Why did not M. Lauzanne ask for the moon while he was about it? What does he suppose we Americans have been striving for since 1789 but systems that will work? Henry Adams, commenting upon the disastrous failure of Grant’s administration, says just this thing. “The world” (the American world) “cared little for decency. What it wanted, it did not know. Probably a system that would work, and men who could work it. But it found neither.” And still the search goes on. A system of taxation that will work. A system of wage-adjustment that will work. A system of prohibition that will work. A system of public education that will work. These are the bright phantoms we pursue; and now a Paris editor casually adds a system for a working league of nations. “If France is in the right, let America give us her moral support. If France is in the wrong, let America show us the road to follow.” To presume agreement where none exists is the most dangerous form of self-deception. When newspapers and orators tell us that to the United States has come “the moral leadership of the world,” we must understand them to imply that foreign nations, with whom we have little in common, are of our way of thinking--provided always that they know what we think, and that we know ourselves. For the wide divergence of national aspirations, they make scant allowance; for misunderstanding and ill-will, they make no allowance at all. Before the election of 1920, the spokesmen of both political parties assured us with equal fervour that our country was destined to be the bulwark of the world’s peace. Their prescriptions for peace differed radically in detail; but all agreed that ours was to be the administering hand, and all implied the readiness of Europe (and, if need be, Asia and Africa) to accept our restoratives. “Want America to teach Turkey,” was the headline of a leading newspaper, which, in October, 1920, deplored the general unteachableness of the Turk. Perhaps the careless crudeness of headlines deceives a large class of hurried readers who rely too implicitly upon them. When the Conference at Versailles was plodding through its task, a New York paper announced in large type: “Italy dissatisfied with territory assigned her by Colonel House.” It had a mirth-provoking sound; but, after all, the absurdity was in no way attributable to Colonel House; and, in the matter of dissatisfaction, not even a headline could go beyond the facts. What has ever impelled the “Tribuna” and the “Avanti” to express amicable agreement, save their mutual determination to repudiate the intervention of the United States?