temperament became dangerous. Having decided that some concessions were
unavoidable, he might have sought by firmness and address and the use of
the financial power of the United States to secure as much as he could
of the substance, even at some sacrifice of the letter. But the
President was not capable of so clear an understanding with himself as
this implied. He was too conscientious. Although compromises were now
necessary, he remained a man of principle and the Fourteen Points a
contract absolutely binding upon him. He would do nothing that was not
honorable; he would do nothing that was not just and right; he would do
nothing that was contrary to his great profession of faith. Thus,
without any abatement of the verbal inspiration of the Fourteen Points,
they became a document for gloss and interpretation and for all the
intellectual apparatus of self-deception, by which, I daresay, the
President's forefathers had persuaded themselves that the course they
thought it necessary to take was consistent with every syllable of the
Pentateuch.

The President's attitude to his colleagues had now become: I want to
meet you so far as I can; I see your difficulties and I should like to
be able to agree to what you propose; but I can do nothing that is not
just and right, and you must first of all show me that what you want
does really fall within the words of the pronouncements which are
binding on me. Then began the weaving of that web of sophistry and
Jesuitical exegesis that was finally to clothe with insincerity the
language and substance of the whole Treaty. The word was issued to the
witches of all Paris:

Fair is foul, and foul is fair,
Hover through the fog and filthy air.