Treaty of Versailles Articles

Title

Treaty of Versailles Articles

Creator

Storey, Moorfield, 1845-1929
Peabody, George Foster, 1852-1938
Reinach, Joseph, 1856-1921

Identifier

WWP16249

Date

1920 May

Description

A series of articles on America's entry into the League of Nations and the Treaty of Versailles.

Source

Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, Staunton, Virginia

Language

English

Text

The President and the Treaty

An Eminent Lawyer’s View

To the Editor of the Herald:

In this morning’s paper you state the issue raised by the “President’s ultimatum” as follows:

“The issue actually before the country today is not the treaty or no treaty; it is the treaty and covenant exactly as framed, as obstinately insisted on by the President, or the treaty and covenant with moderate and reasonable reservations for the safeguarding of America.”

This statement only shows the difficulty of making the treaty an issue in the coming campaign, for in my judgment it is most misleading, and I will try to say why.

The treaty as presented to the Senate had been signed by the representatives of almost every nation. It was an agreement which could not be changed without their consent, and if any country undertook to change it, the changes would be ineffectual unless assented to by the other parties to the agreement. This might be done by express consent, or by that silence which is proverbially equivalent, but assent in some form was and is essential. The cheerful assumption of our people that we can make the treaty to suit ourselves is unfounded. It takes two to make a bargain.

The senators who insisted on reservations never proposed to ratify the treaty. If their propositions had been accepted, the treaty would have been rejected, and a new treaty proposed which might have been adopted after fresh negotiations, or accepted in silence, but until one or the other had been done by the parties to the agreement there could be no treaty. It is idle to proceed on the theory that the new treaty would have been accepted by the other powers. Our conditional ratification meant only new negotiations, not peace.

What the chance of its acceptance would be may be judged from the reservations which ultimately took a form that made acceptance impossible. Let us consider them briefly.

As the treaty came to us, all the nations agreed to use their naval and military strength and economic pressure against any one which undertook to make war, provided they unanimously consented to do so. Without its consent no nation could be compelled to act. As the reservation left it, every other nation remained bound, while we assumed no obligation to do anything unless Congress should authorize it when the emergency should arise.

Another reservation by asserting the Monroe doctrine removed the whole western hemisphere from the protection of the league of nations and left it at our mercy.

Another made us judge in our own case as to whether we had fulfilled our obligations before withdrawing from the league.

And finally, in order to insure the defeat of the treaty, the reservation in regard to Ireland was added.

There were others less important.

Many of us agreed with the words of Senator Lodge spoken on , at the very outset of the peace negotiations:“We must do our share to carry out the peace as we have done our share to win the war, of which the peace is an integral part. We must do our share in the occupation of German territory, which will be held as security for the indemnities to be paid by Germany. We cannot escape doing our part in aiding the peoples to whom we have helped to give freedom and independence in establishing themselves with ordered governments, for in no other way can we erect the barriers which are essential to prevent another outbreak by Germany upon the world. We cannot leave the Jugo-Slavs, the Czecho-slovaks and the Poles, the Lithuanians and the other states which we hope to see formed and marching upon the path of progress and development unaided and alone.”

We had believed that this country was willing to join in a league with other nations to insure world peace and general disarmament, and we were bitterly disappointed when he and others, so far from coming forward with any constructive proposal, concentrated their efforts on the attempt to strike from the treaty all obligation to take our part in this great work.

We will not admit that our country has not the power to make any treaty that any other country can make. We know that treaty after treaty has been made imposing on this country pecuniary obligations, although under our constitution all money bills must originate in the House. We were sure that our representative in the council of the league must hold an office created by law and with powers limited as the law should prescribe. We felt that the differences between the disagreeing senators should be dealt with not on party but national lines, and we hoped to see them acting cordially together in the attempt to realize the hopes of the world.

Instead, from the outset the opponents of the treaty have combined to defeat it, and not to make a better one. They desired to offer other nations an agreement which bound them, but left us free to act precisely as we might if there were no treaty. We offered to let them carry the burdens resulting from the war without help or promise of help from us. We are now criticising our late allies for deserting the Armenians and refusing to expel the Turks from Europe, while we decline as a nation to send one man or spend one dollar to help them in either task.

