n
Commissioners from embarrassment or in inducing the President to adopt a
better course than the haphazard one that he was pursuing.

It is apparent that we differed radically as to the necessity for a
clearly defined programme and equally so as to the advantages to be
gained by having a draft-treaty made or a full statement prepared
embodying the provisions to be sought by the United States in the
negotiations. I did not attempt to hide my disapproval of the vagueness
and uncertainty of the President's method, and there is no doubt in my
own mind that Mr. Wilson was fully cognizant of my opinion. How far this
lack of system in the work of the Commission and the failure to provide
a plan for a treaty affected the results written into the Treaty of
Versailles is speculative, but my belief is that they impaired in many
particulars the character of the settlements by frequent abandonment of
principle for the sake of expediency.

The want of a programme or even of an unwritten plan as to the
negotiations was further evidenced by the fact that the President,
certainly as late as March 19, had not made up his mind whether the
treaty which was being negotiated should be preliminary or final. He had
up to that time the peculiar idea that a preliminary treaty was in the
nature of a _modus vivendi_ which could be entered into independently by
the Executive and which would restore peace without going through the
formalities of senatorial consent to ratification.

The purpose of Mr. Wilson, so far as one could judge, was to include in
a preliminary treaty of the sort that he intended to negotiate, the
entire Covenant of the League of Nations and other principal
settlements, binding the signatories to repeat these provisions in the
final and definitive treaty when that was later negotiated. By this
method peace would be at once restored, the United States and other
nations associated with it in the war would be obligated to renew
diplomatic and consular relations with Germany, and commercial
intercourse would follow as a matter of course. All this was to be done
without going through the American constitutional process of obtaining
the advice and consent of the Senate to the Covenant and to the
principal settlements. The intent seemed to be to respond to the popular
demand for an immediate peace and at the same time to checkmate the
opponents of the Covenant in the Senate by having the League of Nations
organized and functioning