It was not merely an act of the statesmen. The worst features of the Treaty were imposed by popular feeling--put into the Treaty by statesmen who did not believe in them, and only included them in order to satisfy public opinion. The policy of President Wilson failed in part because of the humane and internationalist opinion of the America of 1916 had become the fiercely chauvinist and coercive opinion of 1919, repudiating the President's efforts. Part of the story of these transformations has been told in the preceding pages. Let us summarise the story as a whole. We saw at the beginning of the War a real feeling for the right of peoples to choose their own form of government, for the principle of nationality. At the end of the War we deny that right in half a score of cases,[72] where it suits our momentary political or military interest. The very justification of 'necessity,' which shocks our conscience when put forward by the enemy, is the one we invoke callously at the peace--or before it, as when we agree to allow Czarist Russia to do what she will with Poland, and Italy with Serbia. Having sacrificed the small State to Russia in 1916, we are prepared to sacrifice Russia to the small State in 1919, by encouraging the formation of border independencies, which, if complete independencies, must throttle Russia, and which no 'White' Russian would accept. While encouraging the lesser States to make war on Russia, we subsidise White Russian military leaders who will certainly destroy the small States if successful. We entered the War for the destruction of militarism, and to make disarmament possible, declaring that German arms were the cause of our arms; and having destroyed German arms, we make ours greater than they were before the War, and introduce such new elements as the systematic arming of African savages for European warfare. We fought to make the secret bringing about of war by military or diplomatic cliques impossible, and after the Armistice the decision to wage war on the Russian Republic is made without even public knowledge, in opposition to sections in the Cabinets concerned, by cliques of whose composition the public is completely ignorant.[73] The invasion of Russia from the north, south, east, and west, by European, Asiatic, and negro troops, is made without a declaration of war, after a solemn statement by the chief spokesman of the Allies that there should be no invasion. Having declared, during the War, on a score of occasions, that we were not fighting against any right or interest of the German people[74]--or the German people at all--because we realised that only by ensuring that right and interest ourselves could we turn Germany from the ways of the past, at the peace we impose conditions which make it impossible for the German people even adequately to feed their population, and leave them no recourse but the recreation of their power. Having promised at the