A TRAGIC STORY

Evening Post, Volume CV, Issue 107, 7 May 1923, Page 5

A TRAGIC STORY

WHY WILSON FAILED

A HISTORY OF VERSAILLES.

Of all the great men who met at Versailles to write the last chapter of the Btory .of Germany's military defeat^ Woodrow Wilson's was the most drama- 1 tic casualty. As surely as the Unknown Warrior lost his life in the field of war, Woodrow Wilson, laid down his life on the field of peace; but less honour is His. He is politically dead; he returned from Versailles to America with a physique so impaired that the heavy work of fighting a losing battle for the Presidency left him in hospital, from which he emerged wrecked for the rest of his life. The story of his fight at Versailles and his overwhelming defeat there is told in a book by Ray Stannard Baker, discussed in the "English Review." It is not, says the-reviewer, a book the public will care for, because it is a plain, unsensational record; but it is none the less a terrible book. It is, he says, "a revelation of European civilisation which all the fears, greeds, vanities, cruelties, pettishnesses, and stupidities' of the old order clash and culminate in the inevitable conclusion that we have reached the end of a system, an epoch, and of an order. Out of this book the figure of President Wilson emerges clearly and nobly. For the first time we learn how splendidly he fought for a world attitude as against the squalid selfishness of a sports' attitude, what terrific forces were opposed to him how he was beaten down in detail step by step—stabbed in the stomach by the French, and eventually in the back by his own people, who for party reasons were determined to smash him." Wilson failed, the writer thinks, for three reasons. First, he had no definite written programme of peace, and so his fourteen points were knocked down one by one; secondly, he allowed himself to be induced not to use his great power, the people or publicity, and thus lost .his democratic argument; thirdly^ he did not understand the psychology of the politicians of Europe, the depth of the hates, fears, greeds, and cruelties of old Europe, or economics. He trusted, like an inveterate schoolmaster, to his own powers of. auto-suggestion, and almost like a child, to the spirit of honour and. justice. The writer lays much emphasis on the network of secret treaties which the Versailles Conference revealed. At last, says the author of the book, he understood, and" 1 suying that the only real interest of France in Po-. land was to weaken Germany by giving Poland territory to which she had no right, he ordered his steamer to take him home again. General Bliss, one of Wilson's chief advisers, was gravely distressed. "The brilliancy of the military glory which lighted up certain of the Western Powers of Europe," he said, "might in reality not be a sign of health, but only the' hectic flush of'disease which would eventually result in the downfall of the strip of Latin and Anglo, Saxon civilisation along the western coast of Europe." The American author of the book is impressed (and the reviewer with him) by the inherent sinfulness of European statesmanship, expressed in world-poLtics. They write scathingly of Mr. Lloyd George and his advisers. "Our own part in the peace' is _ so pitiable that one hardly likes to refer to it. We spiked the President." The lone spirit of President Wilson will ,go down to posterity, says the reviewer, as the white light of civilisation. His fame will grow. His battle will not have been fought in vain. He has lit a candle which will not go out, as already men are perceiving, as shortly America, too, will understand when France has brought Europe to the brink of ruin. This book of Mr. Baker, while it presents a striking picture of President Wilson, happens also to picture Europe in colours which exactly suit- the "English Review," so that the magazine's eulogy is perhaps due more to enthusiasm than to good judgment. The article concludes that the Treaty of Versailles, must be cast away. "A peace, fully known to be unfulfillable, was forced upon Germany at the point of the bayonet, by men oblivious to their own pledge of military honour, to all precepts of international law, to all economic sense. If we compare the language spoken by the men at Paris with those of Castlereagh and Wellington, we can only come to one conclusion. It is that either civilisation has gone back a thousand years, or that our minds wer« not normal at the time. Arid that probably is the explanation. . We were wardrunk, unable to think intelligently. The way out is "clear. We must face the truth. We must lead—back to honour and to the spirit of our own history.'-