the Supreme Council to attain any of the moral victories over
militarism, race-hatred, and secret intrigues which its leaders had
encouraged the world to expect.

"The leaders of the Conference," wrote an influential press organ,[122]
"are under suspicion. They may not know it, but it is true. The
suspicion is doubtless unjust, but it exists. What exists is a fact; and
men who ignore facts are not statesmen. The only way to deal with facts
is to face them. The more unpleasant they are the more they need to be
faced.

"Some of the Conference leaders are suspected of having, at various
times and in various circumstances, thought more of their own personal
and political positions and ambitions than of the rapid and practical
making of peace. They are suspected, in a word, of a tendency to
subordinate policy to politics.

"In regard to some important matters they are suspected of having no
policy. They are also suspected of unwillingness to listen to their own
competent advisers, who could lay down for them a sound policy. Some of
them are even suspected of being under the spell of some benumbing
influence that paralyzes their will and befogs their minds, when high
resolve and clear visions are needful."

Another accusation of the same tenor was thus formulated: "In various
degrees[123] and with different qualities of guilt all the Allied and
Associated leaders have dallied with dishonesty. While professing to
seek naught save the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of
self-interest. The result has been a progressive loss of faith in them
by their own peoples severally, and by the Allied, Associated, and
neutral peoples jointly. The tide of public trust in them has reached
its lowest ebb."

At the Conference, as we saw, the President of the United States
possessed what was practically a veto on nearly all matters which left
the vital interests of Britain and France intact. And he frequently
exercised it. Thus the dispute about the Thracian settlement lay not
between Bulgaria and Greece, nor between Greece and the Supreme Council,
but between Greece and Mr. Wilson. In the quarrel over Fiume and the
Dalmatian coast it was the same. When the Shantung question came up for
settlement it was Mr. Wilson alone who dealt with it, his colleagues,
although bound by their promises to support Japan, having made him their
mouthpiece. The rigor he displayed in dealing with some of the smaller
countries was in inverse ra