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The Inquiry's influence in Paris incalculable in that they are the authors of much of our modern-day one world monolith. The Inquiry representing the first ad hoc, interdisciplinary group of social scientists, setting the stage in Paris for nothing less than what Bateson himself described as, "one of the great sell outs in the history of our civilization".  Bateson describing Wilson as a trusting president who allowed himself to be swept up in the current of progressive idealism. Allowing himself to be persuaded by private scholars and diplomats who were deliberately being used as 'entering wedges' to usurp the presidential advisory authority of the State Department in one of history's most obvious, yet obscure, coup d'états. This reliance on the opinion of the technical, scientific expert leading to a largely apathetic, indifferent public unwilling to think for themselves. And while this may be an eerily accurate description of public opinion today, it is important to know that this phenomenon had its beginnings, not within the more contemporary era of Trump journalism, but over one hundred years ago.

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"The Peace Treaty was not to be a return to the old diplomacy, but the establishment of a new world order." James T. Shotwell, Inquiry member and author of, At the Paris Peace Conference, pg. 13.

"For five years, there has been no free play of public opinion in the world. Confronted by the inexorable necessities of war, governments conscripted public opinion ... They goose-stepped it. They taught it to stand at attention and salute ... It sometimes seems that after the Armistice was signed, millions of Americans must have taken a vow that they would never again do any thinking for themselves. They were willing to die for their country, but not willing to think for it." Frank I. Cobb, editor New York World, excerpt from Liberty and the News, pg. 8.