recall that when I had the pleasure of a conference with your committee and with the Committee of the House of Representatives on Foreign Affairs at the White House in March last the questions now most frequently asked about the League of Nations were all canvassed with a view to their immediate clarification. The Covenant of the League was then in its first draft and subject to revision. It was pointed out that no express recognition was given to the Monroe Doctrine; that it was not expressly provided that the League should have no authority to act or to express a judgment on matters of domestic policy; that the right to withdraw from the League was not expressly recognized; and that the constitutional right of the Congress to determine all questions of peace and war was not sufficiently safeguarded. On my return to Paris all these matters were taken up again by the Commission on the League of Nations and every suggestion of the United States was accepted.

The views of the United States with regard to the questions I have mentioned had, in fact, already been accepted by the Commission and there was supposed to be nothing inconsistent with them in the draft of the Covenant first adopted-the draft which was the subject of our discussion in March-but no objection was made to saying explicitly in the text what all had supposed to be implicit in it. There was absolutely no doubt as to the meaning of any one of the resulting provisions of the Covenant in the minds of those who participated in drafting them, and I respectfully submit that there is nothing vague or doubtful in their wording.

The Monroe Doctrine is expressly mentioned as an understanding which is in no way to be impaired or interfered with by anything contained in the Covenant and the expression "regional understandings like the Monroe Doctrine” was used, not because any one of the conferees thought there was any comparable agreement anywhere else in existence or in contemplation, but only because it was thought best to avoid the appearance of dealing in such a document with the policy of a single nation. Absolutely nothing is concealed in the phrase.

With regard to domestic questions Article 16 of the Covenant expressly provides that, if in case of any dispute arising between members of the League the matter involved is claimed by one of the parties "and is found by the Council to arise out of a matter which by international law is solely within the domestic juris

diction of that party, the Council shall so report, and shall make no recommendation as to its settlement." The United States was by no means the only Government interested in the explicit adoption of this provision, and there is no doubt in the mind of any authoritative student of international law that such matters as immigration, tariffs, and naturalization are incontestably domestic questions with which no international body could deal without express authority to do so. No enumeration of domestic questions was undertaken, because to undertake it, even by sample, would have involved the danger of seeming to exclude those not mentioned.

The right of any sovereign State to withdraw had been taken for granted, but no objection was made to making it explicit. Indeed, so soon as the views expressed at the White House conference were laid before the Commission it was at once conceded that it was best not to leave the answer to so important a question to inference. No proposal was made to set up any tribunal to pass judgment upon the question whether a withdrawing nation had in fact fulfilled "all its international obligations and all its obligations under the Covenant." It was recognized that that question must be left to be resolved by the conscience of the nation proposing to withdraw; and I must say that it did not seem to me worth while to propose that the article be made more explicit, because I knew that the United States would never itself propose to withdraw from the League if its conscience was not entirely clear as to the fulfilment of all its international obligations. It has never failed to fulfil them and never will.

Article 10 is in no respect of doubtful meaning when read in the light of the Covenant as a whole. The Council of the League can only "advise upon" the means by which the obligations of that great article are to be given effect to. Unless the United States is a party to the policy or action in question, her own affirmative vote in the Council is necessary before any advice can be given, for a unanimous vote of the Council is required. If she is a party, the trouble is hers anyhow. And the unanimous vote of the Council is only advice in any case. Each Government is free to reject it if it pleases. Nothing could have been made more clear to the conference than the right of our Congress under our Constitution to exercise its independent judgment in all matters of peace and war. No attempt was made to question or limit that right. The United States will, indeed, undertake under

Article 10 to "respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League," and that engagement constitutes a very grave and solemn moral obligation. But it is a moral, not a legal, obligation, and leaves our Congress absolutely free to put its own interpretation upon it in all cases that call for action. It is binding in conscience only, not in law.

Article 10 seems to me to constitute the very backbone of the whole Covenant. Without it the League would be hardly more than an influential debating society.

