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When, on September 1, 1939, the world was plunged into war for the second time in twenty-five years, many people turned their thoughts to the problem of creating some agency that in the future would have sufficient power to maintain world peace. Shortly after the United States entered the war, President Roosevelt told Congress that the American people were not going to be satisfied with just winning the war, but that they wanted to "maintain the security of the peace that will follow." Increasingly, more and more people have felt that if the United States had joined
League of Nations in 1919 or 1920 there would have been a strong possibility that now [1943] there would not be a war ravaging the earth. In a very blunt fashion Prime Minister Winston Churchill told the American Congress on December 26, 1941, that this war need not have happened had the peace-loving nations worked together during the past twenty years. In the light of this statement, why did the United States abstain from the league? Why did the United States shirk its responsibility as a major power and generally follow an irresponsible course in world affairs?

Unfortunately the Versailles Treaty, in which the League of Nations was incorporated, was not debated in the United States Senate purely on its merits. Instead of a reasonable atmosphere to discuss this proposed method of ending wars, the air of the Senate was one of bitterness, partisanship, and hostility. Some senators, like Henry Cabot Lodge, had a deep personal hatred for Woodrow Wilson; some Senators were personally piqued that the President had not included any members of their body on the Peace Commission; some partisan Republicans did not want to pass a
peace treaty drawn up by a Democratic President since this might insure a Democratic victory in 1920. Then, of course, certain Senators were influenced by their constituents: many German-Americans were opposed to the treaty because in their opinion it was too severe on Germany; many Italian-Americans were against the treaty because Italy had not been given Fiume; many Irish-Americans looked upon the treaty as an English plot to control the world and were particularly furious at England at that moment because of England's suppression of the Irish revolution; reactionaries were opposed to the treaty because it was not severe enough toward
Germany; and, on the other hand, a number of liberals opposed the treaty because they felt that it was too harsh toward Germany.

When President Wilson presented the Versailles Treaty to the Senate on July 10, 1919, the Senate did not divide into two groups, one for the treaty and the other against. Instead, four groups were formed: (1) a pro-treaty group, composed of 43 Democrats and one Republican, who were for ratification without any qualifications; (2) the "mild reservationists," made up of about 15 Republicans, who were warmly for the treaty but desired reservations of a mild character; (3) the "strong reservationists," consisting of about 20 Republicans, who favored ratification but with "strong" reservations; and (4) the "irreconcilables," 12 Republicans and 3 Democrats, led by
William E. Borah, who were opposed to ratification under any conditions. The vast majority of the Senate, 80 out of 96, were for the treaty, although groups two and three wanted certain reservations. The problem of strategy was to present the question in such a way that the three groups favorable to the treaty could unite. The tragedy was that the treaty "failed of ratification not because a constitutional majority desired to reject the treaty but because the different groups
favor of the treaty were unable to agree on the conditions of ratification." When the two votes on ratification occurred (November 19, 1919, and March 19, 1920) the treaty was defeated not by its enemies, the "irreconcilables," but by its most ardent friends. On both occasions when the treaty with reservations came to a vote, the reservationists voted for it and the "irreconcilables," in combination with the administration Democrats (group 1), voted against it. The administration
Democrats did not want to defeat the treaty. They only wanted to defeat the treaty with reservations in order that a vote could be had under more acceptable conditions. In so doing they were acting on the advice of President Wilson, who wrote to Senator Hitchcock just before the first vote was taken: "I sincerely hope that the friends and the supporters of the treaty will vote against the Lodge resolution of ratification. I understand that the door will then probably be open for a more genuine resolution of ratification."

