These unfavorable impressions were general.  Almost every step subsequently taken by the Conference confirmed them, and long before the Treaty was presented to the Germans, public confidence was gone in the ability of the Supreme Council to attain any of the moral victories over militarism, race-hatred, and secret intrigues which its leaders had encouraged the world to expect.

“The leaders of the Conference,” wrote an influential press organ,[122] “are under suspicion.  They may not know it, but it is true.  The suspicion is doubtless unjust, but it exists.  What exists is a fact; and men who ignore facts are not statesmen.  The only way to deal with facts is to face them.  The more unpleasant they are the more they need to be faced.

“Some of the Conference leaders are suspected of having, at various times and in various circumstances, thought more of their own personal and political positions and ambitions than of the rapid and practical making of peace.  They are suspected, in a word, of a tendency to subordinate policy to politics.

“In regard to some important matters they are suspected of having no policy.  They are also suspected of unwillingness to listen to their own competent advisers, who could lay down for them a sound policy.  Some of them are even suspected of being under the spell of some benumbing influence that paralyzes their will and befogs their minds, when high resolve and clear visions are needful.”

Another accusation of the same tenor was thus formulated:  “In various degrees[123] and with different qualities of guilt all the Allied and Associated leaders have dallied with dishonesty.  While professing to seek naught save the welfare of mankind, they have harbored thoughts of self-interest.  The result has been a progressive loss of faith in them by their own peoples severally, and by the Allied, Associated, and neutral peoples jointly.  The tide of public trust in them has reached its lowest ebb.”

At the Conference, as we saw, the President of the United States possessed what was practically a veto on nearly all matters which left the vital interests of Britain and France intact.  And he frequently exercised it.  Thus the dispute about the Thracian settlement lay not between Bulgaria and Greece, nor between Greece and the Supreme Council, but between Greece and Mr. Wilson.  In the quarrel over Fiume and the Dalmatian coast it was the same.  When the Shantung question came up for settlement it was Mr. Wilson alone who dealt with it, his colleagues, although bound by their promises to support Japan, having made him their mouthpiece.  The rigor he displayed in dealing with some of the smaller countries was in inverse ratio to the indulgence he practised toward the Great Powers.  Not only were they peremptorily bidden to obey without discussion the behests which had been brought to their cognizance, but they were ordered, as we saw, to promise to execute other injunctions which might be issued by the Supreme Council on certain matters in the future, the details of which were necessarily undetermined.