France in particular have gotten out of the treaty everything that they wanted, and the league of nations can do nothing to alter any of the unjust clauses of the treaty except by unanimous consent of the members of the league, and the great powers will never give their consent to changes in the interests of weaker peoples.'

We then talked about the possibility of ratification by the Senate. Mr. Lansing said: "I believe that if the Senate could only understand what this treaty means, and if the American people could really understand, it would unquestionably be defeated, but I wonder if they will ever understand what it lets them in for." He expressed the opinion that Mr. Knox would probably really understand the treaty—

[Laughter.]

May I reread it?

He expressed the opinion that Mr. Knox would probably really understand the treaty, and that Mr. Lodge would; but that Mr. Lodge's position would become purely political, and therefore ineffective.

He thought, however, that Mr. Knox might instruct America in the real meaning of it.

[Laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. He has made some very valuable efforts in the direction.

Mr. BULLITT. I beg to be excused from reading any more of these conversations.

Senator BRANDEGEE. We get the drift.
[Laughter.]

I want to ask one or two questions.

The CHAIRMAN. Go ahead.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did you read any of these minutes of the meetings of the American commission?

Mr. BULLITT. Of the American commission itself?

Senator BRANDEGEE. Yes.

Mr. BULLITT. No, sir. I have on one or two occasions glanced at them but I never have read them carefully.

Senator BRANDEGEE. They were accessible to you at the time, were they?

Mr. BULLITT. They were, sir.

Senator BRANDEGEE. You stated, if I recall your testimony correctly, that when the proposition was made that the legislative bodies of the contracting parties should have representation in the assembly, the President objected to that?

Mr. BULLITT. The President-if I may explain again-approved in principle, but said that he did not see how the thing could be worked out, and he felt that the assembly of delegates, or whatever it is called in the present draft, gave sufficient representation to the peoples of the various countries.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Do you know what his objection was to the legislative bodies of the contracting parties having representation on the assembly?

Mr. BULLITT. The President believed, I think-in fact, it was so stated to me by Col. House, who discussed the matter with me-that it would make too unwieldy a central organ for the league.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Do you understand why it would be any more unwieldy if Congress should appoint the delegates than if the President should?

Mr. BULLITT. It would necessitate a larger central body if representation was to be given to the important political parties of the various countries. It would have necessitated a body of, say, 10 representatives from the United States-5 from the Republican party and 5 from the Democratic Party, in the assembly of the league, which would become a large body.

Senator BRANDEGEE. The idea was that the political parties of the country should be represented?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, the political viewpoints should be represented so that you would get some connection between the central assembly of the league and the true opinion of the countries.

Senator BRANDEGEE. When you went across to Paris on the George Washington with the President do you know whether he had with him at that time any draft for a league of nations or any memorandum that he showed to you or discussed with you?

Mr. BULLITT. The President outlined to several of us one evening, or rather one afternoon, the conception he had at the time of the league of nations. I did not see any formal draft that he had, but the President made a statement before the council of 10, in one of these minutes from which I have been reading, stating that he had first-and in fact I think I know it from other sources-that he had first received the Phillimore report, that then it had been rewritten by Col. House and that he had rewritten Col. House's report, and after he had discussed his rewriting with Robert Cecil and Gen. Smuts, he had rewritten it again.

Senator BRANDEGEE. You stated substantially that the only part of the league draft which was laid before the Peace Conference which the President had his way about, was Article 10. Did you make some such statement as that?

Mr. BULLITT. Yes, sir.

Senator BRANDEGEE. The President stated to us that that was practically what he had submitted to the Niagara conference here when the A B C powers from South America were discussing the Mexican question. He had then considered it as an article for American use on this continent.

Do you know what the attitude of Gen. Smuts was as to article 10 as proposed by the President?

Mr. BULLITT. I do not, sir. Again, full minutes of the discussions and conclusions reached of all these meetings of the committee on the league of nations were kept.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did you read the various other plans that were proposed or suggested over there for a league of nations? Mr. BULLITT. I have read some of them, sir.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did the others have anything similar to what is now article 10 in the treaty pending in the Senate?

