His Imperial Majesty had fied without observing the formality of presenting his sword. In Trafalgar Square the crowd surged like a rising tide and sang God Save the King. Through the thin light of a cathedral he Archbishop rendered up his solmen thanks and hoped that the day of the plowshare had returned forever. Peace on earth had come at last and democracy ruled in a world made safe.

In the awful calm which followed hard upon the sound of war the nations met at Paris to preserve forever the peace which four years of strife had taught them to cherish and to bring among the people of the earth a new harmony. One man, above the others, sought alone to rekindle those lights which Lord Grey had seen going out all over Europe in the dread spring of 1914. He was an honest, earnest man who by his teachings and his phrases had taught men to believe that they could rule themselves and that nations could lie down together.

The doctrines of Utopia he brought to Paris and he set them against the worldly knowledge of ancient Europe. Because he saw a vision he felt the people could not perish. In this spirit he sought to make a peace with the aid of a politician who had received his mandate from the people on the platform of "Hang the Kaiser" and a statesman called the "Tiger." Before the bitterness and diplomacy of these men the dream shriveled, concession followed concession, the concert of the nations lapsed into dissonance, and the dreamer returned to the repudiation of his own people. It was a dreary peace. Perhaps the gayest note was at the signing when for the first time in five years the fountains played at Versailles.

It is perhaps as well that the man who strove so hard to set the nations free now lies dead. Democracy has fied the chancelleries of Europe, and the cloud of war is rising over the horizon. The very things which President Wilson in his sincerity attempted to abolish have sprung from the Treaty he killed himself to make.

Today at nine in the New Lecture Hall Professor Baxter will talk about the Peace of Versailles, revealing its inadequacies and explaining how it came to be. Those who would seek to understand the world today would do well to hear him.