Part 15 — REJECTION OF THE PEACE TREATY The Senate Fails to Ratify the Treaty of Versailles With the Revised Lodge Reservations by a Vote of 49 to 35

The Treaty of Versailles with the Covenant of The League of Nations was signed on June 28, 1919, by Germany and by the representatives of the Allied and Associated Powers, with the exception of China.

It was ratified by the German National Assembly on July 10th; by the British Parliament on July 25th, and by King George on July 31st, by the King of Italy on October 7th, by France on October 13th and by Japan on October 27th.

On the day the Treaty was signed President Wilson sailed for New York, and on July 10th he addressed the Senate and submitted the Treaty to that body, which under the Constitution is empowered to give its "advice and consent" to treaties negotiated by the Chief Executive. Opposition to the Covenant of the League of Nations had previously developed in the Senate, especially on the part of the Republican majority. The Foreign Affairs Committee, of which Senator Lodge of Massachusetts was Chairman, was from the start unalterably opposed to the Treaty unless it contained as amendments or as reservations clauses which, it was claimed, would safeguard American interests and institutions. In February the President, who had made a hurried trip from Paris in order to acquaint the American people with the details of the Treaty as it affected this country, conferred at the White House with the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate and the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House, on which occasion there was a frank and comprehensive discussion, a complete stenographic report of which was published in the press. On March 3rd Senator Lodge presented a resolution signed by 39 Republican Senators and Senators-elect protesting against the Covenant of The League of Nations, as it stood. As it required a two-thirds vote of the Senate to ratify, these 39 opponents of the treaty would be sufficient to reject it, and the virtual effect of this resolution was to give warning to the President that the Treaty unless it were to be "Americanized" would fail of ratification.

The President on March 5th sailed from New York and returned to Paris to take up his work at the Peace Conference, remaining there until the Treaty was signed.

On July 15th, the Foreign Relations Committee took the Treaty under consideration and conducted hearings on it. One of these, continuing for several days, was for the purpose of exposing what the Committee regarded as the unjust treatment of China in respect of the cession to Japan, under the Treaty, of the German rights in Shantung (Kiauchau).

On August 19th, the Foreign Relations Committee again conferred at the White House with the President, and on September 3rd the President started on a tour of the country to win support for the Treaty and The League of Nations.

On September 10th the Foreign Relations Committee reported the Treaty to the Senate with 45 amendments and four reservations.

On September 26th, owing to a nervous breakdown, the President at Wichita, Kansas, gave up his tour of the country and returned to Washington.

What were known as the Fall amendments to the Treaty were defeated in the Senate on October 2nd by 58 to 30, and as this vote indicated the unlikelihood of amendments being passed, the Republicans of the Foreign Relations Committee changed their tactics, abandoning amendments and considering reservations instead. It had been pointed out that American amendments to the Treaty would require ratification by Germany and that this might nullify the whole Treaty and necessitate the re-opening of negotiations, thereby delaying peace indefinitely.

On October 4th the Massachusetts Republican State Convention, before which Senator Lodge spoke in defense of his attitude on the Treaty, urged prompt ratification of the Peace Treaty with "reasonable and effective" reservations.

On October 15th by a vote of 55 to 35 the Senate rejected a proposed amendment of the Foreign Relations Committee to the clause affecting the German rights in Shantung by virtue of which these would be transferred to China.

The deadlock in the Senate had meanwhile aroused widespread criticism throughout the country, the attitude of the Republican majority being vigorously objected to by influential members of that party. Public opinion both in and out of the Republican party was generally in favor of ratification with reservations, as was repeatedly indicated by "straw" votes among the people.

RATIFICATION, WITH ORIGINAL LODGE RESERVATIONS, DEFEATED NOV. 19, 1919.

On November 6th Senator Lodge presented 14 reservations which had been agreed to by the majority members of the Foreign Relations Committee. On November 19th, they were voted on by the Senate, being coupled with the following resolution of ratification:

Resolved (two-thirds of the Senators present concurring therein), That the Senate advise and consent to the ratification of the Treaty of Peace with Germany concluded at Versailles on the 28th day of June, 1919 subject to the following reservations and understandings, which are hereby made a part and condition to this resolution of ratification, which ratification is not to take effect or bind the United States until the said reservations and understandings adopted by the Senate have been accepted by an exchange of notes as a part and a condition of this resolution of ratification by at least three of the four principal allied and associated powers, to wit, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan.

