April 27th

The President secured, in the Committee at least, the Monroe Doctrine reservation and also the amendment to the Covenant which permits the powers to withdraw from the League and escape its responsibilities on two years’ notice. It is a victory which Senators in Washington, both supporters and opponents of the Treaty, say will smooth the path to ratification, but it cannot be denied that both these changes have weakened the President’s position here. It is true, of course, that none of the powers represented on the Commission, with the exceptions of Japan and of China, attach much real importance to the Doctrine. They, the Europeans, argue that as it did not keep America out of the World War in 1917 America will come in again if it is in her interest to do so and that President Monroe has been dead a long, long time. And it is quite clear that much of the opposition to the reservation was inspired by a belief that here was a situation that would facilitate trading, and undoubtedly “trades” have been made. Orlando argues openly, and Clemenceau more discreetly, that as the President has been helped by them in his struggle with the recalcitrant Senators in Washington they have every reason to expect his assistance in their parliamentary battles, which to them, at least, are also of vital importance.

But in insisting upon the right to withdraw from the League and to cast off the responsibilities assumed under the Covenant upon notice the President has suffered a tremendous loss in moral prestige. Many of those who deplore this step were until the last few days the most unwavering supporters of the President. Today they are not, and they are quoting many expressions in the Wilson speeches at the Conference which certainly do not tally with his later action. “We were told,” they are saying, “that the word Covenant connoted something sacramental, and by it the peace of God could and would be secured. How the President denounced man-made pacts, and protocols and agreement which men and nations only had to keep as long as it was to their advantage, but the Covenant, he thundered, ‘had the sanction of God.’ It, the Covenant, was a sacrament, and those who partook of it drank the blood of the Prince of Peace, but now it appears it is only binding for twenty-four months. You can stay in or get out, as your national interests dictate. In other words, it is merely another scrap of paper-like all the old-style treaties.” These are reported to me as the sentiments of M. Larnaude—but he has not gone so far in the public debates.

Orlando, however, supported the President in a long speech, and it is evident that he expects a substantial return. Under his honeyed words the President suffered visibly, and indeed nothing could have been more destructive of the League ideal than those that the eloquent Sicilian used. No wonder the original Covenanter writhed. Orlando’s words were: “However precious the privilege of membership in the League may seem today, it is a comfort to know you can divest yourself of membership and its responsibilities in case you want to, in case the new society does not work out in the way we all hope it will.”

It is to be hoped that these sacrifices will smooth the path of the Treaty, and of the President, in Washington, but it cannot be denied that here, at least, they have entailed a loss of prestige and of faith in the Wilsonian ideals in quarters which have hitherto been the most steadfast.