lling into egregious and costly errors, it was
inevitable that their intervention should be resented as arbitrary and
mischievous by the leaders of the interested nations whose
acquaintanceship with those questions and with the interdependent issues
was extensive and precise. This resentment, however, might have been
not, indeed, neutralized, but somewhat mitigated, if the temper and
spirit in which the Duumvirate discharged its self-set functions had
been free from hauteur and softened by modesty. But the magisterial
wording in which its decisions were couched, the abruptness with which
they were notified, and the threats that accompanied their imposition
would have been repellent even were the authors endowed with
infallibility.

One of the delegates who unbosomed himself to me on the subject soon
after the Germans had signed the Treaty remarked: "The Big Three are
superlatively unsympathetic to most of the envoys from the lesser
belligerent states. And it would be a wonder if it were otherwise, for
they make no effort to hide their disdain for us. In fact, it is
downright contempt. They never consult us. When we approach them they
shove us aside as importunate intruders. They come to decisions unknown
to us, and carry them out in secrecy, as though we were enemies or
spies. If we protest or remonstrate, we are imperialists and ungrateful.

"Often we learn only from the newspapers the burdens or the restrictions
that have been imposed on us."

A couple of days previously M. Clemenceau, in an unofficial reply to a
question put by the Rumanian delegation, directed them to consult the
financial terms of the Treaty with Austria, forgetting that the
delegates of the lesser states had not been allowed to receive or read
those terms. Although communicated to the Austrians, they were carefully
concealed from the Rumanians, whom they also concerned. At the same
time, the Rumanian government was called upon to take and announce a
decision which presupposed acquaintanceship with those conditions,
whereupon the Rumanian Premier telegraphed from Bucharest to Paris to
have them sent. But his _locum tenens_ did not possess a copy and had no
right to demand one.[140] Incongruities of this character were frequent.

One statesman in Paris, who enjoys a world-wide reputation, dissented
from those who sided with the lesser states. He looked at their protests
and tactics from an angle of vision which the unbiased historian,
however em