he
large majority, were as pertinent after the Treaty was completed as they
were when the memorandum was made.

As Colonel House was the other member of the Commission on the League of
Nations and would have to consider the practicability and expediency of
including the mandatory system in the Covenant, I read the memorandum to
him stating that I had orally presented most of the questions to the
President who characterized them as "legal technicalities" and for that
reason unimportant. I said to the Colonel that I differed with the
President, as I hoped he did, not only as to the importance of
considering the difficulties raised by the questions before the system
of mandates was adopted, but also as to the importance of viewing from
every standpoint the wisdom of the system and the difficulties that
might arise in its practical operation. I stated that, in my opinion, a
simpler and better plan was to transfer the sovereignty over territory
to a particular nation by a treaty of cession under such terms as seemed
wise and, in the case of some of the newly erected states, to have them
execute treaties accepting protectorates by Powers mutually acceptable
to those states and to the League of Nations.

Colonel House, though he listened attentively to the memorandum and to
my suggestions, did not seem convinced of the importance of the
questions or of the advantages of adopting any other plan than that of
the proposed mandatory system. To abandon the system meant to abandon
one of the ideas of international supervision, which the President
especially cherished and strongly advocated. It meant also to surrender
one of the proposed functions of the League as an agent in carrying out
the peace settlements under the Treaty, functions which would form the
basis of an argument in favor of the organization of the League and
furnish a practical reason for its existence. Of course the presumed
arguments against the abandonment of mandates may not have been
considered, but at the time I believed that they were potent with
Colonel House and with the President. The subsequent advocacy of the
system by these two influential members of the Commission on the League
of Nations, which resulted in its adoption, in no way lessened my belief
as to the reasons for their support.

The mandatory system, a product of the creative mind of General Smuts,
was a novelty in international relations which appealed strongly to
those who preferred to adop