comprehensive enough for such a revolutionary undertaking.  In no case could he make headway without the voluntary co-operation of the nations themselves, who in their own best interests might have submitted to heavy sacrifices, to which their leaders, whom he treated as true exponents of their will, refused their consent.  But he scouted the notion of a world-parliament.  Whenever, therefore, contemplating a particular issue, not as an independent question in itself, but as an integral part of a larger problem, he made a suggestion seemingly tending toward the ultimate goal, his motion encountered resolute opposition in the face of which he frequently retreated.

At the outset, on which so much depended, the peoples as distinguished from the governments appeared to be in general sympathy with his principal aim, and it seemed at the time that if appealed to on a clear issue they would have given him their whole-hearted support, provided always that, true to his own principles, he pressed these to the fullest extent and admitted no such invidious distinctions as privileged and unprivileged nations.  This belief was confirmed by what I heard from men of mark, leaders of the labor people, and three Prime Ministers.  They assured me that such an appeal would have evoked an enthusiastic response in their respective countries.  Convinced that the principles laid down by the President during the last phases of the war would go far to meet the exigencies of the conjuncture, I ventured to write on one of the occasions, when neither party would yield to the other:  “The very least that Mr. Wilson might now do, if the deadlock continues, is to publish to the world the desirable objects which the United States are disinterestedly, if not always wisely, striving for, and leave the judgment to the peoples concerned."[288]

But he recoiled from the venture.  Perhaps it was already too late.  In the judgment of many, his assent to the suppression of the problem of the freedom of the seas, however unavoidable as a tactical expedient, knelled the political world back to the unregenerate days of strategical frontiers, secret alliances, military preparations, financial burdens, and the balance of power.  On that day, his grasp on the banner relaxing, it fell, to be raised, it may be, at some future time by the peoples whom he had aspired to lead.  The contests which he waged after that first defeat had little prospect of success, and soon the pith and marrow of the issue completely disappeared.  The utmost he could still hope for was a paper covenant—–­ which is a different thing from a genuine accord—­to take home with him to Washington.  And this his colleagues did not grudge him.  They were operating with a different cast of mind upon a wholly different set of ideas.  Their aims, which they pursued with no less energy and with greater perseverance than Mr. Wilson displayed, were national.  Some of them implicitly took the ground that Germany, having