rs opposed to
accepting any mandate, European or Asiatic, at the moment when Mr.
Lansing declares to the Congress that the government of which he is a
member does not desire to accept any mandate. But is it not obvious that
if Mr. Wilson sovereignly determines the lot of Turkey he can be held in
consequence to the performance of certain duties? We have often had to
deplore the absence of policy common to the Allies. But has each one of
them, considered separately, at least a policy of its own? Does it take
action otherwise than at haphazard, yielding to the impulse of a
general, a consul, or a missionary?"[126]

It soon became manifest even to the most obtuse that whenever the
Supreme Council, following its leaders and working on such lines as
these, terminated its labors, the ties between the political communities
of Europe would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of secret
diplomacy, secret alliances, and secret intrigues, unless in the
meanwhile the peoples themselves intervened to render them stronger and
more enduring. It would, however, be the height of unfairness to make
Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending to a far resonant
beginning. He had been accused by the press of most countries of
enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of
disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues
were said to go in fear of the "malady of lost power." But charges of
this nature overstep the bounds of legitimate criticism. Motive is
hardly ever visible, nor is it often deducible from deliberate action.
If, for example, one were to infer from the vast territorial
readjustments and the still vaster demands of the various belligerents
at the Conference, the motives that had determined them to enter the
war, the conclusion--except in the case of the American people, whose
disinterestedness is beyond the reach of cavil--would indeed be
distressing. The President of the United States merited well of all
nations by holding up to them an ideal for realization, and the mere
announcement of his resolve to work for it imparted an appreciable if
inadequate incentive to men of good-will. The task, however, was so
gigantic that he cannot have gaged its magnitude, discerned the defects
of the instruments, nor estimated aright the force of the hindrances
before taking the world to witness that he would achieve it. Even with
the hearty co-operation of ardent colleagues and the adoption