A majority of the Senators, then, desired to accept the treaty, but they could not devise the strategy necessary to bring this majority together on the vote. This favorable majority was backed up by a majority of the American public who, too, wanted to accept the treaty and entrance into the League of Nations. The Literary Digest conducted a poll of newspapers in April, 1919, and found that 718 were for ratification, 478 were for ratification with conditions, and only 181 were against ratification. For a long time, the idea of a league of nations had been growing in the United States. Theodore Roosevelt, speaking before the Nobel Prize Committee in 1910, advocated a League of Peace to prevent war from breaking out. After the outbreak of the World War, he wrote that "the great civilized nations of the world which do possess force, actual or immediately potential, should\ combine by solemn agreement in a great world league for the peace of righteousness." President Wilson was also thinking along the same lines in the fall of 1914. He told a friend that "all nations must be absorbed into some great association of nations whereby all shall guarantee the integrity of each so that any one nation violating the agreement between all of them shall bring punishment on itself automatically." Ex-President Taft expressed much the same opinion in October, 1914.

So many Americans were in agreement with these distinguished leaders that there was formed on June 17, 1915, a Committee for a League to Enforce Peace. Within a year the league had branches in almost every congressional district in the country. The organization felt that it was desirable the United States to join a league of nations. Senator Lodge publicly gave his support to the proposal in 1916, as did Woodrow Wilson. On January 22, 1917, President Wilson told the Senate that one of the things necessary for permanent peace was a league of nations. On January 8, 1918,
in his message to Congress setting forth the fourteen points on which he thought that the peace should be based, Wilson included a general association of nations to give "mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike" as the last point.

When Wilson sailed for Europe in December, 1918, to attend the peace conference, he did not have, however, a completely united country behind his desire to make a peace that would be permanent. In the mid-term Congressional elections, the Republicans had gained control of the Senate by a majority of two. Wilson, on October 25, 1918, had publicly asked the voters who approved of his leadership to vote for a Democratic congressmen in the 1918 off year elections.

He pointed out that he wanted this because a Republican Congress would divide the leadership of the nation. The Republicans in Congress had been prowar but antiadministration, and this was no time for divided leadership. Furthermore, the election of a Republican majority in either house of Congress would be considered abroad to be a repudiation of his leadership. Theodore Roosevelt denounced this appeal and repudiated Wilson's Fourteen Points. Other Republicans like Charles
Hughes, William H. Taft, and Will Hays, chairman of the Republican National Committee, stated they did not agree that Wilson's control of the government should be unhampered nor was it necessary for the country's welfare. In the months that followed, when Taft fought shoulder to shoulder with Wilson against the leadership of his own party in the Senate for the Versailles Treaty and the League of Nations, one leading writer has pointed out that Taft "must have wondered whether it might have been better to have given Wilson the continued control for which he asked. Wilson was destroyed in the conflict with a Republican Congress which followed the election of 1918. .. ."

The election of a Republican Senate in 1918 should not necessarily be taken as evidence that the nation thereby repudiated Wilson's leadership. A majority of the people had long been Republican and Wilson had been elected in 1912 when the Republican party had split into two wings. In each of the elections from 1914 to 1918 the Republicans had slowly regained seats in Congress. When it is remembered that there is usually a reaction against the party in power at a midterm election
when the Presidency is not at stake, the election of 1918 was not a great victory for the Republicans nor a great defeat for the President.2

As soon as the Armistice celebration had quieted, Senators Knox, Poindexter, and Reed attacked the proposal of a league of nations. Former Senator Albert Beveridge of Indiana had through his correspondence been urging the defeat of a league of nations for some time. He wrote Theodore Roosevelt and Will Hays that the Republican Party would be injured if Wilson's plans were not opposed. He wrote Henry Cabot Lodge, Republican majority leader and Chairman of the Senate
Committee on Foreign Affairs, that the future of the party was in his hands and that its prospects would be "seriously, perhaps fatally, injured by the acceptance of Mr. Wilson's international plan, or any variation of it." With the Democrats winning prestige for the successful prosecution of the war, some Republican politicians felt that they could not permit that party also to write a successful peace, or victory for the Republicans in 1920 would be impossible.

