Chapter 13

THE SENATE AND THE TREATY

Neither President Wilson nor those who had been working with him at Paris seriously feared that, after securing the point of chief importance to him at the Conference, he would fail to win support for the League of Nations and the treaty at home. They recognized, of course, that his political opponents in the Senate would not acquiesce without a struggle. The Republicans were now in the majority, and Henry Cabot Lodge, the new chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, had gone far in his efforts to undermine Wilson's policy at Paris. He had encouraged the Italians in their imperialistic designs in the Adriatic and had done his best to discredit the League of Nations. Former Progressive Senators, such as Johnson and Borah, who like Lodge made personal hostility to Wilson the chief plank in their political programme, had declared vigorously their determination to prevent the entrance of the United States into a League. The Senators as a whole were not well-informed upon foreign conditions and Wilson had done nothing to enlighten them. He had not asked their advice in the formulation of his policy, nor had he supplied them with the facts that justified the position he had taken. Naturally their attitude was not likely to be friendly, now that he returned to request their consent to the treaty, and the approach of a presidential election was bound to affect the action of all ardent partisans.

Opposition was also to be expected in the country. There was always the ancient prejudice against participation in European affairs, which had not been broken even by the events of the past two years. The people, even more than the Senate, were ignorant of foreign conditions and failed to understand the character of the obligations which the nation would assume under the treaty and the covenant of the League. There was genuine fear lest the United States should become involved in wars and squabbles in which it had no material interest, and lest it should surrender its independence of action to a council of foreign powers. This was accompanied by the belief that an irresponsible President might commit the country to an adventurous course of action which could not be controlled by Congress. The chief opposition to the treaty and covenant, however, probably resulted from the personal dislike of Wilson. This feeling, which had always been virulent along the Atlantic coast and in the industrial centers of the Middle West, had been intensified by the President's apparent disregard of Congress. More than one man of business argued that the treaty must be bad because it was Wilson's work and the covenant worst of all, since it was his pet scheme. One heard daily in the clubs and on the golf-courses of New England and the Middle Atlantic States the remark: "I know little about the treaty, but I know Wilson, and I know he must be wrong."

And yet the game was probably in the President's hands, had he known how to play it. Divided as it was on the question of personal devotion to Wilson, the country was a unit in its desire for immediate peace and normal conditions. Admitting the imperfections of the treaty, it was probably the best that could be secured in view of the conflicting interests of the thirty-one signatory powers, and at least it would bring peace at once. To cast it aside meant long delays and prolongation of the economic crisis. The covenant of the League might not be entirely satisfactory, but something must be done to prevent war in the future; and if this League proved unsatisfactory, it could be amended after trial. Even the opposing Senators did not believe that they could defeat the treaty outright. They were warned by Republican financiers, who understood international economic conditions, that the safety and prosperity of the world demanded ratification, and that the United States could not afford to assume an attitude of isolation even if it were possible. Broad-minded statesmen who were able to dissociate partisan emotion from intellectual judgment, such as ex-President Taft, agreed that the treaty should be ratified as promptly as possible. All that Senator Lodge and his associates really hoped for was to incorporate reservations which would guarantee the independence of American action and incidentally make it impossible for the President to claim all the credit for the peace.

Had the President proved capable of coöperating with the moderate Republican Senators it would probably have been possible for him to have saved the fruits of his labor at Paris. An important group honestly believed that the language of the covenant was ambiguous in certain respects, particularly as regards the extent of sovereignty sacrificed by the national government to the League, and the diminution of congressional powers. This group was anxious to insert reservations making plain the right of Congress alone to declare war, defining more exactly the right of the United States to interpret the Monroe Doctrine, and specifying what was meant by domestic questions that should be exempt from the cognizance of the League. Had Wilson at once combined with this group and agreed to the suggested reservations, he would in all probability have been able to secure the two-thirds vote necessary to ratification. The country would have been satisfied; the Republicans might have contended that they had "Americanized" the treaty; and the reservations would probably have been accepted by the co-signatories. It would have been humiliating to go back to the Allies asking special privileges, but Europe needed American assistance too much to fail to heed these demands. After all America had gained nothing in the way of territorial advantage from the war and was asking for nothing in the way of reparations.

