Conference, undoubtedly believed that some sort of organization of this nature was necessary, and I am convinced that the same popular belief prevailed in all other civilized countries. It is possible that this assertion may seem too emphatic to some who have opposed the plan for a League of Nations, which appears in the first articles of the Treaty of Versailles, but, if these opponents of the plan will go back to the time of which I am writing, and avoid the impressions made upon them by subsequent events, they will find, I believe, that even their own views have materially changed since December, 1918. It is true that concrete plans had then been suggested, but so far as the public knew the President had not adopted any of them or formulated one of his own. He had not then disclosed the provisions of his "Covenant."

The mass of the people were only concerned with the general idea. There was no well-defined opposition to that idea. At least it was not vocal. Even the defeat of the Democratic Party in the Congressional elections of November, 1918, could not be interpreted to be a repudiation of the formation of a world organization. That election, by which both Houses of Congress became Republican, was a popular rebuke to Mr. Wilson for the partisanship shown in his letter of October addressed to the American people, in which he practically asserted that it was unpatriotic to support the Republican candidates. The indignation. and resentment aroused by that injudicious and unwarranted attack upon the loyalty of his political opponents

lost to the Democratic Party the Senate and largely reduced its membership in the House of Representatives if it did not in fact deprive the party of control of that body. The result, however, did not mean that the President's ideas as to the terms of peace were repudiated, but that his practical assertion, that refusal to accept his policies was unpatriotic, was repudiated by the American people.

It is very apparent to one, who without prejudice reviews the state of public sentiment in December, 1918, that the trouble, which later developed as to a League of Nations, did not lie in the necessity of convincing the peoples of the world, their governments, and their delegates to the Paris Conference that it was desirable to organize the world to prevent future wars, but in deciding upon the form and functions of the organization to be created. As to these details, which of course affected the character, the powers, and the duties of the organization, there had been for years a wide divergence of opinion. Some advocated the use of international force to prevent a nation from warring against another. Some favored coercion by means of general ostracism and non-intercourse. Some believed that the application of legal justice through the medium of international tribunals and commissions was the only practical method of settling disputes which might become causes of war. And some emphasized the importance of a mutual agreement to postpone actual hostilities until there could be an investigation as to the merits of

a controversy. There were thus two general classes of powers proposed which were in the one case political and in the other juridical. The cleavage of opinion was along these lines, although it possibly was not recognized by the general public. It was not only shown in the proposed powers, but also in the proposed form of the organization, the one centering on a politico-diplomatic body, and the other on an international judiciary. Naturally the details of any plan proposed would become the subject of discussion and the advisability of adopting the provisions would arouse controversy and dispute. Thus unanimity in approving a world organization did not mean that opinions might not differ radically in working out the fundamental principles of its form and functions, to say nothing of the detailed plan based on these principles.

In May, 1916, President Wilson accepted an invitation to address the first annual meeting of the League to Enforce Peace, which was to be held in Washington. After preparing his address he went over it and erased all reference to the use of physical force in preventing wars. I mention this as indicative of the state of uncertainty in which he was in the spring of 1916 as to the functions and powers of the international organization to maintain peace which he then advocated. By January, 1917, he had become convinced that the use of force was the practical method of checking aggressions. This conversion was probably due to the fact that he had in his own mind. worked out, as one of the essential bases of peace, to which

he was then giving much thought, a mutual guaranty of territorial integrity and political independence, which had been the chief article of a proposed Pan-American Treaty prepared early in 1915 and to which he referred in his address before the League to Enforce Peace. He appears to have reached the conclusion that a guaranty of this sort would be of little value unless supported by the threatened, and, if necessary, the actual, employment of force. The President was entirely logical in this attitude. A guaranty against physical aggression would be practically worthless if it did not rest on an agreement to protect with physical force. An undertaking to protect carried with it the idea of using effectual measures to insure protection. They were inseparable; and the President, having adopted an affirmative guaranty against aggression as a cardinal provision — perhaps I should say the cardinal provision — of the anticipated peace treaty, could not avoid becoming the advocate of the use of force in making good the guaranty.

During the year 1918 the general idea of the formation of an international organization to prevent war was increasingly discussed in the press of the United States and Europe and engaged the thought of the Governments of the Powers at war with the German Empire. On January 8 of that year President Wilson in an address to Congress proclaimed his "Fourteen Points," the adoption of which he considered necessary to a just and stable peace. The last of these "Points" explicitly states the basis of the

proposed international organization and the fundamental reason for its formation. It is as follows:

"XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike."

This declaration may be considered in view of subsequent developments to be a sufficiently clear announcement of the President's theory as to the plan of organization which ought to be adopted, but at the time the exact character of the "mutual guarantees" was not disclosed and aroused little comment. I do not believe that Congress, much less the public at large, understood the purpose that the President had in mind. Undoubtedly, too, a sense of loyalty to the Chief Executive, while the war was in progress, and the desire to avoid giving comfort of any sort to the enemy, prevented a critical discussion of the announced bases of peace, some of which were at the time academic, premature, and liable to modification if conditions changed.

In March Lord Phillimore and his colleagues made their preliminary report to the British Government on "a League of Nations" and this was followed in July by their final report, copies of which reached the President soon after they were made. The time had arrived for putting into concrete form the general ideas that the President held, and Colonel House, whom some believed to be the real author of Mr. Wilson's conception of a world union,