Clemenceau shrugged his shoulders, Mr. Wilson
raised his hand, and the matter was assumed to be settled. Nothing more
was said or written on the subject. But when the news was announced,
after the President's departure from France, it took the other American
delegates by surprise and they disclaimed all knowledge of any such
decision. On inquiry, however, they learned that the venue had in truth
been fixed in this offhand way.[95]

Mr. Wilson found it a hard task at first to obtain acceptance for his
ill-defined tenets by France, who declined to accept the protection of
his League of Nations in lieu of strategic frontiers and military
guaranties. Insurmountable obstacles barred his way. The French
government and people, while moved by decent respect for their American
benefactors[96] to assent to the establishment of a league, flatly
refused to trust themselves to its protection against Teuton aggression.
But they were quite prepared to second Mr. Wilson's endeavors to oblige
some of the other states to content themselves with the guaranties it
offered, only, however, on condition that their own country was first
safeguarded in the traditional way. Territorial equilibrium and military
protection were the imperative provisos on which they insisted. And as
France was specially favored by Mr. Wilson on sentimental grounds which
outweighed his doctrine, and as she was also considered indispensable to
the Anglo-Saxon peoples as their continental executive, she had no
difficulty in securing their support. On this point, too, therefore, the
President found himself constrained to give way. And only did he abandon
his humanitarian intentions and his strongest arguments to be lightly
brushed aside, he actually recoiled so far into the camp of his
opponents that he gave his approval to an indefensible clause in the
Treaty which would have handed over to France the German population of
the Saar as the equivalent of a certain sum in gold. Coming from the
world-reformer who, a short time before, had hurled the thunderbolts of
his oratory against those who would barter human beings as chattels,
this amazing compromise connoted a strange falling off. Incidentally it
was destructive of all faith in the spirit that had actuated his
world-crusade. It also went far to convince unbiased observers that the
only framework of ideas with decisive reference to which Mr. Wilson
considered every project and every objection as it arose, was that wh