social institutions to this axiom.

In the meanwhile the Conference which ignored this problem of problems
has transformed Europe into a seething mass of mutually hostile states
powerless to face the economic competition of their overseas rivals and
has set the very elements of society in flux.

E.J. DILLON.

THE INSIDE STORY OF THE PEACE CONFERENCE

I

THE CITY OF THE CONFERENCE

The choice of Paris for the historic Peace Conference was an
afterthought. The Anglo-Saxon governments first favored a neutral
country as the most appropriate meeting-ground for the world's
peace-makers. Holland was mentioned only to be eliminated without
discussion, so obvious and decisive were the objections. French
Switzerland came next in order, was actually fixed upon, and for a time
held the field. Lausanne was the city first suggested and nearly chosen.
There was a good deal to be said for it on its own merits, and in its
suburb, Ouchy, the treaty had been drawn up which terminated the war
between Italy and Turkey. But misgivings were expressed as to its
capacity to receive and entertain the formidable peace armies without
whose co-operation the machinery for stopping all wars could not well be
fabricated. At last Geneva was fixed upon, and so certain were
influential delegates of the ratification of their choice by all the
Allies, that I felt justified in telegraphing to Geneva to have a house
hired for six months in that picturesque city.

But the influential delegates had reckoned without the French, who in
these matters were far and away the most influential. Was it not in the
Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, they asked, that Teuton militarism had
received its most powerful impulse? And did not poetic justice, which
was never so needed as in these evil days, ordain that the chartered
destroyer who had first seen the light of day in that hall should also
be destroyed there? Was this not in accordance with the eternal fitness
of things? Whereupon the matter-of-fact Anglo-Saxon mind, unable to
withstand the force of this argument and accustomed to give way on
secondary matters, assented, and Paris was accordingly fixed upon....

"Paris herself again," tourists remarked, who had not been there since
the fateful month when hostilities began--meaning that something of the
wealth and luxury of bygone days was venturing to display itself anew as
an afterglow of the epoch whose sun was setting behind banks of
thunder-clouds.