n there is time to consider the Treaty as a
complete document.

"The impression made by it is one of disappointment, of regret, and
of depression. The terms of peace appear immeasurably harsh and
humiliating, while many of them seem to me impossible of performance.

"The League of Nations created by the Treaty is relied upon to
preserve the artificial structure which has been erected by
compromise of the conflicting interests of the Great Powers and to
prevent the germination of the seeds of war which are sown in so many
articles and which under normal conditions would soon bear fruit. The
League might as well attempt to prevent the growth of plant life in a
tropical jungle. Wars will come sooner or later.

"It must be admitted in honesty that the League is an instrument of
the mighty to check the normal growth of national power and national
aspirations among those who have been rendered impotent by defeat.
Examine the Treaty and you will find peoples delivered against their
wills into the hands of those whom they hate, while their economic
resources are torn from them and given to others. Resentment and
bitterness, if not desperation, are bound to be the consequences of
such provisions. It may be years before these oppressed peoples are
able to throw off the yoke, but as sure as day follows night the time
will come when they will make the effort.

"This war was fought by the United States to destroy forever the
conditions which produced it. Those conditions have not been
destroyed. They have been supplanted by other conditions equally
productive of hatred, jealousy, and suspicion. In place of the Triple
Alliance and the Entente has arisen the Quintuple Alliance which is
to rule the world. The victors in this war intend to impose their
combined will upon the vanquished and to subordinate all interests to
their own.

"It is true that to please the aroused public opinion of mankind and
to respond to the idealism of the moralist they have surrounded the
new alliance with a halo and called it 'The League of Nations,' but
whatever it may be called or however it may be disguised it is an
alliance of the Five Great Military Powers.

"It is useless to close our eyes to the fact that the power to compel
obedience by the exercise of the united strength of 'The Five' is the
fundamental principle of the League. Justi