s a foregone conclusion, and at that time it was not even
suggested that the Treaty would fail of ratification. The decision had
to be made under the conditions and expectations which then prevailed.
Unquestionably there was on June 28, 1919, a common belief that the
President would compose his differences with a sufficient number of the
Republican Senators to obtain the necessary consent of two thirds of the
Senate to the ratification of the Treaty, and that the delay in
senatorial action would be brief. I personally believed that that would
be the result, although Mr. Wilson's experience in Washington in
February and the rigid attitude, which he then assumed, might have been
a warning as to the future. Seeing the situation as I did, no man would
have been willing to imperil immediate ratification by resigning as
Commissioner on the ground that he was opposed to the President's
policies. A return to peace was at stake, and peace was the supreme need
of the world, the universal appeal of all peoples. I could not
conscientiously assume the responsibility of placing any obstacle in the
way of a return to peace at the earliest possible moment. It would have
been to do the very thing which I condemned in the President when he
prevented an early signing of the peace by insisting on the acceptance
of the Covenant of the League of Nations as a condition precedent.
Whatever the consequence of my action would have been, whether it
resulted in delay or in defeat of ratification, I should have felt
guilty of having prevented an immediate peace which from the first
seemed to me vitally important to all nations. Personal feelings and
even personal beliefs were insufficient to excuse such action.

CHAPTER XVI

LACK OF AN AMERICAN PROGRAMME

Having reviewed the radical differences between the President and myself
in regard to the League of Nations and the inclusion of the Covenant in
the Treaty of Peace with Germany, it is necessary to revert to the early
days of the negotiations at Paris in order to explain the divergence of
our views as to the necessity of a definite programme for the American
Commission to direct it in its work and to guide its members in their
intercourse with the delegates of other countries.

If the President had a programme, other than the general principles and
the few territorial settlements included in his Fourteen Points, and the
generalities contained in his "subsequent addresses," he did not sh