To Woodrow Wilson, the apparent failure, belongs the undying honor, which will grow with the growing centuries, of having saved the "little child that shall lead them yet." No other statesman but Wilson could have done it. And he did it.

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.

When in doubt, do the courageous things

A man is not defeated by his opponents but by himself.

The World Bank, as you may very well know, is frequently a very controversial agency. We're seen as the bearers of goods and support, but we're also sometimes being put in a corner of institutions that perhaps carry more power than it should and perhaps sometimes even refused from asking or recommending governments and agencies to take measures that are not always seen as being fair or bringing the greatest advantage to the countries we're dealing with.

The World Bank is putting more emphasis on reaching out not just to governments and officials in the countries we are working in, but also to civil societies.