and now all of them honestly strove to save their own countries’ vital interests from its disruptive action while helping to apply it to their neighbors.  Thus Britain, who at that time had no territorial claims to put forward, had her sea-doctrine to uphold, and she upheld it resolutely.  Before he reached Europe the President was notified in plain terms that his theory of the freedom of the seas would neither be entertained nor discussed.  Accordingly, he abandoned it without protest.  It was then explained away as a journalistic misconception.  That was the first toll paid by the American reformer in Europe, and it spelled failure to his entire scheme, which was one and indivisible.  It fell to my lot to record the payment of the tribute and the abandonment of that first of the fourteen commandments.  The mystic thirteen remained.  But soon afterward another went by the board.  Then there were twelve.  And gradually the number dwindled.

This recognition of hard realities was a bitter disappointment to all the friends of the spiritual and social renovation of the world.  It was a spectacle for cynics.  It rendered a frank return to the ancient system unavoidable and brought grist to the mill of the equilibrists.  And yet the conclusion was shriked.  But even the tough realities might have been made to yield a tolerable peace if they had been faced squarely.  If the new conception could not be realized at once, the old one should have been taken back into favor provisionally until broader foundations could be laid, but it must be one thing or the other.  From the political angle of vision at which the European delegates insisted on placing themselves, the Old World way of tackling the various problems was alone admissible.  Their program was coherent and their reasoning strictly logical.  The former included strategic frontiers and territorial equilibrium.  Doubtless this angle of vision was narrow, the survey it allowed was inadequate, and the results attainable ran the risk of being ultimately thrust aside by the indignant peoples.  For the world problem was not wholly nor even mainly political.  Still, the method was intelligible and the ensuing combinations would have hung coherently together.  They would have satisfied all those—­and they were many—­who believed that the second decade of the twentieth century differs in no essential respect from the first and that latter-day world problems may be solved by judicious territorial redistribution.  But even that conception was not consistently acted on.  Deviations were permitted here and insisted upon there, only they were spoken of unctuously as sacrifices incumbent on the lesser states to the Fourteen Points.  For the delegates set great store by their reputation for logic and coherency.  Whatever other charges against the Conference might be tolerated, that of inconsistency was bitterly resented, especially by Mr. Wilson.  For a long while he contended that he was as true to his Fourteen Points as is the needle to the pole.  It was not until after his return to Washington, in the summer, that he admitted the perturbations caused by magnetic currents—­sympathy for France he termed them.