, as in this country, felt, it is
true, that it was wrong to permit the peaceful withdrawal of the German
armies, even though the full military advantages of victory were secured
by the armistice conditions; the Allies ought, they argued, to impress
on the Germans the magnitude of their defeat on the field of battle, and
this could not be done so long as German soil had been free from warfare.
General Pershing was strongly opposed to the granting of an armistice.
The Allied chiefs knew, however, that although the continuation of the
fighting would lead to the surrender of a great German force, every day
would cost the victorious armies a heavy toll of killed and wounded, and
the advantage to be gained thereby was at least questionable. This fact
was emphasized even by Marshal Foch. They hesitated, certainly, to accept
the Fourteen Points as the basis for peace, for they feared lest the
interpretation put upon them at the Peace Conference might rob them of
what they believed to be the just fruits of victory. In both France and
England there was, it is true, a body of liberal opinion which would not
brook open repudiation of the ideals that Wilson had sponsored during the
war and to which Allied ministers had themselves paid tribute. In each
country there was another group demanding a "peace of annihilation," with
the payment of all war costs by the defeated, but Lloyd George and
Clemenceau feared at the moment to raise this issue. Both England and
France were dependent upon American assistance for the immediate future
as they had been during the war. They needed American food, raw
materials, and money. A break with Wilson, who for the moment was the
popular hero of Europe, taken in conjunction with an economic crisis,
might be the signal for domestic disturbances if not revolution.

Thus with Germany helpless and the Allies at least outwardly accepting
his peace programme, Woodrow Wilson seemed to be master of the situation.
And yet his power was more apparent than real. Apart from that moral
influence which he exercised over the European liberals and which among
some of the working classes was so extreme that candles were burnt before
his picture, but which also was inevitably unstable and evanescent,
Wilson's power rested upon the fact that he was President of the United
States. But the nation was no longer united behind him or his policy, if
indeed it had ever been so. That hatred and distrust which had marked the
elec