ady interpreter, "You will lose your job if you go on
making these wrong translations."

But those details are interesting, if at all, only as means of eking out
a mere sketch which can never become a complete and faithful picture. It
was the desire of the eminent lawgivers that the source of the most
beneficent reforms chronicled in history should be as well hidden as
those of the greatest boon bestowed by Providence upon man. And their
motives appear to have been sound enough.

The pains thus taken to create a haze between themselves and the peoples
whose implicit confidence they were continuously craving constitute one
of the most striking ethico-psychological phenomena of the Conference.
They demanded unreasoning faith as well as blind obedience. Any
statement, however startling, was expected to carry conviction once it
bore the official hall-mark. Take, for example, the demand made by the
Supreme Four to Bela Kuhn to desist from his offensive against the
Slovaks. The press expressed surprise and disappointment that he, a
Bolshevist, should have been invited even hypothetically by the "deadly
enemies of Bolshevism" to delegate representatives to the Paris
Conference from which the leaders of the Russian constructive elements
were excluded. Thereupon the Supreme Four, which had taken the step in
secret, had it denied categorically that such an invitation had been
issued. The press was put up to state that, far from making such an
undignified advance, the Council had asserted its authority and
peremptorily summoned the misdemeanant Kuhn to withdraw his troops
immediately from Slovakia under heavy pains and penalties.

Subsequently, however, the official correspondence was published, when
it was seen that the implicit invitation had really been issued and that
the denial ran directly counter to fact. By this exposure the Council of
Four, which still sued for the full confidence of their peoples, was
somewhat embarrassed. This embarrassment was not allayed when what
purported to be a correct explanation of their action was given out and
privately circulated by a group which claimed to be initiated. It was
summarized as follows: "The Israelite, Bela Kuhn, who is leading Hungary
to destruction, has been heartened by the Supreme Council's indulgent
message. People are at a loss to understand why, if the Conference
believes, as it has asserted, that Bolshevism is the greatest scourge of
latter-day humanity, it ordered the