There was the greatest
desire to accommodate. He sought always for a formula that would
satisfy the claims of all.
A man so ready to compromise is actuated by no guiding principle.
Mr. Scott, the editor of the "Manchester Guardian", said when
President Wilson was in England; "Yes, Lloyd George is honestly for
the League of Nations. But that won't prevent him from doing things
at Paris which will be utterly inconsistent with the principle of
such a league. It isn't intellectual dishonesty; but Lloyd George
hasn't a logical mind. He doesn't understand the implications of
his own position."
Neither did Colonel House at Paris. The League of Nations was an
emotion with him, not a principle. It was a tremendous emotion. He
spoke of it in a voice that almost broke. I remember his glowing
eyes and the little catch in his throat as he said, at Paris, "The
politicians don't like the League of Nations. And if they really
knew what it would do to them, they would like it still less."
But, for all that naive faith in the wonders it would do, Colonel
House had not thought out the League of Nations, and was quite
incapable of thinking it out, for he is not a man of analytical
mind; and what mental power he had was inhibited by the glow of his
feelings. His temperature was above the thinking point. Thus, like
Mr. Lloyd George, he could make compromises that played ducks and
drakes with his general position, since he had no real
understanding of the League, which was not an intellectual
conviction with him, arduously arrived at, but which possessed his
soul as by an act of grace, like an old-fashioned religious
conversion.
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