brought about agreement and modified the worst of the mistakes made.  His conception of things was academic, and he had not realized that there was need to constitute the nations before laying down rules for the League; he trusted that bringing them together with mutual pledges would further most efficiently the cause of peace among the peoples.  On the other hand, there was diffidence, shared by both, between Wilson and Lloyd George, and there was little likelihood of the British Prime Minister’s move checking the course the Conference had taken.

Italy might have done a great work if its representatives had had a clear policy.  But, as M. Tardieu says, they had no share in the effective doings of the Conference, and their activity was almost entirely absorbed in the question of Fiume.  The Conference was a three-sided conversation between Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George, and the latter had hostility and diffidence on each side of him, with Italy—­as earlier stated—­for the most part absent.  Also, it was just then that the divergence between Wilson and the Italian representatives reached its acute stage.  The essential parts of the treaty were decided in April and the beginning of May, on April 22 the question of the right bank of the Rhine, on the 23rd or 24th the agreement about reparations.  Italy was absent, and when the Italian delegates returned to Paris without being asked on May 6, the text of the treaty was complete, in print.  In actual fact, only one person did really effective work and directed the trend of the Conference, and that person was Clemenceau.

The fact that the Conference met in Paris, that everything that was done by the various delegations was known, even foreseen so that it could be opposed, discredited, even destroyed by the Press beforehand—­a thing which annoyed Lloyd George so much that at one time he thought seriously of leaving the Conference—­all this gave an enormous advantage to the French delegation and especially to Clemenceau who directed the Conference’s work.

All his life Clemenceau has been a tremendous destroyer.  For years and years he has done nothing but overthrow Governments with a sort of obstinate ferocity.  He was an old man when he was called to lead the country, but he brought with him all his fighting spirit.  No one detests the Church and detests Socialism more than he; both of these moral forces are equally repulsive to his individualistic spirit.  I do not think there is any man among the politicians I have known who is more individualistic than Clemenceau, who remains to-day the man of the old democracy.  In time of war no one was better fitted than he to lead a fighting Ministry, fighting at home, fighting abroad, with the same feeling, the same passion.  When there was one thing only necessary in order to beat the enemy, never to falter in hatred, never to doubt the sureness of victory, no one came near him, no one could be more determined, no one more bitter.