d be that the
terms of the Treaty, other than the provisions regarding a League of
Nations, would be drafted by foreign delegates and not by the President.

Impressed by the unsatisfactory state of affairs and desirous of
remedying it if possible, I asked Dr. James Brown Scott and Mr. David
Hunter Miller, the legal advisers of the American Commission, to prepare
a skeleton treaty covering the subjects to be dealt with in the
negotiations which could be used in working out a complete programme.
After several conferences with these advisers concerning the subjects to
be included and their arrangement in the Treaty, the work was
sufficiently advanced to lay before the Commissioners. Copies were,
therefore, furnished to them with the request that they give the
document consideration in order that they might make criticisms and
suggest changes. I had not sent a copy to the President, intending to
await the views of my colleagues before doing so, but during the
conference of January 10, to which I have been compelled reluctantly to
refer in discussing the Covenant of the League of Nations, I mentioned
the fact that our legal advisers had been for some time at work on a
"skeleton treaty" and had made a tentative draft. The President at once
showed his displeasure and resented the action taken, evidently
considering the request that a draft be prepared to be a usurpation of
his authority to direct the activities of the Commission. It was this
incident which called forth his remark, to which reference was made in
Chapter VIII, that he did not propose to have lawyers drafting
the Treaty.

In view of Mr. Wilson's attitude it was useless for Dr. Scott and Mr.
Miller to proceed with their outline of a treaty or for the
Commissioners to give consideration to the tentative draft already made.
It was a disagreeable situation. If the President had had anything,
however crude and imperfect it might have been, to submit in place of
the Scott-Miller draft, it would have been a different matter and
removed to an extent the grounds for complaint at his attitude. But he
offered nothing at all as a substitute. It is fair to assume that he had
no programme prepared and was unwilling to have any one else make a
tentative one for his consideration. It left the American Commission
without a chart marking out the course which they were to pursue in the
negotiations and apparently without a pilot who knew the channel.

Six days after the enforced