gained, while an immense missionary, educational and humanitarian asset would have been sacrificed. And

the detachment of Austria-Hungary, would have saved a confederation which, as liberalized, would be today the solution of a dozen problems now vexing eastern Europe. Such a breach between AustriaHungary and Germany would have isolated Turkey and Bulgaria also from the Kaiser, and would have meant, in fact, the end of the war. In 1917, as movements of Prince Sextus, brother of the Austrian Empress Lita, so plainly showed, the diplomatic capture of Austria-Hungary almost come about. In a fatal moment, the last of the Hapsburgs threw his remaining stakes on the Kaiser's last drive against the British and both dynasties went down in a common doom.

On November 11th, 1918, there was signed the Armistice. And there began for Woodrow Wilson the supreme task of helping to secure an equitable and lasting peace. He decided that he must go in person to Paris and the magnitude of the problems there revealed is at least a strong argument for his decision. On the other hand, it has been argued that he surrendered his prestige as sovereign head of the state and sacrificed the advantage of influencing Europe from a distance far removed from her turbulent emotions.

In unravelling the entangelments of the Paris Conference, critics have been too apt to base their verdict upon some phrase, some document, some personal impression, so failing to envisage the drama as a whole. At that momentous negotation, tens of thousands of diplomats, officials, secretaries, typists, delegates, correspondents for newspapers, novelists and men who afterwards knew better than anybody else how it ought to have been done, were gathered and the output, in speech and writing, was a bewildering billionage of words. But the brain of man is finite; in no day are there more than twenty-four hours; with every hour clamoring for a decision and most decisions pleading for a a compromise, no man, however masterful, could be omnipotent. It will be seen that on most issues Woodrow Wilson was right. But this does not mean that on these issues, he could get his own way.

The old world had barely survived a terrible operation. Much blood had been lost and the patient was still light-headed under the anesthetic of that passionate propaganda amid which alone wars can now be waged. Even in the United States, there was still a touch of the delirium and with fever all around him, there were few men whose pulse beat even, whose temperature was normal. Among those men, Woodrow Wilson, General Smuts and Robert Cecil stand

out conspicuous. In a mad world, they were sane. But with the madness, they had for all that to make terms. Faced by lunacy, they had to humor it lest worse befall.

It is now clear that of all cities the Paris of the post-Armistice mood was the least suitable for such a conference. The spirit of the press, of the diplomatists, of the people was solely French; the etiquette, the festivities, the numberless and irritating courtesies were all calculated to delay and to obscure the real business to be done. To some extent, this is true of the rapturous welcomes also extended to Woodrow Wilson in Italy and England. The ceremonies were illtimed. The occasion for rejoicing would have been when peace was ratified, and the war won.

To the superior eye of J. M. Keynes, Woodrow Wilson seemed like an innocent in a thieves' kitchen. The description is a grotesque travesty of the man and the situation. Of the political geography of Europe, Woodrow Wilson, alone of them all, had made a thorough and detached examination. The trouble they had with him was not that he knew too little but that he knew too much and was thus beyond the range of mere sophistries. And the idea that his mind lacked the subtlety of Lloyd George is not less fallacious. Woodrow Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau understood one another perfectly. The three of them

were men of strong will, clear speech and profound experience of public affairs. But they differed. And the differences meant delay and compromise.

Neither Wilson nor Lloyd George nor Clemenceau were dictators in their own countries. Behind Lloyd George, there was a House of Commons, just elected on the slogans that Germany must pay and the Kaiser hang. Behind Clemenceau lurked Foch and Poincare who demanded the Rhine frontier. And behind Woodrow Wilson lay in shadow the illconcealed hostility always animating the Senate against Treaties, however harmless they may seem to be. The trio had thus to reckon with the line of communications to their authority and everywhere that line lay through country where the press was vocal. To the newspapers, Lloyd George was sensitive, and with reason. His Parliamentary majority was a Coalition in which his fate was held by the Tories. Between Wilson and Clemenceau, Lloyd George wavered.

The common charge against Wilson has been that he was the professor, imperious, doctrinaire, unyielding. Whatever may have been his attitude in the United States, it is the clear truth that in Paris, he yielded too much. "I am this day weak," he might have said with David, "though anointed King; and these men the Sons of Zerniah be too hard for me." Still he fought till he was too faint to fight further

and lay in the Hotel Crillon, helpless with influenza. And he resolved one deadlock by summoning the George Washington and threatening to go home. Yet to have broken up the Conference lightly would have been a crime. The old world believed, at any rate, that Bolshevism might easily spread westwards and dissolve what was left of the economy of Christendom. And the terror of the Teuton still stalked in the land. Moreover, Wilson would have been severely criticized, had he failed to bring home at least some kind of a settlement.

His program had been stated to Congress on January 8th, 1918, and is known as the Fourteen Points.. It was accepted by the Allies and Germany as the basis of peace. And the habit of assuming that the Fourteen Points were abandoned in the Treaty of Versailles, wholesale, can only be pursued by those who have not refreshed their memories of what the Fourteen Points were. By the Seventh Point, Belgium was to be evacuated and restored, and this was secured at Paris. So was the eighth point by which AlsaceLorraine was to be handed back to France. frontiers of Italy, mentioned in the ninth point, may not be accurately "effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality"-witness the inclusion of the German speaking Tyrol,-but, in the main, what was intended, namely, the annexation of Italia Irrdenta

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