There was the superstition of the mysterious four who, without advice, without use of the vast machinery of expert knowledge that had been called into existence, without consideration of political prejudice, of ancient hates and struggles, carved up countries, made artificial boundaries, and did it with a nicely calculated sense of revenge, hate, self-advantage. This “Big-Four” came in popular minds to be a hydra-headed tyrant—more irresponsible, brutal, and cynical than any czar of Russia or Machiavelli of the Middle Ages.
And it was a creation that left out of consideration facts that were there for everybody to read if they were willing to work. It was a Putois they created. Who was Putois? Read your Anatole France, or if Crainquebille is not at hand, read Joseph Conrad’s review.
The malevolence of those not charged with the conduct of affairs against those so charged grew thicker and thicker as the days went on. Gossip became more and more unrestrained. It was the only refuge of the numbers who had no definite business in the scene but who had come to watch—often with the idea in their minds that they might be able to contribute some definite, salutary, stimulating something, often again with a very definite idea that they might be able to pull down this or that person having some actual inside hold.
There were those who set themselves with calculation to destroy the prestige of the President of the United States; not to destroy it by sound criticism of his point of view, by the presentation of a larger aspect of things than his, but to do it by a calculated meanness of mind. In the general and frightful disorder left by the war, everything begged that men should sink their littleness and show bigness, if there was any in them, or if not leave the scene, in order at least, by their absence, there might be so much less of littleness of mind around. But these men—and women—stayed on. They sat at the tables of the Ritz and smacked their lips over a nasty piece of scandal, born of mischief-making partisans in far distant places; the meanness of the “outs” against the leader of the “ins.” And there were always those to listen and to spread.
In the greatness of the calamity that had overwhelmed the world, it would seem that men should have gone beyond the point not only of this wanton mischief but beyond the point of sneering. A sneer in the face of this vast destruction of mankind was like a sneer at an angry Jehovah. But men everywhere sneered at the attempts at order, at justice. And, curiously enough, it was those who labeled themselves liberal, humane, that sneered most.