later edited out of the minutes) that Australia would make its own choice the next time Britain went to war. Botha echoed these sentiments in a private letter to Lloyd George of 15 May 1919, in which he said that the dominions had no obligation to add their names to the Anglo-American guarantee of protection to France against future attacks.67 Borden contented himself with warning Lloyd George that the guarantee might be difficult for Canadians to support.68
When it came to the work of the peace conference, Borden and his fellow delegates accepted that when the Canadians sat on its committees and commissions, they did so as representatives of the British Empire, even sometimes of Britain alone. When it came to the composition of the Supreme Economic Council, set up in February 1919 to coordinate allied operations in areas such as shipping and finance, however, Borden and Foster agreed that there should be five representatives from the British Empire (with one from the dominions and India) and that they should be advised by a committee incorporating British and empire experts rather than two separate bodies as originally proposed.69 Borden, for all his concerns about the spread of Bolshevism, accepted with alacrity Lloyd George’s invitation to represent Britain at the proposed meeting with the Bolsheviks at Prinkipo – ‘a great honour to Canada.’ Appointed as vice-chair to the committee dealing with Greece’s boundaries, Borden took his lead from British officials.70 ‘He is easy and intelligent,’ Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary after his first meeting with Borden, ‘and will make a good representative.’71 In the committee meetings, which he occasionally chaired, Borden’s interventions were generally limited to points of order and requests for information. When he did express an opinion, for example, on the desirability of Greece’s receiving part of Asia Minor, he reflected the British viewpoint.72
When new international organizations were discussed, however, the Canadians remembered that they were a separate nation. Recognition of Canada’s changed status came up again when the composition of the League of Nations and the International Labor Organization (ILO) were discussed. The Americans and the French at first assumed that the self-governing parts of the British Empire, which were not yet fully-fledged states, according to international practice, would not be members. They were soon disabused of this assumption by both the dominions themselves and the British speaking on their behalf. Cecil, who was lukewarm on the issue, told David Hunter Miller, his American counterpart, that Great Britain was obliged to ask for separate membership. Hughes, Smuts, and Borden all made it clear that their countries expected to belong to both the League and the ILO in their own right.73 In response to American objections that the dominions would simply vote as the British told them, Sifton, in an analogy which might have been better chosen, said that the United States was scarcely in a position to talk: ‘There were many small States such as Cuba, Hayti, Liberia and Nicaragua and Panama, who were practically in the pocket of the United States, and would be dominated by Americans; so that the effect of the present proposal would simply be to redress the balance in some measure.’74 The Americans chose not to make an issue of the matter. (House, who along with Wilson represented the United States on the League commission, again looked forward to the undermining of the British Empire.)75
The Canadians were also concerned about eligibility for membership on the executive councils of the League and the ILO. Under pressure from the smaller powers, the great powers reluctantly added four members to the League council to be chosen by vote of the League assembly.76 Unfortunately, from the dominions’ point of view, the wording again referred to ‘states.’ In the case of the ILO’s council, the relevant clause lumped in colonies and self-governing dominions with the mother country and gave the latter the right to only one nominee. On 21 April, when Cecil presented the draft League covenant to the British Empire delegation, Sifton, Borden, and Hughes all complained. There would be ‘unfortunate effects’ back home, warned Sifton, when it was realized that Canada was not eligible for election to the League council. Cecil somewhat disingenuously replied that there had never been any intention of excluding the dominions and agreed to ask that the words ‘member of the League’ should replace ‘state’ throughout the document. A week later, Borden and Sifton raised similar concerns about the ILO. The provision, said Borden, would ‘drive Canadian labour into the arms of the United States for the purpose of securing representation of the Governing Body.’77 (In a memorandum to Borden, Sifton had described the reaction of Canadian workers: ‘I rather anticipate that disregarding some views of theology they will say in their somewhat frank manner that they will see the Japanese and Italian delegates and their respective governments individually and collectively sizzling in the lowest depths of Hell before they will agree to accept a standing inferior to the negroes of Liberia.’)78 The British again were obliged to pursue the matter with the Americans and the French, both reluctant to start altering documents whose wording had given so much trouble.79 As they were increasingly doing, the Canadians also lobbied on their own behalf.80
Borden returned to the attack on 5 May. Canada would reject the ILO convention in the plenary session that had been called to consider the Germany treaty, which included the League and the ILO, and although it would sign the treaty, it would immediately give notice of withdrawal from both bodies. ‘Canada had led the democracies of the Western Hemisphere in the war and yet, in respect of this Labour Convention which, in view of her industrial importance, was of great concern to her, it was proposed to place her on a lower level than countries such as Liberia, Siam, Nicaragua, Panama, &c.’81 A public disagreement at this stage was the last thing either the British or the other powers wanted. The plenary session took place on the following day, and the terms were to go to the Germans on the next. The Italians had only just arrived back in Paris after a very public walkout over their territorial claims, and the Belgians and the Japanese were threatening to leave.
