That is all true. It would have been weakness to let the Germans off, but the surrender of their Fleet, the destruction of their Army, the enormous sum of their dead was not a “let off.” They were broken and punished, in pride and in soul. They would have made a peace of terror? Yes, that is certain, and they would have aroused, intensified and perpetuated a world of hate by which later they would have been destroyed. Their war lords would have made a worse peace than this of ours; but that is no argument why we should have imitated their methods and morals. THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS There was one institution created by the peacemakers which held out a promise of a better relationship between nations than that of military alliances and armed force divided into an uncertain Balance of Power. All that was wrong in the Peace Treaties might be put right by the League of Nations. The seeds of war sown by the Treaties might be made to blossom into the laurels of peace by the League. Although the Supreme Council set up by the Allies for the enforcement of its military provisions might act on purely nationalistic lines, the League of Nations would build up the international moral sense, and establish a Court of Appeal by which injustice, aggression, and the war spirit could be extirpated between all nations subscribing to its code of laws, and the spirit of arbitration. President Wilson comforted himself for any little defects which might have crept into the Peace Treaties by this new instrument of idealism which he had helped to create with a very passionate enthusiasm. It was his great gift to the world and, as he hoped, the fulfilment of the promises he had made to the world in his messages before and after the ending of the war, appealing so poignantly to the secret hopes of humanity that when he came to Europe as the great arbitrator of its councils, he was received as the leader, spokesman, and prophet of the New World which was to be built out of the ruins of the Old. The rejection by the American Senate of all that he had done killed Wilson. It also destroyed all immediate hopes of European recovery based upon the League as an instrument of reconstruction, co-operation and peace. It was one of the great tragedies of history. Yet, looking back now upon the reasons of the American refusal to enter the League of Nations, it is clear that it was not entirely due to the personal antagonism which President Wilson had aroused by certain defects of character—his autocratic methods, his rejection of good counsel, and his mentality in the beginning of the war, nor to a national selfishness on the part of the American people, desiring to withdraw rapidly from responsibilities which they had incurred by their entry into the war. From the American point of view, at that time, the war had proved more than ever the supreme good fortune of the United States in being remote from the hatreds and quarrels of that mess of races