Mr. Wilson retorted:  “You are assuming more than is meet.  The frontiers which we are tracing are provisional, not final.  That is a consideration which ought to weigh with you.  Besides, the League of Nations will intervene to improve what is imperfect.”  “O League of Nations, what blunders are committed in thy name!” the delegate may have muttered to himself as he listened to the words meant to comfort him and his countrymen.

Much might have been urged against this proffered solace if the delegates had been in a captious mood.  The League of Nations had as yet no existence.  If its will, intelligence, and power could indeed be reckoned upon with such confidence, how had it come to pass that its creators, Britain and the United States, deemed them dubious enough to call for a reinforcement in the shape of a formal alliance for the protection of France?  If this precautionary measure, which shatters the whole Wilsonian system, was indispensable to one Ally it was at least equally indispensable to another.  And in the case of Poland it was more urgent than in the case of France, because if Germany were again to scheme a war of conquest the probability is infinitesimal that she would invade Belgium or move forward on the western front.  The line of least resistance, which is Poland, would prove incomparably more attractive.  And then?  The absence of Allied troops in eastern Europe was one of the principal causes of the wars, tumults, and chaotic confusion that had made nervous people tremble for the fate of civilization in the interval between the conclusion of the armistice and the ratification of the Treaty.  In the future the absence of strongly situated Allies there, if Germany were to begin a fresh war, would be more fatal still, and the Polish state might conceivably disappear before military aid from the Allied governments could reach it.  Why should the safety of Poland and to some extent the security of Europe be made to depend upon what is at best a gambler’s throw?

But no counter-objections were offered.  On the contrary, M. Paderewski uttered the soft answer that turneth away wrath.  He profoundly regretted the decision of the lawgivers, but, recognizing that it was immutable, bowed to it in the name of his country.  He knew, he said, that the delegates were animated by very friendly feelings toward his country and he thanked them for their help.  M. Paderewski’s colleague, the less malleable M. Dmowski, is reported to have said:  “It is my desire to be quite sincere with you, gentlemen.  Therefore I venture to submit that while you profess to have settled the matter on principle, you have not carried out that principle thoroughly.  Doubtless by inadvertence.  Thus there are places inhabited by a large majority of Poles which you have allotted to Germany on the ground that they are inhabited by Germans.  That is inconsistent.”  At this Mr. Lloyd George jumped up from his place and asked:  “Can you name any such places?” M. Dmowski gave several