Lloyd George promptly promised Borden that he would take up his concerns with the Council of Four. Borden sent him a reminder on the morning of 6 May. Clemenceau and Wilson reluctantly agreed to change the wording to make it clear that dominions such as Canada were eligible for the council of the ILO. When Borden learned that they had not also changed the wording on the League, he drafted a memorandum which was signed by Lloyd George, Wilson, and Clemenceau, in which they expressed their ‘entire concurrence’ with his view that the self-governing dominions were eligible to be named to the League council.82
Borden, who had been receiving increasingly panicky demands from White for his return, left Paris a few days later. ‘It is most important’ he told Foster and Doherty, who were to remain, ‘that the status which has been secured for Canada at the present Conference should be maintained and that any proposal whether made through design, inattention or misconception, which might detract therefrom should be resisted and rejected.’ The future should be plainer sailing, but ‘it is necessary to bear in mind an inevitable tendency on the part of officials, and sometimes of Ministers, to forget that the United Kingdom is not the only nation in the British Empire.’ Canadian proposals on the empire’s adherence to the treaty, he added, had been accepted in ‘most respects.’83 Borden had been concerned about this issue for some time. The old practice, whereby the British representatives signed on behalf of the empire, no longer seemed congruent with Canada’s status. In February 1919 he consulted his dominion colleagues and Lloyd George and got a general agreement that the treaties should be signed under the general heading of British Empire delegation by the plenipotentiaries from the dominions and India as well as by Britain, the former being identified by their nations.84 On 12 March Borden circulated a memorandum with his view of the constitutional situation. The dominions should be parties and signatories to all treaties and conventions of the peace conference in recognition of the part they had played and also to record ‘the status attained.’ Such a move, so Borden argued, was not a break with the existing constitution of the empire: ‘the Crown is the supreme executive in the United Kingdom and in all the Dominions, but it acts on the advice of different Ministries within different constitutional units.’ The lengthy Canadian memorandum on the League of Nations, sent the following day, underlined this point: ‘It is also assumed that the Dominions of the British Empire are entitled to become Signatories of the Covenant.’85 The dominions were, in fact, moving on to new territory; their delegates were no longer signing merely as members of the British Empire but on behalf of their respective nations. It was a technicality but, as officials in London realized, a highly significant one that granted the dominions greater autonomy in international affairs than they had hitherto possessed. Once conceded, it was difficult, if not impossible, to take back.86
Allies around the conference table, Treaty of Versailles, Paris, France, 1919 (R. Simmons, National Archives of Canada, C242)
The Canadians, who seem to have cared more about the issue than those from the other dominions, continued to press, requesting, for example, when the king, as was required, issued full powers to their plenipotentiaries, that he do so on the basis of a formal request from the Canadian government.87 Sifton sent Dafoe a copy of his papers: ‘the first tangible evidence of a recognition of the rights of Canadians to be alive. Of course the British Government and particularly the permanent service thereof, do not for a moment think it means anything more than a little flattery but possibly having once issued them, the habit may grow.’88 On 28 June 1919 the dominion and Indian representatives – in the case of Canada, Doherty and Sifton – signed the Treaty of Versailles with Germany. The meaning of those signatures, however, remained as ambiguous as the status they were supposed to reflect. The five British plenipotentiaries signed first, on behalf of the United Kingdom and the British dominions and India. The remaining British empire signatures were underneath and indented, which suggests that they were subordinate to those of the United Kingdom.89
Ratification of the treaties induced a last flurry of activity. The question was simple but important: did the British Parliament and king ratify on behalf of the whole empire, or must each dominion Parliament meet and pass a separate ratification? Borden sent a testy cable to Sifton, now Canada’s high commissioner in London: ‘I am under pledge to submit the Treaty to Parliament before ratification on behalf of Canada.’ Was Britain intending to ratify for the empire? ‘If so our attendance at Paris and our signature to the Treaty was an utterly idle formality.’90 The British took the opposing point of view, partly because they wanted to put the treaty with Germany into effect as soon as possible. Ratification by three of the big five powers was necessary, and although the French and the Japanese were prepared to move ahead quickly, the Italians were in the midst of a political crisis and the Americans were engaged in a bitter partisan debate. If each dominion Parliament had to be called – a procedure that would inevitably take time – the treaty would remain in limbo. ‘It would be disastrous,’ Balfour wrote to Milner, ‘if whole of Peace of the world were to be hung up for months because Canadian Parliament had adjourned, and in order to give time for treaty to reach Australia and be discussed and approved by Australian Parliament.’ He offered an elegant but ineffectual solution: the king could ratify on behalf of all the dominions, with the proviso that his doing so would not preclude his depositing further ratifications on behalf of each dominion as soon as their parliaments approved. Milner, whose own view was that ratification by Britain did indeed bind the empire, thought that this would only lead to more hurt feelings in the dominions. ‘I can hardly suppose that it would be any particular satisfaction to them to go through what in that case would be a meaningless formality.’ It was better, he thought, to encourage the dominions either to give Britain the authority to go ahead on behalf of the whole empire or to get their parliaments together as quickly as possible.91 When the British tried to pressure the dominions by saying that the French, in particular, were demanding immediate ratification, Borden answered at once: ‘I cannot emphasize too strongly the unfortunate results which would certainly ensue from ratification before Canadian Parliament has had an opportunity of considering Treaty.’92 The British backed off, and the Canadian Parliament, along with the legislatures of its sister dominions, duly passed resolutions ratifying the treaty. A similar procedure was followed with the treaties signed subsequently with the other enemy nations.
