They are determined to try out their ideas and are impatient of opposition which seeks to prevent the experiment.

In fact opposition seems sometimes to enhance the virtue of a novelty in the minds of those who propose or advocate its adoption.

Many reformers suffer from this form of vanity.
In the case of the system of mandates its adoption by the Conference and the conferring on the League of Nations the power to issue mandates seemed at least to the more conservative thinkers at Paris a very doubtful venture.

It appeared to possess no peculiar advantages over the old method of transferring and exercising sovereign control either in providing added protection to the inhabitants of territory subject to a mandate or greater certainty of international equality in the matter of commerce and trade, the two principal arguments urged in favor of the proposed system.
If the advocates of the system intended to avoid through its operation the appearance of taking enemy territory as the spoils of war, it was a subterfuge which deceived no one.

It seemed obvious from the very first that the Powers, which under the old practice would have obtained sovereignty over certain conquered territories, would not be denied mandates over those territories.