anship to be able to put oneself in the
place--one might almost say in the skin--of the foreign peoples and
governments with which one is called upon to deal. But the feat is
arduous and presupposes a variety of conditions which the President was
unable to fulfil. His conception of Europe, for example, was much too
simple. It has been aptly likened to that of the American economist who
once remarked to the manager of an English railway: "You Britishers are
handicapped by having to build your railway lines through cities and
towns. We go to work diligently: we first construct the road and create
the cities afterward."

And Mr. Wilson happened just then to be in quest of a fulcrum on which
to rest his idealistic lever. For he had already been driven by
egotistic governments from several of his commanding positions, and
people were gibingly asking whether the new political gospel was being
preached only as a foil for backslidings. Thus he abandoned the freedom
of the seas ... on which he had taken a determined stand before the
world. Although he refused the Rhine frontier to France, he had
reluctantly given way to M. Clemenceau in the matter of the Saar Valley,
assenting to a monstrous arrangement by which the German inhabitants of
that region were to be handed over to the French Republic against their
expressed will, as a set-off for a sum in gold which Germany would
certainly be unable to pay.[194] He doubtless foresaw that he would also
yield on the momentous issue of Shantung and the Chino-Japanese secret
treaty. In a word, some of his more important abstract tenets professed
in words were being brushed aside when it came to acts, and his position
was truly unenviable. Naturally, therefore, he seized the first
favorable occasion to apply them vigorously and unswervingly. This was
supplied by the dispute between Italy and Jugoslavia, two nations which
he held, so to say, in the hollow of his hand.

The latter state, still in the making, depended for its frontiers
entirely on the fiat of the American President backed by the Premiers of
Britain and France. And of this backing Mr. Wilson was assured. Italy,
although more powerful militarily than Jugoslavia, was likewise
economically dependent upon the good-will of the two English-speaking
communities, who were assured in advance of the support of the French
Republic. If, therefore, she could not be reasoned or cajoled into
obeying the injunctions of the Supreme Council, s