When Congress reassembled in December, partisan attacks were made on the way the war had been conducted and on Wilson's decision to attend the peace conference in person. Wilson's failure to include any Senator in his peace commission rankled in the breasts of some Senators. In the next three months, the small group of irreconcilables, unalterably opposed to the League of Nations, seized the initiative in the Senate and assailed the idea of internationalism. The majority of Republicans who favored the league in some form or other remained quiet, and the country at
large gained the impression that the peace was becoming a partisan issue.

Just what the role that Henry Cabot Lodge was playing in these months and those to come is not entirely clear. His apologists claim that he was honestly for a league of nations, with reservations. There is evidence, however, to demonstrate that he was out to kill the league under any circumstance, and that he considered the best way to accomplish this was through attaching reservations to the covenant. Lodge was a partisan Republican willing to sacrifice ideals or anything else to party loyalty. From 1893 to 1924, as a member of the Senate, he never departed from strict party regularity. In addition to party regularity, he hated Woodrow Wilson. Until Wilson's entrance into politics, Lodge had been known as "the scholar in politics," but this title, probably much to the bitterness of Lodge, then passed to Wilson. According to the estimate of Nicholas Murray Butler, "The figure that made the least appeal throughout all these years was that of Henry Cabot Lodge. He was able, vain, intensely egotistical, narrow-minded, dogmatic, and provincial."

Lodge was a master of parliamentary technique. By 1919 no one knew better than he the devices to be used to kill a treaty in the Senate. That Lodge would oppose a treaty drawn up by a Democratic President, and one whom he personally hated, seems obvious. In his public statements on the treaty, Lodge avoided any evidence of hostility toward the President. As Republican leader, it would have been unwise to have attacked the President. But in the book that Lodge wrote in 1925, justifying his conduct against the league, "his hatred for Wilson shines forth in its full intensity."

Lodge, in his book, The Senate and the League of Nations, admitted that he had told Senator Borah, the leader of the irreconcilables, that "any attempt to defeat the treaty of Versailles with the league by a straight vote in the Senate, if taken immediately, would be hopeless, even if it were desirable" and that the thing to do was "to proceed in the discussion of the treaty by way of amendment and reservation."

There is also evidence that Lodge desired to kill the treaty by attaching reservations unacceptable to Wilson, in order that the responsibility for the defeat would then fall upon the President. Lodge wrote later that ³there was another object which I had very much at heart, and that was that if we were successful in putting on reservations we should create a situation where, if the acceptance of the treaty was defeated, the Democratic party, and especially Mr. Wilson's friends, should be responsible for its defeat, and not the opponents of the treaty who were trying to pass it in a form safe for the United States.

The initial plans to attack the league were made by Lodge and Theodore Roosevelt in December, 1918. Although no draft of the league covenant had as yet been published, these two men planned to attack whatever league proposal the President brought home. On the floor of the Senate on December 21, Lodge made a speech, intended for the ears of the Allies, in which he warned that if certain "extraneous provisions"--i.e. The League of Nations--were to be found in the treaty of peace, then they would be struck out or amended by the United States Senate.

The text of the covenant of the league was first published in American papers on February 15, 1919. Immediately, the small minority of irreconcilables rallied to the attack. There can be no question that the majority of Republican Senators wanted the United States to join the league. They saw some shortcomings in it, but they felt that it was bigger than the shortcomings. The most active Senators in debate, however, were the opponents of the league. Lodge, as Republican leader, had a difficult time in preserving party unity, but he struck upon a device to accomplish this. On March 3, in the Senate, he introduced a resolution signed by thirty-seven Republican Senators
and Senators-elect of the next Congress to the effect that the peace treaty should be signed immediately and that the question of a "league of nations to insure the permanent peace of the world should then be taken up for careful and serious consideration." The real purpose of the round robin was to commit more than one-third of the Republican Senators to a policy of united, partisan action on the treaty. This policy was a victory for the irreconcilables, since one of them, Senator Brandegee, had first suggested it to Lodge. Although this was a victory for the
irreconcilables, it was not a complete one. In order to gain the signatures of many Republican Senators, a statement had to be inserted in the resolution that the signers could not accept the constitution of the league "in the form now proposed." If changes were made, many of the signers were still free to accept the league.