The Canadians spent considerable time and effort in Paris on Canada’s status. Borden and his advisers, such as Christie and Biggar, felt that their greatest achievement had been to get recognition, as Christie stated in a long paper he wrote in the summer of 1919, of Canada as an international person.93 Christie felt that the empire, or as he preferred to call it, the British Commonwealth, was strengthened, although he had his moments of doubt. As he wrote to Wrong, ‘It depends I suppose on whether the different parts of the Empire really make up their minds that they will play together, that they have in fact some important common objects, that there is actual business that they can transact better together than apart, or whether we, for example, are to be drugged by the unlovely miasma from the south and become “100% Canadian and the rest of the world be damned.”’94
The peace conference was useful in another, less dramatic way, in that it obliged Canada to define its interests as an international player. Borden protested vigorously, for example, when the Canadians got wind of a proposal to restore a German submarine telegraph cable that had run via the Azores to New York. This line would divert traffic from a new link through Halifax and, even worse, hand it over to the Americans. Canada had suffered enough at the hands of American (and British) ‘monopolists.’ Canada wanted the cable left where it was and a share in its administration; Canada must also be represented at any future international telegraph congresses. Lloyd George raised the issue with Wilson, who was quick to reassure him that the United States had no intention of depriving Canada of its cable link.95
Canada recognized that it had considerable economic interests in Europe at the end of the war. A new trade mission in London under Lloyd Harris worked with the British to market Canadian products and to make sure that Canada received a share in European reconstruction. Canadian businessmen complained that the British were selfishly keeping their shipping to themselves.96 Borden went directly to Balfour when he learned that only British and American firms were being asked to supply iron and steel to France: ‘Canada has been fighting for nearly four years on French soil, with untold sacrifice in a war which concerned her, materially, as little as any country in the world. Under the circumstances, it seems incomprehensible that the French Government should utterly ignore Canada’s capacity for supplying iron and steel.’97 In February 1919 Borden and Harris saw Lloyd George to ask for an end to the wartime embargo on food shipments to neutrals and enemies: ‘there would be deep dissatisfaction with Great Britain, both in the United States and Canada, if she persists in a policy which is considered to show disregard of her undertaking to accept food supplies which she called upon Canada and the United States to furnish.’ Adequate food supplies, they added, would undercut the appeal of Bolshevism.98
During the peace conference, Foster made it his particular business to arrange credits with the French, Belgian, Greek, and Rumanian governments, so that they could buy Canadian products. ‘There will be millions more to be fed and clothed to fend off widespread starvation,’ he wrote enthusiastically in his diary. ‘The call will still be on America to feed and supply.’ He made sure that Canada was at the Lyons trade fair. The Australians, he noted with satisfaction, ‘were hopelessly outclassed in exhibits and refused to attend our banquet.’ (There was also a certain amount of rivalry between the two self-governing dominions.) He then brought the exhibits to Paris to reach the new nations such as Czechoslovakia.99
On international commercial aviation, then in its infancy, the Canadians argued that the special conditions in North America meant that Canada and the United States should be treated differently from European powers. Although there was no need for this issue to be settled by the peace conference, the powers took advantage of the presence of so many nations in Paris to set up a commission to work out an international convention. Canada was not directly represented, but Sifton sat on the British Empire’s committee, where, he proudly told a Canadian friend, he made a nuisance of himself. He objected strongly to having merely British Empire representation on the proposed international board and threatened that Canada would not take part.100 Indeed, he attacked the very idea of international regulation, arguing that conditions in North America were so special – the 4,000-mile undefended border with the United States; the prairies, where airplanes could land easily on either side of that border – that it would be absurd that a body largely staffed by Europeans would deal with them. ‘The whole subject,’ he wrote to Borden on 29 April, ‘is so utterly unknown, that for anyone to sit down and attempt without consultation to include a country like Canada, where if commercial air traffic is a success it will be of vastly more importance than it is likely to be in any of the countries who are assuming to settle the matter, is a blunder that would generally be called a crime.’ It would make much more sense for Canada and the United States to work out their own regulations. When one of the leading British experts was badly shaken in an air crash a few weeks later, he found it a clear demonstration that there was no point in trying to set up international standards.101 Borden took Sifton’s concerns, although in politer form, to the British Empire delegation.102
When the British showed few signs of budging, Sifton proposed on 6 May that Canada sign the convention with a reservation exempting air traffic between Canada and the United States from its provisions. The British reluctantly agreed to take the matter up with the aeronautical commission. As they had done on other issues, the Canadians also spoke directly to the Americans, whom they found sympathetic. In the summer of 1919 the American State Department contacted the Canadian government, via the British embassy in Washington, to ascertain Canadian views. ‘They would not like to do anything,’ the embassy reported, ‘out of harmony with Canada’s attitude.’ Christie dealt directly with the Americans, and the Canadian government postponed signing the convention, with a view to working out a special arrangement with the United States.103
Although the Canadians insisted that, like the Americans, they were a disinterested party in Paris, they were also briefly tempted by the possibility of acquiring territory. Perhaps Canada should take over the little French islands of St Pierre and Miquelon? Possibly Newfoundland as well? Or the British West Indies? Management by the rich, energetic northern brother could only benefit the locals, Harry J. Crowe, a Toronto entrepreneur, assured Borden, and Canada’s climate would deter Black immigration. As ‘a striking and suitable commemoration of Canada’s entry into World politics,’ F. Perry of the Imperial Munitions Board wrote to Borden, Canada also should take over British Honduras and British Guinea. The subject had been discussed ‘in a general way,’ Borden replied, and he believed that Lloyd George might look on it favourably.104 In his memoirs, Lloyd George claimed the problem was with the Canadians, who shrank from sharing in the responsibilities of the empire. ‘I found Sir Robert Borden was deeply imbued with the American prejudice against the government of extraneous possessions and peoples which did not form an integral part of their own Union.’105 There were, in fact, serious reservations on the British side, notably on the part of Milner, the colonial secretary. ‘If the relations between Canada & Great Britain,’ he wrote in the margins of a letter from Borden, ‘are to remain those of intimate & indissoluble union – as partner nations in a Super-State – then I think Canada sh’d take over the West Indies. She will certainly develop them better than we can. But as long as these relations remain indefinite & even doubtful, I am unwilling to part – even to Canada – with any territory wh. is to-day indisputably British.’106
Borden chose not to push the matter, perhaps because the Canadians had another, more important, goal in sight: swapping British Honduras for the Alaska panhandle. The Americans and the British, who saw it as a way of removing a source of irritation between the United States and the British Empire, were sympathetic.107 Borden talked to both Lloyd George and Milner as well as a ‘very prominent’ member of the American delegation towards the end of April 1919 and received some encouragement.108 The matter went no further, partly because Lloyd George and Wilson were preoccupied with the German treaty and other crises and perhaps because Borden himself was already turning his attention back to Canada.
