February 1st

I have made it a rule, of course with an exception now and then, not to confide to my diary any of the spectacular events that have followed upon the ora formidabile of the Armistice. I have omitted all reference to the pageantry with which the cavalcades of kings have been greeted as they came to the City of Light, and I ignore the visits of the President to the capitals of Europe now breathing freely after the tortured agony of war. These events are in the hands of competent remembrancers and assuredly they will not escape history. My task has been the humble one of jotting down things seen and words heard of less spectacular character which may, taken together, shape the future and perhaps control it and which, engrossed as he is with major tasks, may have escaped the Colonel’s attention. From this rule, however, I deviate today in recording the words with which on the day when the delegates to the Peace Conference met in the first solemn conclave (January 25th), the President asked for the appointment of a commission to draft the League of Nations Covenant which is to be the statute of the Parliament of Man and, as many hope, will bring peace to the war-racked world.

His words were: “The United States in entering the war never for a moment thought it was intervening in the politics of Europe, Asia, or of any part of the world. Its thought was that all the world had now become conscious that there was a single cause which turned upon the issues of this war. That was the cause of justice and of liberty for men of every kind and place. Therefore the United States would feel that its part had been played in vain if there ensued upon it merely a body of European settlements. It would feel it could not take part in guaranteeing this European settlement unless that guarantee involved the continuous superintendence of the peace of the world by the Associated Nations of the World.”

A trumpet note it was; the Colonel was affected as were all present. Tears streamed down the rugged face of M. Léon Bourgeois as he recalled the gallant but unsuccessful battles he had fought for peace and to safeguard civilization at The Hague, and at all the other conferences. Clemenceau listened to the President with his eyes closed, and certainly his features, which can be so expressive, did not reveal his inmost thoughts, but he was courteous and immediately set in motion the machinery of reconstruction which the President asked for. Bourgeois came up to us as we of the American group were leaving the scene of the great pronouncement. “Light and leading has come to us at last,” he said, “and it has come from the West.”

I accompanied House back to the Crillon, and in a very few minutes he was his practical self again, examining the situation the details of which were soon to be placed in his skilled, competent hands. At last he said, “The President has given them an unfailing compass for their guidance. If the Covenant goes into all the treaties we shall be bound to the European settlements. If not—not. They, both at home and abroad, have fair warning. The issue is joined.”

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As the difficult task of drafting the Covenant between the peace-loving nations begins in a few hours it is probably wise to recall and review some of the antecedents of the great plan. Of course it must be admitted, although a most depressing admission, that the idea goes back to the dawn of history and that none of the cherished hopes based upon it have been realized. William Penn, with his brotherly scheme of founding a paradise in Pennsylvania, brought the plan across the stormy Western Ocean into the new world from which Mr. Wilson now brings it back to wartorn and bleeding Europe. There may be many details of the incubation or rather the revival of the idea in its present form that are still obscure, but while doubtless not a complete narrative I shall here set down the record in so far as it is known to me.

Early in 1915, in one of the darkest periods of the war, Colonel House began to work on a plan to prevent what had happened, to the disgrace of our civilization, from ever happening again. By July 1918 he had, with the assistance of Hunter Miller, who is as able as he is unobtrusive (and who is with us now), hammered out what he called “A World Constitution.”

Many months before the Armistice House was bombarded with suggestions and proposals from leading French statesmen (but not from Clemenceau) as to what the League of Nations, on which so many hopes of peace were based, should be. But as early as July 1918 he was forced to the conclusion that what the French, or many of them, had in mind was a continuation of the war alliance, with complete control of the peace conditions and absolute exclusion of the Central Empires from the comity of nations. When Sir Edward Grey (in this month), by publishing his plea for the admission of Germany into the ultimate League, provoked a storm of unfavorable criticism in the French press, House from Magnolia wrote the President frankly admitting his misgivings, indeed his fears (July 1918).

