y treaty which they had signed. But the President, for
reasons of a purely negative character, passed them over and with what
looked to the public like mere carelessness, chose General Tasker Howard
Bliss and Henry White, formerly Ambassador to Rome and Paris under
Presidents Roosevelt and Taft. Both were men of ability and experience,
but neither enjoyed the particular confidence of the American people;
and what Americans chiefly wanted was the assurance of persons they knew
and trusted, that the peace was right. In the existing state of public
opinion, the assurance of the President was not in itself sufficient.

President Wilson's decision to go to Paris as a member of the Commission
aroused still fiercer opposition, but had reasons infinitely more cogent.
He knew that there would be great difficulty in translating his ideals
into fact at the Peace Conference. He believed that he could count upon
the support of liberal opinion in Europe, but realized that the leading
politicians had not yet been won sincerely to his policy. The pledge they
had given to accept the Fourteen Points might mean much or little;
everything depended upon interpretation. A peace of justice and a League
of Nations still hung in the balance. At this moment, with Germany clearly
helpless, opinion abroad appeared to be tending, naturally enough, toward
the old-style division of the spoils among the victors. More than one
influential French and British newspaper began to sound the cry _Vae
victis_. Moreover, in America broke forth a chorus of encouragement to the
Allies to pay no attention to Wilsonian idealism. On the 27th of
November, shortly before the Commission sailed, Roosevelt wrote: "Our
Allies and our enemies and Mr. Wilson himself should all understand that
Mr. Wilson has no authority whatever to speak for the American people at
this time. His leadership has just been emphatically repudiated by
them.... Mr. Wilson and his Fourteen Points and his four supplementary
points and his five complementary points and all his utterances every
which way have ceased to have any shadow of right to be accepted as
expressive of the will of the American people.... Let them [the Allies]
impose their common will on the nations responsible for the hideous
disaster which has almost wrecked mankind." It was frank encouragement to
the Allies, coming from the American who, with Wilson, was best-known
abroad, to divide the spoils and to disregard all promises to