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me, and I began to take my hat off to that "most superior person," George Nathaniel, Earl Curzon.

Lord Curzon gave the Paris proceedings a wide berth. He was even less in evidence than Winston Churchill or Alfred, Lord Milner, the cold-blooded protégé of Joseph Chamberlain, of whom Labouchère was wont to say, "he has no feelings and no failings." Milner is a sort of iceberg carved into the semblance of a human being. Balfour is a bland boa-constrictor, with a deadly, dangerous hug. Curzon is a roaring furnace, sputtering forth sparks against his pet aversions the Japanese and the plain people.

One afternoon at "the House of the Flirt" Mr. Wilson, I am told, broached Pacific problems to Lloyd George. George was very receptive. Quite as if on the spur of the moment, he suggested the concentration of American and British war-ships in the Pacific.

"We can avoid trouble there by forethought," said Lloyd George.

I am not in a position to state what connection there is or is not between this conversation at "the House of the Flirt" and the decree of Daniels sending the American fleet through the canal into Pacific waters. Still, I was told in Paris that Lord Curzon and Admiral Jellicoe, with the indorsement of Winston Churchill, put this idea into the head of Lloyd George. Whether or not the decision was made a matter of record by Sir Maurice Hankey, it is, of course, impossible to say. Lloyd George had his witness. witness.

Mr. Wilson was his own

It was in "the House of the Flirt" that the Monroe Doctrine was made to walk the plank by Woodrow Wilson. The circumstances belong to history.

The President has been compared to many historical personages: to Alexander I of Russia, a smug lunatic, author of the Holy Alliance and the chief contributing cause of the promulgation of Monroe's Doctrine; and to James I, a learned, but bad-tempered, bigot. Curiously enough the gentlemen (and ladies) who spend so much time in digging up from the biographies caricature counterparts of Mr. Wilson have so far failed to note the striking resemblances between the

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salient defects of Monroe and those of Wilson. Adams, and not Monroe, wrote the Monroe Doctrine. Monroe was eager enough to take the credit for our most daring adventure in foreign affairs, after the successful event. The story of American advocacy of a League of Nations suggests a deadly parallel. A century ago, the vengeful spirit of Allied absolutism menaced popular governments, just as Bolshevism menaced all orderly government during the proceedings of the Council of Four. roe's hesitancy, his timorous temperament, the unwillingness with which he was drawn along by the logic of events and the bolder and more experienced hand of his secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, lend piquancy to the fact that the attempted assassination of his doctrine was reserved for the hand of one whom the late Mr. Roosevelt assailed for identically similar weaknesses of character.

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Mr. Wilson propounded the PanAmerican Doctrine. The event was carefully noted in the London foreign office, which does not forget earlier American unwillingness to participate in the Congress of Panama, or to associate Latin-American or European support with the maintenance of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Doctrine was always supposed to be strictly United States policy until Mr. Wilson proposed his Pan-American Doctrine, and later sat in secret conclave with European old masters at "the House of the Flirt.” The United States Senate, backed by overwhelming American opinion, forced Mr. Wilson to put a specific Monroe Doctrine bone in his League of Nations skeleton. The proposition, from any angle, was absurd. To mention the doctrine at all in the body of the covenant was to do the very thing that a long succession of American administrations had flatly refused to do. Sage senators, no wiser than Mr. Wilson, missed the point of the jest. The careful British. who are supposed to lack a sense of humor, caught the funny bone by the knuckle and turned it into the very best joke of the conference.

Mr. Wilson breathed his Monroe Doctrine difficulty into the wide-open ear of Lord Robert Cecil. Lord Robert, long

and loose-jointed, posed his patrician personality in an attitude of deep sympathy. It was necessary to head off opposition within the League of Nations commission, where Léon Bourgeois, Baron Makino, and other delegates were pushing amendments contrary to the Wilson-Cecil concordat.

"Leave that to me, Mr. President," said Lord Robert. The President, very gladly, did that little thing. Lord Robert engineered through the commission a very select drafting committee to mull over contentious motions, including Mr. Wilson's own Monroe Doctrine clause. Later, this committee presented to the full commission of nineteen a small scrap of paper containing the following words:

Nothing in this Covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of international engagements such as treaties of arbitration or regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine for securing the maintenance of peace.

M. Bourgeois asked for the paper. It was handed to him. The whiskered savant of France poised his pince-nez on the tip of his broad nose. He rumpled his hair. He scratched his left cheek. He pulled at his beard. He read aloud the thirty-two words twice over.

"But what does it mean?" he asked smiling Mr. Wilson.

Lord Robert yawned, stretched his six-feet-six, and observed, with the nearest thing to a grin:

"Oddly enough, it means just what it says."

A few days later a communiqué, is

sued privately by the British delegation to the British press, volunteered the following interpretation:

Article XXI makes it clear that the Covenant is not intended to abrogate or weaken any other agreements, so long as they are consistent with its own terms, into which the Members of the League may have entered, or may enter hereafter, for the further assurance of peace. Such agreements include special treaties for compulsory arbitration, and military conventions that are purely defensive. In so far as the Monroe Doctrine tends to the same end, whatever validity it possesses cannot be affected by the Covenant.

The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed in 1813 in order to prevent the extension of European absolutist principles to South America, but while it forbids interference by individual European States in American affairs, it can never be invoked to limit the action of the League of Nations, which is in its nature world-wide, and therefore no more European than American. The principles of the League, as expressed in Article X, are in fact the extension to the whole world of the principles of President Monroe; while. should any dispute as to the meaning of the latter ever arise between American and European Powers, the League is there to settle it.

Who wrote the Monroe Doctrine clause inserted in the League covenant?

Lord Curzon. He drew the clause, Lord Robert Cecil trimmed it, Mr. Balfour inserted an important word.

Mr. Wilson "OK'd" it in "the House of the Flirt."

The Monroe Doctrine was proclaimed in the President's Message to Congress, December 2, 1823.

A Shower

By AMY LOWELL

That sputter of rain, flipping the hedge-rows

And making the highways hiss,

How I love it!

And the touch of you upon my arm

As you press against me that my umbrella

May cover you.

Tinkle of drops on stretched silk.

Wet murmur through green branches

[graphic]

by Charles Hanson Towne

Decoration by John R Neill

When we went to the circus

We had seats by the door,

Where the clowns made their entrance,
And a coach and four.

A shabby old carriage,
Trying to be grand,

Painted up with gold figures,
Painted to beat the band.

In it sat a "princess,"
In cheap, tawdry lace,
A gorgeous wig upon her head,
And powder on her face.

I could see the clowns waiting
For their cues to come in.
How solemn were their faces
In that strange, hellish din!

Great elephants stood near them,
Trained seals, and giraffes.
Together they were waiting
For five thousand laughs.

Together they were waiting
For the signal to begin.
One face haunts me yet,
A boyish harlequin,

With a grave, sad expression
Even beneath that paint;

The deep eyes of a poet,

The thin cheeks of a saint.

Suddenly the band played,
And every one was off;

But somehow, through the rush and roar
I heard a little cough,

And I saw a tiny smile come
Around his lips and eyes.
But to me there was a tragedy
Beneath that pale disguise.

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