fare. Truly, no human being
since the dawn of history has ever yet been favored with such a superb
opportunity. Mr. Wilson might have made a gallant effort to lift society
out of the deep grooves into which it had sunk, and dislodge the secular
obstacles to the enfranchisement and transfiguration of the human race.
At the lowest it was open to him to become the center of a countless
multitude, the heart of their hearts, the incarnation of their noblest
thought, on condition that he scorned the prudential motives of
politicians, burst through the barriers of the old order, and deployed
all his energies and his full will-power in the struggle against sordid
interests and dense prejudice. But he was cowed by obstacles which his
will lacked the strength to surmount, and instead of receiving his
promptings from the everlasting ideals of mankind and the inspiriting
audacities of his own highest nature and appealing to the peoples
against their rulers, he felt constrained in the very interest of his
cause to haggle and barter with the Scribes and the Pharisees, and ended
by recording a pitiful answer to the most momentous problems couched in
the impoverished phraseology of a political party.

Many of his political friends had advised the President not to visit
Europe lest the vast prestige and influence which he wielded from a
distance should dwindle unutilized on close contact with the realists'
crowd. Even the war-god Mars, when he descended into the ranks of the
combatants on the Trojan side, was wounded by a Greek, and, screaming
with pain, scurried back to Olympus with paling halo. But Mr. Wilson
decided to preside and to direct the fashioning of his project, and to
give Europe the benefit of his advice. He explained to Congress that he
had expressed the ideals of the country for which its soldiers had
consciously fought, had had them accepted "as the substance of their own
thoughts and purpose" by the statesmen of the associated governments,
and now, he concluded: "I owe it to them to see to it, in so far as in
me lies, that no false or mistaken interpretation is put upon them, and
no possible effort omitted to realize them. It is now my duty to play my
full part in making good what they offered their lives and blood to
obtain. I can think of no call to service which could transcend
this."[57] No intention could well be more praiseworthy.

Soon after the _George Washington_, flying the presidential flag, had
steamed out