Page:A Short History of the World.djvu/420

400 A Short History of The World reversal of that scene, in the same Hall of Mirrors, was over- powering. Whatever generosities had appeared in the opening phases of the Great War had long been exhausted. The populations of the victorious countries were acutely aware of their own losses and sufferings, and entirely regardless of the fact that the defeated had paid in the like manner. The war had arisen as a natural and inevitable consequence of the competitive nationalisms of Europe and the absence of any Federal adjustment of these competitive forces ; war is the necessary logical consummation of independent sovereign nationalities living in too small an area with too powerful an armament ; and if the great war had not come in the -form it did it would have come in some similar form — ^just as it will certainly return upon a still more disastrous scale in twenty or thirty years' time if no political unification anticipates and prevents it. States organized for war will make wars as sufely as hens will lay eggs, but the feeling of these distressed and war-worn countries disregarded this fact, and the whole of the defeated peoples were treated as morally and materially responsible for all the damage, as they would no doubt have treated the victor peoples had the issue of war been different. The French and English thought the Germans were to blame, the Germans thought the Russians, French and English were to blame, and only an intelligent minority thought that there was anything to blame in the fragmentary political constitution of Europe. The treaty of Versailles was intended to be exemplary and vindictive ; it provided tremendous penalties for the vanquished ; it sought to provide compensations for the wounded and suffering victors by imposing enormous debts upon nations already bank- rupt, and its attempts to reconstitute international relations by the establishment of a League of Nations against war, were manifestly insincere and inadequate. So far as Europe was concerned it is doubtful if there woiild have been any attempt whatever to organize international relations for a permanent peace. The proposal of the League of Nations was brought into practical poKtics by the president of the United States ol America, President Wilson. Its chief support was in America. So far the United States, this new modern state, had developed no distinctive ideas of international relationship beyond the Monroe doctrine, which protected the new world from European interference. Now suddenly it was called upon for its mental con-