When Lodge was discussing future plans, shortly after this round robin, with Borah, he had to admit that "the vocal classes of the community, most of the clergymen, the preachers of sermons, a large element in the teaching force of the universities, a large proportion of the newspaper editors, and finally the men and women who were in the habit of writing and speaking for publication, although by no means thoroughly informed, were friendly to the league as it stood, and were advocating it." A month later Lodge admitted that a majority of the people favored the league.

Outstanding Republicans outside the Senate, like former-President Taft and A. Lawrence Lowell, were actively campaigning for the league. When the covenant of the league was changed by the peace conference to meet the principal American objections, it was possible for the signers of the round robin to accept the league. Senator Hitchcock, the acting Democratic leader, had written Wilson: "A number of Republican Senators who signed Lodge's manifesto on the League of Nations will, in my opinion, vote for it nevertheless, if it is a part of the peace treaty. A still larger number will give it support if certain amendments are made." Taft and Lowell wired Wilson along the same vein, and the American delegation at Paris secured the consent of other nations to changes on certain points. These points were: (1) a recognition of the Monroe Doctrine by name; exclusion of domestic questions like immigration and the tariff from the league's jurisdiction; right of withdrawal from the league; (4) right to refuse to accept a mandate over territory.

When the new Congress met in special session on May 19, 1919 the irreconcilable Republicans gained a great advantage. The Republicans controlled the Senate by a majority of two, and thus they would have a majority on each committee. In control of the Committee on Foreign Relations, they could delay or hasten action on the treaty. When the composition of the committee was announced, of the ten Republican members six were openly irreconcilable. The other four were Lodge, the chairman, who was really irreconcilable; McCumber, the most outspoken Republican
for the league; and two party regulars, Harding and New, who would follow the party leaders. Lodge seems to have deliberately packed the Republican membership of the committee with men hostile to the League. Thus he gained the power to keep the treaty in the committee's hands, while a campaign was launched to arouse public sentiment against the league. Millionaires H. C. Frick and Andrew W. Mellon contributed money, and a propaganda campaign consisting of mailings and
speaking tours was started.

While this minority was working against the league, evidence continued to pile up of the great support that the league had among the people. Thirty-two state legislatures endorsed the league and two others made a conditional endorsement. Thirty-three governors of states, also, had endorsed a league of nations.

On July 10, the day after he returned from France, Wilson presented the treaty of peace to the Senate. The Committee on Foreign Affairs kept it in their hands for two months. They had to delay in this way in order to defeat the treaty, because, as one of the irreconcilables, Senator Moses, later said, if the rules of the Senate had permitted a quick vote, "the Versailles Treaty would have been ratified without reservation." In order to stall, the committee read the treaty aloud line by line. This required two weeks. Then. the next six weeks were devoted to permitting representatives of national groups that felt that the treaty was not fair to their homeland to vent
their rage. It was natural for the irreconcilables to stir up this opposition to the treaty among foreign elements in the United States.

On September 10, the Committee on Foreign Relations presented its majority report to the Senate. The irreconcilables realized by now that they could not persuade the majority of the Republicans in the Senate to reject the treaty. Not one of the irreconcilables signed a report calling for rejection. Instead, they followed the advice of Lodge and proceeded "by way of amendment and reservation." With Lodge, Harding, and New, they recommended forty-five amendments and four reservations to the covenant of the league. The minority report, filed by six of the seven Democratic members, urged acceptance of the treaty without change. Senator McCumber, the tenth Republican on the committee, filed his own minority report in which he rebuked the partisanship of the majority:

Not one word is said, not a single allusion made, concerning either the great
purpose of the League of Nations or the methods by which those 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. It is regrettable that the animosity which centers almost wholly against the League of Nations provisions should have been engendered against a subject so important to the world's welfare. It is regrettable that the consideration of a matter so foreign to any kind of partisanship should be influenced in the country, as well as on the floor of this Senate, by hostility toward or subserviency to the President of the United States. No matter how just may be any antagonism toward President Wilson, the aspirations and hopes of a wounded and bleeding world ought not to be denied because, under the Constitution, the treaty must first be formulated by him.

