Although representing no established government and personifying the Russian régime that had overthrown Czarism, only to be itself supplanted by the Bolsheviki, Kerenski felt that the services of the real Russian people to the Allied cause entitled his party to a hearing at the Peace Conference. Prophetically, he told me that the extremists did not represent the Russian people, and that they were forcing things too far ever to succeed. I remember almost his exact words: “Russia is finished with the past, but is by no means ready to go to its antithesis. I myself represent the middle course, and the world will some day realize that my government was evolutionary, not revolutionary.” Kerenski was especially hurt by the fact that “even the Americans” would not listen to him. With fiery phrases, he explained convincingly that there could be no general peace until Russian affairs were adjusted, and that 160,000,000 people who had so manfully contributed their full share against Prussianism could not justly, or even safely, be ignored. “I am not the spokesman of them all,” he admitted; “but I do represent the political sentiment that must eventually prevail.” Dr. Robert Lord was in charge of Russian affairs for the American delegation. I had him meet Kerenski the next day in my rooms, and from this meeting an invitation to the Crillon followed. A more pathetic picture was that presented by the Chinese delegation. They gave a dinner to a number of Americans, including Thomas Lamont, Edward A. Filene, Senator Hollis, Charles R. Crane, Professor Taussig, and myself. The affair may have been hopefully conceived, but, on that very day, Ray Stannard Baker came to them with President Wilson’s message that he had to consent to the Japanese pretensions in Shantung. We had gone for a banquet; we remained for a wake. The Chinese delegates frankly feared that their failure to secure a proper adjustment with Japan might so exasperate their people at home as to lead to personal harm to them. They felt that their treatment by the Conference would arouse their nation from its ancient lethargy and transform it into a military power that might eventually avenge its injured pride. One of them said to me: “We have a much firmer moral foundation than Japan, and we have a population of 400,000,000 as against its 56,000,000. We possess as much latent power as the Japanese, and I dread to contemplate what may happen if it is ever aroused.” To look into the eyes of those Chinamen as they talked to us and to observe their bearing under the trying circumstances of that evening was to learn a lesson in restraint. The gravity of their situation was freely admitted, and yet they were perfect hosts to us Americans whose leader had just disappointed them.