of the sovereignty of a state than the severance and disposal of its territorial possessions against its will.  It is a frankly hostile act, and as such was rightly limited by the Conference to enemy countries.  Why, then, was it extended to the ex-Ally?  Is it not clear that if reconstituted Russia should regard the Allied states as enemies and choose the potential enemies of these as its friends, it will be legitimately applying the principles laid down by the Allies themselves?  No expert in international law and no person of average common sense will seriously maintain that any of the decisions reached in Paris are binding on the Russia of the future.  No problem which concerns two equal parties can be rightfully decided by only one of them.  The Conference which declared itself incompetent to impose on Holland the cession to Belgium even of a small strip of territory on one of the banks of the Belgian river Scheldt cannot be deemed authorized to sign away vast provinces that belonged to Russia.  Here the plea of the self-determination of peoples possesses just as much or as little cogency as in the case of Ireland and Egypt.

President Wilson and Mr. Lloyd George had inaugurated their East European policy by publicly proclaiming that Russia was the key to the world situation, and that the peace would be no peace so long as her hundred and fifty million inhabitants were left floundering in chaotic confusion, under the upas shade of Bolshevism.  They had also held out hopes to their great ex-ally of efficient help and practical counsel.  And there ended what may be termed the constructive side of their conceptions.

It was followed by no coherent action.  Discourses, promises, maneuvers, and counter-maneuvers were continuous and bewildering, but of systematic policy there was none.  Statesmanship in the higher sense of the word was absent from every decision the delegates took and from every suggestion they proffered.  Nor was it only by omission that they sinned.  Their invincible turn for circuitous methods, to which severer critics give a less sonorous name, was manifested ad nauseam.  They worked out cunning little schemes which it was hard to distinguish from intrigues, and which, if they had not been foiled in time, would have made matters even worse than they are.  From the outset the British government was for summoning Bolshevist delegates to the Conference.  A note to this effect was sent by the London Foreign Office to the Allied governments about a fortnight before the delegates began their work of making peace.  But the suggestion was withdrawn at the instance of the French, who doubted whether the services of systematic lawbreakers would materially conduce to the establishment of a new society of law-abiding states.  Soon afterward another scheme cropped up, this time for the appointment of an Inter-Allied committee to watch over Russia’s destinies and serve as a sort of board of Providence.  The representatives of