ided, held ten meetings between February 3 and February 14, on which
latter day it submitted a report at a plenary session of the Conference
on the Preliminaries of Peace. The report was presented by the President
in an address of exceptional excellence which made a deep impression on
his hearers. His dignity of manner, his earnestness, and his logical
presentation of the subject, clothed as it was in well-chosen phrases,
unquestionably won the admiration of all, even of those who could not
reconcile their personal views with the Covenant, as reported by the
Commission. It was a masterly effort, an example of literary rather than
emotional oratory, peculiarly fitting to the occasion and to the temper
and intellectual character of the audience.

Considering the brief time given to its discussion in the Commission and
the necessary haste required to complete the document before the
President's departure, the Covenant as reported to the Conference was a
creditable piece of work. Many of the more glaring errors of expression
and some of the especially objectionable features of the President's
revised draft were eliminated. There were others which persisted, but
the improvement was so marked that the gross defects in word and phrase
largely disappeared. If one accepted the President's theory of
organization, there was little to criticize in the report, except a
certain inexactness of expression which indicated a lack of technical
knowledge on the part of those who put the Covenant into final form. But
these crudities and ambiguities of language would, it was fair to
presume, disappear if the articles passed through the hands of
drafting experts.

Fundamentally, however, the Covenant as reported was as wrong as the
President's original draft, since it contained the affirmative guaranty
of political independence and territorial integrity, the primacy of the
Five Great Powers on the Executive Council, and the perplexing and
seemingly unsound system of mandates. In this I could not willingly
follow President Wilson, but I felt that I had done all that I could
properly do in opposition to his theory. The responsibility of decision
rested with him and he had made his decision. There was nothing more
to be said.

On the evening of the day of the plenary session, at which the report of
the League of Nations was submitted, the President left Paris for Brest
where the George Washington was waiting to convey him to the United
States