It was at this crucial moment that Wilson's peculiar temperamental faults asserted themselves. Sorely he needed the sane advice of Colonel House, who would doubtless have found ways of placating the opposition. But that practical statesman was in London and the President lacked the capacity to arrange the compromise that House approved.

President Wilson alone either would not or could not negotiate successfully with the middle group of Republicans. He went so far as to initiate private conferences with various Senators, a step indicating his desire to avoid the appearance of the dictatorship of which he was accused; but his attitude on reservations that altered the meaning of any portion of the treaty or covenant was unyielding, and he even insisted that merely interpretative reservations should not be embodied in the text of the ratifying resolution. The President evidently hoped that the pressure of public opinion would compel the Senate to yield to the demand for immediate peace and for guarantees against future war. His appearance of rigidity, however, played into the hands of the opponents of the treaty, who dominated the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. Senator Lodge, chairman of the committee, adopted a stand which, to the Administration at least, did not seem to be justified by anything but a desire to discredit the work of Wilson. He had, in the previous year, warmly advocated a League of Nations, but in the spring of 1919 he had given the impression that he would oppose any League for which Wilson stood sponsor. Thus he had raised objections to the preliminary draft of the covenant which Wilson brought from Paris in February; but when Wilson persuaded the Allies to incorporate some of the amendments then demanded by Republican Senators, he at once found new objections. He did not dare attack the League as a principle, in view of the uncertainty of public opinion on the issue; but he obviously rejoiced in the President's inability to unite the Democrats with the middle-ground Republicans, for whom Senator McCumber stood as spokesman.

On the 19th of August a conference was held at the White House, in which the President attempted to explain to the Foreign Relations Committee doubtful points and to give the reasons for various aspects of the settlement. A careful study of the stenographic report indicates that his answers to the questions of the Republican Senators were frank, and that he was endeavoring to remove the unfortunate effects of his former distant attitude. His manner, however, had in it something of the schoolmaster, and the conference was fruitless. Problems which had been studied for months by experts of all the Powers, and to the solution of which had been devoted long weeks of intelligent discussion, were now passed upon superficially by men whose ignorance of foreign questions was only too evident, and who barely concealed their determination to nullify everything approved by the President. Hence, when the report of the committee was finally presented on the 10th of September, the Republican majority demanded no less than thirty-eight amendments and four reservations. A quarter of the report was not concerned at all with the subject under discussion, but was devoted to an attack upon Wilson's autocratic methods and his treatment of the Senate. As was pointed out by Senator McCumber, the single Republican who dissented from the majority report, "not one word is said, not a single allusion made, concerning either the great purposes of the League of Nations or the methods by which these purposes are to be accomplished. Irony and sarcasm have been substituted for argument and positions taken by the press or individuals outside the Senate seem to command more attention than the treaty itself."