Every selfish consideration, every suspicion or prejudice against other nations, every sordid argument, every jealous fear, every fancied danger have been set before the American people until in the contemplation of imagined perils their eyes have become blinded to the present real dangers.

A year ago the world was our friend, and universal peace defended by a united world seemed possible. What nation can we now depend on in case of war? The friends we have we are trying to alienate, and the country is asked now to fall back into the old slough, to spend our money and our brains in preparation for war, and that war a war made by modern science more horrible than our worst fears could imagine.

Sinn Fein is a bad motto for a great nation. We are a part of the world, and we must bear our part of its sorrows and losses. We cannot help it if we would. Our present attitude will result in adding to all the horrors which flow from a disunited world, and whether we join in the effort to prevent them, we must share them when they come, and then we shall reap the harvest which our selfishness has sown.

The issue before the country is whether we will play our part in the effort to save the world from war and preparation for war by uniting with all other nations, or whether we will pursue our way alone among nations who fear and suspect us, and who will welcome the chance to unite against us.

As Mr. Lowell said to John Bull,
"Aren't your bonds held by fate, John,
Like all the world's beside?"

Let those who tell me that this is not the issue propose their plan for ending war. In all the discussion they have not done it yet.

We may say what we like of the President. We may criticise his obstinacy, his lack of tact, his mistakes. Who is without fault? Yet he alone of all the leaders in this country has risen to the crisis and has recognized the true duty and the true interest of this great republic. Assailed from every side, sick almost unto death, beset by difficulties, he has held his rudder true, and while the men who have wrought the ruin which the country contemplates may amid the heat and dust of a presidential campaign mislead their fellow-citizens, the time will come when we shall regret their and our folly in sackcloth and ashes.

The issue in this campaign is between those who wish, as far as it is humanly possible, to insure peace in the only possible way by an agreement between nations, and those who do not. It cannot be disguised or evaded.

It is still as true as when it was said by Mr. Lodge in the Untied States Senate more than 21 years ago in arguing against the opponents of the Spanish treaty: “Suppose we reject the treaty, what follows? Let us look at it practically. We continue the state of war, and every sensible man in the country, every business interest, desires the re-establishment of peace in law as well as in fact. At the same time, we repudiate the President and his action before the whole world, and the repudiation of the President in such a matter as this is, to my mind, the humiliation of the United States in the eyes of civilized mankind, and brands us as a people incapable of great affairs or of taking rank where we belong as one of the greatest of the great world powers.”

Moorfield Storey.

Boston, May 12.

To the Editor of the New York World:

Your admirable and forceful articles on the Senate’s treatment of the Versailles Treaty have greatly aided in rightly informing the vast circle of readers reached through your great journal.

Some of your readers cannot, however, agree with your editorial disagreement with the President’s position as taken in his telegram to the Chairman in the State of Oregon.

The responsibility of completing the Treaty by its promulgation after action by the Senate is solely upon the President—equally with the initiation of a Treaty. It is therefore incumbent upon him to be true to his own conscience as informed by his knowledge of conditions. In this matter no action of the Senate, even though unanimous, nor any public sentiment, however strong he may think it to be, could absolve the President from clear responsibility for any evil that might follow, if his judgment in advance was that injury would result.

The essential factor in the Versailles Treaty was the moral power and influence of the United States associated on the same terms with other nations—especially so because of the leadership of our great President in bringing the settlement about on the basis of moral influence which recognized the practical complications.

It is clear to some minds, in spite of assertions of eminent critics, that the entrance of the United States in the League at this late day, with reservations indicating our fear for our own interests and unwillingness to trust our associates, even though all of our allies have shown their confidence in one another, would surely deprive us of any moral power, much less the leadership we rightly had when the Treaty was signed. The acceptance of any reservations by the other nations would only serve to emphasize our selfishness and make it certain that no moral power would go with it to overcome the worldwide distrust already created. Only a splendid reassertion of the true sentiment of the people, which will compel the Senate to ratify the Treaty, with only such interpretative reservations as the President may accept, will serve to restore the moral respect of Europe and our leadership.

