of the Bay on her way to Europe, the United Press received
from its correspondent on board, who was attached to Mr. Wilson's
person, a message which invigorated the hopes of the world and evoked
warm outpourings of the seared soul of suffering man in gratitude toward
the bringer of balm. It began thus: "The President sails for Europe to
uphold American ideals, and literally to fight for his Fourteen Points.
The President, at the Peace Table, will insist on the freedom of the
seas and a general disarmament.... The seas, he holds, ought to be
guarded by the whole world."

Since then the world knows what to think of the literal fighting at the
Peace Table. The freedom of the seas was never as much as alluded to at
the Peace Table, for the announcement of Mr. Wilson's militant
championship brought him a wireless message from London to the effect
that that proposal, at all events, must be struck out of his program if
he wished to do business with Britain. And without a fight or a
remonstrance the President struck it out. The Fourteen Points were not
discussed at the Conference.[58] One may deplore, but one cannot
misunderstand, what happened. Mr. Wilson, too, had his own fixed aim to
attain: intent on associating his name with a grandiose humanitarian
monument, he was resolved not to return to his country without some sort
of a covenant of the new international life. He could not afford to go
home empty-handed. Therein lay his weakness and the source of his
failure. For whenever his attitude toward the Great Powers was taken to
mean, "Unless you give me my Covenant, you cannot have your Treaty," the
retort was ready: "Without our Treaty there will be no Covenant."

Like Dejoces, the first king of the Medes, who, having built his palace
at Ecbatana, surrounded it with seven walls and permanently withdrew his
person from the gaze of his subjects, Mr. Wilson in Paris admitted to
his presence only the authorized spokesmen of states and causes, and not
all of these. He declined to receive persons who thought they had a
claim to see him, and he received others who were believed to have none.
During his sojourn in Paris he took many important Russian affairs in
hand after having publicly stated that no peace could be stable so long
as Russia was torn by internal strife. And as familiarity with Russian
conditions was not one of his accomplishments, he presumably needed
advice and help from those acquainted with them. Now a large nu