The President did not receive the popular support which he expected, and the burst of popular wrath which he believed would overwhelm senatorial opposition was not forthcoming. In truth public opinion was confused. America was not educated to understand the issues at stake. Wilson's purposes at Paris had not been well reported in the press, and he himself had failed to make plain the meaning of his policy. It was easy for opponents of the treaty to muddy discussion and to arouse emotion where reason was desirable. The wildest statements were made as to the effect of the covenant, such as that entrance into the League would at once involve the United States in war, and that Wilson was sacrificing the interests of America to the selfish desires of European states. The same men who, a year before, had complained that Wilson was opposing England and France, now insisted that he had sold the United States to those nations. They invented the catchword of "one hundred per cent Americanism," the test of which was to be opposition to the treaty. They found strange coadjutors. The German-Americans, suppressed during the war, now dared to emerge, hoping to save the Fatherland from the effects of defeat by preventing the ratification of the treaty; the politically active Irish found opportunity to fulminate against British imperialism and "tyranny" which they declared had been sanctioned by the treaty; impractical liberals, who were disappointed because Wilson had not inaugurated the social millennium, joined hands with out-and-out reactionaries. But the most discouraging aspect of the situation was that so many persons permitted their judgment to be clouded by their dislike of the President's personality. However much they might disapprove the tactics of Senator Lodge they could not but sympathize to some extent with the Senate's desire to maintain its independence, which they believed had been assailed by Wilson. Discussions which began with the merits of the League of Nations almost invariably culminated with vitriolic attacks upon the character of Woodrow Wilson.

In the hope of arousing the country to a clear demand for immediate peace based upon the Paris settlement, Wilson decided to carry out the plan formulated some weeks previous and deliver a series of speeches from the Middle West to the Pacific coast. He set forth on the 3d of September and made more than thirty speeches. He was closely followed by some of his fiercest opponents. Senators Johnson and Borah, members of the Foreign Relations Committee, who might have been expected to remain in Washington to assist in the consideration of the treaty by the Senate, followed in Wilson's wake, attempting to counteract the effect of his addresses, and incidentally distorting many of the treaty's provisions, which it is charitable to assume they did not comprehend. The impression produced by the President was varied, depending largely upon the political character of his audience. East of the Mississippi he was received with comparative coolness, but as he approached the coast enthusiasm became high, and at Seattle and Los Angeles he received notable ovations. And yet in these hours of triumph as in the previous moments of discouragement, farther east, he must have felt that the issues were not clear. The struggle was no longer one for a new international order that would ensure peace, so much as a personal conflict between Lodge and Wilson. Whether the President were applauded or anathematized, the personal note was always present.

It was evident, during the tour, that the nervous strain was telling upon Wilson. He had been worn seriously by his exertions in Paris, where he was described by a foreign plenipotentiary as the hardest worker in the Conference. The brief voyage home, which was purposely lengthened to give him better chance of recuperation, proved insufficient. Forced to resume the struggle at the moment when he thought victory was his, repudiated where he expected to find appreciation, the tour proved to be beyond his physical and nervous strength. At Pueblo, Colorado, on the 25th of September, he broke down and returned hastily to Washington. Shortly afterwards the President's condition became so serious that his physicians forbade all political conferences, insisting upon a period of complete seclusion and rest, which was destined to continue for many months.

Thus at the moment of extreme crisis in the fortunes of the treaty its chief protagonist was removed from the scene of action and the Democratic forces fighting for ratification were deprived of effective leadership. Had there been a real leader in the Senate who could carry on the fight with vigor and finesse, the treaty might even then have been saved; but Wilson's system had permitted no understudies. There was no one to lead and no one to negotiate a compromise. From his sick-room, where his natural obstinacy seemed to be intensified by his illness, the President still refused to consider any reservations except of a purely interpretative character, and the middle-ground Republicans would not vote to ratify without "mild reservations," some of which seemed to him more than interpretative.

