hich have been most scientifically demonstrated, encounter, when put
into practice, obstacles which have not been surmounted and are often
insurmountable.

President Wilson, who is not only a great jurist and a noble idealist,
but who also has that genius for realization which is a characteristic
of all America, has not failed to appreciate the difficulties which
the League of Nations would encounter were it put into practice. And
if, in his messages, he has insisted with a force that is every day
more eloquent on the necessity of tackling the problem; he has never
given a detailed solution for it.

He has done better than that, for he has swept aside certain factors
which would have made it absolutely impossible. On the second, of
April, 1917, in his immortal declaration of war, he formally declared
that "no autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within a
partnership of nations or observe its covenants. It must be a league
of honor, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals
away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would
and render account to no one, would be a corruption seated at its very
heart. Only a free people can hold their purpose and their honor
steady to a common end, and prefer the interests of mankind to any
narrow interest of their own."

These are admirable words of truth and of philosophic depth, words
which deserve to be graven in stone. No autocracy, then, in the League
of Nations, no German militarism nor Austrian imperialism in it. No
universal league of nations, even, but a limited society, a society of
democracies!

Certain hasty critics have observed neither the same prudence nor
logic as President Wilson. They have been farther from the truth, much
farther from the truth. They have falsified his text, as do all
commentators. They have desired to build complete in all details the
League of Nations, which only existed in outline. They have succeeded
in showing how difficult the construction would be, and they have only
been able to set up a house of cards which the first breath of wind
would knock down.

For example, this is how one of the most eminent French socialists, M.
Albert Thomas, a man who has given abundant proof of his practical
experience and actual talents, formerly the French Minister of
Munitions, depicts the League of Nations:

Let us suppose [he wrote on the twenty-fifth of December,
1917], as the mathematicians say,