The Peace Negotiations Part 7

Though recognizing the President's views as to the relative importance of organizing a League and of restoring peace without delay, and suspecting that he purposed to use the impatience and fear of the delegates to break down objections to his plan of organization, I still hoped that the critical state of affairs in Europe might induce him to adopt another course. With that hope I began the preparation of a resolution to be laid before the Conference, which, if adopted, would appear in the preliminary treaty in the form of declarations which would const.i.tute the bases of a future negotiation regarding a League of Nations.

At a conference on January 20 between the President and the American Commissioners, all being present except Colonel House, I asked the President if he did not think that, in view of the shortness of time before he would be compelled to return to Washington on account of the approaching adjournment of Congress, it would be well to prepare a resolution of this sort and to have it adopted in order that it might clear the way for the determination of other matters which should be included in a preliminary treaty. From the point of view of policy I advanced the argument that a series of declarations would draw the fire of the opponents and critics of the League and would give opportunity for an expression of American public opinion which would make possible the final drafting of the charter of a League in a way to win the approval of the great ma.s.s of the American people and in all probability insure approval of the Covenant by the Senate of the United States.

In reviewing what took place at this conference I realize now, as I did not then, that it was impolitic for me to have presented an argument based on the a.s.sumption that changes in the President's plan might be necessary, as he might interpret my words to be another effort to revise the theory of his plan. At the time, however, I was so entirely convinced of the expediency of this course, from the President's own point of view as well as from the point of view of those who gave first place to restoring peace, that I believed he would see the advantage to be gained and would adopt the course suggested. I found that I was mistaken. Mr. Wilson without discussing the subject said that he did not think that a resolution of that sort was either necessary or advisable.

While this definite rejection of the proposal seemed to close the door to further effort in that direction, I decided to make another attempt before abandoning the plan. The next afternoon (January 21) at a meeting of the Council of Ten, the discussion developed in a way that gave me an excuse to present the proposal informally to the Council. The advantages to be gained by adopting the suggested action apparently appealed to the members, and their general approval of it impressed the President, for he asked me in an undertone if I had prepared the resolution. I replied that I had been working upon it, but had ceased when he said to me the day before that he did not think it necessary or advisable, adding that I would complete the draft if he wished me to do so. He said that he would be obliged to me if I would prepare one.

Encouraged by the support received in the Council and by the seeming willingness of the President to give the proposal consideration, I proceeded at once to draft a resolution.

The task was not an easy one because it would have been useless to insert in the doc.u.ment any declaration which seemed to be contradictory of the President's theory of an affirmative guaranty or which was not sufficiently broad to be interpreted in other terms in the event that American public opinion was decidedly opposed to his theory, as I felt that it would be. It was also desirable, from my point of view, that the resolution should contain a declaration in favor of the equality of nations or one which would prevent the establishment of an oligarchy of the Great Powers, and another declaration which would give proper place to the administration of legal justice in international disputes.

The handicaps and difficulties under which I labored are manifest, and the resolution as drafted indicates them in that it does not express as clearly and unequivocally as it would otherwise do the principles which formed the bases of the articles which I handed to the President on January 7 and which have already been quoted _in extenso_.

The text of the resolution, which was completed on the 22d, reads as follows:

"_Resolved_ that the Conference makes the following declaration:

"That the preservation of international peace is the standing policy of civilization and to that end a league of nations should be organized to prevent international wars;

"That it is a fundamental principle of peace that all nations are equally ent.i.tled to the undisturbed possession of their respective territories, to the full exercise of their respective sovereignties, and to the use of the high seas as the common property of all peoples; and

"That it is the duty of all nations to engage by mutual covenants--

"(1) To safeguard from invasion the sovereign rights of one another;

"(2) To submit to arbitration all justiciable disputes which fail of settlement by diplomatic arrangement;

"(3) To submit to investigation by the league of nations all non-justiciable disputes which fail of settlement by diplomatic arrangement; and

"(4) To abide by the award of an arbitral tribunal and to respect a report of the league of nations after investigation;

"That the nations should agree upon--

"(1) A plan for general reduction of armaments on land and sea;

"(2) A plan for the restriction of enforced military service and the governmental regulation and control of the manufacture and sale of munitions of war;

"(3) Full publicity of all treaties and international agreements;

"(4) The equal application to all other nations of commercial and trade regulations and restrictions imposed by any nation; and

"(5) The proper regulation and control of new states pending complete independence and sovereignty."

This draft of a resolution was discussed with the other American Commissioners, and after some changes of a more or less minor character which it seemed advisable to make because of the appointment of a Commission on the League of Nations at a plenary session of the Conference on January 25, of which Commission President Wilson and Colonel House were the American members, I sent the draft to the President on the 31st, four days before the Commission held its first meeting in Colonel House's office at the Hotel Crillon.

