first Conference of The Hague, are instructive
instances. They also, like Mr. Wilson, it is assumed, would fain have
inaugurated a golden age of international right and moral fellowship if
verbal exhortations and arguments could have done it. The only kind of
fresh attempt, which after the failure of those two experiments could
fairly lay claim to universal sympathy, was one which should withdraw
the proposed politico-social rearrangement from the domain alike of
rhetoric and of empiricism and substitute a thorough systematic reform
covering all the aspects of international intercourse, including all the
civilized peoples on the globe, harmonizing the vital interests of these
and setting up adequate machinery to deal with the needs of this
enlarged and unified state system. And it would be fruitless to seek for
this in Mr. Wilson's handiwork. Indeed, it is hardly too much to affirm
that empiricism and opportunism were among the principal characteristics
of his policy in Paris, and that the outcome was what it must be.

Disputes and delays being inevitable, the Conference began its work at
leisure and was forced to terminate it in hot haste. Having spent months
chaffering, making compromises, and unmaking them again while the
peoples of the world were kept in painful suspense, all of them
condemned to incur ruinous expenditure and some to wage sanguinary wars,
the springs of industrial and commercial activity being kept sealed, the
delegates, menaced by outbreaks, revolts, and mutinies, began, after
months had been wasted, to speed up and get through their work without
adequate deliberation. They imagined that they could make up for the
errors of hesitancy and ignorance by moments of lightning-like
improvisation. Improvisation and haphazard conclusions were among their
chronic failings. Even in the early days of the Conference they had
promulgated decisions, the import and bearings of which they missed, and
when possible they canceled them again. Sometimes, however, the error
committed was irreparable. The fate reserved for Austria was a case in
point. By some curious process of reasoning it was found to be not
incompatible with the Wilsonian doctrine that German-Austria should be
forbidden to throw in her lot with the German Republic, this prohibition
being in the interest of France, who could not brook a powerful united
Teuton state. The wishes of the Austrian-Germans and the principle of
self-determination accordingly