One cannot thus play fast and loose with the destinies of a community composed of one hundred and fifty million people whose members are but slackly linked together by a few tenuous social bonds, without forfeiting the right to offer them real guidance.  And a blind man is a poor guide to those who can see.  Alone the Americans were equipped with carefully tabulated statistics and huge masses of facts which they poured out as lavishly as coal-heavers hurl the contents of their sacks into the cellar.  But they put them to no practical use.  Losing themselves in a labyrinth of details, they failed to get a comprehensive view of the whole.  The other delegations lacked both data and general ideas.  And all the Allies were destitute of a powerful army in the East, and therefore of the means of asserting the authority which they assumed.

They one and all dealt in vague theories and deceptive analogies, paying little heed to the ever-shifting necessities of time, place, and peoples, and indeed to the only conditions under which any new maxims could be fruitfully applied.  And even such rules as they laid down were restricted and modified in accordance with their own countries’ interests or their unavowed aims, without specific warrant or explanation.  No account was taken of the historical needs or aspirations of the people for whom they were legislating, as though all nations were of the same age, capable of the same degree of culture, and impressible to identical motives.  It never seemed to have crossed their minds that races and peoples, like individuals, have a soul, or that what is meat to one may be poison to another.

One of the most Ententophil and moderate press organs in France put the matter forcibly and plainly as follows:  “The governments of Washington and of London are aware that we are immutably attached to the alliance with them.  But we owe them the truth.  Far too often they make a bad choice of the agents whose business it is to keep them informed, and they affect too much disdain for friendly suggestions which emanate from any other source.  American agents, in particular, civil as well as military, explore Europe much as their forebears ‘prospected’ the Far West, and they look upon the most ancient nations of Europe as Iroquois, Comanches, or Aztecs.  They are astounded at not finding everything on the old Continent as in New York or Chicago, and they set to work to reform Europe according to the rules in force in Oklahoma or Colorado.  Now we venture respectfully to point out to them that methods differ with countries.  In the United States the Colonists were wont to set fire to the forests in order to clear and fertilize the land.  Certain American agents recommend the employment in Europe of an analogous procedure in political matters.  They rejoice to behold the Russian and Hungarian forests burst into flame.  In Lenin, Trotzky, Bela Kuhn, they appreciate useful pioneers of the new civilization.  We crave their permission to view these things from another side.  In old Europe one cannot set fire to the forests without at the same time burning villages and cities."[261]