As the Sixty-Fifth Congress would come to an end on March 4, and as the interpretation which had been placed on certain provisions of the Federal Const.i.tution required the presence of the Chief Executive in Washington during the last days of a session in order that he might pa.s.s upon legislation enacted in the days immediately preceding adjournment, Mr. Wilson had determined that he could not remain in Paris after February 14. At the time that I sent him the proposed resolution there remained, therefore, but two weeks for the Commission on the League of Nations to organize, to deliberate, and to submit its report to the Conference, provided its report was made prior to the President's departure for the United States. It did not seem to me conceivable that the work of the Commission could be properly completed in so short a time if the President's Covenant became the basis of its deliberations.

This opinion was shared by many others who appreciated the difficulties and intricacies of the subject and who felt that a hasty and undigested report would be unwise and endanger the whole plan of a world organization.

In view of this situation, which seemed to be a strong argument for delay in drafting the plan of international organization, I wrote a letter to the President, at the time I sent him the proposed resolution, saying that in my opinion no plan could be prepared with sufficient care to warrant its submission to the Conference on the Preliminaries of Peace before he left Paris and that unless a plan was reported he would be in the position of returning empty-handed to the United States. I urged him in the circ.u.mstances to secure the adoption of a resolution by the delegates similar in nature, if not in language, to the draft which was enclosed, thereby avoiding a state of affairs which would be very disheartening to the advocates of a League of Nations and cause general discontent among all peoples who impatiently expected evidence that the restoration of peace was not far distant.

It would be presumptuous on my part to speculate on the President's feelings when he received and read my letter and the proposed resolution. It was never answered or acknowledged, and he did not act upon the suggestion or discuss acting upon it, to my knowledge, with any of his colleagues. On the contrary, he summoned the Commission on the League of Nations to meet on February 3, eleven days before the date fixed for his departure for the United States, and laid before that body his revised draft of a Covenant which formed the groundwork for the Commission's report presented to the Conference on February 14.

The question naturally arises--Why did the President ask me to complete and send to him the resolution embodying a series of declarations if he did not intend to make it a subject of consideration and discussion? It is a pertinent question, but the true answer remains with Mr. Wilson himself. Possibly he concluded that the only way to obtain his plan for a League was to insist upon its practical acceptance before peace was negotiated, and that, unless he took advantage of the universal demand for peace by making the acceptance of the Covenant a condition precedent, he would be unable to obtain its adoption. While I believe this is a correct supposition, it is not responsive to the question as to the reason why he wished me to deliver to him a draft resolution. In fact it suggests another question--What, from the President's point of view, was to be gained by having the resolution in his hands?

I think the answer is not difficult to find when one remembers that Mr.

Wilson had disapproved a resolution of that sort and that the Council of Ten had seemed disposed to approve it. There was no surer way to prevent me from bringing the subject again before the Council than by having the proposed resolution before him for action. Having submitted it to him I was bound, on account of our official relationship, to await his decision before taking any further steps. In a word, his request for a draft practically closed my mouth and tied my hands. If he sought to check my activities with the members of the Council in favor of the proposed course of action, he could have taken no more effectual way than the one which he did take. It was undoubtedly an effective means of "pigeonholing" a resolution, the further discussion of which might interfere with his plan to force through a report upon the Covenant before the middle of February.

This opinion as to the motive which impelled the President to pursue the course that he did in regard to a resolution was not the one held by me at the time. It was formed only after subsequent events threw new light on the subject. The delay perplexed me at the time, but the reason for it was not evident. I continued to hope, even after the Commission on the League of Nations had a.s.sembled and had begun its deliberations, that the policy of a resolution would be adopted. But, as the days went by and the President made no mention of the proposal, I realized that he did not intend to discuss it, and the conviction was forced upon me that he had never intended to have it discussed. It was a disappointing result and one which impressed me with the belief that Mr. Wilson was prejudiced against any suggestion that I might make, if it in any way differed with his own ideas even though it found favor with others.

CHAPTER X

THE GUARANTY IN THE REVISED COVENANT

During the three weeks preceding the meeting of the Commission on the League the work of revising the President's original draft of the Covenant had been in progress, the President and Colonel House holding frequent interviews with the more influential delegates, particularly the British and French statesmen who had been charged with the duty of studying the subject. While I cannot speak from personal knowledge, I learned that the suggested changes in terms and language were put into form by members of the Colonel's office staff. In addition to modifications which were made to meet the wishes of the foreign statesmen, especially the British, Mr. Gordon Auchincloss, the son-in-law and secretary of Colonel House, and Mr. David Hunter Miller, Auchincloss's law partner and one of the accredited legal advisers of the American Commission, prepared an elaborate memorandum on the President's draft of a Covenant which contained comments and also suggested changes in the text. On account of the intimate relations existing between Messrs. Miller and Auchincloss and Colonel House it seems reasonable to a.s.sume that their comments and suggestions were approved by, if they did not to an extent originate with, the Colonel.