The United States so understands and construes Article I that in case of notice of withdrawal from the League of Nations, as provided in said article, the United States shall be the sole judge as to whether all its international obligations and all its obligations under the said covenant have been fulfilled, and notice of withdrawal by the United States may be given by a concurrent resolution of the Congress of the United States.

The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country or to interfere in controversies between nations—whether members of the League or not—under the provisions of Article 10, or to employ the military or naval forces of the United States under any article of the Treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces of the United States, shall by act or joint resolution so provide.

No mandate shall be accepted by the United States under Article 22, Part 1, or any other provision of the Treaty of Peace with Germany, except by action of the Congress of the United States.

The United States reserves to itself exclusively the right to decide what questions are within its domestic jurisdiction and declares that all domestic and political questions relating wholly or in part to its internal affairs, including immigration, labor, coastwise traffic, the tariff, commerce, the suppression of traffic in women and children, and in opium and other dangerous drugs, and all other domestic questions, are solely within the jurisdiction of the United States and are not under this Treaty to be submitted in any way either to arbitration or to the consideration of the Council or of the Assembly of the League of Nations, or any agency thereof, or to the decision or recommendation of any other power.

The United States will not submit to arbitration or to inquiry by the Assembly or by the Council of the League of Nations, provided for in said Treaty of Peace, any questions which in the judgment of the United States depend upon or relate to its long-established policy, commonly known as the Monroe Doctrine; said doctrine is to be interpreted by the United States alone and is hereby declared to be wholly outside the jurisdiction of said League of Nations and entirely unaffected by any provision contained in the said Treaty of Peace with Germany.

The United States withholds its assent to Articles 156, 157, and 158, and reserves full liberty of action with respect to any controversy which may arise under said articles between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan.

The Congress of the United States will provide by law for the appointment of the representatives of the United States in the Assembly and the Council of the League of Nations, and may in its discretion provide for the participation of the United States in any commission, committee, tribunal, court, council, or conference, or in the selection of any members thereof and for the appointment of members of said commissions, committees, tribunals, courts, councils, or conferences, or any other representatives under the Treaty of Peace, or in carrying out its provisions, and until such participation and appointment have been so provided for and the powers and duties of such representatives have been defined by law, no person shall represent the United States under either said League of Nations or the Treaty of Peace with Germany, or be authorized to perform any act for or on behalf of the United States thereunder, and no citizen of the United States shall be selected or appointed as a member of said commissions, committees, tribunals, courts, councils, or conferences except with the approval of the Senate of the United States.

The United States understands that the Reparation Commission will regulate or interfere with exports from the United States to Germany, or from Germany to the United States, only when the United States by act or joint resolution of Congress approves such regulation or interference.

The United States shall not be obligated to contribute to any expenses of the League of Nations, or of the secretariat, or of any commission, or committee, or conference, or other agency, organized under the League of Nations or under the Treaty or for the purpose of carrying out the Treaty provisions, unless and until an appropriation of funds available for such expenses shall have been made by the Congress of the United States.

If the United States shall at any time adopt any plan for the limitation of armaments proposed by the Council of the League of Nations, under the provisions of Article 8, it reserves the right to increase such armaments without the consent of the Council whenever the United States is threatened with invasion or engaged in war.

The United States reserves the right to permit, in its discretion, the nationals of a covenant-breaking State, as defined in Article 16 of the covenant of the League of Nations, residing within the United States or in countries other than that violating said Article 16, to continue their commercial, financial, and personal relations with the nationals of the United States.

Nothing in Articles 296, 297, or in any of the annexes thereto or in any other article, section, or annex of the Treaty of Peace with Germany shall, as against citizens of the United States, be taken to mean any confirmation, ratification, or approval of any act otherwise illegal or in contravention of the right of citizens of the United States.

The United States withholds its assent to Part XIII. (Articles 387 to 427, inclusive) unless Congress by act or joint resolution shall hereafter make provision for representation in the organization established by said Part XIII, and in such event the participation of the United States will be governed and conditioned by the provisions of such act or joint resolution.

The United States assumes no obligation to be bound by any election, decision, report, or finding of the council, or assembly in which any member of the League and its self-governing dominions, colonies, or parts of empire, in the aggregate have cast more than one vote, and assumes no obligation to be bound by any decision, report, or finding of the council or assembly arising out of any dispute between the United States and any member of the League if such member, or any self-governing dominion, colony, empire, or part of empire united with it politically has voted.

Ratification of the above resolution required a two-thirds vote. The resolution was lost 55 to 39, the votes of 13 Republican "irreconcilables" being cast against the resolution. On a motion to reconsider, the resolution was again voted on, this time the vote being 51 to 41. Senator Underwood's motion for unconditional ratification of the Treaty without reservation was then lost 53 to 38.

