f Europe was almost passionate in its advocacy of
President Wilson's peace program, all the special interests that were
seeking to capitalize the peace for their own advantage or profit were
actively at work and were beginning to swing all the influence that
they could command on their various Governments. It was inevitable from
the outset that Mr. Wilson could never get the peace that he had
expected. The treaty was bound to be a series of compromises that would
satisfy nobody, and when Mr. Wilson assumed all the responsibility for
it in advance he assumed a responsibility that no stateman who had ever
lived could carry alone. Had he taken Mr. Root or Mr. Taft or both of
them with him the terms of the Treaty of Versailles might have been no
different, but the Senate would have been robbed of the partisan
grievance on which it organized the defeat of ratification.

Day after day during the conference Mr. Wilson fought the fight for a
peace that represented the liberal thought of the world. Day after day
the odds against him lengthened. The contest finally resolved itself
into a question of whether he should take what he could get or whether
he should withdraw from the conference and throw the doors open to
chaos. The President made the only decision that he had a moral right
to make. He took what he could get, nor are the statesmen with whom he
was associated altogether to blame because he did not get more. They
too had to contend against forces over which they had no control. They
were not free agents either, and Mr. Smuts has summed up the case in
two sentences:

It was not the statesmen that failed so much as the spirit of the
peoples behind them. The hope, the aspiration, for a new world
order of peace and right and justice, however deeply and
universally felt, was still only feeble and ineffective in
comparison with the dominant national passions which found their
expression in the peace treaty.

All the passions and hatreds bred of four years of merciless warfare,
all the insatiable fury for revenge, all the racial ambitions that had
been twisted and perverted by centuries of devious diplomacy--these
were all gathered around the council table, clamorous in their demand
to dictate the terms.

Mr. Wilson surrendered more than he dreamed he was surrendering, but it
is not difficult to follow his line of reasoning. The League of Nations
was to be a continuing court of equity, sitting in jud