what Germany was compelled to drop, the inequality of strength between
the two rivals for European hegemony might be remedied for many
generations.

Hence sprang those cumulative provisions for the destruction of highly
organized economic life which we shall examine in the next chapter.

This is the policy of an old man, whose most vivid impressions and most
lively imagination are of the past and not of the future. He sees the
issue in terms, of France and Germany not of humanity and of European
civilization struggling forwards to a new order. The war has bitten into
his consciousness somewhat differently from ours, and he neither expects
nor hopes that we are at the threshold of a new age.

It happens, however, that it is not only an ideal question that is at
issue. My purpose in this book is to show that the Carthaginian Peace is
not _practically_ right or possible. Although the school of thought from
which it springs is aware of the economic factor, it overlooks,
nevertheless, the deeper economic tendencies which are to govern the
future. The clock cannot be set back. You cannot restore Central Europe
to 1870 without setting up such strains in the European structure and
letting loose such human and spiritual forces as, pushing beyond
frontiers and races, will overwhelm not only you and your "guarantees,"
but your institutions, and the existing order of your Society.

By what legerdemain was this policy substituted for the Fourteen Points,
and how did the President come to accept it? The answer to these
questions is difficult and depends on elements of character and
psychology and on the subtle influence of surroundings, which are hard
to detect and harder still to describe. But, if ever the action of a