It has several times been suggested, in public debate and in private conference, that interpretations of the sense in which the United States accepts the engagements of the Covenant should be embodied in the instrument of ratification. There can be no reasonable objection to such interpretations accompanying the act of ratification provided they do not form a part of the formal ratification itself. Most of the interpretations which have been suggested to me embody what seems to me the plain meaning of the instrument itself. But if such interpretations should constitute a part of the formal resolution of ratification, long delays would be the inevitable consequence, inasmuch as all the many governments concerned would have to accept, in effect, the language of the Senate as the language of the treaty before ratification would be complete. The assent of the German Assembly at Weimar would have to be obtained, among the rest, and I must frankly say that I could only with the greatest reluctance approach that assembly for permission to read the treaty as we understand it and as those who framed it quite certainly understood it. If the United States were to qualify the document in any way, moreover, I am confident from what I know of the many conferences and debates which accompanied the formulation of the treaty that our example would immediately be followed in many quarters, in some instances with very serious reservations, and that the meaning and operative force of the treaty would presently be clouded from one end of its clauses to the other. 7

The only other outstanding feature of the hearings which space will permit us to notice, was the testimony of William C. Bullitt regarding the alleged views of Secretary Lansing on the treaty. Mr. Bullitt was an employe of the State 7 Sen. Doc. 106, 66th Cong., 1st sess., p. 500.

Department, attached to the Peace Conference, who resigned in May, 1919, after he had learned the terms of the proposed Treaty of Peace with Germany. At the end of his testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations on September 12, 1919, Mr. Bullitt read from a memorandum of a conversation with the Secretary of State at Paris on May 19, 1919, as follows:

Mr. Lansing then said that he, too, considered many parts of the treaty thoroughly bad, particularly those dealing with Shantung and the League of Nations. He said: "I consider that the League of Nations at present is entirely useless. The great powers have simply gone ahead and arranged the world to suit themselves. England and France particularly have gotten out of the treaty everything that they wanted, and the League of Nations can do nothing to alter any of the unjust clauses of the treaty except by unanimous consent of the members of the League, and the great powers will never give their consent to changes in the interests of weaker peoples."

We then talked about the possibility of ratification by the Senate. Mr. Lansing said: "I believe that if the Senate could only understand what this treaty means, and if the American people could really understand, it would unquestionably be defeated."8

PRESIDENT WILSON'S ENDEAVORS TO OBTAIN

UNCONDITIONAL RATIFICATION

Debate in the Senate continued while the treaty was under consideration by the Committee on Foreign Relations. It increased in volume and diversity until the Senators became divided into three groups. A small number of Senators absolutely opposed the ratification of the treaty in any form, and because of their insistent opposition they became known as the "irreconcilables." A larger group supported the President's demand that the treaty be ratified as signed, but later indicated their willingness to accept reservations of an "interpretative character." The third group was made up of

8 Ibid., p. 1276.

Senators who favored the ratification of the treaty on condition that it contain reservations safeguarding what they believed to be the substantial rights and interests of the United States. This group itself did not remain compact, but developed a schism of so-called "mild reservationists" who favored a larger participation of the United States in world affairs and therefore a minimum of reservations, as against the more restricted participation and maximum program of reservations advocated by the main group of reservationists.

As the debate progressed in the Senate and individual Senators expressed their views, it became apparent that the treaty could not obtain the necessary votes for ratification even with "interpretative reservations." President Wilson endeavored to save the situation by personal conferences at the White House with mild reservation Senators; but the serious probability that the Senate would not fully approve his work at Paris forced him to play what he evidently relied upon as his strongest hand, namely, a direct appeal to the people to support the treaty and to bring sufficient pressure to bear upon the opposing Senators to obtain its ratification in form acceptable to him. Accordingly the President undertook to accomplish this purpose in a speech-making tour of the West. He began at Columbus, Ohio, on September 4, 1919, visiting in rapid succession Indianapolis, St. Louis, Kansas City, Des Moines, Omaha, Sioux Falls, St. Paul, Minneapolis, Bismarck and Mandan, N. D., Billings and Helena, Montana; Cœur d'Alene, Idaho; Spokane, Tacoma, Portland, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Reno, Ogden, Salt Lake City, Cheyenne; Denver and Pueblo, Colorado. In his speeches he expounded what he considered to be the real meaning of the Covenant, dwelt upon features of the treaty whose merits he said had been overlooked by its opponents and lukewarm friends and deplored the attempts to amend or accept it with reservations. At the last-named city the trip was brought to an abrupt end on September 25 by the serious breakdown of the President, which forced him immediately to return to Washington, where