Let us take for example the case of M. Hymans of Belgium and M. Dmowski of Poland. M. Clemenceau was on the friendliest terms with these two men, but they thought they could do better for their country if the interests of Belgium and Poland were advanced and maintained in conference with the delegates of all the powers. But the French Foreign Office had decided that Belgium and Poland were necessary allies for France. Therefore, they were not to treat directly with the powers as a whole. France was to become their spokesman and defender in the inner council. This is what went on throughout the conference in regard to the interests of all the minor states. They were encouraged, or rather forced, by their very exclusion from the council table, to engage in intrigues to advance their interests. After the second plenary session Paris could not help becoming a typical nineteenth-century conference of the great powers. On the various commissions in which the new map of Europe was being decided upon, the rival claims of the small states were upheld or opposed by the representatives of the Entente Powers not on the merits of the matter in hand but in accordance with orders issued by the respective Governments to their delegates. What these orders were depended upon the tractability of the smaller states in direct and secret negotiations with the foreign offices of the Entente Powers. On the commissions, only the American members, having no interests at stake, were acting judicially; all the others were acting politically. And, where smaller states were represented on the commissions, their votes were frequently influenced by threats and bribes. Questions like the Teschen dispute between Czechoslovakia and Poland, the Banat dispute between Jugoslavia and Rumania, and the Hellenistic ambitions of Greece were highly profitable for this purpose. Mr. Wilson thought that the regulations, by which the minor states were excluded, had been adopted to make possible a practicable working committee; and he found reasonable, as did every one, M. Clemenceau’s argument that, as the great powers had won the war and would have to be responsible for the enforcement of peace, they must keep in their hands the final decisions. But Mr. Wilson did not know how the game was being played. Few of his colleagues suspected what was going on until the conference entered its fourth month. When Mr. Wilson presided at the sessions of the Commission on the League of Nations and found provision after provision being changed and modified, little did he suspect that the opposition he encountered on the part of some of the members of the commission was due not to conviction but to deals that had been made regarding questions that had nothing to do with the League.