I will confess that I am altogether perplexed by the behavior of France at the present time. I do not understand what she believes she is doing in Europe and I do not understand her position in this conference. Why could she not have co-operated in this conference instead of making it a scene of special pleading? I have already said that the French here seem to be more foreign than any other people and least in touch with the general feeling of the assembly. They seem to have come here as national advocates, as special pleaders, without any of that passionate desire to lay the foundations of a world settlement that certainly animates nearly every other delegation. They do not seem to understand how people here regard either the conference or France. There is indeed a great and enduring enthusiasm for France in America. Marshal Foch has gone about in America as the greatest of heroes and the most popular figure. He has been overwhelmed by hospitality and smothered by every honor America could heap upon him. The French flag is far more in evidence than the British in both New York and Washington. This may easily give French visitors the idea that they are exceptional favorites here and that France can count upon American backing in any quarrels she chooses to pick with the British or the Germans or Russians. There could be no greater error. The enthusiasm for Foch is largely personal; he was the General of all the Allies. The enthusiasm for France is largely traditional and it does not extend to the French nationals or the present day. America loves, as all liberal and intelligent men throughout the world must love, France the great liberator of men’s minds; France of the great Revolution; the France of art and light, France, the beautiful and the gallant. It is hard to write bitterly of a country that can give the world an Anatole France, sane and smiling, or so brave and balanced a gentleman as the late Robert d’Humiers. But where is that France today? None of that France has come to the Washington Conference, but only an impenitent apologist for three years of sins against the peace of the world, an apologist for national aggression posturing as fear, and reckless greed disguised as discretion.