Canada’s key relations at Paris were, as they had been even before the war, with Britain and the United States. The Canadians were determined that the two great powers in their world should get on. As Borden told the Imperial War Cabinet in 1917, the United States and the British Empire together ‘could do more than anything else to maintain the peace of the world.’109 If the League of Nations did not work out, he told Lloyd George just after the war ended, there might be a smaller one between ‘the two great English speaking commonwealths who share common ancestry, language and literature, who are inspired by like democratic ideals, who enjoy similar political institutions and whose united force is sufficient to ensure the peace of the world.’110 Throughout the peace conference, the Canadians took it upon themselves to explain the United States to other nations, especially to Britain.111 As Borden told Lloyd George, ‘Conditions in the United States and the policy of the United States Government from time to time are naturally of great moment to Canada by reason of the immediate proximity of the two countries and the constantly increasing commercial, industrial and social intercourse between them.’112
The United States, for its part, regarded Canada as a useful ally in its quest for a new diplomacy. House was ‘very anxious,’ he told the British representative Sir William Wiseman, as the peace conference was about to open, that ‘BORDEN and SMUTS should “play in” with the President’s policy.’ Wilson had reservations about Borden – ‘He is not a man who responds quickly, or with whom conversation is easy’113 – but invited him to a meeting a few days later where the two men discussed the League of Nations and the disposition of the German colonies. Wilson, so Borden told his diary, ‘agreed with me that good relations between B.E. and U.S. best asset either c’d have.’114
Borden took upon himself the role of conciliator when the United States and Britain differed. When the Americans, led by Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, wanted to include a labour charter in the preamble to the ILO and the British objected, it was Borden who worked out the final compromise.115 When the British and American experts disagreed on Greece’s borders with Albania, Borden tried to get a compromise.116 In the British Empire delegation, he argued strongly against high reparations from Germany because they ran counter to Wilson’s Fourteen Points, which they all had accepted. They must not, Borden warned, alienate the Americans. ‘Otherwise the United States might unite with France to squeeze us out.’117
Canada and the United States briefly found themselves on opposite sides when it came to the eighth clause in the ILO charter, which provided that all foreign workmen lawfully in any country should receive the same treatment under labour legislation and social insurance as nationals. Borden, mindful of the prejudice at home against Asian labour, warned of ‘great disorder, possibly rebellion on the Pacific Coast of the United States and of Canada.’ Although the Americans shared his concern, Wilson, who himself may have drafted the clause, felt it necessary to get the charter accepted by the European countries, many of whose nationals worked in North America.118 On 8 April Borden and the other dominion prime ministers thought they had prevailed upon the British to reconsider, but two days later they discovered the clause, still in the draft German treaty. In Borden’s words, they took ‘a very firm stand.’119 At Lloyd George’s request, Borden saw both Clemenceau and Wilson. The day before the plenary that was to approve the treaty, Borden held a meeting in his hotel room with, among others, George Barnes, the British minister of labour; Emile Vandervelde, the Belgian minister of justice and leader of the Socialist party; and Henry Robinson, a California banker representing the United States. It was agreed that on the following day he would move an amendment to the report of the labour commission. The offending clause was safely watered down to read: ‘The standard set by law in each country with respect to the conditions of labour should have due regard to the equitable economic treatment of all workers lawfully resident therein.’120
Early in the peace conference, the Canadians acted as an intermediary between their fellow dominions, notably Australia, and the United States over the disposition of Germany’s colonies. Wilson, who opposed territorial annexations, insisted that in the case of peoples not yet ready for self-government, the League of Nations should take on a mandated responsibility. Several of the British dominions, however, were determined to hang on to their wartime conquests. South Africa demanded German Southwest Africa (today’s Namibia); Australia a number of islands south of the equator, including the northern part of New Guinea; and New Zealand German Samoa. The British, who did not object to mandates and, more important, had no wish to confront the Americans on this issue, found themselves obliged yet again to fight their dominions’ battles.121 At the Supreme Council on 24 January Lloyd George argued, rather half-heartedly, for annexation. Borden attempted to forestall the expected clash by arguing that the relations among the components of the British Empire were actually like those proposed for the League of Nations. Before the peace conference opened, Borden had warned the Imperial War Cabinet against quarrelling with the United States over the colonies. Like the rest of the Canadian delegation, he was rubbed the wrong way by Hughes. (There may also have been a certain amount of sibling rivalry. After all, Canada, as the oldest dominion, expected to take the lead, a prerogative Hughes tended to ignore.) Borden bristled at Hughes’s attacks on Wilson and his League of Nations and was quietly pleased when Lloyd George consulted him on how to keep Hughes under control.122
Wilson said nothing in the Supreme Council.123 To his intimates, however, he said he would not stand for ‘dividing the swag.’124 Intense discussions behind the scenes followed. Borden did not play a significant part, but he watched with disapproval as Hughes spurned the attempts by Smuts and House to come up with a compromise. After what Borden described in his diary as a ‘pretty warm scene’ at a meeting of the British Empire delegation, Hughes gave way and agreed to accept the territories he wanted as mandates, but he did so with ill grace (and an inflammatory newspaper interview), which infuriated Wilson.125 Borden made a point of apologizing to the Americans and explaining that the British Empire delegation found Hughes equally troublesome.126