House and Miller had before them the Phillimore plan, so called from the eminent English jurist who drew it up, and several provisions of it were incorporated in the Constitution. It was about the middle of July (1918) that House in his summer home at Magnolia sent on his sketch plan to the President. From his covering letter it would appear that House had in mind to restrict full membership in the League to the Greater Powers. He expressed the hope, and also the belief, that the plan would be so fair and so just that, assured of its protection, all the lesser powers would concur and later “join up.” This preliminary sketch was written hurriedly in thirty-six hours upon the receipt of an urgent call from the President, and, as House told me later, “It should not be regarded as representing my mature thought on the problem.” It was, however, as he explained, “a venture in practical idealism,” and it provided for a council, dominated, it is true, by the Great Powers, but with, as he thought, adequate representation assured the lesser states.

With this draft before him, and perhaps with others, the President set to work on his own plan. In the House sketch the word “Covenant” was used, in this connection perhaps for the first time, but as President Wilson in his addresses to the Congress had often spoken of his objective as a “covenanted peace” House may have simply clothed his idea in the President’s language. He certainly never showed any pride of authorship in bringing into world-wide use the Old Testament term. House’s sketch was fully utilized by the President in drawing up his plan which later became known as the First Official American Draft. Out of the twenty-three articles in the House sketch all but five were incorporated in the President’s plan. There was also by this time before the President a French draft drawn up by M. Leon Bourgeois. It was sent to House from Paris and submitted by him to the President. Its salient feature was a provision for an international military force under a permanent staff, later to be so frequently referred to as the “Sheriff’s posse of the league of law-abiding nations.”

During the period of incubation which followed, as requested by House, Elihu Root and ex-President Taft made suggestions and some of these helped to shape the President’s plan. About the middle of August (1918) Wilson paid House a long visit at Magnolia (in Massachusetts), and the sketch and the plan were compared and some changes in language as well as in structure were made. It was agreed to hold the plan in confidence until a more opportune moment for launching it arrived. Both the President and House were agreed that its publication at this time would start bitter controversy rather than fruitful discussion.

The draft that resulted from this conference at Magnolia is the one that Wilson took with him when, months later, he sailed for Paris. My clear understanding is that there were no further changes in this document until on the eve of the Conference the President and House got down to work at the Crillon. A suggestion of General Smuts as to mandates was now taken over, although his idea is to be found in the Fourteen Points, and the President incorporated his own idea of an International Labor Bureau with the main purpose, in Wilson’s words, of “having an eight-hour workday throughout the world.” Another article, an original idea of the President’s according to House, was inserted. It “required newly created states to accord equality of treatment to all racial and religious minorities.” Still another suggestion of the President’s was inserted, and that assured to all member states the right to intervene with proposals of conciliation when war threatened. In a conversation at this time with Professor Seymour of Yale, the President explained the motive behind this proposal. He said: “When troubles threaten I want any nation to have the right to butt in. There must be no more private wars.”

With some slight changes in language, and with these important additions, the resulting document became known as the Second Paris Draft. Some confusion resulted from the fact that at this moment a new British draft was sent to House and by him was submitted to the President. Orlando also submitted an Italian draft and some minor points of his were accepted. The President did not like the new British draft and the British did not like the American draft. Wiseman told House that “his people thought that the Americans were grabbing the whole shooting match and there was trouble ahead.” House put both drafts into the hands of Miller for America, and Hurst for Britain, with orders to iron things out, that is, “to smooth the ruffled feathers.”

These unfortunate gentlemen worked on their difficult task day and night, but the result of their collaboration only reached the President yesterday (February 2d) and he did not like it at all. He told House “it has neither warmth nor color.” After much discussion, however, this draft was accepted tentatively, and it became the basis of the discussions which now ensued. This is as briefly as I can tell it the historique, the antecedents, of the document upon which the delegates are to work from now on in conformity with the resolution adopted, at the President’s insistence, in the Plenary Session of the Conference, held on January 25th, which reads:

“It is essential to the maintenance of the world settlement which the Associated Nations are now met to establish, that a League of Nations be created to promote international co-operation, to insure the fulfillment of accepted international obligations, and to provide safeguards against war.

“This League should be created as an integral part of the general Treaty of Peace, and should be open to every civilized nation which can be relied on to promote its objects. . . .

“The Conference, therefore, appoints a committee representative of the Associated Governments to work out the Constitution and the functions of the League.”