a point which was supposed to be part of the groundwork of the new ordering.  This from the Conference point of view was a momentous decision, which could be taken only with the consent of the Supreme Council.  Even as a mere threat it was worthless if it did not stand for the deliberate will of that body which the President had deemed it superfluous to consult.  As it happened, the British authorities were just then organizing a body of gendarmes to police the Turkish territories in question, and they were engaged in this work with the knowledge and approval of the Supreme Council.  Mr. Wilson’s announcement could therefore only be construed—­and was construed—­as the act of an authority superior to that of the Council.[125] The Turks, who are shrewd observers, must have drawn the obvious conclusion from these divergent measures as to the degree of harmony prevailing among the Allied and Associated Powers.

M. Clemenceau had a conversation on the subject with Mr. Polk, who explained that the note was informal and given verbally, and conveyed the idea only of one nation in connection with the Armenian situation.  This explanation, accepted by the French government, did not commend itself to public opinion, either in France or elsewhere.  Moreover, the French were struck by another aspect of this arbitrary exercise of supreme power.  “President Wilson,” wrote an eminent French publicist, “throws himself into the attitude of a man who can bind and loose the Turkish Empire at the very moment when the Senate appears opposed to accepting any mandate, European or Asiatic, at the moment when Mr. Lansing declares to the Congress that the government of which he is a member does not desire to accept any mandate.  But is it not obvious that if Mr. Wilson sovereignly determines the lot of Turkey he can be held in consequence to the performance of certain duties?  We have often had to deplore the absence of policy common to the Allies.  But has each one of them, considered separately, at least a policy of its own?  Does it take action otherwise than at haphazard, yielding to the impulse of a general, a consul, or a missionary?"[126]

It soon became manifest even to the most obtuse that whenever the Supreme Council, following its leaders and working on such lines as these, terminated its labors, the ties between the political communities of Europe would be just as flimsy as in the unregenerate days of secret diplomacy, secret alliances, and secret intrigues, unless in the meanwhile the peoples themselves intervened to render them stronger and more enduring.  It would, however, be the height of unfairness to make Mr. Wilson alone answerable for this untoward ending to a far resonant beginning.  He had been accused by the press of most countries of enwrapping personal ambition in the attractive covering of disinterestedness and altruism, just as many of his foreign colleagues were said to go in fear of the “malady of lost power.”  But charges of this nature overstep