to approve and ratify the new league.  Truly it was a genial conception worthy of a broad-minded statesman.  It aimed at a durable peace based on what he considered a fair settlement of claims satisfactory to all, and it would have lightened the burden of the Big Four.  But whether it could have been realized by peoples moved by turbid passions and represented by trustees, some of whom were avowedly afraid to relinquish claims which they knew to be exorbitant, may well be doubted.

But the issue was never put to the test.  The two statesmen failed to agree on the Cabinet question; M. Jonescu kept aloof from office, and the post of second delegate fell to Rumania’s greatest diplomatist and philologist, M. Mishu, who had for years admirably represented his country as Minister in the British capital.  From the outset M. Bratiano’s position was unenviable, because he based his country’s case on the claims of the secret treaty, and to Mr. Wilson every secret treaty which he could effectually veto was anathema.  Between the two men, in lieu of a bond of union, there was only a strong force of mutual repulsion, which kept them permanently apart.  They moved on different planes, spoke different languages, and Rumania, in the person of her delegates, was treated like Cinderella by her stepmother.  The Council of Three kept them systematically in the dark about matters which it concerned them to know, negotiated over their heads, transmitted to Bucharest injunctions which only they were competent to receive, insisted on their compromising to accept future decrees of the Conference without an inkling as to their nature, and on their admitting the right of an alien institution—­the League of Nations—­to intervene in favor of minorities against the legally constituted government of the country.  M. Bratiano, who in a trenchant speech inveighed against these claims of the Great Powers to take the governance of Europe into their own hands, withdrew from the Conference and laid his resignation in the hands of the King.

One of the most remarkable debaters in this singular parliament, where self-satisfied ignorance and dullness of apprehension were so hard to pierce, was the youthful envoy of the Czechoslovaks, M. Benes.  This politician, who before the Conference came to an end was offered the honorable task of forming a new Cabinet, which he wisely declined, displayed a masterly grasp of Continental politics and a rare gift of identifying his country’s aspirations with the postulates of a settled peace.  A systematic thinker, he made a point of understanding his case at the outset.  He would begin his expose by detaching himself from all national interests and starting from general assumptions recognized by the Olympians, and would lead his hearers by easy stages to the conclusions which he wished them to draw from their own premises.  And two of them, who had no great sympathy with his thesis, assured me that they could detect no logical flaw in his argument.  Moderation and sincerity were the virtues which he was most eager to exhibit, and they were unquestionably the best trump cards he could play.  Not only had he a firm grasp of facts and arguments, but he displayed a sense of measure and open-mindedness which enabled him to implant his views on the minds of his hearers.