prevent war was increasingly discussed in
the press of the United States and Europe and engaged the thought of the
Governments of the Powers at war with the German Empire. On January 8 of
that year President Wilson in an address to Congress proclaimed his
"Fourteen Points," the adoption of which he considered necessary to a
just and stable peace. The last of these "Points" explicitly states the
basis of the proposed international organization and the fundamental
reason for its formation. It is as follows:

"XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific
covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political
independence and territorial integrity to great and small
states alike."

This declaration may be considered in view of subsequent developments to
be a sufficiently clear announcement of the President's theory as to the
plan of organization which ought to be adopted, but at the time the
exact character of the "mutual guarantees" was not disclosed and aroused
little comment. I do not believe that Congress, much less the public at
large, understood the purpose that the President had in mind.
Undoubtedly, too, a sense of loyalty to the Chief Executive, while the
war was in progress, and the desire to avoid giving comfort of any sort
to the enemy, prevented a critical discussion of the announced bases of
peace, some of which were at the time academic, premature, and liable to
modification if conditions changed.

In March Lord Phillimore and his colleagues made their preliminary
report to the British Government on "a League of Nations" and this was
followed in July by their final report, copies of which reached the
President soon after they were made. The time had arrived for putting
into concrete form the general ideas that the President held, and
Colonel House, whom some believed to be the real author of Mr. Wilson's
conception of a world union, prepared, I am informed, the draft of a
scheme of organization. This draft was either sent or handed to the
President and discussed with him. To what extent it was amended or
revised by Mr. Wilson I do not know, but in a modified form it became
the typewritten draft of the Covenant which he took with him to Paris,
where it underwent several changes. In it was the guaranty of 1915,
1916, 1917, and 1918, which, from the form in which it appeared,
logically required the use of force to give it effect.

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