Mr. Wilson does not seem to have considered any alternative to the immediate formulation of a covenant of the “League of Nations.” He left the all-important question of peace in abeyance, and devoted his energies to the preparation of a document which would serve as an outward and visible sign of personal success. Perhaps he was dismayed by the opposition, in reactionary Allied circles, to moral theories considered by officials to be impracticable and even dangerous, however useful they might once have been for purposes of propaganda. He may have been paralysed amid unaccustomed surroundings where he was not the supreme authority. At any rate, he neglected to use a weapon whose potency he, of all rulers, should have known--the weapon of publicity, which was, as ever, at his service and would have rallied to the causes he espoused the support and approval of sincere reformers in every class. He worked in secret and secured adhesion to a draft of the covenant of the “League of Nations,” whose colourless and non-committal character betrayed official handiwork. The man who had arrived in Paris as the bearer of a message whose echoes had filled the world with hope, left France the bearer of a “scrap of paper.” He returned to find his authority lessened. Before, he had stood alone; he came back to take his place as one of the “Big Four.” It is given to few men to act as well as to affirm. Mr. Lloyd George was unable to help the President; his election speeches had been the reverse of a moral exposition of the issues, and the Parliamentary majority they had helped to create allowed no lapses into Liberalism. More than a year had passed since the Prime Minister of Great Britain had stated that the British people were not fighting “a war of aggression against the German people ... or to destroy Austria-Hungary, or to deprive Turkey of its capital or of the rich and renowned lands of Asia Minor and Thrace which are predominantly Turkish in race.” Teschen had not been heard of then, and the demands of Italy and M. Venizelos were either forgotten or ignored. Mr. Lloyd George’s native sense and insight would have avoided many pitfalls; the Bullit revelations did no more than bare justice to his acumen in regard to Russia, but he was terrorized by a section of the British Press, which held him relentlessly to vote-catching pledges, however reckless or extravagant. The Prime Minister of the French Republic was pre-occupied with revenging past humiliations, with retrieving the fortunes of his country and making it secure. He did lip-service to the “League of Nations,” but talked of it with sardonic humour, and did it infinite harm. A dominating personality and a prodigious intellect enriched by wide experience were lost to the cause of human progress. No rare occurrence, when the possessors of these gifts are old.