Senatorial forces were roughly divided into four groups. There were the "bitter-enders," typified by Johnson, Borah, and Brandegee, who frankly wanted to defeat the treaty and the League outright; there were the "reservationists," most of whom, like Lodge, wanted the same but did not dare say so openly; there were the "mild reservationists," most of whom were Republicans, who sincerely desired immediate peace and asked for no important changes in the treaty; and finally there were those who desired to ratify the treaty as it stood. The last-named group, made up of Democrats, numbered from forty-one to forty-four, and obviously needed the assistance of the "mild reservationists," if they were to secure a two-thirds vote of the Senate. During October, all the amendments which the Foreign Relations Committee brought forward were defeated through the combination of the last two groups. Early in November, however, fourteen reservations were adopted, the "mild reservationists" voting with Senator Lodge, for lack of any basis of compromise with the Democrats. The effect of these reservations would, undoubtedly, have been to release the United States from many of the obligations assumed by other members, while assuring to it the benefits of the League. The most serious of the reservations was that concerned with Article X of the covenant, which stated that the United States would assume no obligations to preserve the territorial integrity or political independence of any other country, or to interfere in controversies between nations, unless in any particular case Congress should so provide. From the moment when Wilson first developed his policy of international service, coöperative interference in order to prevent acts of aggression by a strong against a weaker power had been the chief point in his programme. It was contained in his early Pan-American policy; it ran through his speeches in the campaign of 1916; it was in the Fourteen Points. It was his specific contribution to the covenant in Paris. Article X was the one point in the covenant which Wilson would not consent to modify or, as he expressed it, see "nullified." Just because it lay nearest Wilson's heart, it was the article against which the most virulent attacks of the "die-hards" were directed.

The President denounced the reservation on Article X, as a "knife-thrust at the heart of the covenant," and its inclusion in the ratifying resolution of the Senate, spelled the defeat of ratification. On the eve of voting he wrote to Senator Hitchcock, leader of the Democratic forces in the Senate, "I assume that the Senators only desire my judgment upon the all-important question of the resolution containing the many reservations of Senator Lodge. On that I cannot hesitate, for, in my opinion, the resolution in that form does not provide for ratification but rather for nullification of the treaty. I sincerely hope that the friends and supporters of the treaty will vote against the Lodge resolution of ratification." The "mild reservationists" led by McCumber voted with the Lodge group for the resolution; but the "bitter-enders," combining with the supporters of the original treaty, outnumbered them. The vote stood thirty-nine in favor of the resolution and fifty-five against. When a motion for unconditional ratification was offered by Senator Underwood, it was defeated by a vote of fifty-three to thirty-eight.

The Republicans on the Foreign Relations Committee had succeeded far beyond the hopes of their leaders in August. They had killed the treaty, but in such an indirect fashion as to confuse the public and to fix upon the President the blame for delaying the peace. It was easy to picture the obstinacy of the President as the root of all the evil which resulted from the political and economic uncertainty overhanging our European relations. So widespread was this feeling among his natural opponents, that the Republican Senators began to assume a far loftier tone, and to laugh at the tardy efforts of the Democrats to arrange a compromise. When Senator Pomerene, after consultation with Administration leaders, proposed the appointment of a "committee of conciliation," to find a basis of ratification that would secure the necessary two-thirds vote, the motion was killed by forty-eight to forty-two. Senator Lodge announced that he would support the resolution suggested by Knox, which would end the war by congressional resolution and thus compel Wilson to negotiate a separate treaty of peace with Germany.

Intelligent public opinion, however, was anxious that the quarrels of the President and the Senate should not be allowed to delay the settlement[15]. Rightly or wrongly the people felt that the struggle was largely a personal one between Lodge and Wilson, and insisted that each must yield something of their contention. On the one hand, ex-President Taft and others of the more far-seeing Republicans worked anxiously for compromise, with the assistance of such men as Hoover, who perceived the necessity of a League, but who were willing to sacrifice its efficiency to some extent, if only the United States could be brought in. On the other hand, various Democrats who were less directly under Wilson's influence wanted to meet these friends of the League half-way. During December and January unofficial conferences between the senatorial groups took place and progress towards a settlement seemed likely. The Republicans agreed to soften the language of their minor reservations, and Wilson even intimated that he would consent to a mild reservation on Article X, although as he later wrote to Hitchcock, he felt strongly that any reservation or resolution stating that the "United States assumes no obligation under such and such an article unless or except, would chill our relationship with the nations with whom we expect to be associated in this great enterprise of maintaining the world's peace." It was important "not to create the impression that we are trying to escape obligations."

