exacting examiners, struggling with difficult questions and eager to
answer them satisfactorily. Suppose the first language spoken is French.
As many of the plenipotentiaries do not understand it, they cannot be
blamed for relaxing attention while it is being employed, and keeping up
a desultory conversation among themselves in idiomatic English, which
forms a running bass accompaniment to the voice, often finely modulated,
of the orator. Owing to this embarrassing language difficulty, as soon
as a delegate pauses to take his breath, his arguments and appeals are
done by M. Mantoux into English, and then it is the turn of the French
plenipotentiaries to indulge in a quiet chat until some question is put
in English, which has forthwith to be rendered into French, after which
the French reply is translated into English, and so on unendingly, each
group resuming its interrupted conversations alternately.

One delegate who passed several hours undergoing this ordeal said that
he felt wholly out of sympathy with the atmosphere at the Conference
Hall, adding: "While arguing or appealing to my country's arbiters I
felt I was addressing only a minority of the distinguished judges, while
the thoughts of the others were far away. And when the interpreter was
rendering, quickly, mechanically, and summarily, my ideas without any of
the explosive passion that shot them from my heart, I felt discouraged.
But suddenly it dawned on me that no judgment would be uttered on the
strength of anything that I had said or left unsaid. I remembered that
everything would be referred to a commission, and from that to a
sub-commission, then back again to the distinguished plenipotentiaries,"

Another delegate remarked: "Many years have elapsed since I passed my
last examination, but it came back to me in all its vividness when I
walked up to Premier Clemenceau and looked into his restless, flashing
eyes. I said to myself: When last I was examined I was painfully
conscious that my professors knew a lot more about the subject than I
did, but now I am painfully aware that they know hardly anything at all
and I am fervently desirous of teaching them. The task is arduous. It
might, however, save time and labor if the delegates would receive our
typewritten dissertations, read them quietly in their respective hotels,
and endeavor to form a judgment on the data they supply. Failing that,
I should like at least to provide them with a criterion of truth, fo