If to this brief summary of the increasing secretiveness of the proceedings of the controlling bodies of the Peace Conference are added the intrigues and personal bargainings which were constantly going on, the "log-rolling"-- to use a term familiar to American politics--which was practiced, the record is one which invites no praise and will find many who condemn it.

In view of the frequent and emphatic declarations in favor of "open diplomacy" and the popular interpretation placed upon the phrase "Open covenants openly arrived at," the effect of the secretive methods employed by the leading negotiators at Paris was to destroy public confidence in the sincerity of these statesmen and to subject them to the charge of pursuing a policy which they had themselves condemned and repudiated.
Naturally President Wilson, who had been especially earnest in his denunciation of secret negotiations, suffered more than his foreign colleagues, whose real support of "open diplomacy" had always been doubted, though all of them in a measure fell in public estimation as a consequence of the way in which the negotiations were conducted.
The criticism and condemnation, expressed with varying degrees of intensity, resulted from the disappointed hopes of the peoples of the world, who had looked forward confidently to the Peace Conference at Paris as the first great and decisive change to a new diplomacy which would cast aside the cloak of mystery that had been in the past the recognized livery of diplomatic negotiations.

The record of the Paris proceedings in this particular is a sorry one.

It is the record of the abandonment of principle, of the failure to follow precepts unconditionally proclaimed, of the repudiation by act, if not by word, of a new and better type of international intercourse.
It is not my purpose or desire to fix the blame for this perpetuation of old and discredited practices on any one individual.

To do so would be unjust, since more than one preferred the old way and should share the responsibility for its continuance.