than they did. And then, when the Allied victories of the autumn of 1918 had made Germany's early collapse certain, it was Wilson whose famous Fourteen Points opened to the conquerors and the conquered the prospect of a peace honorable to both and not ruinous to what was left of the civilisation of Europe. The population of Germany believed that the Fourteen Points were an honest offer of terms morally binding on the Allies. In their relief from fear of a peace of savage vengeance they threw off their militarist rulers, conveyed their own will-to-peace to their men in the field, and asked the Allies for an armistice. No words can describe the thrill of enthusiastic delight that passed through our own armies, too, when the Fourteen Points became known to them. Here was peace, it seemed, about to come in the inspiring form at first proclaimed by all as our object and then almost lost to sight during the souring years of indecisive warfare soiled with foul weapons and unknightly spites.

When Wilson came to Europe for the Conference his place in popular imagination and hope throughout Europe was beyond all precedent. If by any miracle he could then have dealt, face to face, with the masses of decent, friendly, and simple people who form the bulk of every nation, a new era of peace and well-being might have opened for the world. But at Versailles he had not peoples to deal with but a few politicians fatally barred by their own past from acceptance of the rule of being just and fearing not. Some had already bound their countries over, by furtive treaties, to carry out bargains that would not square with the Fourteen Points, or indeed with any honorable rules of international conduct. French politicians had, on their country's behalf, gambled so heavily on the wild hope of wringing fantastic sums out of a Germany already half starved that now the alternatives seemed to be French national bankruptcy or the repudiation of the Fourteen Points by which Germany had been persuaded to abridge her resistance. The Prime Minister of England had just won his commission to make the peace by a demagogic appeal to faith in his power of "making Germany pay." In the cool, quiet rooms of Versailles, with all the generous relentments and chivalrous or Christian impulses that were

then stirring in Europe safely outside the shut doors, WILSON had to deal alone with that entangled, sophisticated, and materialist diplomatic world which so many Americans believe to be Europe, the whole of Europe, and nothing but Europe. It beat him. But what could he have done? Thrown up his hand and walked out when first the honorable undertakings of the Fourteen Points were repudiated by the others? But that would have been to throw away the last hopes of his dearest project of all, the League of Nations; the others only paid it lip homage; they did not ardently wish or intend its success; still, they might agree to its formal creation as an equivalent to his acquiescence in the wrongs that they specially desired to commit; and then, the League once established, with America a leader in it and infusing her free and uninfected spirit into it, the world might at last be well on the way to a true democracy of free nations, Wilson gave in. To gain, as he hoped, something splendid for the world, he first agreed to let the peace-making go on in the dark. And then in that darkness he accepted, with the same lofty motive, complicity in the ignoble peace of revenge which has given us the Europe that we see to-day.

It was only after the bitter sacrifice had been consummated and Wilson had signed a peace abhorrent to the principles of right for which he had stood up that the smashing blow came. Out of the wreck of his generous leadership among the Allies nothing was left but the Covenant of the League of Nations. Still, in it were boundless possibilities for beneficent American predominance in the world's councils. And then all of Wilsonism that Europe had not destroyed America threw over when the Senate rejected the Covenant. Perhaps the two most tragically closed of modern political careers before Wilson's were Parnell's and Joseph Chamberlain's. Both presented in full measure the essential tragic spectacle of a powerful personality wholly given to a greater object than personal ambition, and wholly wrecked by a casual passion or a faulty calculation. But in no case has the Lucifer-like fall from great power and brilliant distinction to impotence and decay been set off with so many intensifying circumstances as in the tragedy of Wilson. For his stage was not a country, but the

world; his opportunity was such as, perhaps, the world never before gave to a man, and the completeness of his collapse was made surpassingly poignant by the circumstance that in his eagerness to achieve at least one half of his ideal he had let himself desert the other half, and then lost all. We do not know enough to try to define here the failings in Wilson's equipment which contributed to his calamity. That he was incompletely endowed for his almost superhuman task seems to be the general opinion of those who knew him. But in a terribly soiled political world he was a most honest and highminded leader; at a crisis in human civilisation he was the man who told mankind most truly and clearly the right way and the wrong; and already most of those, at any rate in Europe, who pushed him aside can see now that he knew better than they and was a better man.