Borden took a much more active part in brokering a compromise on an another contentious issue between the British Empire and the United States a few months later. It arose when Japan tried to insert a clause on racial equality into the League’s covenant. Although Britain had no objections to what was a rather anodyne clause, it found itself in an awkward position. On the one hand, it was allied to Japan, which expected support. On the other, its own dominions, notably Australia, New Zealand, and, to a lesser extent, South Africa and Canada, were panicky about what they saw, incorrectly, as a threat to their own limits on Asian immigration. The United States was also torn between seeing the justice of the Japanese demand as well as wanting to keep on friendly terms with Japan, and fearing its own domestic opinion, especially that on the west coast. A number of people, including House, Cecil, Smuts, and Borden, tried to come up with a formula that would appease both the Japanese, understandably sensitive about seeing their nationals treated as inferiors, and the hardliners, Hughes prominent among them. On 25 March the British Empire delegation met at Borden’s apartment. Borden suggested new wording for the controversial clause, but Hughes rejected it. The Japanese delegates then joined the meeting, but the group was unable to reach a conclusion.127 On 31 March Borden, who had discussed the matter with Smuts, carried new proposals to Hughes.128
When Smuts left on a mission to Hungary at the start of April, he and Cecil asked Borden to carry on for the British. Hughes, Cecil told Borden bluntly, was impossible. The Japanese were threatening to make a public protest. Indeed, there was a danger that they might refuse to sign the German treaty at all. ‘It is possible,’ Cecil added, ‘that they may refuse to join the League of Nations.’129 Borden took his responsibilities seriously, travelling back and forth between Cecil, the recalcitrant Hughes, and the Japanese delegates.130 In the end, his efforts and those of everyone else came to nothing. The Japanese, to everyone’s relief, decided not to press the issue. For all his distaste for Hughes and his methods, Borden recognized that Canada and Australia had a common interest in preserving the new status the dominions had won for themselves. The two men continued to meet until Borden sailed for Canada in May, leaving Doherty and Foster, himself about to leave, in charge.131
With the signing of the German treaty at Versailles on 28 June the main work of the conference ended. Christie believed that Canada had gained valuable experience. Before 1919, he argued, Canada’s international relations were almost entirely economic in nature; the Paris gathering was the first occasion ‘on which Canada became conscious that she was directly and vitally concerned in a world political conference.’132 As Sifton saw it, ‘We always took the position that while we were willing and anxious to help as far as possible in making it a good Treaty, we had no wish to raise questions that would cause trouble and only desired that in so far as our people were concerned and in regard to matters which especially interested them, we should have fair and equal treatment.’133 Did that amount to full nationhood for Canada? Christie did not go quite so far. Canada had a ‘new status’; it had been a member of the peace conference and signed the treaty with Germany, and it was now a member of the League of Nations and the ILO. ‘The Dominions,’ he concluded, ‘have asserted a sovereign status of some sort and have for some purposes entered the Family of Nations.’134
Participation in the peace settlements was something of a false dawn for the dominions. They had made an exceptional effort, but none, not even Canada, had the diplomatic resources to sustain a role in international affairs. In addition, in the early 1920s Canada, like the others, was preoccupied with domestic affairs. Borden’s successors showed little enthusiasm for the promised conference on imperial constitutional arrangements. In the end, it never took place. Nor did Canada show much interest in the round of conferences and meetings that followed Paris. It sent only a token delegation to the important Genoa economic conference in 1922 and was not represented at all at the Lausanne conference of 1923 that finally made peace between the Allies and the new Turkey. Canadian foreign policy was largely symbolic, in the words of Robert Bothwell, ‘a policy that was genuinely unimportant to the majority of politicians in Ottawa, and one that could find no issue on which it could mobilize any interest, much less sentiment, in Canada.’135
On the other hand, Canada continued to manage its relations with the United States. By 1919, as the American legal expert Hunter-Miller rightly said, ‘the practical situation was slipping away from the legal status.’ Although matters affecting Canada were still technically dealt with by London and Washington, ‘we knew, and London knew that we knew, and so on with all the possible permutations of this progression, that the matter could not be settled except in accordance with the wishes of the Ottawa government.’136 Borden and his immediate successor, Arthur Meighen, pressed for Canadian representation in Washington. In 1920 Canada reached an agreement with a more or less willing Britain that a Canadian minister plenipotentiary, second in rank to the ambassador, should become part of the British embassy in the American capital. What the assignment meant in terms of authority was not spelled out. The Canadian view, which the British did not challenge, was that their minister would be responsible to and take instructions from the Canadian government. In the end, the new government of Mackenzie King chose not to make an appointment until 1927.137
Although imperial unity was maintained, the fault lines had become apparent in Paris. Dominions had gained the right to accept or withhold their assent to international agreements. Leaders such as Botha and Hughes had raised the question of whether London could commit the self-governing dominions to war. The answer was to come in 1922 during the Chanak crisis, when Lloyd George tried, unsuccessfully, to involve the dominions in its struggle with Turkey. Mackenzie King, now prime minister, firmly, if deviously, refused to commit Canadian forces. Canada’s international status remained as unclear as ever. It was fortunate, perhaps, that the nation now had a prime minister who throve on ambiguity.
