a League was postponed until
after peace had been restored. As has been said, it was my hope that
there would be a separate convention organizing the League, but I was
not as sanguine of this as many who believed this course would
be followed.

It later developed that the President never had any other purpose than
to include the detailed plan of organization in the peace treaty,
whether the treaty was preliminary or definitive. When he departed for
Italy he had not declared this purpose to the Commissioners, but from
some source, which I failed to note at the time and cannot now
recollect, I gained the impression that he intended to pursue this
policy, for on December 29 I wrote in my book of notes:

"It is evident that the President is determined to incorporate in the
peace treaty an elaborate scheme for the League of Nations which will
excite all sorts of opposition at home and abroad and invite much
discussion.

"The articles relating to the League ought to be few and brief. They
will not be. They will be many and long. If we wait till they are
accepted, it will be four or five months before peace is signed, and
I fear to say how much longer it will take to have it ratified.

"It is perhaps foolish to prophesy, but I will take the chance. Two
months from now we will still be haggling over the League of Nations
and an exasperated world will be cursing us for not having made
peace. I hope that I am a false prophet, but I fear my prophecy will
come true. We are riding a hobby, and riding to a fall."

By the time the President returned from his triumphal journey to Rome I
had completed the articles upon which I had been working; at least they
were in form for discussion. At a conference at the Hotel Crillon
between President Wilson and the American Commissioners on January 7, I
handed to him the draft articles saying that they were supplemental to
my letter of December 23. He took them without comment and without
making any reference to my unanswered letter.

The first two articles of the "International Agreement," as I termed the
document, were identical in language with the memoranda dealing with a
mutual covenant and with an international council which I had enclosed
in my letter of December 23. It is needless, therefore, to repeat
them here.

Article III of the so-called "Agreement" was entitled "Peaceful
Settlements of International Disputes," and read as follows: