ain European town had been sent to Moscow for
the speedy removal of Lenin. The casual way in which these and kindred
matters were talked of gave one the measure of the change that had come
over the world since the outbreak of the war. There was nobody left in
Europe whose death, violent or peaceful, would have made much of an
impression on the dulled sensibilities of the reading public. All values
had changed, and that of human life had fallen low.

To follow these swiftly passing episodes, occasionally glancing behind
the scenes, during the pauses of the acts, and watch the unfolding of
the world-drama, was thrillingly interesting. To note the dubious
source, the chance occasion of a grandiose project of world policy, and
to see it started on its shuffling course, was a revelation in politics
and psychology, and reminded one of the saying mistakenly attributed to
the Swedish Chancellor Oxenstjern, "_Quam parva sapientia regitur
mundus_."[3]

The wire-pullers were not always the plenipotentiaries. Among those were
also outsiders of various conditions, sometimes of singular ambitions,
who were generally free from conventional prejudices and conscientious
scruples. As traveling to Paris was greatly restricted by the
governments of the world, many of these unofficial delegates had come in
capacities widely differing from those in which they intended to act. I
confess I was myself taken in by more than one of these secret
emissaries, whom I was innocently instrumental in bringing into close
touch with the human levers they had come to press. I actually went to
the trouble of obtaining for one of them valuable data on a subject
which did not interest him in the least, but which he pretended he had
traveled several thousand miles to study. A zealous prelate, whose
business was believed to have something to do with the future of a
certain branch of the Christian Church in the East, in reality held a
brief for a wholly different set of interests in the West. Some of these
envoys hoped to influence decisions of the Conference, and they
considered they had succeeded when they got their points of view brought
to the favorable notice of certain of its delegates. What surprised me
was the ease with which several of these interlopers moved about,
although few of them spoke any language but their own.

Collectivities and religious and political associations, including that
of the Bolshevists, were represented in Paris during the Con