1 National Archives of Canada (NAC), Borden Papers, vol. 157, Memorandum for Interview with Mr Lloyd George, 4.2.19.
2 Ibid., vol. 94, Wrong to Borden, 13.11.18; NAC, Christie Papers, vol. 4, Christie to Rowell, 1.1.19
3 NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 93, White to Borden, 11.4.19, 23.4.19, 26.4.19; vol. 157, letter of 16.12.18; vol. 94, petition forwarded by Arthur Meighen, 15.1.19; House of Lords Record Office (HLRO), Lloyd George Papers, F5/3/24, Borden to Lloyd George, 27.3.19; NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 157.
4 Bodleian Library (BL), Oxford, MS Milner, Deposit 383/1, Milner to Devonshire 25.3.19.
5 NAC, Christie Papers, vol. 3, file 6/6, Borden to Christie, n.d.
6 NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 8 (diary extracts), 11.1.19.
7 Robert Craig Brown, Robert Laird Borden: A Biography, Vol. 2,1914–1937 (Toronto, 1980), 20, 208.
8 NAC, Borden Papers, C1864, diary entry 6.5.19.
9 Clemenceau, Grandeur and Misery of Victory (Toronto, 1930), 141; NAC, Oliver Mowat Biggar Papers, vol. 2, letter of 1.2.19; Foster Papers, vol. 106, letters to Mrs Foster, 21.12. 18, 1.1.19, 9.6.19; James Shotwell, At the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1937), 165.
10 Clifford Lovin, A School for Diplomats: The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Lanham, Md., 1997), 3 and passim.
11 NAC, Clement Jones, ‘The Dominions and the Peace Conference. A New Page in Constitutional History,’ copy in Christie Papers, vol. 7, f. 21, 30, 211.
12 See NAC, Biggar Papers, 12.3.19, 23.3.19, 28.3.19, 4.4.19.
13 NAC, Borden Papers, Borden diary entries 28.12.18, 16.1.19, 4.2.19.
14 NAC, Biggar Papers, 4.4.19.
15 Yale University Library (YUL), Edward M. House Diary, entry 1.2.19.
16 Library of Congress, George Louis Beer Collection, 13.5.19.
17 Murray Donnelly, Dafoe of the Free Press (Toronto, 1968), 99.
18 W. Stewart Wallace, ed., The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Sir George Foster (Toronto, 1933), 199.
19 NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 106, Foster to his wife, 3.2.19.
20 NAC, Biggar Papers, vol. 2, letter of 1.2.19.
21 Robert Laird Borden, Robert Laird Borden: His Memoirs, Vol. 2, 1916–1920 (Toronto and Montreal, 1969), 186.
22 Donnelly, Dafoe of the Free Press, 93.
23 NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 106, Foster to his wife, 5.2.19.
24 Ibid., vol. 8, entry for 19.1.19.
25 Canada, Department of External Affairs, Documents on Canadian External Relations (DCER), Vol. 2, The Paris Peace Conference of 1919, 53–4.
26 NAC, Biggar Papers, vol. 2, letter to Mrs Biggar, 1.2.19.
27 Robert Bothwell, Loring Christie: The Failure of Bureaucratic Imperialism (New York, and London 1988), 77, 173, 193; Brown, Robert Laird Borden, 155–6.
28 United States, Department of State, Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1919: The Paris Peace Conference (FRUS), 13 vols (Washington, D.C., 1942–7), 3, 188–93, 196–7.
29 BL, Milner MS. Deposit, 383/1, Milner to Devonshire, 25.3.19.
30 NAC, Christie Papers, vol. 4, Christie to Rowell, 1.1.19.
31 NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 2, diary entries 31.10.18, 2.12.18; vol. 8, diary entry 22.1.19; Borden Papers, diary entries 2.12.18. Biggar Papers, vol. 2, letter to Mrs Biggar of 23.3.19.
32 Canada, DCER, vol. 2, 88, Borden to White, 14.3.19.
33 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry 11.11.19.
34 NAC, Biggar Papers, vol. 2, letter to Mrs Biggar of 16.2.19.
35 HLRO, Lloyd George papers, F5/3/21, Borden to LLG, 20.3.19.
36 See C.P Stacey, Canada and the Age of Conflict, Vol. 1, 1867–1921 (Toronto, 1984), 276–82, for a discussion of Canadian intervention in Russia.
