he negotiations at Paris and
wrote it into the Covenant of the League of Nations by contriving an
organization which would give practical control over the destinies of
the world to an oligarchy of the Five Great Powers. It was an assumption
of the right of supremacy based on the fact that the united strength of
these Powers could compel obedience. It was a full endorsement of the
theory of "the balance of power" in spite of the recognized evils of
that doctrine in its practical application. Beneath the banner of the
democracies of the world was the same sinister idea which had found
expression in the Congress of Vienna with its purpose of protecting the
monarchical institutions of a century ago. It proclaimed in fact that
mankind must look to might rather than right, to force rather than law,
in the regulation of international affairs for the future.

This defect in the theory, on which the League of Nations was to be
organized, was emphasized and given permanency by the adoption of a
mutual guaranty of territorial integrity and political independence
against external aggression. Since the burden of enforcing the guaranty
would unavoidably fall upon the more powerful nations, they could
reasonably demand the control over affairs which might develop into a
situation requiring a resort to the guaranty. In fact during a plenary
session of the Peace Conference held on May 31, 1919, President Wilson
stated as a broad principle that responsibility for protecting and
maintaining a settlement under one of the Peace Treaties carried with it
the right to determine what that settlement should be. The application
to the case of responsible guarantors is obvious and was apparently in
mind when the Covenant was being evolved. The same principle was applied
throughout the negotiations at Paris.

The mutual guaranty from its affirmative nature compelled in fact,
though not in form, the establishment of a ruling group, a coalition of
the Great Powers, and denied, though not in terms, the equality of
nations. The oligarchy was the logical result of entering into the
guaranty or the guaranty was the logical result of the creation of the
oligarchy through the perpetuation of the basic idea of the Supreme War
Council. No distinction was made as to a state of war and a state of
peace. Strongly opposed to the abandonment of the principle of the
equality of nations in times of peace I naturally opposed the
affirmative guaranty and endeavored