ere content to stretch the euphemistic terms until
these covered conflicting conceptions and gratified the ears of every
hearer. Thus, "open covenants openly arrived at" came to mean arbitrary
ukases issued by a secret conclave, and "the self-determination of
peoples" connoted implicit obedience to dictatorial decrees. The new
result was a bewildering phantasmagoria.

And yet it was professedly for the purpose of obviating such
misunderstandings that Mr. Wilson had crossed the Atlantic. Having
expressed in plain terms the ideals for which American soldiers had
fought, and which became the substance of the thoughts and purposes of
the associated statesmen, "I owe it to them," he had said, "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." And that
was the result achieved.

No such juggling with words as went on at the Conference had been
witnessed since the days of medieval casuistry. New meanings were
infused into old terms, rendering the help of "exegesis" indispensable.
Expressions like "territorial equilibrium" and "strategic frontiers"
were stringently banished, and it is affirmed that President Wilson
would wince and his expression change at the bare mention of these
obnoxious symbols of the effete ordering which it was part of his
mission to do away with forever. And yet the things signified by those
words were preserved withal under other names. Nor could it well be
otherwise. One can hardly conceive a durable state system in Europe
under the new any more than the old dispensation without something that
corresponds to equilibrium. An architect who should boastingly discard
the law of gravitation in favor of a different theory would stand little
chance of being intrusted with the construction of a palace of peace.
Similarly, a statesman who, while proclaiming that the era of wars is
not yet over, would deprive of strategic frontiers the pivotal states of
Europe which are most exposed to sudden attack would deserve to find few
disciples and fewer clients. Yet that was what Mr. Wilson aimed at and
what some of his friends affirm he has achieved. His foreign colleagues
re-echoed his dogmas after having emasculated them. It was instructive
and unedifying to watch how each of the delegates, when his own
country's turn came to be dealt with on the new lines, reversed his
tactics and, sacrificing sound to substance, insisted