The people who fought hard against the Lodge reservations and now accept them do not, I am confident, realize how they belie their own basis for influence with our people and with Europe. In the opinion of many both Mr. Taft and Mr. Bryan are profoundly wrong in thinking the President’s constitutional obligation, to so conduct our Treaty negotiations as to maintain the honor of our country, is subject to the votes of Senators elected from widely scattered states mainly upon local and partisan considerations. I submit that historians will record that no act of President Wilson’s most distinguished administration is more clearly dictated by the highest public consideration than this noble and courageous refusal to surrender his judgment, which is based on a fuller knowledge and understanding than any one else can have, and is supported by this conscientious sense of the obligation of his oath to protect the true welfare of the United States—the most precious possession of which is its moral integrity.

The greatest of men said: “He who would save his life shall lose it.” It does not need history to prove that this eternal truth is equally the case with a nation.

President Wilson has proved himself through all this atrocious delay and utterly damnable conspiracy of malignity a man of clear purpose, unaffected by personal feeling, in spite of his near approach to death’s door, and with a magnificent devotion to the welfare of the people of this country and also of the whole world, now so dependent upon us for moral support.

I venture to say that there is a fair possibility that before the ides of November public opinion will manifest itself as seeing eye to eye with the President, and time-serving Senators will hasten to ratify the Treaty of Versailles with interpretations only.

The “condition” confronting the President is one of the moral reputation of the United States in this world crisis, and no compromise of morals can relieve such a condition. He is called upon to be true to his oath to protect his country. Mr. Taft calls upon him to surrender to what both he and Mr. Taft have fought on principle. I do not believe President Wilson should or will make such a surrender. It would be a sacrifice of a great moral principle, in which the future honor and welfare of the United States is concerned, and the future of our civilization may also be involved.

George Foster Peabody.
New York, May 13, 1920.

WILSON AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY

From Springfield Republican, The President’s message to the Oregon democrats concerning the treaty is not inconsistent with the stand taken by his supporters in the Senate in favor of the Hitchcock reservations. What the President advised the Oregon democrats to repudiate were the Lodge reservations. Nothing in the President’s message can be construed as uncompromising opposition to any reservations whatever. Reservations that nullify, “whittle down or weaken” the covenant the President condemns, as he always has; and the Lodge reservations are of that character.

If they were not of that character, none of the dozen or more republican irreconcilables in the Senate would have helped to put them through; Lodge himself would have had no use for them, and Mr. Taft down to the very last would not have opposed them. The reason they were finally accepted by many in both parties who had long fought them was based upon the belief that “a half loaf is better than none”—Mr. Taft’s very words. It cannot be said, however, that a half loaf is as good or desirable as a whole loaf. In the case of the covenant, moreover, Senator Knox now specifically denies that the Lodge reservations “Americanize” it; what is worse still, he condemns them in toto because “nothing could be fraught with more danger than any nation’s having a specially insured relation to a league where the other nations are subject to the dangers against which the immune nation attempts to secure itself.”

If the league is to become the supreme issue of the presidential campaign with the President leading the fight for it in substantially the form in which it was incorporated in the treaty, the President will be able to quote from three eminent republican authorities to the following effect:

1. From Mr. Taft, former President of the United States, that the covenant can be safely and wisely accepted without any reservations whatever.

2. From Senator Knox, former secretary of state, that there is no truth in the statement that the Lodge reservations “Americanize” the league, and that their actual incorporation in the treaty would be “fraught with more danger” than anything else conceivable.

3. From Senator Lodge, chairman of the Senate committee on foreign relations, that a separate peace, which Senator Knox advises and the peace resolution contemplates but which Mr. Wilson abhors, “would brand us with everlasting dishonor” and “bring ruin” also to the country.

The democratic party has President Wilson to deal with. He is no easy customer. For almost eight years he has been the party’s unquestioned chief. Under his leadership, two presidential elections have been won. Allowing for all the mistakes and failures of his two administrations, his positive achievements will blaze brightly in history. He has ruled so strongly both as a party leader and as a president that his political opponents in all other parties to-day denounce him as an autocrat, but at least he has succeeded in making obsolete the old charge which republicans periodically brought against the democratic party for a generation—that it could not govern.

