"The Great Powers," observed the most outspoken of the delegates of the lesser states, "are bandits, but as their operations are on a large scale they are entitled to another and more courteous name. Their gaze is fascinated by markets, concessions, monopolies. They are now making preparations for a great haul. At this politicians cannot affect to be scandalized. For it has never been otherwise since men came together in ordered communities. But what is irritating and repellent is the perfume of altruism and philanthropy which permeates this decomposition. We are told that already they are purchasing the wharves of Dantzig, making ready for 'big deals' in Libau, Riga, and Reval, founding a bank in Klagenfurt and negotiating for oil-wells in Rumania. Although deeply immersed in the ethics of politics, they have not lost sight of the worldly goods to be picked up and appropriated on the wearisome journey toward ideal goals. The atmosphere they have thus renewed is peculiarly favorable to the growth of cant, and tends to accelerate the process of moral and social dissolution. And the effects of this mephitic air may prove more durable than the contribution of its creators to the political reorganization of Europe. If we compare the high functions which they might have fulfilled in relation to the vast needs and the unprecedented tendencies of the new age with those which they have unwittingly and deliberately performed as sophists of sentimental morality and destroyers of the wheat together with the tares, we shall have to deplore one of the rarest opportunities missed beyond retrieve." In this criticism there is a kernel of truth. The ethico-social currents to which the war gave rise had a profoundly moral aspect, and if rightly canalized might have fertilized many lands and have led to a new and healthy state-system. One indispensable condition, however, was that the peoples of the world should themselves be directly interested in the process, that they should be consulted and listened to, and helped or propelled into new grooves of thought and action. Instead of that the delegates contented themselves with giving new names to old institutions and tendencies which stood condemned, and with teaching lawless disrespect for every check and restraint except such as they chose to acknowledge. They were powerful advocates for right and justice, democracy and publicity, but their definitions of these abstract nouns made plain-speaking people gasp. Self-interest and material power were the idols which they set themselves to pull down, but the deities which they put in their places wore the same familiar looks as the idols, only they were differently colored. FOOTNOTES: [127] In February, 1919. [128] The French Minister of Foreign Affairs, M. Pichon, undertook to recognize in principle the independence of Esthonia, provided that Esthonia would take over her part of the Russian debt.