ose cumulative provisions for the destruction of highly
organized economic life which we shall examine in the next chapter.

This is the policy of an old man, whose most vivid impressions and most
lively imagination are of the past and not of the future. He sees the
issue in terms, of France and Germany not of humanity and of European
civilization struggling forwards to a new order. The war has bitten into
his consciousness somewhat differently from ours, and he neither expects
nor hopes that we are at the threshold of a new age.

It happens, however, that it is not only an ideal question that is at
issue. My purpose in this book is to show that the Carthaginian Peace is
not _practically_ right or possible. Although the school of thought from
which it springs is aware of the economic factor, it overlooks,
nevertheless, the deeper economic tendencies which are to govern the
future. The clock cannot be set back. You cannot restore Central Europe
to 1870 without setting up such strains in the European structure and
letting loose such human and spiritual forces as, pushing beyond
frontiers and races, will overwhelm not only you and your "guarantees,"
but your institutions, and the existing order of your Society.

By what legerdemain was this policy substituted for the Fourteen Points,
and how did the President come to accept it? The answer to these
questions is difficult and depends on elements of character and
psychology and on the subtle influence of surroundings, which are hard
to detect and harder still to describe. But, if ever the action of a
single individual matters, the collapse of The President has been one of
the decisive moral events of history; and I must make an attempt to
explain it. What a place the President held in the hearts and hopes of
the world when he sailed to us in the _George Washington!_ What a great
man came to Europe in those early days of our victory!

In November, 1918, the armies of Foch and the words of Wilson had
brought us sudden escape from what was swallowing up all we cared for.
The conditions seemed favorable beyond any expectation. The victory was
so complete that fear need play no part in the settlement. The enemy
had laid down his arms in reliance on a solemn compact as to the general
character of the Peace, the terms of which seemed to assure a settlement
of justice and magnanimity and a fair hope for a restoration of the
broken current of life. To make assurance certain the Pres