O N T H E T E R M S O F P E A C E

1 9 1 8

––––––––––––––––––––– Henry Cabot Lodge ––––––––––––––––––––

We have now at this moment a league of nations. They have been engaged in

compelling Germany to make peace and in restoring peace to the world. It has

taken four years of the bloodiest war ever known to get that peace. By this

existing and most efficient league the peace once signed must be carried out and

made effective. Therefore, it is well to reflect that entering upon a new and

larger league of nations involves somewhat heavy responsibilities and dangers

which must be carefully examined and deliberately considered before they are

incurred. The attempt to form now a league of nations—and I mean an effective

league, with power to enforce its decrees—no other is worth discussing—can

tend at this moment only to embarrass the peace which we ought to make at

once with Germany. The American people desire as prompt action on peace

with Germany as is consistent with safety. The attempt to attach the provisions

for an effective league of nations to the treaty of peace now making with

Germany would be to launch the nations who have been fighting Germany on a

sea of boundless discussion, the very thing Germany most desires. It would

cause wide differences of opinion and bring long delays. If the attempt was

successful and a league of nations, with the powers about which I have ventured

to inquire vested in it, were to come here before the Senate, it might endanger

the peace treaty and force amendments. It certainly would lead to very long

delays. Is not the first duty of all the countries united against Germany to make

a peace with Germany? Is that not the way to bring peace to the world now?

Ought we not to avoid, so far as possible, all delays? Ought we not, speaking

only for ourselves, to have a treaty here before the Senate which will not

involve interminable discussions about the provisions of a league? Is it not our

first duty and our highest duty to bring peace to the world at this moment and

not encumber it by trying to provide against wars which never may be fought

and against difficulties which lie far ahead in a dim and unknown future? I have

merely glanced at these outlying questions, my purpose being simply to show

that they ought none of them to be pressed at this time; that the making of peace

with Germany and the settlement of the questions inseparably connected with it

is enough and more than enough for the present without embarrassing it with

questions which involve the settlement of the unknown, without the attempt to

deal with all possible questions that ever may arise between nations. To enter

on these disputed fields which are not necessary to the making of the peace with

Germany seems to me perilous and more likely at this moment to lead to

trouble and to a failure of the German peace and its associated questions than to

anything else.

Source: The Senate and the League of Nations by Henry Cabot Lodge (New

York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), pp. 96–98.