clock. It
was almost as quick a feat as the drafting of the Covenant of Nations.
Further, the resourceful statemaker forged a republic which was
qualified to transfer sovereignly Russian territory to unrecognized
states without consulting the nation or obtaining authority from any
one. More marvelous than any other detail, however, is the circumstance
that he did his work so well that it never amounted to
intervention.[322]

One cannot affect surprise if the distinction between this amazing
exploit of diplomatico-military prestidigitation and intermeddling in
the internal affairs of another nation prove too subtle for the mental
grasp of the average unpolitical individual.

It is practices like these which ultimately determine the worth of the
treaties and the Covenant which Mr. Wilson was content to take back with
him to Washington as the final outcome of what was to have been the most
superb achievement of historic man. Of the new ethical principles, of
the generous renunciation of privileges, of the righting of secular
wrongs, of the respect that was to be shown for the weak, which were to
have cemented the union of peoples into one pacific if not blissful
family, there remained but the memory. No such bitter draught of
disappointment was swallowed by the nations since the world first had a
political history. Many of the resounding phrases that once foretokened
a new era of peace, right, and equity were not merely emptied of their
contents, but made to connote their opposites. Freedom of the seas
became supremacy of the seas, which may possibly turn out to be a
blessed consummation for all concerned, but should not have been
smuggled in under a gross misnomer. The abolition of war means, as
British and American and French generals and admirals have since told
their respective fellow-citizens, thorough preparations for the next
war, which are not to be confined, as heretofore, to the so-called
military states, but are to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.[323] "Open
covenants openly arrived at" signify secret conclaves and conspirative
deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy which cannot be
dispensed with even after the whole business has passed into
history.[324] The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the
rights of every Great Power to hold its subject nationalities in thrall
on the ground that their reciprocal relations appertain to the domestic
policy of the state. It means, further, the privi