It cannot be gainsaid that the two predominant partners behaved throughout as benevolent despots, to whom despotism came more easily than benevolence.  As we saw, they kept their colleagues of the lesser states as much in the dark as the general public and claimed from them also implicit obedience to all their behests.  They went farther and demanded unreasoning acquiescence in decisions to be taken in the future, and a promise of prompt acceptance of their injunctions—­a pretension such as was never before put forward outside the Catholic Church, which, at any rate, claims infallibility.  Asked why he had not put up a better fight for one of the states of eastern Europe, a sharp-tongued delegate irreverently made answer, “What more could you expect than I did, seeing that I was opposed by one colleague who looks upon himself as Napoleon and by another who believes himself to be the Messiah.”

Among the many epigrammatic sayings current in Paris about the Conference, the most original was ascribed to the Emir Faissal, the son of the King of the Hedjaz.  Asked what he thought of the world’s areopagus, he is said to have answered:  “It reminds me somewhat of one of the sights of my own country.  My country, as you know, is the desert.  Caravans pass through it that may be likened to the armies of delegates and experts at the Conference—­caravans of great camels solemnly trudging along one after the other, each bearing its own load.  They all move not whither they will, but whither they are led.  For they have no choice.  But between the two there is this difference:  that whereas the big caravan in the desert has but one leader—­a little ass—­the Conference in Paris is led by two delegates who are the great Ones of the earth.”  In effect, the leaders were two, and no one can say which of them had the upper hand.  Now it seemed to be the British Premier, now the American President.  The former scored the first victory, on the freedom of the seas, before the Conference opened.  The latter won the next, when Mr. Wilson firmly insisted on inserting the Covenant in the Treaty and finally overrode the objections of Mr. Lloyd George and M. Clemenceau, who scouted the idea for a while as calculated to impair the value of both charters.  There was also a moment when the two were reported to have had a serious disagreement and Mr. Lloyd George, having suddenly quitted Paris for rustic seclusion, was likened to Achilles sulking in his tent.  But one of the two always gave way at the last moment, just as both had given way to M. Clemenceau at the outset.  When the difference between Japan and China cropped up, for example, the other delegates made Mr. Wilson their spokesman.  Despite M. Clemenceau’s resolve that the public should not “be apprized that the head of one government had ever put forward a proposal which was opposed by the head of another government,” it became known that they occasionally disagreed among themselves, were more than once on