the world.

In dealing with all those matters I aimed at impartiality, which is an
unattainable ideal, but I trust that sincerity and detachment have
brought me reasonably close to it. Having no pet theories of my own to
champion, my principal standard of judgment is derived from the law of
causality and the rules of historical criticism.

The fatal tactical mistake chargeable to the Conference lay in its
making the charter of the League of Nations and the treaty of peace with
the Central Powers interdependent. For the maxims that underlie the
former are irreconcilable with those that should determine the latter,
and the efforts to combine them must, among other untoward results,
create a sharp opposition between the vital interests of the people of
the United States and the apparent or transient interests of their
associates. The outcome of this unnatural union will be to damage the
cause of stable peace which it was devised to further.

But the surest touchstone by which to test the capacity and the
achievements of the world-legislators is their attitude toward Russia in
the political domain and toward the labor problem in the economic
sphere. And in neither case does their action or inaction appear to have
been the outcome of statesman-like ideas, or, indeed, of any higher
consideration than that of evading the central issue and transmitting
the problem to the League of Nations. The results are manifest to all.

The continuity of human progress depends at bottom upon labor, and it is
becoming more and more doubtful whether the civilized races of mankind
can be reckoned on to supply it for long on conditions akin to those
which have in various forms prevailed ever since the institutions of