4]"/> he who aspires to lead a democracy must take account; that the Peace of Versailles was the best momentary settlement which the demands of the mob and the characters of the chief actors conjoined to permit; and for the life of Europe, that he has spent his skill and strength for two years in avoiding or moderating the dangers.

Such claims would be partly true and cannot be brushed away. The private history of the Peace Conference, as it has been disclosed by French and American participators, displays Mr. Lloyd George in a partly favorable light, generally striving against the excesses of the Treaty and doing what he could, short of risking a personal defeat. The public history of the two years which have followed it exhibit him as protecting Europe from as many of the evil consequences of his own Treaty, as it lay in his power to prevent, with a craft few could have bettered, preserving the peace, though not the prosperity, of Europe, seldom expressing the truth, yet often acting under its influence. He would claim, therefore, that by devious paths, a faithful servant of the possible, he was serving Man.

He may judge rightly that this is the best of which a democracy is capable,—to be jockeyed, humbugged, cajoled along the right road. A preference for truth or for sincerity as a method may be a prejudice based on some esthetic or personal standard, inconsistent, in politics, with practical good.

We cannot yet tell. Even the public learns by experience. Will the charm work still, when the stock of statesmenʼs credibility, accumulated before these times, is getting exhausted?

In any event, private individuals are not under the same obligation as Cabinet Ministers to sacrifice veracity to the public weal. It is a permitted self–indulgence for a private person to speak and write freely. Perhaps it may even contribute one ingredient to the congeries of things which the wands of statesmen cause to work together, so marvelously, for our ultimate good.

For these reasons I do not admit error in having based The Economic Consequences of the Peace on a literal interpretation of the Treaty of Versailles, or in having examined the results of actually carrying it out. I argued that much of it was impossible; but I do not agree with many critics, who held that, for this very reason, it was also harmless. Inside opinion accepted from the beginning many of my main conclusions about the Treaty.[1] But it was not therefore unimportant that outside opinion should accept them also.

For there are, in the present times, two opinions; not, as in former ages, the true and the false, but the outside and the inside; the opinion of the public voiced by the politicians and the newspapers, and the opinion of the politicians, the journalists and the civil servants, upstairs and backstairs and behind–stairs, expressed in limited circles. In time of war it became a patriotic duty that the two opinions should be as different as possible; and some seem to think it so still.

This is not entirely new. But there has been a change. Some say that Mr. Gladstone was a hypocrite; yet if so, he dropped no mask in private life. The high tragedians, who once ranted in the Parliaments of the world, continued it at supper afterwards. But appearances can no longer be kept up behind the scenes. The paint of public life, if it is ruddy enough to cross the flaring footlights of to–day, cannot be worn in private,—which makes a great difference to the psychology of the actors themselves. The multitude which lives in the auditorium of the world needs something larger than life and plainer than the truth. Sound itself travels too slowly in this vast theater, and a true word no