ABSTRACT
There has been an important change. Before the war the area of people's interest lay in the Americas, the Pacific, and eastern Asia. The United States was in contact with European diplomacy whenever that diplomacy affected those regions of the globe. Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points and his other principles were a vague attempt to define that part. But they did not operate at any significant point, and in the actualities of Europe they are only a memory and a catch cry. A nation, determined to participate but undetermined as to what it wants, is gullibility itself. Its role will be that of reinforcement for the Powers which can most effectively secure the attention of its representative. And the experience of Paris shows that the high motive of not wanting anything in particular easily degenerates into the complacency of not wanting anything very much.
