Among the peculiar traits of this evanescent epoch may be mentioned inaccessibility to the teaching of facts which run counter to cherished prejudices, aims, and interests.  People draw from facts which they cannot dispute only the inferences which they desire.  An amusing instance of this occurred in Paris, where a Syndicalist organ[36] published an interesting and on the whole truthful account of the chaotic confusion, misery, and discontent prevailing in Russia and of the brutal violence and foxy wiles of Lenin.  The dreary picture included the cost of living; the disorganization of transports; the terrible mortality caused by the after-effects of the war; the crowding of prisons, theaters, cinemas, and dancing-saloons; the eagerness of employers to keep their war prisoners employed while thousands of demobilized soldiers were roaming about the cities and villages vainly looking for work; the absence of personal liberty; the numerous arrests, and the relative popularity withal of the Dictator.  This popularity, it was explained, the press contributed to keep alive, especially since the abortive attempt made on his life, when the journals declared that he was indispensable for the time being to his country.

He himself was described as a hard despot, ruthless as a tiger who strikes his fellow-workers numb and dumb with fear.  “But he is under no illusions as to the real sentiments of the members of the Soviet who back him, nor does he deign to conceal those which he entertains toward them....  Whenever Lenin himself is concerned justice is expeditious.  Some men will be delivered from prison after many years of preventive confinement without having been brought to trial, others who fired on Kerensky will be kept untried for an indefinite period, whereas the brave Russian patriot who aimed his revolver at Lenin, and whom the French press so justly applauded, had only three weeks to wait for his condemnation to death.”

This article appearing in a Syndicalist organ seemed an event.  Some journals summarized and commented it approvingly, until it was discovered to be a skit on the transient conditions in France, whereupon the “admirable expose based upon convincing evidence” and the “forcible arguments” became worthless.[37]

An object-lesson in the difficulty of legislating in Anglo-Saxon fashion for foreign countries and comprehending their psychology was furnished by two political trials which, taking place in Paris during the Conference, enabled the delegates to estimate the distance that separates the Anglo-Saxon from the Continental mode of thought and action in such a fundamental problem as the administration of justice.  Raoul Villain, the murderer of Jean Jaures—­France’s most eminent statesman—­was kept in prison for nearly five years without a trial.  He had assassinated his victim in cold blood.  He had confessed and justified the act.  The eye-witnesses all agreed as to the facts.  Before the court, however, a long procession of ministers of state, politicians, historians, and professors defiled, narrating in detail the life-story, opinions, and strivings of the victim, who, in the eyes of a stranger, unacquainted with its methods, might have seemed to be the real culprit.  The jury acquitted the prisoner.