Conscious of these reefs and shoals, the French government, which was at first contemptuous of the Wilsonian scheme, discerned the use it might be put to as a military safeguard, and sought to convert it into that.  “The French,” wrote a Francophil English journal published in Paris, “would like the League to maintain what may be called a permanent military general staff.  The duties of this organization would be to keep a hawklike eye on the misdemeanors, actual or threatened, of any state or group of states, and to be empowered with authority to call into instant action a great international military force for the frustration or suppression of such aggression.  The French have frankly in mind the possibility that an unrepentant and unregenerate Germany is the most likely menace not only to the security of France, but to the peace of the world in general."[342]

And other states cherished analogous hopes.  The spirit of right and justice was to be evoked like the spirit that served Aladdin, and to be compelled to enter the service of nationalism and militarism, and accomplish the task of armies.

The paramount Powers prescribed the sacrifices of sovereignty which membership of the League necessitated, and forthwith dispensed themselves from making them.  The United States government maintained its Monroe Doctrine for America—­nay, it went farther and identified its interests with the Hay doctrine for the Far East.[343] It decided to construct a powerful navy for the defense of these political assets, and to give the youth of the country a semi-military training.[344] Defense presupposes attack.  War, therefore, is not excluded—­nay, it is admitted by the world-reformers, and preparations for it are indispensable.  Equally so are the burdens of taxation.  But if liberty of defense be one of the rights of two or three Powers, by what law is it confined to them and denied to the others?  Why should the other communities be constrained to remain open to attack?  Surely they, too, deserve to live and thrive, and make the most of their opportunities.  Now if in lieu of a misnamed League of Nations we had an Anglo-Saxon board for the better government of the world, these unequal weights and measures would be intelligible on the principle that special obligations and responsibilities warrant exceptional rights.  But no such plea can be advanced under an arrangement professing to be a society of free nations.  All that can with truth be said is what M. Clemenceau told the delegates of the lesser states at the opening of the Conference—­that the three great belligerents represent twelve million soldiers and that their supreme authority derives from that.  The role of the other peoples is to listen to the behests of their guardians, and to accept and execute them without murmur.  Might is still a source of right.