November 12th

For several reasons I did not retain a copy of the memorandum which I sent on to House within an hour of my last interview with Senator Lodge. The first was, as a result of my telephone talk with him, I had expected House to come to Washington in a very few days and that this was his plan is indicated by the letter to me from Frazier, who was with the Colonel at this time. But there was another and a more powerful reason for my apparent negligence. The copy of the Covenant which the Senator and I had before us during our talks was in printed form from the document room and on it the Senator had penciled with his own hand (and under his signature) a number of unimportant verbal changes which I do not clearly recall except that they were few and unimportant. But in about thirty words he made additions to Article X and Article XVI which, in his opinion, restored to the Senate, and also to the House, as the “money power,” the authority which, as he claimed, was their constitutional right and which he asserted the President had ignored. These changes and additions, having been made by the Senator with his own hand, authenticated the document, and it was in these notations that the value of the memorandum lay. A copy by me would have been of little or no value—so I thought at the time.