gue put the United States at the mercy of European politicians
and would it involve our country in a series of European wars in which we
had no interest?

What followed must be counted as little less than a tragedy. The man of
academic antecedents with masterly powers of exposition, who had voiced
popular thought during the years of the war so admirably, now failed
completely as an educator of opinion. The President might have shown that
the League Covenant, instead of postponing peace, was really essential to
a settlement, since it was to facilitate solutions of various territorial
problems which might otherwise hold the Conference in debate for months.
He could have demonstrated with a dramatic vigor which the facts made
possible, the anarchical condition of Europe and the need for some sort of
international system of cooeperation if a new cataclysm was to be avoided,
and he might have pictured the inevitable repercussive effect of such a
cataclysm upon America. He might have shown that in order to give effect
to the terms of the Treaty, it was necessary that the League Covenant
should be included within it. He could have emphasized the fact that the
Covenant took from Congress no constitutional powers, that the Council of
the League, on which the United States was represented, must be unanimous
before taking action, and then could only make recommendations. But the
President failed to explain the situation in terms comprehensible to the
average man. However adequate his addresses seemed to those who understood
the situation abroad, they left the American public cold. His final speech
in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City was especially
unfortunate, for his statement that he would bring back the Treaty and the
League so intertwined that no one could separate them sounded like a
threat. At the moment when he needed the most enthusiastic support to curb
the opposition of the Senate, he alienated thousands and lost the chance
to convince tens of thousands.

These developments did not pass unnoticed in Europe. Clemenceau and Lloyd
George had yielded to Wilson during the first weeks of the Conference
because they could not afford to separate their fortunes from the United
States, upon whom they depended for economic support, and because an open
break with Wilson would weaken their own position with liberals in France
and England. But now it became apparent to them that Wilson's position at
home was so unstable t