The majority report did not reflect the sentiment of the Senate. While the treaty was in committee, the debates on the floor of the Senate had demonstrated that the majority of the Republicans were going to vote for entrance into the league. Some wanted strong reservations, others mild, but both groups wanted acceptance of the treaty. The irreconcilables had failed to hold a majority to rejection, and admitted this in their majority report. Now their approach was to hold all Republicans together by a program of amendments or reservations. The Wilson Democrats had two courses of action. They might reach an agreement with the mild reservationists and detach
them from the other Republicans, or they could refuse any concessions and possibly win some Republican Senators who would be willing to give up any reservations rather than have the treaty rejected.

It was this last course of action that they decided to follow. Wilson publicly made no suggestion that he might accept mild reservations. To his Senate leader, Hitchcock, he gave a list of reservations that he would accept if necessary, but Wilson took no public step to win the support of the mild reservationist Republicans. Wilson apparently felt that either it was not necessary to accept any reservations, or he was afraid that concessions so early might lead to further demands. In September, the President started on a tour of the nation to arouse the people to vigorous support of the league. On this tour he collapsed and returned to Washington, broken and paralyzed. With his collapse, the most powerful protagonist of the league could fight no more.

The debate in the Senate, following the reports of the Committee on Foreign Relations, was one replete with a great deal of demagoguery. The opponents of the league pandered to popular and national prejudices. They stated that the United States would become entangled in the broils of Europe; that the United States would lose its national sovereignty; that the league was a device for the British Empire to rule the world, since the Dominions as well as Great Britain had a vote; that the majority of countries in the league would be Catholic and thus the league would be under the
Pope. They also tried to rally support by denouncing English activities in Ireland and the wrongs done to China in Shantung.

In October the voting began on the amendments. The mild reservationists joined with the almost solid Democratic membership, and all the amendments were defeated. On November 7, the voting began on the reservations, and then the mild reservationists joined with the rest of the Republicans to attach these to the treaty. When the treaty with fourteen reservations came to a vote on Nov 19, it was rejected by a vote of 39 to 55. Ratification was supported by the reservationist Senators and was opposed by the irreconcilables in combination with the Wilson Democrats, who voted for rejection in hopes of getting final ratification later on just the question
of the league as it stood in the treaty of peace. McCumber, just before the vote was taken, pled with the administration Democrats to accept what could be obtained rather than lose everything, but Wilson sent a letter to them to vote against the treaty with reservations. Wilson did this in expectation that a favorable vote could be obtained without any reservations, and also that if the United States placed conditions on its entrance to the league, other nations might do the same and the league would be greatly weakened.

The Senate's action came as a shock to the nation. As one authority has written, "It seemed absurd that the national policy adopted should be the one advocated by only seventeen Senators. Common sense revolted at seeing the votes of seventy-eight Senators to enter the League nullified because they could not agree among themselves on the terms of entry." Immediately the Senate voted to reconsider the question in the next session. The bewilderment of the people at the action taken by
the Senate can well be imagined from the observations of Ida Tarbell, who made a speaking tour of the west in the interests of the league in the summer of 1919:

As the days went by, I sensed a growing bewilderment at the fight against the league. These people had listened for years to people they honored urging some form of international union against war. They had heard Dr. Jordan and Jane Addams preaching a national council for the prevention of war. President Taft advocating a league to enforce peace. In many of these towns there had been chapters of these societies. With such a background, was it strange that many people in the Northwest should have been puzzled that the Congress of the United States was seemingly more and more determined that we should not join the first attempt of the civilized world to find substitutes for war in international quarrels?

