Woodrow Wilson | Typed letter signed, to Rev. F.B. Meyer, written from the Paris Peace Conference, January 1919

Woodrow Wilson, 28^th President of the United States of America

Letter signed, to Rev. R.B. Meyer, written during the Paris Peace Conference, reluctantly declining to participate in Meyer’s planned commemorative film for the tercentenary of the voyage of the Mayflower, 1 page, 4to (270 x 210 mm), headed stationery of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, Paris, 28 January 1919, fragile at folds

“…I cannot in conscience turn away from my duties to do anything that is not absolutely necessary in connection with them or for the furtherance of the great object for which I came over…”

Frederick Meyer (1847–1929) was a prominent British evangelical Baptist minister, who also travelled extensively in America. Wilson had arrived in France in December 1918, hoping that the war could be ended with a principled peace based on his famed Fourteen Points, and that this would usher in a new world order based on self-determination and agreed international rules under a new League of Nations.

PROVENANCE:

Sale, Phillips, London, 10 November 1991, lot 341