, but nobody
took the slightest interest in the envoys. They were ignored. At last
the chief of the commission, M. Noulens, taking the initiative, wrote
direct to M. Clemenceau, informing him that the task intrusted to him
and his colleagues had been achieved, and requesting to be permitted to
make their report to the Conference. The reply was an order dissolving
the commission unheard.

Once when the relations between Messrs. Wilson and Lloyd George were
somewhat spiced by antagonism of purpose and incompatibility of methods,
a political friend of the latter urged him to make a firm stand. But the
British Premier, feeling, perhaps, that there were too many
unascertained elements in the matter, or identifying the President with
the United States, drew back. More than once, too, when a certain
delegate was stating his case with incisive emphasis Mr. Wilson, who
was listening with attention and in silence, would suddenly ask, "Is
this an ultimatum?" The American President himself never shrank from
presenting an ultimatum when sure of his ground and morally certain of
victory. On one such occasion a proposal had been made to Mr. Lloyd
George, who approved it whole-heartedly. But it failed to receive the
_placet_ of the American statesman. Thereupon the British Premier was
strongly urged to stand firm. But he recoiled, his plea being that he
had received an ultimatum from his American colleague, who spoke of
quitting France and withdrawing the American troops unless the point
were conceded. And Mr. Wilson had his way. One might have thought that
this success would hearten the President to other and greater
achievements. But the leader who incarnated in his own person the
highest strivings of the age, and who seemed destined to acquire
pontifical ascendancy in a regenerated world, lacked the energy to hold
his own when matters of greater moment and high principle were at stake.

These battles waged within the walls of the palace on the Quai d'Orsay
were discussed out-of-doors by an interested and watchful public, and
the conviction was profound and widespread that the President, having
set his hand to the plow so solemnly and publicly, and having promised a
harvest of far-reaching reforms, would not look back, however
intractable the ground and however meager the crop. But confronted with
serious obstacles, he flinched from his task, and therein, to my
thinking, lay his weakness. If he had come prepared to assert his
perso