The President finally went into the war—reluctantly like a humanitarian and a Christian—but he came out of it stupendously victorious, having personally forced the downfall of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and driven the kaiser into exile. Prof. Keynes, his English critic at Paris, ranks Wilson with Foch’s armies in destroying the will to war of the enemy peoples and also says that he was the “noblest figure” in the treaty negotiations at the peace conference. Mr. Hoover, just after the armistice was signed, delivered this judgment: “There is no greater monument to any man’s genius than the conduct of negotiations with the enemy by the President.” Prof. A. L. Pollard of the university of London now writes in his new book on the world war that despite its shortcomings, the Paris conference, chiefly through the creation of the league of nations, “achieved higher ideals than those attained by any preceding congress of peace.”

The democratic party must soon decide whether it will repudiate this democratic president or stand by him. Considered simply as a party question, repudiation of the present leader appears as suicidal a policy as was the repudiation of President Cleveland by the democratic national convention of 1896. Cleveland was disavowed and scorned, but the shattered democratic party went out of power for 16 years. The chaos into which the democratic party would now be thrown by repudiating President Wilson cannot be forecast or measured. He will not yield. The party must see him through or suffer painful consequences.

A HISTORIAN'S ESTIMATE OF PRESIDENT WILSON

To the Editor of The New York Times:

Will you publish in The New York Times these few lines of a French Republican who has been always a great friend and admirer of the American democracy? I was Gambetta’s first Secretary, after his death the editor of his paper, member for about twenty years of the Chambre des Députies, one of the authors of the “Revision of the Dreyfus Case,” military writer under the name of Polybe, &c. But I am by profession a historian. As I know something of the past, I read sometimes in the future. And I love justice.

I sincerely believe that President Wilson has made a number of mistakes. He is a man, and men are not gods or demigods, or even infallible Popes. But I am quite certain that Wilson’s name will be written in history on the same glorious tablet with Washington, Lincoln and Roosevelt. He is a political man, with some of the professional deformations of party politics; but he is a statesman of the largest size, and all of us—I mean the people who know something of our contemporary history, who do not follow the upper mob or the mob from below in its exaggerated enthusiasms and its nonsensical hatreds, who are not accustomed to howl with the wolves and to shriek with the parrots, who are no snobs, who remained afar from the Wilsonian snobism and who keep afar from the anti-Wilsonian snobism—we are waiting for the hour when full justice will be honorably rendered to your President.

Full justice implies some reserves. I could express important reserves. When President Wilson spoke of “peace without victory” he was mistaken. When President Wilson spoke of a French imperialism he was mistaken; Paris is not Berlin. But how could a Frenchman, who knows and remembers; how could a civilized man who knows and remembers; how could he forget that Wilson succeeded in bringing into the war, not some of the American people but the whole of the American democracy; that Wilson, in the spring and the summer of , was one of the men who saved humanity from Ludendorff’s most violent attack; that Wilson is the man who revived the old Greek, the old Christian, the old philosophical idea of a society of nations?

The fourteen articles were not perfect but they greatly helped the victory of liberty and right. The fourteen reservations implied some truth, as our Voltaire said that there is some truth in every error, but they have eclipsed for an hour the great glory of the United States. Why does Germany not observe the treaty that Germany has signed? The world was happy under the pax Romana. The world would begin to be out of trouble if the Congress had consented to sign the pax Americana.

I, as a Frenchman, as a stanch Republican, as a historian, I refuse to be ungrateful. I remain grateful to Joffre, to Foch, to Clemenceau. I remain grateful to your splendid American boys. I remain grateful to the officer who went to Lafayette’s tomb and simply said, “Lafayette, we are here!” I remain grateful to Roosevelt, who was the St. John Baptist of American intervention. I remain grateful to Woodrow Wilson who did the deed.

Joseph Reinach.
Paris, May 5.

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Citation

Storey, Moorfield, 1845-1929, Peabody, George Foster, 1852-1938, and Reinach, Joseph, 1856-1921, “Treaty of Versailles Articles,” 1920 May, WWP16249, Cary T. Grayson Papers, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library & Museum, Staunton, Virginia.