THE NATION'S PLEDGE 1

THE Clayton-Bulwer treaty was a convention to define the joint policy of the United States and Great Britain "with reference to any means of communication by ship-canal which may be constructed between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by way of the River San Juan de Nicaragua and either or both the Lakes of Nicaragua or Managua to any port or place on the Pacific Ocean."

This treaty, which was ratified by the Senate May 22, 1850, provided that

The Governments of the United States and Great Britain hereby declare that neither the one nor the other will ever obtain or maintain for itself any exclusive control over said ship-canal; agreeing that neither will ever erect nor maintain any fortifications commanding the same or in the vicinity thereof, or occupy, or fortify, or colonize, or assume or exercise any dominion over Nicaragua, Costa Rica, the Mosquito Coast, or any part of Central America.

If the treaty had stopped there, the United States would have been spared much controversy and vexation; but it did

not stop there. In their anxiety to extend the general principles of this treaty to every possible Isthmian route between the Atlantic and Pacific, and thereby prevent interference on the part of other governments, the American and British diplomatists included in the convention a further provision that:

The Governments of the United States and Great Britain, having not only desired, in entering into this convention, to accomplish a particular object, but also to establish a general principle, they hereby agree to extend their protection, by treaty stipulations, to any other practicable communications, whether by canal or railway, across the Isthmus which connects North and South America, and especially to the interoceanic communications, should the same prove to be practicable, whether by canal or railway, which are now proposed to be established by the way of Tehuantepec or Panama.

This treaty was hailed at the time as a notable victory for American diplomacy. It ended all American misgivings as to the objects of the British policy on the Mosquito Coast, and it was regarded as more favorable to American than to British interests.

The United States was not prepared to build a canal, and it was well satisfied to have any canal that might be built subject to the joint protection of the two English-speaking nations.

After ratification the treaty went to sleep, and for many years neither the United States nor Great Britain manifested further interest in the subject of a trans-Isthmian canal except in an academic way.

Finally de Lesseps appeared upon the scene, and the question became acute again. Hayes, who was then President, declared that any canal ought to be under American control and the line of that canal should be considered "a part of the coastline of the United States." A House committee reported a resolution March 8, 1880, that the United States was entitled to control any Isthmian canal and authorizing the President to terminate any treaty conflicting with that principle. The resolution was called up for the second time March 3, 1881, and failed to pass. Congress thus refused to abrogate the Clayton-Bulwer treaty.

Garfield modified Hayes's coast-line dictum into an assertion that we did not seek "peculiar or commercial privileges in any commercial route." Frelinghuysen, who was Arthur's Secretary of State, undertook to put the Clayton-Bulwer treaty to the test and negotiated a treaty with Nicaragua for the construction of a canal entirely under American control. One of Cleveland's first official acts after he became President in 1885 was to withdraw this treaty from the Senate.

،،

The Spanish-American war made the canal question a vital issue in American politics, and John Hay, then Secretary of State, undertook to bring about a modification of the ClaytonBulwer treaty. The first Hay-Pauncefote treaty was amended by the Senate, much to Secretary Hay's mortification. A new compromise treaty was then negotiated to facilitate the construction of a ship-canal to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by whatever route may be considered expedient," and to "remove any objection which may arise out of the convention of the 19th of April, 1850, commonly known as the Clayton-Bulwer treaty, to the construction of such canal under the auspices of the Government of the United States, without impairing the 'general principle' of neutralization established in Article VIII of that convention."

This treaty, which was received as another brilliant achievement in American diplomacy, provides that

The canal shall be free and open to the vessels of commerce and of war of all nations observing these rules, on terms of entire equality, so that there shall be no discrimination against any such nation, or its citizens or subjects, in respect of the conditions or charges of traffic, or otherwise. Such conditions and charges of traffic shall be just and equitable.

If ever language was clear, this language is clear. If this clause does not mean what it says, it means nothing. Indeed, the whole history of the treaty relations between the United States and Great Britain in respect to an Isthmian canal goes to prove that such a provision, even though it were as clumsily drawn as this provision is plainly drawn, could not mean any