The Paris of the Conference, on the other hand, was democratic, with a strong infusion of plutocracy.  It attempted no such brilliant display as that which flattered the senses or fired the imagination of the Viennese.  In 1919 mankind was simpler in its tastes and perhaps less esthetic.  It is certain that the froth of contemporary frivolity had lost its sparkling whiteness and was grown turbid.  In Vienna, balls, banquets, theatricals, military reviews, followed one another in dizzy succession and enabled politicians and adventurers to carry on their intrigues and machinations unnoticed by all except the secret police.  And, as the Congress marked the close of one bloody campaign and ushered in another, one might aptly term it the interval between two tragedies.  For a time it seemed as though this part of the likeness might become applicable to the Conference of Paris.

Moving from pleasure to politics, one found strong contrasts as well as surprising resemblances between the two peace-making assemblies, and, it was assumed, to the advantage of the Paris Conference.  Thus, at the Austrian Congress, the members, while seemingly united, were pulling hard against one another, each individual or group tugging in a different direction.  The Powers had been compelled by necessity to unite against a common enemy and, having worsted him on the battlefield, fell to squabbling among themselves in the Council Chamber as soon as they set about dividing the booty.  In this respect the Paris Conference—­the world was assured in the beginning—­towered aloft above its historic predecessor.  Men who knew the facts declared repeatedly that the delegates to the Quai d’Orsay were just as unanimous, disinterested, and single-minded during the armistice as they were through the war.  Probably they were.

Another interesting point of comparison was supplied by the dramatis personae? of both illustrious companies.  They were nearly all representatives of old states, but there was one exception.

THE CONGRESS CHIEF

Mistrusted, Feared, Humored, and Obeyed

A relatively new Power took part in the deliberations of the Vienna Congress, and, perhaps, because of its loftier intentions, introduced a jarring note into the concert of nations.  Russia was then a newcomer into the European councils; indeed she was hardly yet recognized as European.  Her gifted Tsar, Alexander I, was an idealist who wanted, not so much peace with the vanquished enemy as a complete reform of the ordering of the whole world, so that wars should thenceforward be abolished and the welfare of mankind be set developing like a sort of pacific perpetuum mobile.  This blessed change, however, was to be compassed, not by the peoples or their representatives, but by the governments, led by himself and deliberating in secret.  At the Paris Conference it was even so.