and bled side by side. This change
was to be revealed when the Conference met. There was no sign of it in
the plaudits of the multitudes who welcomed the President in France, in
England, and in Italy. He returned on January 7, 1919, from Italy to
Paris, where delegates to the Conference from all the countries which
had been at war with Germany were gathering.

The first session of the Peace Conference was held January 18. The
main work of the Conference was carried on by the Supreme Council,
constituted at this meeting and composed of the two ranking delegates
of each of the five great powers, Great Britain, France, Italy, the
United States, and Japan. The decisions which this Council arrived at,
with the aid of the large groups of technical advisers which
accompanied the delegations of the great powers, were reported to the
Conference in plenary session from time to time and ratified. The
Supreme Council was, however, gradually superseded by the "Big Four,"
Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Orlando, while the "Five,"
composed of ministers of foreign affairs, handled much of the routine
business, and made some important decisions, subject to the approval of
the "Four." According to statistics compiled by Tardieu, the Council
of Ten held seventy-two sessions, the "Five" held thirty-nine, and the
"Four" held one hundred and forty-five. As one of the American experts
puts it: "The 'Ten' fell into the background, the 'Five' never emerged
from obscurity, the 'Four' ruled the Conference in the culminating
period when its decisions took shape."

At the plenary session of January 25, President Wilson made a notable
speech in which he proposed the creation of a league of nations, and a
resolution to organize such a league and make it an integral part of
the general treaty was unanimously adopted. A commission to draft a
constitution for the League was appointed with President Wilson as
chairman. On February 14 the first draft of the Covenant of the League
was presented by him to the Conference, and on the following day he
sailed for the United States in order to consider the bills passed by
Congress before the expiration of the session on March 4. The first
draft of the Covenant was hastily prepared, and it went back to the
commission for revision. As soon as the text was made known in the
United States, opposition to the Covenant was expressed in the Senate.
During the President's brief visit to Washington, he