The crux of the opposition to the Treaty was Article X. In President Wilson's view, the Lodge reservation to this article cut the heart out of the League of Nations, and nullified its whole structure and practical operation. For a time it looked as if the Peace Treaty was dead. Public opinion, however, insisted that the Treaty must not be allowed to die and that the United States was morally obligated to the rest of the world to take its place in the family of nations as a signatory to the Treaty with such interpretative reservations as would protect America's interests, and at the same time not antagonize other nations.

Early in January, 1920, the President in a letter to Senator Hitchcock declared against "strong" reservations, and on January 15th, with a view to reaching a compromise, there began a series of bi-partisan conferences among Senators at which were discussed the various reservations that had been a stumbling block, but no agreement could be reached. As before, the phraseology and intent of Article X was the principal bone of contention.

THE TREATY AGAIN BEFORE THE SENATE

On February 10th Senator Lodge reported the Treaty a second time to the Senate, and with the original set of reservations. After another month of debate and of organized efforts on the part of public spirited citizens to exert pressure on the Senators to settle their differences and give the nation what it demanded—a Treaty of Peace—the lines were again drawn preparatory to another vote. The Senate, sitting in Committee of the Whole, took up the Lodge reservations, one after another, accepting some virtually without change, modifying or amplifying others, until all but Article X had been agreed upon.

Various new drafts of this reservation were suggested, both by Senators and by private citizens; some of these were voted on, but none could muster the votes necessary for adoption.

Early in March a compromise reservation was worked out by Republicans and Democrats, and this was made the occasion of an effort to induce the President to give his views on Article X. For convenience in comparison, Article X of the League of Nations, the original Lodge reservation, and the proposed compromise reservation, are reproduced herewith:

ARTICLE X OF THE LEAGUE

The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League. In case of any such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.

THE ORIGINAL LODGE RESERVATION

The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country or to interfere in controversies between nations—whether members of the League or not—under the provision of Article X., or to employ the military or naval forces of the United States under any article of the Treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which under the Constitution has the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces of the United States, shall by act or joint resolution so provide.

THE PROPOSED COMPROMISE RESERVATION

The United States assumes no obligation to employ its military or naval forces, its resources, or the economic boycott to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country under the provisions of Article X., or to employ the military or naval forces of the United States under any other article of the Treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has the sole power to declare war, shall, by act or joint resolution, so provide.

ARTICLE X, SAYS WILSON, NULLIFIES A SACRED OBLIGATION

The President expressed his views on Article X and the proposed reservations to it in a letter to Senator Hitchcock under date of March 8th, in which he said:

"There is no escaping the moral obligations which are expressed in positive terms in this article of the covenant. We won a moral victory over Germany, far greater even than the military victory won on the field of battle, because the opinion of the whole world swung to our support and the support of the nations associated with us in the great struggle. It did so because of our common profession and promise that we meant to establish 'an organization of peace which should make it certain that the combined power of free nations would check every invasion of right, and serve to make peace and justice the more secure by affording a definite tribunal of opinion to which all must submit and by which every international readjustment that cannot be amicably agreed upon by the peoples directly concerned shall be sanctioned.'

"This promise and assurance were written into the preliminaries of the armistice and into the preliminaries of the peace itself and constitute one of the most sacred obligations ever assumed by any nation or body of nations. It is unthinkable that America should set the example of ignoring such a solemn moral engagement.

"For myself, I feel that I could not look the soldiers of our gallant armies in the face again if I did not do everything in my power to remove every obstacle that lies in the way of the adoption of this particular article of the covenant, because we made these pledges to them as well as to the rest of the world, and it was to this cause they deemed themselves devoted in a spirit of crusaders. I should be forever unfaithful to them if I did not do my utmost to fulfill the high purpose for which they fought."

"A NEW DOCTRINE IN THE WORLD'S AFFAIRS"

The President said he regarded the stipulations as to constitutional methods required by the proposed compromise reservation as superfluous, because it was understood at Paris that whatever duties any nation undertook under the Treaty would as a matter of course "have to be fulfilled by its usual and established constitutional methods of action." He said further:

"Any reservation which seeks to deprive the League of Nations of the force of Article X. cuts at the very heart and life of the covenant itself. Any League of Nations which does not guarantee as a matter of incontestable right the political independence and integrity of each of its members might be hardly more than a futile scrap of paper, as ineffective in operation as the agreement between Belgium and Germany which the Germans violated in 1914.

