t unusual and untried methods rather than to
accept those which had been tested by experience and found practical of
operation. The self-satisfaction of inventing something new or of
evolving a new theory is inherent with not a few men. They are
determined to try out their ideas and are impatient of opposition which
seeks to prevent the experiment. In fact opposition seems sometimes to
enhance the virtue of a novelty in the minds of those who propose or
advocate its adoption. Many reformers suffer from this form of vanity.

In the case of the system of mandates its adoption by the Conference and
the conferring on the League of Nations the power to issue mandates
seemed at least to the more conservative thinkers at Paris a very
doubtful venture. It appeared to possess no peculiar advantages over the
old method of transferring and exercising sovereign control either in
providing added protection to the inhabitants of territory subject to a
mandate or greater certainty of international equality in the matter of
commerce and trade, the two principal arguments urged in favor of the
proposed system.

If the advocates of the system intended to avoid through its operation
the appearance of taking enemy territory as the spoils of war, it was a
subterfuge which deceived no one. It seemed obvious from the very first
that the Powers, which under the old practice would have obtained
sovereignty over certain conquered territories, would not be denied
mandates over those territories. The League of Nations might reserve in
the mandate a right of supervision of administration and even of
revocation of authority, but that right would be nominal and of little,
if any, real value provided the mandatory was one of the Great Powers as
it undoubtedly would be. The almost irresistible conclusion is that the
protagonists of the theory saw in it a means of clothing the League of
Nations with an apparent usefulness which justified the League by making
it the guardian of uncivilized and semi-civilized peoples and the
international agent to watch over and prevent any deviation from the
principle of equality in the commercial and industrial development of
the mandated territories.

It may appear surprising that the Great Powers so readily gave their
support to the new method of obtaining an apparently limited control
over the conquered territories, and did not seek to obtain complete
sovereignty over them. It is not necessary to look far for a suf