The eminent author of the article proceeds to ask whether this can indeed be true; whether English and American capitalists petitioned the Bolsheviki for vast concessions during the war; whether they obtained them while the Conference was at its work and soldiers of their respective countries were fighting in Russia against the Bolsheviki who were bestowing them. "Is it true," he makes bold to ask further, "that that is the explanation of the incredible friendliness displayed by the Allied governments toward the Bolshevist bandits with whom they were willing to strike up a compromise, whom they were minded to recognize by organizing a conference on the Princes' Island?... Many times already rank-smelling whiffs of air have blown upon us; they suggested the belief that behind the Peace Conference there lurked not merely what people feared, but something still worse or an immense political Panama. If this is not true, gentlemen, deny it. Otherwise one day you will surely have an explosion."[113] Whether these grave innuendoes, together with the statement made by Mr. George Herron,[114] the incident of the Banat Republic and the ultimatum respecting the oil-fields unofficially presented to the Rumanians suffice to establish a _prima facie_ case may safely be left to the judgment of the public. The conscientious and impartial historian, however firm his faith in the probity of the men representing the powers, both of unlimited and limited interests, cannot pass them over in silence. One of the shrewdest delegates in Paris, a man who allowed himself to be breathed upon freely by the old spirit of nationalism, but was capable withal of appreciating the passionate enthusiasm of others for a more altruistic dispensation, addressed me one evening as follows: "Say what you will, the Secret Council is a Council of Two, and the Covenant a charter conferred upon the English-speaking peoples for the government of the world. The design--if it be a design--may be excellent, but it is not relished by the other peoples. It is a less odious hegemony than that of imperialist Germany would have been, but it is a hegemony and odious. Surely in a quest of this kind after the most effectual means of overcoming the difficulties and obviating the dangers of international intercourse, more even than in the choice of a political régime, the principle of self-determination should be allowed free play. Was that not to have been one of the choicest fruits of victory? But no; force is being set in motion, professedly for the good of all, but only as their good is understood by the 'all-powerful Two.' And to all the others it is force and nothing more. Is it to be wondered at that there are so many discontented people or that some of them are already casting about for an alternative to the Anglo-Saxon hegemony misnamed the Society of Nations?"