d they may fall
together. In this lies the destructive significance of the Peace of
Paris. If the European Civil War is to end with France and Italy abusing
their momentary victorious power to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary
now prostrate, they invite their own destruction also, being so deeply
and inextricably intertwined with their victims by hidden psychic and
economic bonds. At any rate an Englishman who took part in the
Conference of Paris and was during those months a member of the Supreme
Economic Council of the Allied Powers, was bound to become, for him a
new experience, a European in his cares and outlook. There, at the nerve
center of the European system, his British preoccupations must largely
fall away and he must be haunted by other and more dreadful specters.
Paris was a nightmare, and every one there was morbid. A sense of
impending catastrophe overhung the frivolous scene; the futility and
smallness of man before the great events confronting him; the mingled
significance and unreality of the decisions; levity, blindness,
insolence, confused cries from without,--all the elements of ancient
tragedy were there. Seated indeed amid the theatrical trappings of the
French Saloons of State, one could wonder if the extraordinary visages
of Wilson and of Clemenceau, with their fixed hue and unchanging
characterization, were really faces at all and not the tragi-comic masks
of some strange drama or puppet-show.

The proceedings of Paris all had this air of extraordinary importance
and unimportance at the same time. The decisions seemed charged with
consequences to the future of human society; yet the air whispered that
the word was not flesh, that it was futile, insignificant, of no effect,
dissociated from events; and one felt most strongly the impression,
described by Tolstoy in _War and Peace_ or by Hardy in _The Dynasts_, of
events marching on to their fated conclusion uninfluenced and unaffected
by the cerebrations of Statesmen in Council:

_Spirit of the Years_

Observe that all wide sight and self-command
Deserts these throngs now driven to demonry
By the Immanent Unrecking. Nought remains
But vindictiveness here amid the strong,
And there amid the weak an impotent rage.

_Spirit of the Pities_

Why prompts the Will so senseless-shaped a doing?

_Spirit of the Years_

I have told thee that It works unwittingly,
As one possessed not judgin