be realized.  It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives.  In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force.  What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered!  What misery it will cause!”

Since the foregoing notes were written the impracticability of the universal or even of the general application of the principle has been fully demonstrated.  Mr. Wilson resurrected “the consent of the governed” regardless of the fact that history denied its value as a practical guide in modern political relations.  He proclaimed it in the phrase “self-determination,” declaring it to be an “imperative principle of action.”  He made it one of the bases of peace.  And yet, in the negotiations at Paris and in the formulation of the foreign policy of the United States, he has by his acts denied the existence of the right other than as the expression of a moral precept, as something to be desired, but generally unattainable in the lives of nations.  In the actual conduct of affairs, in the practical and concrete relations between individuals and governments, it doubtless exercises and should exercise a measure of influence, but it is not a controlling influence.

In the Treaty of Versailles with Germany the readjustment of the German boundaries, by which the sovereignty over millions of persons of German blood was transferred to the new states of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, and the practical cession to the Empire of Japan of the port of Kiao-Chau and control over the economic life of the Province of Shantung are striking examples of the abandonment of the principle.

In the Treaty of Saint-Germain the Austrian Tyrol was ceded to the Kingdom of Italy against the known will of substantially the entire population of that region.

In both the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain Austria was denied the right to form a political union with Germany, and when an article of the German Constitution of August, 1919, contemplating a “reunion” of “German Austria” with the German Empire was objected to by the Supreme Council, then in session at Paris, as in contradiction of the terms of the Treaty with Germany, a protocol was signed on September 22, 1919, by plenipotentiaries of Germany and the five Principal Allied and Associated Powers, declaring the article in the Constitution null and void.  There could hardly be a more open repudiation of the alleged right of “self-determination” than this refusal to permit Austria to unite with Germany however unanimous the wish of the Austrian people for such union.