nd Japanese delegates of the
soundness of Greece's pleas, and they sided with M. Venizelos. But Mr.
Wilson clung to his idea with a tenacity which could not be justified by
argument, and was concurrently explained by motives irrelevant to the
merits of the case. Whether the influence of Bulgarophil American
missionaries and strong religious leanings were at the root of his
insistence, as was generally assumed, or whether other considerations
weighed with him, is immaterial. And yet it is worth recording that a
Bulgarian journal[120] announced with the permission of the governmental
censor that the American missionaries in Bulgaria and the professors of
Robert College of Constantinople had so primed the American delegates at
the Conference on the question of Thrace, and generally on the Bulgarian
problem, that all M. Venizelos's pains to convince them of the justice
of his contention would be lost labor."[121]

However this may be, Mr. Wilson's attitude was the subject of adverse
comment throughout Europe. His implied claim to legislate for the world
and to take over its moral leadership earned for him the epithet of
"Dictator," and provoked such epigrammatic comments among his own
countrymen and the French as this: "Louis XIV said, 'I am the state!'
Mr. Wilson, outdoing him, exclaimed, 'I am all the states!'"

The necessity of winning over dissentient colleagues to his grandiose
scheme of world reorganization and of satisfying their demands, which
were of a nature to render that scheme abortive, was the most
influential agency in impairing his energies and upsetting his plans.
This remark assumes what unhappily seems a fact, that those plans were
mainly mechanical. It is certain that they made no provision for
directly influencing the masses, for giving them sympathetic guidance,
and enabling them to suffuse with social sentiments the aspirations and
strivings which were chiefly of the materialistic order, with a view to
bringing about a spiritual transformation of the social basis. Indeed we
have no evidence that the need of such a transformation of the basis of
political thought, which was still rooted in the old order, was grasped
by any of those who set their hand to the legislative part of the work.

These unfavorable impressions were general. Almost every step
subsequently taken by the Conference confirmed them, and long before the
Treaty was presented to the Germans, public confidence was gone in the
ability of