37 David Lloyd George, War Memoirs (London, 1933–8), 4: 1,754; Canada, DCER, 2: 63.
38 YUL, House Diary, entry 5.2.19.
39 See Brown, Robert Laird Borden, 2: 155–6.
40 Canada, DCER, 2: 58, 58–63 passim, 73–87.
41 David Hunter Miller, ‘The Making of the League,’ in Edward Mandell House and Charles Seymour, eds, What Really Happened at Paris (New York, 1921), 411.
42 NAC, Christie Papers, vol. 3, file 6/7, Christie to Clement Jones, 16.9.20; see also Bothwell, Loring Christie, 181–99.
43 See Gérard Bouchard, Genèse des nations et cultures du Nouveau Monde (Montreal, 2000), passim and 24–5, 230–7, 314–20.
44 NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 2, 24.12.18; Dafoe Papers, Letters 1919, Dafoe to Sifton, 26.8.19.
45 Borden, Memoirs, 2: 166; NAC, Borden Papers diary entry 1.1.2.18.
46 Public Record Office (PRO), London, Cabinet Minutes 28/29, British Empire Delegation (BED), 11 (1.3.19); NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 431, Borden memorandum to British Empire delegation, 1.4.19.
47 PRO, BED, 26 (21.4.19).
48 Ibid., 3 (23.1.19).
49 NAC, Christie Papers, vol. 3, 6/7, Christie to George Wrong, 30.12.19.
50 HLRO, Lloyd George Papers, F/5/2/4, memorandum of 26.4.17.
51 Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 4: 1,764–5; Borden, Memoirs, 2: 668.
52 Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of Secrets, Vol. 2, 1919–1931 (London, 1972), 29.
53 Borden, Memoirs, 2: 158; United States, FRUS, 1: 347–8.
54 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry. 4.12.18.
55 Roskill, Hankey, 29–30.
56 L.F. Fitzhardinge, ‘Hughes, Borden, and Dominion Representation at the Paris Peace Conference,’ Canadian Historical Review 49, 2 (June 1968), 163–5.
57 David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties, 2 vols (London, 1938), 1: 206–7.
58 NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 115, White to Borden, 7.12.18; summary of press opinion, 9.11.18.
59 Canada, DCER, 2: 7, White to Borden, 4.12.18.
60 BL, MS Milner. Deposit, 388, Report No.12 from French Ministry of Colonies, 29.5.18.
61 YUL, House Diary, entries 28. 10.18; 6.2.19.
62 United States, FRUS, 3: 567–8; Lloyd George, Truth about the Peace Treaties, 1: 215.
63 Canada, DCER, 2: 30–1.
64 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entries 18.1.19, 13.1.19.
65 Roskill, Hankey, 49.
66 NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 94, Borden to White 7.3.19; vol. 433/62, Borden to Cecil 18.4.19.
67 David Hunter Miller, The Drafting of the Covenant, 2 vols (New York, 1928), 1: 490; HLRO, Lloyd George Papers, F/5/5.
68 Canada, DCER, 2: 148–9.
69 PRO, BED, 10 (27.2.10); BED, 13 (13.3.19); see also Borden’s memorandum of 12.5.19 in ibid., 156.
70 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry, 23.1.19; vol. 166, Borden to Eyre Crowe, 14.2.19, 20.3.19.
71 Harold Nicolson, Peacemaking 1919 (London, 1964), 259.
72 NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 58, Minutes of the Greek Commission.
73 See Hunter Miller, Drafting, 1: 53–4, 57, 478–81; W.J. Hudson, Billy Hughes in Paris (West Melbourne, Australia, 1978), 51–2; Borden, Memoirs, 2: 179–80; Canada, DCER, 2: 35, 42–3, 70.
74 PRO, BED, 29 (28.4.19).
75 Edward Mandell House, The Intimate Papers of Colonel House Arranged as a Narrative by Charles Seymour, 4 vols (Boston and New York, 1926–8), 4: 311.
76 Hunter Miller, Drafting, 1: 53–5, 57–8; 2: 255–60; G.P. deT. Glazebrook, Canada at the Paris Peace Conference (London, Toronto, New York, 1942), 63–7.
77 PRO, BED, 26 (21.4.19); 29 (28.4.19).
78 NAC, Sifton Papers, vol. 7, folder on Labour Legislation, memorandum of 29.4.19.
79 Hunter Miller, Drafting, 1: 478–81, 487–8.
80 See, for example, Borden, Memoirs, 2: 205–6; Canada, DCER, 2: 228.
81 PRO, BED, 30 (5.5.19).
82 Canada, DCER, 2: 149–50; United States, FRUS, 5: 477–8, 478, 489–90; Canada, DCER, 2: 231.
83 Canada, ‘Memorandum with respect to further work of Peace Conference,’ DCER, 2: 155–6.
84 Borden, Memoirs, 2: 187, 193; Glazebrook, Canada at the Conference, 108–9; see also Philip G. Wigley, Canada and the transition to Commonwealth: British-Canadian Relations, 1917–1926 (Cambridge, 1977), 84–9.
