doned or else rewritten. If the American people were convinced that
this would be the consequence of accepting the affirmative guaranty, it
meant its rejection. In any event it was bound to produce an acrimonious
controversy. From the point of view of policy alone it seemed unwise to
include the guaranty in the Covenant, and believing that an objection on
that ground would appeal to the President more strongly than one based
on principle, I emphasized that objection, though in my own mind the
other was the more vital and more compelling.

The points of difference relating to the League of Nations between the
President's views and mine, other than the recognition of the primacy of
the Great Powers, the affirmative guaranty and the resulting denial in
fact of the equality of nations in times of peace, were the provisions
in the President's original draft of the Covenant relating to
international arbitrations, the subordination of the judicial power to
the political power, and the proposed system of mandates. Having
discussed with sufficient detail the reasons which caused me to oppose
these provisions, and having stated the efforts made to induce President
Wilson to abandon or modify them, repetition would be superfluous. It is
also needless, in view of the full narrative of events contained in
these pages, to state that I failed entirely in my endeavor to divert
the President from his determination to have these provisions inserted
in the Covenant, except in the case of international arbitrations, and
even in that case I do not believe that my advice had anything to do
with his abandonment of his ideas as to the method of selecting
arbitrators and the right of appeal from arbitral awards. Those changes
and the substitution of an article providing for the future creation of
a Permanent Court of International Justice, were, in my opinion, as I
have said, a concession to the European statesmen and due to their
insistence.

President Wilson knew that I disagreed with him as to the relative
importance of restoring a state of peace at the earliest date possible
and of securing the adoption of a plan for the creation of a League of
Nations. He was clearly convinced that the drafting and acceptance of
the Covenant was superior to every other task imposed on the Conference,
that it must be done before any other settlement was reached and that it
ought to have precedence in the negotiations. His course of action was
conclusive ev