Mr. Wilson’s trip to England and France was, therefore, a triumph. He was showered with flowers, our newspapers reported, and cheered by throngs of admirers as his motorcade crept through the streets of London. He and Mrs. Wilson were houseguests at Buckingham Palace. At dinner that first night, King George noted that Woodrow Wilson was the first president of the United States to visit England, and he toasted Mr. Wilson as the leader of a “mighty commonwealth tied to us by the closest of ties.”

Ah, I thought, reading that. Our little revolution is officially forgiven.

The American party soon set sail for France. Mr. Wilson looked fit in photos taken as he debarked in Brest, where thousands celebrated his arrival. He received a gold medal from the city of Paris and met with diplomats to discuss the coming peace conference in Versailles. He spent a week at the American army headquarters in Chaumont but declined a visit to the cratered moonscape of the battlefields. “I don’t want to get mad,” he explained in an interview. “I think there should be one man at the peace table who hasn’t lost his temper.”

It was a noble ambition, to retain some composure on that ruined continent. Nevertheless, for all the grief it cost our country, others at Versailles pointed out that only 150,000 of the ten million war dead were Americans. Mr. Wilson might be inclined toward magnanimity; not so, the other victors. Their aim was to punish those who’d set the meat grinder in motion: to destroy forever the ability of Germany, Austria, and Turkey to wage war.