for the execution of their far-reaching plans, yet they
spurned the means of acquiring it. The best construction one can put
upon their action will represent it as the wrecking of the substance by
the form. By establishing a situation of force throughout Europe the
Council created and sanctioned the principle that it must be maintained
by force.

But the affronted nations did not stop at this mild criticism. They
assailed the policy itself, cast suspicion on the disinterestedness of
the motives that inspired it, and contributed thereby to generate an
atmosphere of distrust in which the frail organism that was shortly to
be called into being could not thrive. Contemplated through this
distorting medium, one set of delegates was taunted with aiming at a
monopoly of imperialism and the other with rank hypocrisy. It is
superfluous to remark that the idealism and lofty aims of the President
of the United States were never questioned by the most reckless
Thersites. The heaviest charges brought against him were weakness of
will, exaggerated self-esteem, impatience of contradiction, and a naive
yearning for something concrete to take home with him, in the shape of a
covenant of peoples.

The reports circulating in the French capital respecting vast commercial
enterprises about to be inaugurated by English-speaking peoples and
about proposals that the governments of the countries interested should
facilitate them, were destructive of the respect due to statesmen whose
attachment to lofty ideals should have absorbed every other motive in
their ethico-political activity. Thus it was affirmed by responsible
politicians that an official representative of an English-speaking
country gave expression to the view, which he also attributed to his
government, that henceforth his country should play a much larger part
in the economic life of eastern Europe than any other nation. This, he
added, was a conscious aim which would be steadily pursued, and to the
attainment of which he hoped the politicians and their people would
contribute. So far this, it may be contended, was perfectly legitimate.

But it was further affirmed, and not by idle quidnuncs, that one of
Rumania's prominent men had been informed that Rumania could count on
the good-will and financial assistance of the United States only if her
Premier gave an assurance that, besides the special privileges to be
conferred on the Jewish minority in his country, he would also grant