Comparison of Source Material

The comparison is made between the Papers of Woodrow Wilson in documenting the minutes of the meetings of the Council of Four and the original Hankey minutes as distributed to the participants in 1919. The Papers of Woodrow Wilson contain numerous additional letters, notes regarding additional meetings related to the Peace Conference, and diaries of people who where not part of the Council of Four. The Hankey records concentrate only on the minutes of meetings of the Council of Four and related Appendices. These appendices are not contained in the Mantoux notes and, consequently are missing from the Papers of Woodrow Wilson when they report those meetings for which they utilize only the Mantoux notes.

The meetings of the Council of Four started on March 24, 1919, and continued till June 28, 1919. However, the following comparison between the Papers of Woodrow Wilson and the original Hankey minutes covers only the time period from June 2 to June 9, 1919, since the original Hankey minutes were available to the author for that period only.

The author of this report was in possession of an original copy of the official “Minutes” (“Procès-Verbaux Anglais”) of the meetings of the Council of Four prepared by Hankey for the time period from June 2 to June 9, 1919, including each meeting during this time period. Consequently, the author became interested in learning what difference the use of Mantoux notes versus Hankey minutes would make in the understanding of the Council’s deliberations.

The following section presents a word-by-word comparison of the Mantoux notes and Hankey minutes only for all those meetings between June 2 and June 9 for which “The Papers of Woodrow Wilson”, Volume 60 (from June 1 to June 17 of 1919), Princeton University Press, 1989, report only the Mantoux notes and do not report the Hankey minutes. Those meetings are:

• June 3, 1919, 4:00 p.m.
• June 7, 1919, 11:00 a.m.
• June 7, 1919, 4:00 p.m.
• June 9, 1919, 11:00 a.m.
• June 9, 1919, 11:45 a.m.

Footntotes:

[1] See Appendix II.

[2] Two mistakes were hand-corrected in the Hankey original. The first is found in The Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 60, page 173, line 30: “Holland” is corrected to “Poland”. On page 174, line 8, “forces of danger” is corrected to “sources of danger”.