In passing, one of the astonishing things is that statesmen, compelled by the conditions of their profession to work with the raw material of public opinion, seem blind to the fact that the total effect of the forces which they set in motion will be to transform opinion and render it intractable. American advisers of President Wilson scouted the idea, when it was suggested to them early in the War, that the growth of the War temper would make it difficult for the President to carry out his policy.[82] A score of times the present writer has heard it said by Americans who ought to have known better, that the public did not care what the foreign policy of the country was, and that the President could carry out any policy that he liked. At that particular moment it was true, but quite obviously there was growing up at the time, as the direct result of war propaganda, a fierce Chauvinism, which should have made it plain to any one who observed its momentum, that the notion of President Wilson's policy being put into execution after victory was simply preposterous. Mr Asquith's Government was thus largely responsible for creating a balance of force in public opinion (as we shall see presently) which was responsible for its collapse. Mr Lloyd George has himself sanctioned a jingoism which, if useful temporarily, becomes later an insuperable obstacle to the putting into force of workable policies. For while Versailles could do what it liked in matters that did not touch the popular passion of the moment, in the matters that did, the statesmen were the victims of the temper they had done so much to create. There was a story current in Paris at the time of the Conference: 'You can't really expect to get an indemnity of ten thousand millions, so what is the good of putting it in the Treaty,' an expert is said to have remarked. 'My dear fellow,' said the Prime Minister, 'if the election had gone on another fortnight, it would have been fifty thousand millions.' But the insertion of these mythical millions into the Treaty has not been a joke; it has been an enormous obstacle to the reconstruction of Europe. It was just because public opinion was not ready to face facts in time, that the right thing had to be done at the wrong time, when perhaps it was too late. The effect on French policy has been still more important. It is the illusions concerning illimitable indemnities--directly fostered by the Governments in the early days of the Armistice--still dominating French public opinion, which more than anything else, perhaps, explains an attitude on the part of the French Government that has come near to smashing Europe.