He was so convinced of having God’s backing in his project that he insisted on attending the Paris Peace Conference in 1919​—this in spite of the fact that many political friends thought that the president of the United States should remain independent of the peace negotiations. He believed that he had the people of the world behind him even if he did not have all the politicians. He was convinced that he was God’s instrument for peace. He, more than anyone else, had to go to Paris.

He confided to his private secretary, Tumulty: “This trip will either be the greatest success or the supremest tragedy in all history; but I believe in a Divine Providence . . . It is my faith that no body of men, however they concert their power or their influence, can defeat this great world enterprise.” (Italics ours.)

Evidently Wilson believed with evangelistic fervor in his mission to establish peace on earth. Writer Charles L. Mee states: “At one point he amazed Lloyd George and Clemenceau by explaining how the league would establish a brotherhood of man where Christianity had not been able to do so. ‘Why,’ Lloyd George recalled Wilson as saying, ‘has Jesus Christ so far not succeeded in inducing the world to follow His teachings in these matters? It is because He taught the ideal without devising any practical means of attaining it. That is the reason why I am proposing a practical scheme to carry out His aims.’”​—The End of Order, Versailles 1919.