hip. Yet they were frequently snubbed and each one made to
feel that he was the fifth wheel in the chariot of the Conference. No
sacred fame, says Goethe, requires us to submit to contempt, and they
winced under it. The Big Three lacked the happy way of doing things
which goes with diplomatic tact and engaging manners, and the
consequence was that not only were their arguments mistrusted, but even
their good faith was, as we saw, momentarily subjected to doubt. "Bitter
prejudice, furious antipathy" were freely predicated of the two
Anglo-Saxon statesmen, who were rashly accused of attempting by
circuitous methods to deprive France of her new Slav ally in eastern
Europe. Sweeping recriminations of this character deserve notice only as
indicating the spirit of discord--not to use a stronger term--prevailing
at a Conference which was professedly endeavoring to knit together the
peoples of the planet in an organized society of good-fellowship.

The delegates of the lesser states, to whom one should not look for
impartial judgments, formulated some queer theories to explain the
Allies' unavowed policy and revealed a frame of mind in no wise
conducive to the attainment of the ostensible ends of the Conference.
One delegate said to me: "I have no longer the faintest doubt that the
firm purpose of the 'Big Two' is the establishment of the hegemony of
the Anglo-Saxon peoples, which in the fullness of time may be
transformed into the hegemony of the United States of North America.
Even France is in some respects their handmaid. Already she is bound to
them indissolubly. She is admittedly unable to hold her own without
their protection. She will become more dependent on them as the years
pass and Germany, having put her house in order, regains her economic
preponderance on the Continent. This decline is due to the operation of
a natural law which diplomacy may retard but cannot hinder. Numbers will
count in the future, and then France's role will be reduced. For this
reason it is her interest that her new allies in eastern Europe should
be equipped with all the means of growing and keeping strong instead of
being held in the leading-strings of the overlords. But perhaps this
tutelage is reckoned one of those means?"

Against Britain in especial the Poles, as we saw, were wroth. They
complained that whenever they advanced a claim they found her first
delegate on their path barring their passage, and if Mr. Wilson chanced
to be wit