Rumania was chastened and qualified in severer fashion for admission to the sodality of nations until her delegates quitted the Conference in disgust, struck out their own policy, and courteously ignored the Great Powers.  Then the Supreme Council changed its note for the moment and abandoned the position which it had taken up respecting the armistice with Hungary, to revert to it shortly afterward.[133] The joy with which the upshot of this revolt was hailed by all the lesser states was an evil omen.  For their antipathy toward the Supreme Council had long before hardened into a sentiment much more intense, and any stick seemed good enough to break the rod of the self-constituted governors of the planet.

The concrete result of this tinkering and cobbling could only be a ramshackle structure, built without any reference to the canons of political architecture.  It was shaped neither by the Fourteen Points nor by the canons of the balance of power and territory.  It was hardly more than an abortive attempt to make a synthesis of the two.  Created by force, it could be perpetuated only by force; but if symptoms are to be trusted, it is more likely to be broken up by force.  As an American press organ remarked in August:  “The Council of Five complains that no one now condescends to recognize the League of Nations.  Even the small nations are buying war material, quite oblivious of the fact that there are to be no more wars, now that the League is there to prevent them.  Sweden is buying large supplies from Germany, and Spain is sending a commission to Paris to negotiate for some of France’s war equipment."[134]

Belgium, too, was treated with scant consideration.  The praise lavished on her courageous people during the war was apparently deemed an adequate recompense for the sacrifices she had made and the losses she endured.  For the revision of the treaties of 1839, indispensable to the economic development of the country, no diplomatic preparation was made down to May, and among the Treaty clauses then drafted Belgium’s share of justice was so slight and insufficient that the unbiased press published sharp strictures on the forgetfulness or egotism of the Supreme Council.  “The little that has leaked out of the decisions taken regarding the conditions which affect Belgium,” wrote one journal, “has caused not only bitter disappointment in Belgium, but also indignation everywhere....  The Allies having decided not to accord moral satisfaction to Belgium (they chose Geneva as the capital of the League of Nations), it was perhaps to be expected that they would not accord her material satisfaction.  And such expectations are being fulfilled.  The Limburg province, annexed to Holland in 1839, the province which gave the retreating enemy unlawful refuge in 1918, a rank violation of Dutch neutrality, is apparently not to be restored to Belgium.  Even the right, vital to the safety and welfare of Belgium, the right of unimpeded navigation of the Scheldt between Antwerp and the sea, has not yet been conceded.  And the raw material that is indispensable if Belgian industry is to be revived is withheld; the Allies, however, are quite willing to flood the country with manufactured articles."[135]