pposed by the head of another government."[73] As
though the disagreements, the bickerings, and the serious quarrels of
the heads of the governments could long be concealed from the peoples
whose spokesmen they were!

That bargainings went on at the Conference which a plain-dealing world
ought to be apprised of is the conclusion which every unbiased outsider
will draw from the singular expedients resorted to for the purpose of
concealing them. Before the Foreign Relations Committee in Washington,
State-Secretary Lansing confessed that when, after the treaty had been
signed, the French Senate called for the minutes of the proceedings on
the Commission of the League of Nations, President Wilson telegraphed
from Washington to the Peace Commission requesting it to withhold them.
He further admitted that the only written report of the discussions in
existence was left in Paris, outside the jurisdiction of the United
States Senate. When questioned as to whether, in view of this system of
concealment, the President's promise of "open covenants openly arrived
at" could be said to have been honestly redeemed, Mr. Lansing answered,
"I consider that was carried out."[74] It seems highly probable that in
the same and only in the same sense will the Treaty and the Covenant be
carried out in the spirit or the letter.

During the fateful days of the Conference preventive censorship was
practised with a degree of rigor equaled only by its senselessness. As
late as the month of June, the columns of the newspapers were checkered
with blank spaces. "Scarcely a newspaper in Paris appears uncensored at
present," one press organ wrote. "Some papers protest, but protests are
in vain."[75]

"Practically not a word as to the nature of the Peace terms that France
regards as most vital to her existence appears in the French papers this
morning," complained a journal at the time when even the Germans were
fully informed of what was being enacted. On one occasion _Bonsoir_ was
seized for expressing the view that the Treaty embodied an Anglo-Saxon
peace;[76] on another for reproducing an interview with Marshal Foch
that had already appeared in a widely circulated Paris newspaper.[77] By
way of justifying another of these seizures the French censor alleged
that an article in the paper was deemed uncomplimentary to Mr. Lloyd
George. The editor replied in a letter to the British Premier affirming
that there was nothing in the article but what Mr. Llo