"Article X. as written into the Treaty of Versailles represents the renunciation by Great Britain and Japan, which before the war had begun to find so many interests in common in the Pacific; by France, by Italy, by all the great fighting powers of the world, of the old pretensions of political conquest and territorial aggrandisement. It is a new doctrine in the world's affairs and must be recognized or there is no secure basis for the peace which the whole world so desperately needs.

"If Article X. is not adopted and acted upon, the Governments which reject it will, I think, be guilty of bad faith to their people, whom they induced to make the infinite sacrifices of the war by the pledge that they would be fighting to redeem the world from the old order of force and aggression. They will be acting also in bad faith to the opinion of the world at large, to which they appealed for support in a concerted stand against the aggressions and pretensions of Germany.

"If we were to reject Article X. or so to weaken it as to take its full force out of it, it would mark us as desiring to return to the old world of jealous rivalry and misunderstandings from which our gallant soldiers have rescued us and would leave us without any vision or new conception of justice and peace. We would have learned no lesson from the war, but gained only the regret that it had involved us in its maelstrom of suffering. If America has awakened, as the rest of the world has, to the vision of a new day in which the mistakes of the past are to be corrected, it will welcome the opportunity to share the responsibilities of Article X.

"It must not be forgotten, Senator, that the article constitutes a renunciation of all ambition on the part of powerful nations with whom we were associated in the war. It is by no means certain that without this article any such renunciation will take place. Militaristic ambitions and imperialistic policies are by no means dead, even in counsels of the nations whom we most trust and with whom we most desire to be associated in the tasks of peace.

DEMOCRACY VERSUS IMPERIALISM

"The choice is between two ideals; on the one hand, the ideal of democracy, which represents the rights of free peoples everywhere to govern themselves, and on the other hand the ideal of imperialism which seeks to dominate by force and unjust power, an ideal which is by no means dead and which is earnestly held in many quarters still.

"Every imperialistic influence in Europe was hostile to the embodiment of Article X. in the covenant of the League of Nations, and its defeat now would mark the complete consummation of their efforts to nullify the Treaty. I hold the doctrine of Article X. as the essence of Americanism. We cannot repudiate it or weaken it without at the same time repudiating our own principles.

"The imperialist wants no League of Nations, but if, in response to the universal cry of the masses everywhere, there is to be one, he is interested to secure one suited to his own purposes, one that will permit him to continue the historic game of pawns and peoples—the juggling of provinces, the old balances of power, and the inevitable wars attendant upon these things.

"The reservation proposed would perpetuate the old order. Does any one really want to see the old game played again? Can any one really venture to take part in reviving the old order? The enemies of a League of Nations have by every true instinct centered their efforts against Article X., for it is undoubtedly the foundation of the whole structure. It is the bulwark, and the only bulwark, of the rising democracy of the world against the forces of imperialism and reaction.

"Either we should enter the League fearlessly, accepting the responsibility and not fearing the rôle of leadership, which we now enjoy, contributing our efforts toward establishing a just and permanent peace, or we should retire as gracefully as possible from the great concert of powers, by which the world was saved. For my own part, I am not willing to trust to the counsel of diplomats the working out of any salvation of the world from the things which it has suffered."

ARTICLE X AS FINALLY ADOPTED

The Article X reservation was again rewritten and when finally adopted on March 15 by a vote of 56 to 26, read as follows:

The United States assumes no obligation to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country by the employment of its military or naval forces, its resources, or any form of economic discrimination, or to interfere in any way in controversies between nations, including all controversies relating to territorial integrity or political independence, whether members of the League or not, under the provisions of Article X., or to employ the military or naval forces of the United States, under any article of the Treaty for any purpose, unless in any particular case the Congress, which, under the Constitution, has the sole power to declare war or authorize the employment of the military or naval forces of the United States, shall, in the exercise of full liberty of action, by act or joint resolution so provide.

THE TREATY AGAIN REJECTED

All of the 14 reservations having been debated and adopted in the Senate, sitting in Committee of the Whole, a fifteenth reservation expressing sympathy with the aspirations of the Irish people having been added, the resolution of ratification was introduced by Senator Lodge on March 19th. The vote stood: in favor of ratification, 49; against, 35. By this vote, the Treaty of Versailles was for the second time rejected. The resolution was supported by 28 Republicans and 21 Democrats, and opposed by 23 Democrats and 12 Republicans. The resolution lacked seven votes of the necessary two-thirds, and although it was a Republican measure, the opposition of the Republican "irreconcilables" or "bitter-enders" was sufficient to defeat it.