of the Russian fable of the swan, the crab, and the pike being harnessed
together in order to remove a load. The swan flew upward, the crab
crawled backward, the pike made with all haste for the water, and the
load remained where it was.

A lesser but also a serious disadvantage of the delegation of government
chiefs made itself felt in the procedure. Embarrassing delays were
occasioned by the unavoidable absences of the principal delegates whom
pressure of domestic politics called to their respective capitals, as
well as by their tactics, and their colleagues profited by their absence
for the sake of the good cause. Thus all Paris, as we saw, was aware
that the European chiefs, whose faith in Wilsonian orthodoxy was still
feeble at that time, were prepared to take advantage of the President's
sojourn in Washington to speed up business in their own sense and to
confront him on his return with accomplished facts. But when, on his
return, he beheld their handiwork he scrapped it, and a considerable
loss of time ensued for which the world has since had to pay very
heavily.

Again, when Premier Orlando was in Rome after Mr. Wilson's appeal to
the Italian people, a series of measures was passed by the delegates in
Paris affecting Italy, diminishing her importance at the Conference, and
modifying the accepted interpretation of the Treaty of London. Some of
these decisions had to be canceled when the Italians returned. These
stratagems had an undesirable effect on the Italians.

Not the least of the Premiers' disabilities lay in the circumstance that
they were the merest novices in international affairs. Geography,
ethnography, psychology, and political history were sealed books to
them. Like the rector of Louvain University who told Oliver Goldsmith
that, as he had become the head of that institution without knowing
Greek, he failed to see why it should be taught there, the chiefs of
state, having attained the highest position in their respective
countries without more than an inkling of international affairs, were
unable to realize the importance of mastering them or the impossibility
of repairing the omission as they went along.

They displayed their contempt for professional diplomacy and this
feeling was shared by many, but they extended that sentiment to certain
diplomatic postulates which can in no case be dispensed with, because
they are common to all professions. One of them is knowledge of the
terms of the prob