te that declared a treaty to be but a scrap of paper,
she was heartened by a solemn promise given in writing by her comrades
in arms. But when she had accomplished her part of the contract, that
document turned out to be little more than another scrap of paper. Thus
it was one of the piquant ironies of Fate, Italian publicists said, that
the people who had mostly clamored against that doctrine were indirectly
helping it to triumph. Mr. Wilson, unwittingly sapping public faith in
written treaties, was held up as one of the many pictures in which the
Conference abounded of the delegates refuting their words by acts. The
unbiased historian will readily admit that the secret treaties were
profoundly immoral from the Wilsonian angle of vision, but that the only
way of canceling them was by a general principle rigidly upheld and
impartially applied. And this the Supreme Council would not entertain.

With her British ally, too, France had an unpleasant falling out about
Eastern affairs, and in especial about Syria and Persia. There was also
a demand for the retrocession by Britain of the island of Mauritius, but
it was not made officially, nor is it a subject for two such nations to
quarrel over. The first rift in the lute was caused by the deposition of
Emir Faisal respecting the desires of the Arab population. This
picturesque chief, the French press complained, had been too readily
admitted to the Conference and too respectfully listened to there,
whereas the Persian delegation tramped for months over the Paris streets
without once obtaining a hearing. The Hedjaz, which had been independent
from time immemorial, was formally recognized as a separate kingdom
during the war, and the Grand Sheriff of Mecca was suddenly raised to
the throne in the European sense by France and Britain. Since then he
was formally recognized by the five Powers. His representatives in Paris
demanded the annexation of all the countries of Arabic speech which were
under Turkish domination. These included not only Mesopotamia, but also
Syria, on which France had long looked with loving eyes and respecting
which there existed an accord between her and Britain. The project
community would represent a Pan-Arab federation of about eleven million
souls, over which France would have no guardianship. And yet the
written accord had never been annulled. Palestine was excluded from
this Pan-Arabian federation, and Syria was to be consulted, and instead
of being