Marx's well-worn dictum that the capitalist will sell you the rope you use to hang him with. - Arthur Herman

There was Wilson's overweening spiritual arrogance, which Nicolson saw as part of the president's Presbyterian inheritance. There was Wilson's thin-skinned response to the slightest criticism or opposition, but above all, there was, as Wilson himself admitted, the American president's "one-track mind."

In Wilson's mind, the signing represented the defeat not simply of Germany but of an entire way of organizing the world. Balance of power, armed alliances, secret treaties, "might makes right" — all these assumptions would now be thrown out.

The German delegation, led by a clutch of Social Democratic politicians, arrived in Paris in early May. They expected to be treated, especially by Wilson, as a fellow democratic nation, there to negotiate a final equitable peace. Instead, to their shock and humiliation, they were received as a beaten adversary to be punished and reduced to impotence, while Wilson sat mutely by, doing nothing.