Mr. Wilson found it a hard task at first to obtain acceptance for his ill-defined tenets by France, who declined to accept the protection of his League of Nations in lieu of strategic frontiers and military guaranties. Insurmountable obstacles barred his way. The French government and people, while moved by decent respect for their American benefactors[96] to assent to the establishment of a league, flatly refused to trust themselves to its protection against Teuton aggression. But they were quite prepared to second Mr. Wilson's endeavors to oblige some of the other states to content themselves with the guaranties it offered, only, however, on condition that their own country was first safeguarded in the traditional way. Territorial equilibrium and military protection were the imperative provisos on which they insisted. And as France was specially favored by Mr. Wilson on sentimental grounds which outweighed his doctrine, and as she was also considered indispensable to the Anglo-Saxon peoples as their continental executive, she had no difficulty in securing their support. On this point, too, therefore, the President found himself constrained to give way. And only did he abandon his humanitarian intentions and his strongest arguments to be lightly brushed aside, he actually recoiled so far into the camp of his opponents that he gave his approval to an indefensible clause in the Treaty which would have handed over to France the German population of the Saar as the equivalent of a certain sum in gold. Coming from the world-reformer who, a short time before, had hurled the thunderbolts of his oratory against those who would barter human beings as chattels, this amazing compromise connoted a strange falling off. Incidentally it was destructive of all faith in the spirit that had actuated his world-crusade. It also went far to convince unbiased observers that the only framework of ideas with decisive reference to which Mr. Wilson considered every project and every objection as it arose, was that which centered round his own goal--the establishment, if not of a league of nations cemented by brotherhood and fellowship, at least of the nearest approach to that which he could secure, even though it fell far short of the original design. These were the first-fruits of the interweaving of the Covenant with the Treaty.