The memorandum was first made public by Mr. William C. Bullitt during his hearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in September, 1919 (Senate Doc. 106, 66th Congress, 1st Session, pages 1177 _et seq._).

The most important amendment to the Covenant suggested by these advisers was, in my judgment, the one relating to Article III of the draft, which became Article 10 in the Treaty. After a long criticism of the President's proposed guaranty, in which it is declared that "such an agreement would destroy the Monroe Doctrine," and that "any guaranty of independence and integrity means war by the guarantor if a breach of the independence or integrity of the guaranteed State is attempted and persisted in," the memorandum proposed that the following be subst.i.tuted:

"Each Contracting Power severally covenants and guarantees that it will not violate the territorial integrity or impair the political independence of any other Contracting Power."

This proposed subst.i.tute should be compared with the language of the "self-denying covenant" that I sent to the President on December 23, 1918, the pertinent portion of which is repeated here for the purpose of such comparison:

"Each power signatory or adherent hereto severally covenants and guarantees that it will not violate the territorial integrity or impair the political sovereignty of any other power signatory or adherent to this convention, ..."

The practical adoption of the language of my proposed subst.i.tute in the memorandum furnishes conclusive proof that Colonel House was "entirely converted" to my form of a guaranty as he had frankly a.s.sured me that he was on the evening of January 6. I am convinced also that Mr. Henry White and General Bliss held the same views on the subject. It is obvious that President Wilson was the only one of the American representatives at Paris who favored the affirmative guaranty, but, as he possessed the const.i.tutional authority to determine independently the policy of the United States, his form of a guaranty was written into the revised draft of a Covenant submitted to the Commission on the League of Nations and with comparatively little change was finally adopted in the Treaty of Peace with Germany.

The memorandum prepared by Messrs. Miller and Auchincloss was apparently in the President's hands before the revised draft was completed, for certain changes in the original draft were in accord with the suggestions made in their memorandum. His failure to modify the guaranty may be considered another rejection of the "self-denying covenant" and a final decision to insist on the affirmative form of guaranty in spite of the unanimous opposition of his American colleagues.

In view of what later occurred a very definite conclusion may be reached concerning the President's rejection of the proposed subst.i.tute for his guaranty. Article 10 was from the first the storm center of opposition to the report of the Commission on the League of Nations and the chief cause for refusal of consent to the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles by the Senate of the United States. The vulnerable nature of the provision, which had been so plainly pointed out to the President before the Covenant was submitted to the Commission, invited attack. If he had listened to the advice of his colleagues, in fact if he had listened to any American who expressed an opinion on the subject, the Treaty would probably have obtained the speedy approval of the Senate.

There would have been opposition from those inimical to the United States entering any international organization, but it would have been insufficient to prevent ratification of the Treaty.

As it was, the President's unalterable determination to have his form of guaranty in the Covenant, in which he was successful, and his firm refusal to modify it in any substantial way resulted in strengthening the opponents to the League to such an extent that they were able to prevent the Treaty from obtaining the necessary consent of two thirds of the Senators.

The sincerity of Mr. Wilson's belief in the absolute necessity of the guaranty, which he proposed, to the preservation of international peace cannot be doubted. While his advisers were practically unanimous in the opinion that policy, as well as principle, demanded a change in the guaranty, he clung tenaciously to the affirmative form. The result was that which was feared and predicted by his colleagues. The President, and the President alone, must bear the responsibility for the result.

CHAPTER XI

INTERNATIONAL ARBITRATION

On the day that the Commission on the League of Nations held its first meeting and before I had reason to suspect that Mr. Wilson intended to ignore the letter which I had sent him with the suggested resolution enclosed, I determined to appeal to him in behalf of international arbitration. I decided to do this on the a.s.sumption that, even if the plan for a resolution was approved, the Commission would continue its sessions in preparation for the subsequent negotiation of an agreement of some sort providing for world organization. The provision as to arbitration in the President's original draft of a Covenant was so wrong from my point of view and showed such a lack of knowledge of the practical side of the subject that I was impelled to make an effort to induce him to change the provision. Except for the fact that the matter was wholly legal in character and invited an opinion based on technical knowledge, I would have remained silent in accordance with my feeling that it would be inadvisable for me to have anything to do with drafting the Covenant. I felt, however, that the const.i.tution and procedure of international courts were subjects which did not affect the general theory of organization and concerning which my views might influence the President and be of aid to him in the formulation of the judicial feature of any plan adopted.