hat the Ukraine government would renounce all claims to eastern
Galicia and place their troops under the supreme command of the Polish
generalissimus, in return for which the Poles should undertake to
protect the Ukrainians against all their enemies. This draft agreement,
while under consideration in Warsaw, was negatived by the Polish
delegates in Paris, who saw no good reason why their people should bind
themselves to fight Russia one day for the independence of the Ukraine.
Another inchoate state which made an offer of alliance to Poland was
Esthonia, but its advances were declined on similar grounds. It is
manifest, however, that in the new state system alliances are more in
vogue than in the old, although they were to have been banished from it.

Throughout all the negotiations that turned upon the future status and
the territorial frontiers of Poland the British Premier unswervingly
stood out against the Polish claims, just as the President of the United
States inflexibly countered those of Italy, and both united to negative
those of the Rumanians. Whatever one may think of the merits of these
controversies--and various opinions have been put forward with obvious
sincerity--there can be but one judgment as to the spirit in which they
were conducted. It was a dictatorial spirit, which was intolerant not
merely of opposition, but of enlightened and constructive criticism. To
the representatives of the countries concerned it seemed made up of
bitter prejudice and fierce partizanship, imbibed, it was affirmed, from
those unseen sources whence powerful and, it was thought, noxious
currents flowed continuously toward the Conference. For none of the
affronted delegates credited with a knowledge of the subject either Mr.
Lloyd George, who had never heard of Teschen, or Mr. Wilson, whose
survey of Corsican politics was said to be so defective. And yet to the
activity of men engaged like these in settling affairs of unprecedented
magnitude it would be unfair to apply the ordinary tests of technical
fastidiousness. Their position as trustees of the world's greatest
states, even though they lacked political imagination, knowledge, and
experience, entitled them to the high consideration which they generally
received. But it could not be expected to dazzle to blindness the eyes
of superior men--and the delegates of the lesser states, Venizelos,
Dmowski, and Benes, were undoubtedly superior in most of the attributes
of statesmans