85 Canada, DCER 2: 72–3, 87.
86 Wigley, Canada and the Transition, 88–9.
87 Canada, DCER, 2: 118.
88 NAC, Sifton Papers, vol. 1, Sifton to Dafoe, 11.4.19.
89 See the note in United States, FRUS, 13: 62.
90 Canada, DCER, 2: 165.
91 BL, Milner MS, Deposit 390. Balfour to Milner 23.7.19; Milner to Balfour 26.7.19.
92 Canada, DCER, 2: 168–72.
93 Copy in NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 115.
94 NAC, Christie Papers. vol. 3, Christie to Wrong, 30.12.19.
95 Canada, DCER 2: 228–9; NAC, Borden Papers. vol 94, Borden to Lloyd George, 5.5.19; Paul Mantoux, The Deliberations of the Council of Four, 2 vols, trans and ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 1: 462–5.
96 Canada, DCER 2, 5; NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 93; Christie Papers, vol. 4/file 13; Foster Papers, vol. 2, entries 14.11.18, 25.11.18.
97 NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 93, Borden to Balfour, 28.11.18.
98 Canada, DCER, 2: 200–1.
99 See, for example, NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 8, entries 29.1.19, 30.1.19, 6.2.19, 7.2.19, 11.2.19, 4.3.19, 18.3.19; vol. 7. entry 5.11.18; vol. 8, entry 20.3.19.
100 NAC, Sifton papers, vol. 2, Sifton to Senator G.D. Robertson, 4. 6.19; vol. 1, memorandum of 14.4.19.
101 Canada, DCER, 2: 137–8, 143–4; NAC, Sifton Papers, vol. 7, folder Labour Legislation, Sifton to Borden, 5.5.19.
102 PRO, BED, 20 (13.4.19), 21 (14.4.19).
103 Canada, DCER, 2: 152–3, 232, 170–1 and fn 1, 185.
104 NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 444, Privy Council memorandum of 18.2.18; vol. 116. Crowe to Borden, 7.3.19, 1.4.19; vol. 159, Crowe to Borden, 23.5.18; vol. 116, Perry to Borden, 13.11.18; Borden to Perry 4.12.18.
105 Lloyd George, Truth about the Peace Treaties, 1: 554.
106 BL, additional Milner Papers. holograph note on Borden to Milner 16.5.19.
107 See, for example, Beer, entries 15.1.19 and 7.4.19; NAC, Christie Papers, vol. 7, file 20, memorandum of 15.1.19; Milner to Borden, 7.5.19.
108 BL, additional Milner Papers Borden to Milner 29.4.19; NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry 6.2.19.
109 Lloyd George, War Memoirs, 4: 1754.
110 HLRO, Lloyd George Papers, F/5/2/28, Borden to Lloyd George, 23.11.18.
111 See, for example, Borden’s explanation of the Monroe Doctrine in PRO, BED, 27 (21.4.19).
112 NAC, Borden Papers, vol. 94, Borden to Lloyd George, 27.3.19.
113 YUL, Sir William Wiseman Papers, Series I, Box 7, Peace Conference Diary, 17.1.19, 21.1.19.
114 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry 22.1.19.
115 Canada, DCER, 2: 130–1; Seth P. Tillman, Anglo-American Relations at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 (Princeton, N.J., 1961), 308–9.
116 YUL, House Diary entry 4.3.19.
117 PRO, BED, 19A (11.4.19, 9 a.m.).
118 Borden, Memoirs, 2: 197–8; PRO, BED 29 (28.4.19).
119 PRO, BED, 18 (8.4.19); Borden, Memoirs, 2: 197.
120 Borden, Memoirs, 2: 202; Shotwell, Paris Peace Conference, 295.
121 William Roger Louis, Great Britain and Germany’s Lost Colonies, 1914–1919 (Oxford, 1967), 7–9.
122 Lloyd George, Truth about the Peace Treaties, 1: 116–17, 201; NAC, Foster Papers, vol. 7, 15.6.18, 11.7.18; Biggar Papers, vol. 2, 1.2.19; Borden Papers, diary entries 30.12.18, 11.1.19, 1.2.19; YUL, House Diary, entry 1.2.19.
123 United States, FRUS, 3: 718–28.
124 Woodrow Wilson, The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, 69 vols, ed. Arthur S. Link (Princeton, N.J., 1966–), 54, 308.
125 Borden, Memoirs, Vol. 2, 908; Robert Garran, Prosper the Commonwealth (Sydney, Australia, 1958), 265.
126 YUL, House Diary, entry 1.2.19; NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry 1.2.19.
127 Borden, Memoirs, 2: 195.
128 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry 31.3.19.
129 Canada, DCER, 2: 104–5.
130 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry 9.4.19, 10.4.19; Borden, Memoirs, 2: 195–6; Canada, DCER, 2: 216.
131 NAC, Borden Papers, diary entry 13.5.19.
132 NAC, ‘Notes on the Development at the Paris Peace Conference of the Status of Canada as an International Person,’ Borden Papers, vol. 115/6; Clement Jones, ‘The Dominions and the Peace Conference. A New Page in Constitutional History,’ 211, copy in Christie Papers. vol. 7, file 21.
133 NAC, Sifton papers, vol. 2, Sifton to Senator G.D. Robertson, 4. 6.19.
134 NAC, ‘Notes on the Development at the Paris Peace Conference of the Status of Canada as an International Person,’ Borden papers, vol. 115/6.
135 Bothwell, Loring Christie, 295.
136 Hunter-Miller, Drafting, 1: 489.
137 Stacey, Canada and the Age of Conflict, 311–17.
