various members of the Conference that the
intervention of Mr. Wilson would infallibly prove successful. But events
belied this forecast, whereupon the head of the Persian delegation,
after several months of hopes deferred, quitted France for
Constantinople, and his country's position among the nations was settled
in detail by the new agreement.

That position does undoubtedly resemble very closely Egypt's status
before the outbreak of the World War. And Egypt's status could hardly be
termed independence. Henceforward Great Britain has a strong hold on the
Persian customs, the control of the waterways and carriage routes, the
rights of railway construction, the oil-fields--these were ours
before--the right to organize the army and direct the foreign policy of
the kingdom. And it may fairly be argued that this arrangement may prove
a greater blessing to the Persians than the realization of their own
ambitions. That, at any rate, is my own personal belief, which for many
years I have held and expressed. None the less it runs diametrically
counter to the letter and the spirit of Wilsonianism, which is now seen
to be a wall high enough to keep out the dwarf states, but which the
giants can easily clear at a bound.

Against this violation of the new humanitarian doctrine French
publicists flared up. The glaring character of the transgression
revolted them, the plight of the Persians touched them, and the right of
self-determination strongly appealed to them. Was it not largely for the
assertion of that right that all the Allied peoples had for five years
been making unheard-of sacrifices? What would become of the League of
Nations if such secret and selfish doings were connived at? In a word,
French sympathy for the victims of British hegemony waxed as strong as
the British fellow-feeling for the Syrians, who objected to be drawn
into the orbit of the French. Those sharp protests and earnest appeals,
it may be noted, were the principal, perhaps the only, symptoms of
tenderness for unprotected peoples which were evoked by the great
ethical movement headed by the Conference.

The French further pointed out that the system of Mandates had been
specially created for countries as backward and helpless as Persia was
assumed to be, and that the only agency qualified to apply it was either
the Supreme Council or the League of Nations. The British press answered
that no such humiliating assumption about the Shah's people was being