If the Paris Conference had had at heart the best interests of the peoples of Austria-Hungary, they would have maintained the organism that united these peoples with common interests under some new program of federation. The Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon are inspired by British, French, and Italian interests, and not by a desire to make a better world to live in along the Danube. Under the nose of President Wilson, these interests were amicably adjusted by compromises and bargains. The question was never debated as to whether it would not be best for the peoples concerned to keep some form of a union, in which Austrian and Hungarian domination would no longer prevail. The Entente Powers had their reasons for wanting to break up the Hapsburg dominions. Italy entered the war for this purpose. If the old political organism had been readjusted, Slavic predominance would have appeared to the Italians as a greater menace to their security than the old arrangement of Austrian and Hungarian joint hegemony. Great Britain and France were determined that Germany should never again have the Danubian countries as a reservoir from which to draw for armies to support her schemes. The dissolution of the empire blocked forever Germany’s _Drang nach Osten_. The Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon cut Germany off from the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire. France had in mind a _cordon_ of allies, separating Russia from Germany, and opening up the path to France from the North Sea to the Black Sea. Most important of all, the disappearance of Austria-Hungary removed the formidable commercial rivalry possible when fifty million people lived under a united government in a common customs area. The only danger foreseen was the possibility of Austria joining Germany. This the Entente Powers thought they had taken care of by denying to the Germans the political unity achieved by all the other peoples of Europe. The logical alternatives confronting the peacemakers were either establishing a new Danubian federation or allowing free rein to the national instinct as opposed to economic expediency. Blinded by the extent of their victory, and betrayed into the fallacy of believing that some national movements could be encouraged and approved and others discouraged and stamped out, the Entente Powers forgot economic and political laws. They chose neither alternative. They believed that they could use the power the victory gave them for the furtherance of their own selfish interests. But they forgot that this power was theirs because they were united, and that treaties inspired by their own interests and imposed by force would remain in vigor only so long as they remained united. In the Treaties of St.-Germain and Trianon the Entente Powers departed farther than in the Treaty of Versailles from the ideals so nobly proclaimed during the war. In his speech of January 5, 1917, Mr. Lloyd George had anticipated Mr. Wilson when he told the House of Commons: