Under the title of "Politician and Prophet," Mr. Wail, one of the younger radical publishers, printed an article in the New York Republic about President Wilson, declaring that Mr. Wilson is the victim of his weak will power, which dominates his intellect and sincerity of purpose.

The radical publisher admits that Mr. Wilson returns to America not as a victor, nor in any case as a prophet a new world, but as a man who made too many compromises, in exchange for being recognized as a great statesman. Mr. Weil also states that Wilson started like a great prophet, being very sincere in his teachings of democracy, justice and peace among nations. In Paris, when Wilson became a partner to a peace which no liberal American would have signed, it because apparent that three things were responsible 2for his acquiescence. First, Mr. Wilson's abstract foreign-affair thinking; second, his inexperience in the methods of old European diplomacy; third, his weal will. Wilson's intellect is much stronger than his will power. Several times he attempted to rebel against the European diplomats and their methods, but each time the Paris diplomats succeeded in stopping him, causing him to make new compromises. This was the case when President Wilson commanded the ship "George Washington" to proceed to Brest; so it was with the "Peuma" affair, and so it was apparently with many other incidents of which we here know very little. In the end, Mr. Wilson agreed to accept a peace against which he himself had fought for many a long year.

In other words, the prophet, the apostle of peace among nations and of international justice, was conquered by the politician. His greatness consisted of the admiration bestowed upon him as a prophet of a new era, not as 3a great politician. It is naturally understood that returning as he did from Paris as a politician instead of as a prophet, he becomes a figure the world does not so strongly admire; to whom world history makes great and earnest pleas.

These arguments of Mr. Weil's appear at first glance very logical, but when examined from their very foundation, we find that they suffer from the same abstraction and same foreign-affair philosophy which Mr. Weil attributes to President Wilson. We admit, naturally, that the peace which is now being agreed upon in Paris, is not Wilsonian. We also admit that the President has lost much prestige because of it, but the problem remains: Would it have been better for mankind had he rebelled and resigned from the Paris negotiations when he could do nothing with the Paris diplomats? It is very doubtful whether such a gesture would have been better for 4humanity. For America and its present order of things, it would have been a death-blow. Primarily, in Paris President Wilson, is a representative of America and not of angels. If he should resign, leaving Europe to its own fate, the Allies would not fight for America. Being unfriendly means, in this case, being enemies. How could he explain such politics to the American people, a political situation which makes Europe a foe of America?

In daily life we often experience the case of one partner being the first victim of the others when he withdraws from the business against their will. These partners all united against the one quitting in competition and hatred until he is ruined. What is true in the life of the individual is also true in the life of a people or of a nation. It is tragic enough that America was unable to implant her peace ideals at the Paris conference, but it is more unendingly tragic that after so many sacrifices in goods and blood, she 5should become the object of hatred of a bastardized European mankind.

President Wilson faced the alternative of either to agree on peace rights and thereby claim the friendship of part of Europe for America, or to make all Europe our enemy and permit her to establish peace at our expense. In other words, according to the international situation, as Wilson found it, peace could have been agreed upon either at our expense or that of Germany. It is naturally understood that President Wilson, representing America, was in spite of his idealism duty bound to sign for peace not at our expense but at the expense of Germany.

And credit may be give to President Wilson, not because he signed for Anti-German freedom, which at best is an old-fashioned peace, but 6because until lately he advocated disarmament, a policy which any normal-thinking person who knows Europe well, would discard as impossible of realization. President Wilson could have deducted all this from the disarmament question. A deep abyss lay between him and European diplomacy. With the first draft of disarmament, he could have already discerned that European diplomats were not concerned with American political idealism. Besides,Mr. Wilson, on his first trip to Paris, knew already the kind of diplomats he was going to deal with and the kind of politics that would follow. It is absolutely false to assert that Paris has corrupted Mr. Wilson. It seems to us that he sailed to Paris not to save mankind, as many believe, but to save America. In this he was successful to some extent at the cost of all his Fourteen Points. Now the question is whether this peace, which is entirely medieval in its motives, will endure. Some-how one cannot believe that thirty-five million Frenchmen should succeed in 7ruling for any length of time eighty million Germans. But let us hope for the best.