Here then was a “British colonel” who, in addition to his military duties, was, according to this account, willing and able to create an independent republic without any Supreme Council to assist him, whereas professional diplomatists and military men of other nations had been trying for months to found a Rhine republic under Dorten and had failed.  Nor did he, if the newspaper report be correct, waste much time at the business.  From the moment of its inception until northwestern Russia stood forth an independent state, promulgating and executing grave decisions in the sphere of international politics, only forty-five minutes are said to have elapsed.  Forty-five minutes by the clock.  It was almost as quick a feat as the drafting of the Covenant of Nations.  Further, the resourceful statemaker forged a republic which was qualified to transfer sovereignly Russian territory to unrecognized states without consulting the nation or obtaining authority from any one.  More marvelous than any other detail, however, is the circumstance that he did his work so well that it never amounted to intervention.[322]

One cannot affect surprise if the distinction between this amazing exploit of diplomatico-military prestidigitation and intermeddling in the internal affairs of another nation prove too subtle for the mental grasp of the average unpolitical individual.

It is practices like these which ultimately determine the worth of the treaties and the Covenant which Mr. Wilson was content to take back with him to Washington as the final outcome of what was to have been the most superb achievement of historic man.  Of the new ethical principles, of the generous renunciation of privileges, of the righting of secular wrongs, of the respect that was to be shown for the weak, which were to have cemented the union of peoples into one pacific if not blissful family, there remained but the memory.  No such bitter draught of disappointment was swallowed by the nations since the world first had a political history.  Many of the resounding phrases that once foretokened a new era of peace, right, and equity were not merely emptied of their contents, but made to connote their opposites.  Freedom of the seas became supremacy of the seas, which may possibly turn out to be a blessed consummation for all concerned, but should not have been smuggled in under a gross misnomer.  The abolition of war means, as British and American and French generals and admirals have since told their respective fellow-citizens, thorough preparations for the next war, which are not to be confined, as heretofore, to the so-called military states, but are to extend over all Anglo-Saxondom.[323] “Open covenants openly arrived at” signify secret conclaves and conspirative deliberations carried on in impenetrable secrecy which cannot be dispensed with even after the whole business has passed into history.[324] The self-determination of peoples finds its limit in the rights of every Great Power to hold