temptations to recalcitrance exist that, if Germany remains outside the League, another combination might be formed, under German leadership, and including Russia, Austria, Hungary, Greater Roumania and Bulgaria. A combination untrammelled by self-denying ordinances, compact, almost continuous, controlling the land routes of two continents. No limitation of its armaments could be enforced on such a combination; it would have access to Russia’s vast natural resources, and, if war came, for the first time in history, a coalition of belligerent States would be impervious to blockade by sea. While the Treaties stand, and while the present frame of mind of the Allied Governments continues, such is the situation into which the world is drifting, and for which the Covenant of the League, as drafted, provides no panacea. Even the leading members of that League are dubious adherents to its moral implications; each of them makes some reservation, not based on the principles of progress, but inspired by a distorted sense of patriotism which, in its essence, is the outcome and cult of private interests. The League of Nations was unfortunate in its birthplace. Throughout the Conference the frenzied merriment in Paris was characteristic of the cosmopolitan class which has grown up in an industrial age. These parasites on the wealth of nations possess neither the spirit of _nobless oblige_ nor any sympathy with the masses, and yet they influence affairs; they appear light and frivolous, as though they had no interest in life beyond dancing and feasting on the ruins of Old Europe, and deadening reflection with the discords of jazz bands; but behind these puppets in the show are cold and calculating men, who use “Society” and the atmosphere it creates to kill enthusiasm, to fetter and sensualize weaker minds. After listening to the conversation at a semi-official and fashionable gathering last June in Paris, a French priest pronounced the opinion that only a second redemption could save the world. This old man was always charitable in his judgments, he had heard the confessions of many sinners, but he was roused to moral indignation by the heartless cynicism of the talk around him; his feelings as a Christian had been outraged, and, although the remark was made simply and without affectation, it rang like the denunciation of a prophet, the speaker’s kind eyes kindled and his small, frail body seemed to grow in size. My mind went back to the Cathedral Church at Jassy one Easter Eve. There, for a time, had reigned the proper spirit; it had been fugitive, like all such moods. As Renan says: “_On n’atteint l’idéal qu’un moment_.”[50]