President Wilson evidently did not at that time doubt his ability to secure the approval of the treaty by the United States, including the Covenant of the League of Nations. His course was warmly defended by Senators of his own party. Some peace societies, notably the League to Enforce Peace, undertook a nation-wide propaganda to develop public sentiment for the league, and the President no doubt felt justified in relying upon the traditionally favorable disposition of the American people and government toward the substitution of peaceful methods for war in the settlement of international disputes. He publicly expressed his confidence in the popular support of his program at home in his speech at New York above referred to, made on the eve of his return to Paris. In opening that address he said:

The first thing I am going to tell the people on the other side of the water is that an overwhelming majority of the American people is in favor of the League of Nations. I know that this is true. I have had unmistakable intimations of it from all parts of the country, and the voice rings true in every case.

This feeling of confidence in the ultimate success of the President's policy was reflected among his advisers and assistants on the American Peace Commission, to which the writer was attached as an assistant technical adviser. The opinion was freely expressed among them that when President Wilson brought back the treaty and the Covenant he would be so overwhelmingly supported by the American people as to make his demand for ratification irresistible.

THE TREATY IN THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

Such was the situation when President Wilson on July 10, 1919, personally submitted the peace treaty with Germany to the Senate with an earnest appeal for its prompt ratification. Under the rules of the Senate, the treaty was referred to the Committee on Foreign Relations. The Committee decided to hold public hearings, which began on July 31, and ended on September 12. During its consideration of the treaty the Committee met on 37 days, sitting sometimes in

4 The President's address on submitting the treaty to the Senate is printed in this JOURNAL for July, 1919, pp. 554 and 576.

the morning and afternoon. In the course of the hearings the Committee had before it Honorable Robert Lansing, Secretary of State and one of the American Peace Commissioners, and several of the technical advisers to the American Peace Commission, including Mr. B. M. Baruch, economic adviser, Mr. Norman H. Davis, financial adviser, and Mr. David Hunter Miller, legal adviser. In addition to these officials who took part in the formulation and drafting of the treaty, the Committee heard a number of private persons interested in particular sections of the treaty, especially those relating to geographical distribution of territories and the self-determination of peoples. The presentation of such subjects was made by American citizens as, under the rules of the Committee, only American citizens could be heard by it..

The proposed transfer of Shantung to Japan was opposed by Mr. Thomas F. F. Millard, who styled himself the unofficial friendly counsellor of China, and Mr. John C. Ferguson, official adviser to the President of China. A statement on this subject was also made by Professor E. T. Williams, technical adviser on Far Eastern affairs to the American Peace Commission.

Objections to the provisions of the treaty in regard to Egypt were presented by Mr. Joseph W. Folk, counsel for the commission appointed by the Legislative Assembly of Egypt to attend the Peace Conference at Paris. The Egyptians desired either a recognition of their independence or that their status be left to the Council of the League of Nations.

The recognition of the independence of Lithuania, Latvia, Esthonia and the Ukraine was requested by representatives of the American Mid-European Association, the League of Esthonians, Letts, Lithuanians and Ukrainians of America, and the Ukrainian Federation of the United States.

Mr. Dudley Field Malone, who stated that he appeared as the chosen representative to speak for the people of India, requested that the Covenant be so amended as to require every signatory to provide all its people with democratic institutions, and he presented a resolution passed by the Indian National Council in December, 1918, claiming the right of self-determination.

A large delegation of Americans of Irish descent appeared in opposition to the approval of the Covenant on the ground that, if adopted, it would make more difficult the realization of the aspirations of Ireland for independence. The delegation was headed by the Honorable Daniel F. Cohalan, Justice of the Supreme Court of New York, and included the Honorable Frank P. Walsh, chairman on the American Commission for Irish Independence, former chairman of the War Labor Board; Honorable Edward F. Dunne, former Governor of Illinois and former Mayor of Chicago; Honorable W. W. McDowell, Lieutenant-Governor of Montana, and the Honorable W. Bourke Cochran, former member of Congress.

The claims of Greece to Thrace were submitted by representatives of the National Congress of the Friends of Greece, while representatives of the Hungarian-American Federation protested against the dismemberment of Hungary and requested that plebiscites be held in Hungarian territory which it is proposed to transfer to other sovereignties. The claims of Hungary so far as they overlapped those of Czecho-Slovakia were opposed by representatives of the Slovak League and the Bohemian National Alliance of America.

Representatives of the Albanian National Party requested the right of self-determination for Albania and a government by an international commission appointed by the League of Nations.

The claims of the Jugo-Slavs in the Adriatic and Fiume were explained by a delegation representing the Jugo-Slav Republican Alliance of the United States, while Italy's side was set forth by Honorable F. H. La Guardia, member of Congress, and representatives of the Italian Irredentist Associations of America.

The complete verbatim report of all of these hearings is printed in an official document of 1,297 pages and contains, in addition to the oral testimony, numerous written communications sent to the Committee by interested parties, and the texts of some important official documents of the Peace Conference at Paris.

The most important part of the hearings was a conference with the President at the White House, which took place on August 19, 1919. It would be impossible within a short space to give an adequate 5 Senate Document, No. 106, 66th Cong., 1st sess.

summary of the conversation between the President and the sixteen Senators who participated. The President's views were presented in writing at the opening of the conference, of which the following extract contains the material part:

Nothing, I am led to believe, stands in the way of the ratification of the treaty except certain doubts with regard to the meaning and implication of certain articles of the covenant of the league of nations; and I must frankly say that I am unable to understand why such doubts should be entertained. You will 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 XVI 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 jurisdiction 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 fulfillment of all its international obligations. It has never failed to fulfill 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