y and had
made heavy sacrifices in the war: they complained also that the number of
delegates allotted them was insufficient. Already, it was whispered, the
phrases that dealt with the "rights of small nations" were being
forgotten, and this peace congress was to be but a repetition of those
previous diplomatic assemblies where the spoils went to the strong. But
Wilson, who was regarded as the defender of the rights of the small
states, agreed with Clemenceau that practical necessity demanded an
executive council of restricted numbers, and felt that such a body could
be trusted to see that effective justice was secured. In truth the
President was almost as much impressed by the extreme nationalistic ardor
of the small powers, as a source of future danger, as he was by the
selfishness of the large.

The Supreme Council, during the early days of the Conference, was
generally known as the Council of Ten. It met in the study of Stephane
Pichon, the French Foreign Minister, which opened on to the garden of the
French Foreign Office, and which, with its panelled walls, covered with
gorgeous Gobelins picturing Ruben's story of Marie de' Medici, its
stately brocaded chairs, and old-rose and gray Aubusson carpets, was
redolent of old-time diplomacy. In the center, behind a massive desk, sat
the president of the Conference, Georges Clemenceau--short, squat,
round-shouldered, with heavy white eyebrows and mustache serving
perfectly to conceal the expression both of eyes and of mouth. Ordinarily
he rested immobile, his hands folded in the eternal gray gloves, on his
face an expression of bored tolerance, the expression of a man who, after
half a century in the political arena of France, had little to learn
either of men or of affairs, even from a Peace Conference. Skeptical in
attitude, a cold listener, obviously impermeable to mere verbiage and
affected by the logic of facts alone, he had a ruthless finger ready to
poke into the interstices of a loosely-woven argument. Clemenceau spoke
but rarely, in low even tones, with a paucity and awkwardness of gesture
surprising in a Latin; he was chary of eloquence, disdaining the obvious
arts of the rhetor, but he had at his command an endless string of biting
epigrams, and his satire wounded with a touch so sharp that it was
scarcely felt or seen except by the unfortunate recipient. Upon
infrequent occasion, in the course of hot debate, some one would pierce
his armor and touch him upon t