introduce a
new international order, and it must have brought joy to Clemenceau and
Sonnino.

Wilson feared that having won the war the United States might lose the
peace: not by softness towards Germany--as yet there was no danger of
that--but by forgetting the ideals for which it had entered the war, by
forgetting that a peace of injustice sows the seeds of the next war, and
by a relapse into the old bankrupt system of the Balance of Power. He
realized that the peoples of France, England, and Italy had felt the
pinch of war as the American people had never done, and that it was
demanding too much of human nature to expect that their attitude would be
one of moderation. He knew that in the negotiations Clemenceau and
Sonnino would be definitely opposed to his programme and that he could
not count upon Lloyd George. He decided therefore that he must himself go
to Paris to fight for his ideals. The decision was one of tremendous
significance. At the moment when domestic problems of reconstruction
would be most acute, an American President was going to leave the country
because of the interest of America in European affairs. The United States
was now so much a part of the world system that domestic issues seemed of
less importance than the danger that Europe might fall back into the old
international system which had proved unable to keep the peace. The
President's voyage to France was the clearest manifestation yet
vouchsafed of the settled position of the United States as a world power.

If the justice of his policy and the necessity of full participation in
the peace as in the war be admitted, Wilson was probably right in going
to Paris. No one else could have secured so much of his programme. No
one else was possessed of the political power or the personal prestige
which belonged to him. The history of the Conference was to show that
when he absented himself in February and after he left Paris in June, his
subordinates found great difficulty in meeting Allied opposition. But the
decision of the President to attend the Peace Conference furnished fresh
material for criticism at home. It was a new thing in our history; people
did not understand the importance of the issues involved and attributed
his voyage to vanity. Unquestionably it weakened Wilson in America as
much as it strengthened him abroad. When on the 4th of December, the
presidential ship, _George Washington_, sailed out of New York harbor,
saluted by the wi