ce, thirsting for the
opportunities for development denied to it, but granted to nations which
it despises as inferior? Would a league of nations combine militarily
against the gradual encroachments or sudden aggression of that Power
against its weaker neighbors? Nobody is authorized to answer this
question affirmatively. To-day the Powers cannot agree to intervene
against Bolshevism, which they deem a scourge of the world, nor can they
agree to tolerate it.

"In these circumstances, what compelling motives can be laid before
those delegates who are asked to dispense with strategic frontiers and
rely upon a league of nations for their defense? Take France's outlook.
Peace once concluded, she will be confronted with a secular enemy who
numbers some seventy millions to her forty-five millions. In ten years
the disproportion will be still greater. Discontented Russia is almost
certain to be taken in hand by Germany, befriended, reorganized,
exploited, and enlisted as an ally."[341]

Conscious of these reefs and shoals, the French government, which was at
first contemptuous of the Wilsonian scheme, discerned the use it might
be put to as a military safeguard, and sought to convert it into that.
"The French," wrote a Francophil English journal published in Paris,
"would like the League to maintain what may be called a permanent
military general staff. The duties of this organization would be to keep
a hawklike eye on the misdemeanors, actual or threatened, of any state
or group of states, and to be empowered with authority to call into
instant action a great international military force for the frustration
or suppression of such aggression. The French have frankly in mind the
possibility that an unrepentant and unregenerate Germany is the most
likely menace not only to the security of France, but to the peace of
the world in general."[342]

And other states cherished analogous hopes. The spirit of right and
justice was to be evoked like the spirit that served Aladdin, and to be
compelled to enter the service of nationalism and militarism, and
accomplish the task of armies.

The paramount Powers prescribed the sacrifices of sovereignty which
membership of the League necessitated, and forthwith dispensed
themselves from making them. The United States government maintained its
Monroe Doctrine for America--nay, it went farther and identified its
interests with the Hay doctrine for the Far East.[343] It decided to
construc