[26] Le Figaro, March 6, 1919.

[27] L’Humanite, May 23, 1919.

[28] 3 Ibid.

[29] Le Gaulois, March 23, 1919. The New York Herald (Paris edition), March 22, 1919. L’Echo de Paris, June 12, 1919.

[30] The New York Herald, March 22, 1919.

[31] L’Echo de Paris, June 12, 1919.

[32] The New York Herald, March 22, 1919.

[33] L’Humanite, May 23, 1919.

[34] on July 18, 1919.  Cf. Matin, Echo de Paris, Figaro, July 10, 1919.

[35] Cf. L’Humanite (French Syndicalist organ), July 11, 1919.

II

SIGNS OF THEIR TIMES

Society during the transitional stage through which it has for some years been passing underwent an unprecedented change the extent and intensity of which are as yet but imperfectly realized.  Its more striking characteristics were determined by the gradual decomposition of empires and kingdoms, the twilight of their gods, the drying up of their sources of spiritual energy, and the psychic derangement of communities and individuals by a long and fearful war.  Political principles, respect for authority and tradition, esteem for high moral worth, to say nothing of altruism and public spirit, either vanished or shrank to shadowy simulacra.  In contemporary history currents and cross-currents, eddies and whirlpools, became so numerous and bewildering that it is not easy to determine the direction of the main stream.  Unsocial tendencies coexisted with collectivity of effort, both being used as weapons against the larger community and each being set down as a manifestation of democracy.  Against every kind of authority the world, or some of its influential sections, was up in revolt, and the emergence of the passions and aims of classes and individuals had freer play than ever before.

To this consummation conservative governments, and later on their chiefs at the Peace Conference, systematically contributed with excellent intentions and efficacious measures.  They implicitly denied, and acted on the denial, that a nation or a race, like an individual, has something distinctive, inherent, and enduring that may aptly be termed soul or character.  They ignored the fact that all nations and races are not of the same age nor endowed with like faculties, some being young and helpless, others robust and virile, and a third category senescent and decrepit, and that there are some races which Nature has wholly and permanently unfitted for service among the pioneers of progress.  In consequence of these views, which I venture to think erroneous, they applied the same treatment to all states.  Just as President Wilson, by striving to impose his pinched conception of democracy and his lofty ideas of political morality on Mexico, had thrown that country into anarchy, the two Anglo-Saxon governments by enforcing their theories about the protection of minorities and other political conceptions in various states of Europe helped to loosen the cement of the politico-social structure there.