What they failed to take sufficiently into account was the vis inertiae, the survival of the old spirit among the ruling orders whose members continued to live and move in the atmosphere of use and wont, and the spirit of hate and bitterness infused into all the political classes, to dispel which was a herculean task.  It was exclusively to the leaders of those classes that Mr. Wilson confided the realization of the abstract idea of a society of nations, which he may at first have pictured to himself as a vast family conscious of common interests, bent on moral and material self-betterment, and willing to eschew such partial advantages as might hinder or retard the general progress.  But, judging by his attitude and his action, he had no real acquaintance with the materials out of which it must be fashioned, no notion of the difficulties to be met, and no staying power to encounter and surmount them.  And his first move entailed the failure of the scheme.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Wilson came to the Conference with a home-made charter for the Society of Nations, which, according to the evidence of Mr. Lansing, “was never pressed.”  The State Secretary added that “the present league Covenant is superior to the American plan.”  And as for the Fourteen Points, “They were not even discussed at the Conference."[349] Suspecting as much, I wrote at the time:[350] “The President has pinned himself down to no concrete scheme whatever.  His method is electric, choosing what is helpful and beneficent in the projects of others, and endeavoring to obtain from the dissentients a renunciation of ideas belonging to the old national currents and adherence to the doctrines he deems salutary.  It is, however, already clear that the highest ideal now attainable is not a league of nations as the masses understand it, which will abolish wars and likewise put an end to the costly preparations for them, but only a coalition of victorious nations, which may hope, by dint of economic inducements and deterrents, to draw the enemy peoples into its camp in the not too distant future.  This result would fall very short of the expectations aroused by the far-resonant promises made at the outset; but even it will be unattainable without an international compact binding all the members of the coalition to make war simultaneously upon the nation or group of nations which ventures to break the peace.  I am disposed to believe that nothing less than such an express covenant will be regarded by the continental Powers of the Entente as an adequate substitute for certain territorial readjustments which they otherwise consider essential to secure them from sudden attack.

“Whether such a condition would prevent future wars is a question that only experience can answer.  Personally, I am profoundly convinced, with Mr. Taft, that a genuine league of nations must have teeth in the guise of supernational, not international, forces.  In these remarks I make abstraction from the larger question which wholly absorbs this—­namely, whether the masses for whose behoof the lavish expenditure of time, energy, and ingenuity is undertaken, will accept a coalition of victorious governments against unregenerate peoples as a substitute for the Society of Nations as at first conceived.”