utcome of his endeavors, as the League of Nations was that of Mr.
Wilson's. In lieu of universal peace all eastern Europe was still
warring and revolting in September and the general outlook was
disquieting. The disheartening effect of the contrast between the
promise and the achievement of the American statesman was felt
throughout the world. But Mr. Wilson has the solace to know that people
hardly ever reach their goal--though they sometimes advance fairly near
to it. They either die on the way or else it changes or they do.

It was doubtless a noble ambition that moved the Prime Ministers of the
Great Powers and the chief of the North American Republic to give their
own service to the Conference as heads of their respective missions. For
they considered themselves to be the best equipped for the purpose, and
they were certainly free from such prejudices as professional traditions
and a confusing knowledge of details might be supposed to engender. But
in almost every respect it was a grievous mistake and the source of
others still more grievous. True, in his own particular sphere each of
them had achieved what is nowadays termed greatness. As a war leader Mr.
Lloyd George had been hastily classed with Marlborough and Chatham, M.
Clemenceau compared to Danton, and Mr. Wilson set apart in a category to
himself. But without questioning these journalistic certificates of fame
one must admit that all three plenipotentiaries were essentially
politicians, old parliamentary hands, and therefore expedient-mongers
whose highest qualifications for their own profession were drawbacks
which unfitted them for their self-assumed mission. Of the concrete
world which they set about reforming their knowledge was amazingly
vague. "Frogs in the pond," says the Japanese proverb, "know naught of
the ocean." There was, of course, nothing blameworthy in their
unacquaintanceship with the issues, but only in the offhandedness with
which they belittled its consequences. Had they been conversant with the
subject or gifted with deeper insight, many of the things which seemed
particularly clear to them would have struck them as sheer inexplicable,
and among these perhaps their own leadership of the world-parliament.

What they lacked, however, might in some perceptible degree have been
supplied by enlisting as their helpers men more happily endowed than
themselves. But they deliberately chose mediocrities. It is a mark of
genial spirits that they