What was this business about Prinkipo? Lanny told how anxiously Dr. Herron was trying to find out. The English youth said his government hadn't appointed any delegates, so presumably they thought it was going to fizzle. One more of those “trial balloons.” Fessenden's chief had said that the only way it might be made to work would be for President Wilson to drop everything else and go there and put it through. But of course he couldn't do that. “Don't you think perhaps he's a bit too afraid of delegating authority? One man just can't make so many decisions by himself.”
That was the talk all over Paris; three of the peace commissioners were figureheads, and Colonel House had been weakened by an attack of flu. That was no secret, and Lanny admitted it.
“All of us,” said the Englishman, “at least all the younger crowd, were hoping Wilson could put it over. Now we're a bit sick about it.”
Lanny answered cautiously. “One hears so many things, one doesn't know what to believe.”
“But there are definite things that you can be sure of. It seems as if your President just doesn't know enough about Europe; he does things without realizing what they mean. At the outset he agreed to let the Italians have the Brenner! Shouldn't he have asked somebody about that before he spoke? Of course it's important for the defense of Italy, but if you're going to distribute the world on the basis of strategic needs, where will you stop?”
“I don't know much about the Brenner,” admitted Lanny.
“It's a pass inhabited almost entirely by German people; and what is going to happen to them when the Italians take them over? Will they be compelled to send their children to Italian schools, and all that sort of rot?”
Lanny smiled, and said: “Well, you know it wasn't we who signed that treaty with the Italians.”
“True enough,” admitted Fessenden. “But then it wasn't we who brought up those Fourteen Points!”
That was why it was a pleasure to meet the English; you could speak frankly, and they didn't flare up and deliver orations. It was true they wanted the Americans to pull some chestnuts out of the fire for them, but it was also true that they would meet you halfway in an effort to be decent. The best of them had really hoped that the American President was going to bring in a new order and were saddened now as they discovered how ill equipped he was for the tremendous task.