instincts of vengeance by the promptings of higher
interests. On this ground, and only on this, did the friends of
far-ranging reform support Mr. Wilson in his contention that the two
documents should be rendered mutually interdependent. Reparation for the
damage done in violation of international law and sound guaranties
against its recurrence are of the essence of every peace treaty that
follows a decisive victory. But reparation is seldom this and nothing
more. The lower instincts of human nature, when dominant as they are
during a bloody war and in the hour of victory, generally outweigh
considerations not only of right, but also of enlightened egotism,
leaving justice to merge into vengeance. And the fruits are treasured
wrath and a secret resolve on the part of the vanquished to pay out his
victor at the first opportunity. The war-loser of to-day aims at
becoming the war-winner of to-morrow. And this frame of mind is
incompatible with the temper needed for an era of moral fellowship such
as Mr. Wilson was supposed to be intent on establishing. Consequently, a
peace treaty unmodified by the principles underlying the Covenant is
necessarily a negation of the main possibilities of a society of nations
based upon right and a decisive argument against joining together the
two instruments.

The other kind of peace which Mr. Wilson was believed to have had at
heart consisted not merely in the liquidation of the war, but in the
uprooting of its permanent causes, in the renunciation by the various
nations of sanguinary conflicts as a means of determining rival claims,
and in such an amicable rearrangement of international relations as
would keep such disputes from growing into dangerous quarrels. Right, or
as near an approximation to it as is attainable, would then take the
place of violence, whereby military guaranties would become not only
superfluous, but indicative of a spirit irreconcilable with the main
purpose of the League. Each nation would be entitled to equal
opportunity within the limits assigned to it by nature and widened by
its own mental and moral capacities. Thus permanently to forbid a
numerous, growing, and territorially cramped nation to possess overseas
colonies for its superfluous population while overburdening others with
possessions which they are unable to utilize, would constitute a
negation of one of the basic principles of the new ordering.

Those were the grounds which seemed to warrant the be