President Woodrow Wilson Thanks the Director of the Red Cross for Sending the American Red Cross Bulletin

Woodrow Wilson left for the Versailles Peace Conference to end World War I in December 1918, and attended the opening in January 1919. There he insisted that his proposals for a League of Nations be incorporated into the peace settlement. He returned to the United States in February to report on the progress at Versailles, cabling ahead to invite the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to a working dinner at the White House to discuss the treaty provisions relating to the League of Nations. He found the Senate opposed, a troubling development. He then returned to Versailles to continue negotiating the Treaty.

Wilsonand stayed in Europe for for six months overall. On July 10, 1919, back in Washington, the president of the United States, for the first time since 1789, personally delivered a treaty to the Senate. As Secret Service agents and Capitol Police officers sealed off the Senate wing to everyone without a special pass, President Woodrow Wilson walked into the chamber lugging the oversized document under his right arm. Recently returned from Paris, Wilson hoped for prompt Senate approval but feared trouble from Republicans, newly restored as the chamber’s majority party.

Typed letter signed on White House letterhead, Washington, February 27, 1919, to the Director of Information of the Red Cross in London. “I have received and want to thank you very warmly for the bound voilume of the twenty numbers of the American Red Cross Bulletin published in London during 1918. I appreciate your thoughtful courtesy.”

This is quite a rarity. We cannot find another letter of Wilson from his two weeks in Washington amidst the Peace Conference.