[Footnote 15: A straw vote taken in 311 colleges and including 158,000 students and professors showed an inclination to favor Wilson rather than Lodge, but the greatest number approved compromise: four per cent favored a new treaty with Germany; eight per cent favored killing the Versailles treaty; only seventeen per cent approved the Lodge programme; thirty per cent approved ratification of the treaty without change; and thirty-eight per cent favored compromise.]

On the 31st of January the country was startled by the publication of a letter written by Viscount Grey, who had been appointed British Ambassador to the United States, but who had returned to England after a four months' stay, during which he had been unable to secure an interview with the sick President. In this letter he attempted to explain to the British the causes of American hesitancy to accept the League. He then went on to state that the success of the League depended upon the adherence of the United States, and while admitting the serious character of the reservations proposed by Senator Lodge, insisted that American coöperation ought not to be refused because conditions were attached. His views were unofficial, but it seemed clear that they were approved by the British Cabinet, and they received a chorus of endorsement from the French and British press.

The publication of Grey's letter opened a path to peace to both Senate and President had they been willing to follow it. The Senate, by very slight verbal softening of the language of its reservations, the President by taking the British Ambassador at his word, might have reached an agreement. The Lodge group, however, which had shown some indications of a desire for compromise, was threatened by the "die-hards" who were determined to defeat the treaty; fearing beyond everything to break party unity, Lodge finally refused to alter the language of the strong reservation on Article X, which stated that the United States would assume no obligation to preserve the independence of other nations by military force or the use of its resources or any form of economic discrimination, unless Congress should first so provide. Inasmuch as the economic outlawry of the offending state was the means which Wilson chiefly counted upon, the reservation took all practical significance from Article X, since the delays resulting from congressional deliberation would prevent effective action. The President, possibly believing that imperialist elements abroad were not sorry to see Article X nullified, refused to accept the resolution of ratification so long as it contained this reservation. "The imperialist," he wrote, "wants no League of Nations, but if, in response to the universal cry of 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 balance 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."

The deadlock was complete, and on March 19, 1920, when the vote on ratification was taken, the necessary two-thirds were lacking by seven votes. At the last moment a number of Democrats joined with the Republican reservationists, making fifty-seven in favor of ratification. On the other hand the bitter-end Republicans voted against it with the Democrats who stood by the President, thus throwing thirty-seven votes against ratification. It had taken the Peace Conference five months to construct the treaty with Germany in all its complexities, and secure the unanimous approval of the delegates of thirty-one states. The Senate had consumed more than eight months merely in criticizing the treaty and had finally refused to ratify it.

We are, perhaps, too close to the event to attempt any apportionment of responsibility for this failure to cap our military successes by a peace which--when all has been said--was the nearest possible approach to the ideal peace. It is clear that the blame is not entirely on one side. Historians will doubtless level the indictment of ignorance and political obliquity against the Senators who tried, either directly or indirectly, to defeat the treaty; they will find much justification for their charge, although it will be more difficult to determine the dividing line between mere incapacity to appreciate the necessities of the world, and the desire to discredit, at any cost, the work of Woodrow Wilson. On the other hand, the President cannot escape blame, although the charge will be merely that of tactical incapacity and mistaken judgment. His inability to combine with the moderate Republican Senators first gave a chance to those who wanted to defeat the treaty. His obstinate refusal to accept reservations at the end, when it was clear that the treaty could not be ratified without them, showed a regard for form, at the expense of practical benefit. Granted that the reservations altered the character of the League or the character of American participation in it, some sort of a League was essential and the sooner the United States entered the better it would be. Its success would not rest upon phrases, but upon the spirit of the nations that composed it; the building-up of a new and better international order would not be determined by this reservation or that. Wilson's claim to high rank as a statesmen would probably be more clear if he had accepted what was possible at the moment, in the hope that the League would be improved as the country and the world became better educated.