as I knew it from within, I feel
convinced in my own mind that not the greatest man born of woman in the
history of the race would have saved that situation. The great hope was
not the heralding of the coming dawn, as the peoples thought, but only
a dim intimation of some far-off event toward which we shall yet have
to make many a long, weary march. Sincerely as we believed in the moral
ideals for which he had fought, the temptation at Paris of a large
booty to be divided proved too great. And in the end not only the
leaders but the peoples preferred a bit of booty here, a strategic
frontier there, a coal field or an oil well, an addition to their
population or their resources--to all the faint allurements of the
ideal. As I said at the time, the real peace was still to come, and it
could only come from a new spirit in the peoples themselves.

_Wilson Had to Be Conciliated_

What was really saved at Paris was the child--the covenant of the
League of Nations. The political realists who had their eye on the loot
were prepared--however reluctantly--to throw up that innocent little
sop to President Wilson and his fellow idealists. After all, there was
not much harm in it, it threatened no present national interest, and it
gave great pleasure to a number of good unpractical people in most
countries. Above all, President Wilson had to be conciliated, and this
was the last and the greatest of the fourteen points on which he had
set his heart and by which he was determined to stand or fall. And so
he got his way. But it is a fact that only a man of his great power and
influence and dogged determination could have carried the covenant
through that Peace Conference. Others had seen with him the great
vision; others had perhaps given more thought to the elaboration of the
great plan. But his was the power and the will that carried it through.
The covenant is Wilson's souvenir to the future of the world. No one
will ever deny that honor.

_Great Creative Document_

The honor is very great, indeed, for the covenant is one of the great
creative documents of human history. The peace treaty will fade into
merciful oblivion and its provisions will be gradually obliterated by
the great human tides sweeping over the world. But the covenant will
stand as sure as fate. Forty-two nations gathered round it at the first
meeting of the League at Geneva. And the day is not far off when all
the free peoples of the world will gather aroun