ence was to him a personal problem. Peace was peace
between Wilson and Clemenceau and Lloyd George and Orlando.
Compromises were an accommodation among friends.

I never saw a man so utterly distressed as he was when President
Wilson threatened to break up the Peace Conference and sent for the
George Washington to take him home from Brest. It was as if his own
dearest friends had become involved in a violent quarrel. He did
not see the incident in terms of the principles involved, but only
as the painful interruption of kindly personal relations. Men speak
of him sometimes as the one of our commissioners who knew Europe;
and Europeans, appreciating his sympathy, have fostered this idea
by referring to his understanding of European problems.

But the Europe Colonel House knew was a personal Europe. The
countries on his map were Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando.
The problems of his Europe were Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and
Orlando. He knew what Lloyd George wanted. He knew what Clemenceau
wanted. He knew what Orlando wanted. That was enough.

His kindness of heart, his desire for pleasant personal relations,
his incapacity to think in terms of principles, whether of the
League of Nations or not, betrayed him in the matter of Shantung.
Whether the Peace Conference should return Shantung to China, or
leave it to Japan to return to China was to him, he often said,
"only a question of method. There is no principle involved." The
Japanese were a sensitive people, why should a kind heart question
the excellence of their intentions with respect to China? Shantung
would of course be returned. It was only a question of how.

The simple heart of Colonel House did not save him, either as a
diplomat or as a friend. The failures at Paris plunged Mr. Wilson
into depression in which he went as far down into the valley as he
had been up on the heights during his vision--of a world made
better by his hand. In his darker moments he saw nothing but enmity
and disloyalty about him--even, a little later, "usurpation" in the
case of the timorous and circumspect Mr. Lansing.

Colonel House says that he does not yet know what caused the breach
between the President and himself. Relations stopped; that was all.

This is what occurred: Shortly after Colonel House had convinced
the President that the disposal of Shantung was only a question of
method he disappeared from Paris "to take a rest"; and it became
known that after all he was n