One of those leaders, in conversation with several other delegates and myself, exclaimed one day:  “The League of Nations indeed!  It is an absurdity.  Who among thinking men believes in its reality?” “I do,” answered his neighbor; “but, like the devils, I believe and tremble.  I hold that it is a corrosive poison which destroys much that is good and will further much that is bad.”  A statesman who was not a delegate demurred.  “In my opinion,” he said, “it is a response to a demand put forward by the peoples of the globe, and because of this origin something good will ultimately come of it.  Unquestionably it is very defective, but in time it may be—­nay, must be—­changed for the better.”  The first speaker replied:  “If you imagine that the League will help continental peoples, you are, I am convinced, mistaken.  It took the United States three years to go to the help of Britain and France.  How long do you suppose it will take her to mobilize and despatch troops to succor Poland, Rumania, or Czechoslovakia?  I am acquainted with British colonial public opinion and sentiment—­too often misunderstood by foreigners—­and I can tell you that they are misconstrued by those who fancy that they would determine action of that kind.  If England tells the colonies that she needs their help, they will come, because their people are flesh of her flesh and blood of her blood, and also because they depend for their defense upon her navy, and if she were to go under they would go under, too.  But the continental nations have no such claims upon the British colonies, which would not be in a hurry to make sacrifices in order to satisfy their appetites or their passions.”

The second speaker then said:  “It is possible, but nowise certain, that the future League may help to settle these disputes which professional diplomatists would have arranged, and in the old way, but it will not affect those others which are the real causes of wars.  If a nation believes it can further its vital interest by breaking the peace, the League cannot stop it.  How could it?  It lacks the means.  There will be no army ready.  It would have to create one.  Even now, when such an army, powerful and victorious, is in the field, the League—­for the Supreme Council is that and more—­cannot get its orders obeyed.  How then will its behest be treated when it has no troops at its beck and call?  It is redrawing the map of central and eastern Europe, and is very satisfied with its work.  But, as we know, the peoples of those countries look upon its map as a sheet of paper covered with lines and blotches of color to which no reality corresponds.”

The constitution of the League was termed by Mr. Wilson a Covenant, a word redolent of biblical and puritanical times, which accorded well with the motives that decided him to prefer Geneva to Brussels as the seat of the League, and to adopt other measures of a supposed political character.  The first draft of this document was, as we saw, completed in the incredibly short space of some thirty hours, so as to enable the President to take it with him to Washington.  As the Ententophil Echo de Paris remarked, “By a fixed date the merchandise has to be consigned on board the George Washington."[359]