are well served, but the plenipotentiaries of
the Conference were not characterized by it. Away in the background some
of them had familiars or casual prompters to whose counsels they were
wont to listen, but many of the adjoints who moved in the limelight of
the world-stage were gritless and pithless.

As the heads of the principal governments implicitly claimed to be the
authorized spokesmen of the human race and endowed with unlimited
powers, it is worth noting that this claim was boldly challenged by the
peoples' organs in the press. Nearly all the journals read by the masses
objected from the first to the dictatorship of the group of Premiers,
Mr. Wilson being excepted. "The modern parasite," wrote a respectable
democratic newspaper,[59] "is the politician. Of all the privileged
beings who have ever governed us he is the worst. In that, however,
there is nothing surprising ... he is not only amoral, but incompetent
by definition. And it is this empty-headed individual who is intrusted
with the task of settling problems with the very rudiments of which he
is unacquainted." Another French journal[60] wrote: "In truth it is a
misfortune that the leaders of the Conference are Cabinet chiefs, for
each of them is obsessed by the carking cares of his domestic policy.
Besides, the Paris Conference takes on the likeness of a lyrical drama
in which there are only tenors. Now would even the most beautiful work
in the world survive this excess of beauties?"

The truth as revealed by subsequent facts would seem to be that each of
the plenipotentiaries recognizing parliamentary success as the source of
his power was obsessed by his own political problems and stimulated by
his own immediate ends. As these ends, however incompatible with each
other, were believed by each one to tend toward the general object, he
worked zealously for their attainment. The consequences are notorious.
M. Clemenceau made France the hub of the universe. Mr. Lloyd George
harbored schemes which naturally identified the welfare of mankind with
the hegemony of the English-speaking races. Signor Orlando was inspired
by the "sacred egotism" which had actuated all Italian Cabinets since
Italy entered the war, and President Wilson was burning to associate his
name and also that of his country with the vastest and noblest
enterprise inscribed in the annals of history. And each one moved over
his own favorite route toward his own goal. It was an apt illustration