nds of the spiritual and social renovation of the world. It was
a spectacle for cynics. It rendered a frank return to the ancient system
unavoidable and brought grist to the mill of the equilibrists. And yet
the conclusion was shriked. But even the tough realities might have been
made to yield a tolerable peace if they had been faced squarely. If the
new conception could not be realized at once, the old one should have
been taken back into favor provisionally until broader foundations could
be laid, but it must be one thing or the other. From the political angle
of vision at which the European delegates insisted on placing
themselves, the Old World way of tackling the various problems was alone
admissible. Their program was coherent and their reasoning strictly
logical. The former included strategic frontiers and territorial
equilibrium. Doubtless this angle of vision was narrow, the survey it
allowed was inadequate, and the results attainable ran the risk of being
ultimately thrust aside by the indignant peoples. For the world problem
was not wholly nor even mainly political. Still, the method was
intelligible and the ensuing combinations would have hung coherently
together. They would have satisfied all those--and they were many--who
believed that the second decade of the twentieth century differs in no
essential respect from the first and that latter-day world problems may
be solved by judicious territorial redistribution. But even that
conception was not consistently acted on. Deviations were permitted here
and insisted upon there, only they were spoken of unctuously as
sacrifices incumbent on the lesser states to the Fourteen Points. For
the delegates set great store by their reputation for logic and
coherency. Whatever other charges against the Conference might be
tolerated, that of inconsistency was bitterly resented, especially by
Mr. Wilson. For a long while he contended that he was as true to his
Fourteen Points as is the needle to the pole. It was not until after his
return to Washington, in the summer, that he admitted the perturbations
caused by magnetic currents--sympathy for France he termed them.

The effort of imagination required to discern consistency in such of the
Council's decisions as became known from time to time was so far beyond
the capacity of average outsiders that the ugly phrase "to make the
world safe for hypocrisy" was early coined, uttered, and propagated.

FOOTNOTES:

[46] Cf. _Le