When the demand swept the country for a compromise between the league Democrats and the reservationists even Lodge felt compelled to go into a conference on the question. He did so, however, from his own admission with no idea of compromising. He refused to admit that the treaty had been defeated because of verbal differences between the proleague groups. According to Lodge, the difference between those who supported the treaty and those who opposed it was "not verbal, but vital and essential." By this he could only have meant that the difference between the
irreconcilables (of which he really was one) and the administration Democrats was vital, because the difference between the reservationists (strong and mild) and the administration Democrats was one only of a verbal nature or at least of strategy.

A bipartisan conference met to discuss a method of common action between the reservationists & the Wilson Democrats. This conference failed, however, to work out a plan of action. The irreconcilables and the reservationists voted together to add reservations to the treaty, which were without essential changes from those of November 19. In spite of the fact that they voted for adding reservations to the league, on the question of ratification of the treaty with these reservations, there was no doubt but that the irreconcilables would vote against. The question was
whether enough Democrats would realize that there was no alternative but to vote for reservations or the treaty would be defeated. Again, however, Wilson wrote a letter from his sickbed urging his followers to oppose the treaty with the reservations. He still had faith that the public wanted the league, and he was willing to wait for the approaching presidential election to serve as a popular referendum on the subject.

The vote on March 19, 1920, on the question of ratification of the treaty with reservations, resulted in a majority of the votes cast being for the ratification, but not the requisite two-thirds majority, forty-nine being in favor and thirty-five being opposed. Some Democrats who had voted against in November voted for this second time, but there were still enough administration Democrats who carried out Wilson's desire that they vote against, and the treaty was defeated. For the second time, the responsibility for the defeat lies not alone with the irreconcilables but with the league's warmest friends. If Wilson had not been quite so uncompromising in his position, the treaty with reservations could easily have passed. This possibility greatly disturbed some of the irreconcilables. One of them mentioned to Lodge that Wilson might accept the reservations and then the country would be in the league. Lodge's replied that "You do not take into consideration the hatred that Woodrow Wilson has for me personally. Never under any set of circumstances in this world could he be induced to accept a treaty with Lodge reservations appended to it!"

That Lodge carefully estimated and studied Wilson at every step can be seen from Lodge's own book. After admitting that there was a possibility that the treaty might pass with the reservations, he observes that "... I also felt convinced that President Wilson would prevent the acceptance of the treaty with reservations if he possibly could. I based this opinion on the knowledge which I had acquired as to Mr. Wilson's temperament, intentions, and purposes." On the final page of his book Lodge repeats this same thought: "As the strenuous days which were filled by the contest over the League of Nations passed by, almost every one bringing its difficulty and its crucial question, I made no mistake in my estimate of what President Wilson would do under certain conditions."

Although President Wilson called for the presidential election of 1920 to serve as a great national referendum on the question of the league, it did not serve this purpose. The league was actively debated during the campaign, but the majority of seven million for Harding cannot be translated into a majority of seven million against the league. The Republican platform was ambiguous, but it did advocate entrance of the United States into an international association of nations. In the
platform committee there was a spectacular fight between the proleague Republicans and the irreconcilables. There was a move to adopt a plank favoring the league with the Lodge reservations, but Lodge prevented this plank from being included. This action of Lodge's tends to prove that he always had been an irreconcilable and had used reservations only as a technique to defeat the league.

During the campaign, Harding interpreted the plank on some occasions to be proleague and on other occasions to be antileague. This equivocal stand was, of course, designed to confuse the voters and muddle the issue. Near the end of the campaign Harding seemed more and more to favor an international league. All this time the Democrats were campaigning for the League of Nations without reservations. Outstanding Republicans like former-President Taft and Herbert
Hoover campaigned for Harding and made it plain that they considered support for Harding equivalent to support of the League of Nations. On October 14, 1920, thirty-one leading Republicans, including Elihu Root, Charles E. Hughes, Henry L. Stimson, Herbert Hoover, and William Alien White, issued a public statement that a vote for Harding would be the surest way of indicating that the citizen favored joining the league.

The entire story of they fight in the Senate in the campaign of 1920 demonstrated that the American people never had the opportunity squarely to vote for the League of Nations....