mber of
Russians, representing all political parties and four governments, were
in Paris waiting to be consulted. But between January and May not one of
them was ever asked for information or counsel. Nay, more, those who
respectfully solicited an audience were told to wait. In the meanwhile
men unacquainted with the country and people were sent by Mr. Wilson to
report on the situation, and to begin by obtaining the terms of an
acceptable treaty from the Bolshevik government.

The first plenipotentiary of one of the principal lesser states was for
months refused an audience, to the delight of his political adversaries,
who made the most of the circumstance at home. An eminent diplomatist
who possessed considerable claims to be vouchsafed an interview was put
off from week to week, until at last, by dint of perseverance, as it
seemed to him, the President consented to see him. The diplomatist,
pleased at his success, informed a friend that the following Wednesday
would be the memorable day. "But are you not aware," asked the friend,
"that on that day the President will be on the high seas on his way back
to the United States?" He was not aware of it. But when he learned that
the audience had been deliberately fixed for a day when Mr. Wilson would
no longer be in France he felt aggrieved.

In Italy the President's progress was a veritable triumph. Emperors and
kings had roused no such enthusiasm. One might fancy him a deity
unexpectedly discovered under the outward appearance of a mortal and now
being honored as the god that he was by ecstatic worshipers. Everything
he did was well done, everything he said was nobly conceived and worthy
of being treasured up. In these dispositions a few brief months wrought
a vast difference.

In this respect an instructive comparison might be made between Tsar
Alexander I at the Vienna Congress and the President of the United
States at the Conference of Paris. The Russian monarch arrived in the
Austrian capital with the halo of a Moses focusing the hopes of all the
peoples of Europe. His reputation for probity, public spirit, and lofty
aspirations had won for him the good-will and the anticipatory blessings
of war-weary nations. He, too, was a mystic, believed firmly in occult
influences, so firmly indeed that he accepted the fitful guidance of an
ecstatic lady whose intuition was supposed to transcend the sagacity of
professional statesmen. And yet the Holy Alliance was the supreme
o