It was the human spirit itself that failed at Paris. It is no
use passing judgments and making scapegoats of this or that
individual statesman or group of statesmen. Idealists make a
great mistake in not facing the real facts sincerely and
resolutely. They believe in the power of the spirit, in the
goodness which is at the heart of things, in the triumph which is
in store for the great moral ideals of the race. But this great
faith only too often leads to an optimism which is sadly and
fatally at variance with actual results. It is the realist and
not the idealist who is generally justified by events. We forget
that the human spirit, the spirit of goodness and truth in the
world, is still only an infant crying in the night, and that the
struggle with darkness is as yet mostly an unequal
struggle. . . . Paris proved this terrible truth once more. It
was not Wilson who failed there, but humanity itself. It was not
the statesmen that failed, so much as the spirit of the peoples
behind them.
— Rt. Hon. Jan Christiaan Smuts
World peace