Mr. BULLITT. I really can not say. I am sorry, but I have forgotten. I should not care to testify on that.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Do you know from what you heard while you were there in your official capacity whether the other nations were anxious to have article 10 in the covenant for the league?

Mr. BULLITT. The French were not only anxious for it, but I believe were anxious greatly to strengthen it. They desired immediately a league army to be established, and I believe also to be

stationed in Alsace-Lorraine and along the Rhine, in addition to article 10. I can not say for certain about the others.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Bullitt, we had before us at one of our hearings a representative of the Egyptian people. Do you know anything about that, when it was done, or any discussions about it? I mean the clauses that appear in regard to the British protectorate.

Mr. BULLITT. You mean our agreement to recognize the British protectorate in Egypt?

The CHAIRMAN. It was recognized by this treaty in those clauses. Mr. BULLITT. Yes; but we gave a sort of assent before the treaty formally came out, did we not? I recall the morning it was done. It was handled by Sir William Wiseman, who was the confidential representative that Lloyd George and Balfour had constantly with Col. House and the President. He was a sort of extra confidential foreign office. It was all done, if I recall his statement correctly, in the course of one morning. The President was informed that the Egyptian nationalists were using his 14 points as meaning that the President thought that Egypt should have the right to control her own destinies, and therefore have independence, and that they were using this to foment revolution; that since the President had provoked this trouble by the 14 points, they thought that he should allay it by the statement that we would recognize the British protectorate, and as I remember Sir William Wiseman's statement to me that morning, he said that he had only brought up the matter that morning and that he had got our recognition of the British protectorate before luncheon.

The CHAIRMAN. The President made some public statement?

Mr. BULLITT. I am not certain in regard to the further developments of it. I recall that incident, that it was arranged through Sir William Wiseman, and that it took only a few minutes.

Senator KNOX. That was a good deal of time to devote to a little country like Egypt.

Mr. BULLITT. I do not know. You should know, sir, you have been Secretary of State.

Senator KNOX. We never chewed them up that fast.

Senator NEW. Mr. Bullitt, what, if anything, was said with reference to the Irish question, with which you are familiar?

Mr. BULLITT. At the conference? I do not believe the Irish question was ever brought up before the conference or discussed. There was considerable said on the side, attempts to let down the Walsh mission easily without antagonizing the Irish vote in this country. [Laughter.] I think that is the only consideration that Ireland received.

Senator NEW. There was a cheerful willingness to do that, was there not?

Mr. BULLITT. I think so.

The CHAIRMAN. Is there anything further that anybody desires to ask Mr. Bullitt? We are very much obliged to you indeed, Mr. Bullitt.

Mr. BULLITT. Mr. Chairman, if I may just say I do not know whether it is a matter of first interest to the Senators or not-but on this trip with me to Russia there was Capt. Pettit, and at the same time the journalist, Lincoln Steffens, and I have documents which they prepared and which might be of interest to the committee.

139027°-S. Doc. 106, 66-1—81

The CHAIRMAN. If you will hand those to the stenographer, we will print them with your testimony.

Senator KNOX. What are your plans, Mr. Bullitt? What are you going to do in this country now?

Mr. BULLITT. I expect to return to Maine and fish for trout, where I was when I was summoned by the committee.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Did Mr. Steffens go to Russia with you? Mr. BULLITT. He did.

The CHAIRMAN. He held no official position?

Mr. BULLITT. No.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Who advised him to go?
Mr. BULLITT. I did.

Senator BRANDEGEE. Is he in the country now?

Mr. BULLITT. I do not believe so. I believe he is still in Europe. (By order of the committee the report of Lincoln Steffens referred to is here printed in full in the record, as follows:)

BULLITT EXHIBIT No. 30.

REPORT OF LINCOLN STEFFENS.

APRIL 2, 1919.

Politically, Russia has reached a state of equilibrium; internally; for the present

at least.

I think the revolution there is ended; that it has run its course. There will be changes. There may be advances; there will surely be reactions, but these will be regular, I think; politically and economic, but parliamentary. A new center of gravity seems to have been found.

Certainly, the destructive phase of the revolution in Russia is over. Constructive work has begun.

We saw this everywhere. And we saw order, and though we inquired for them, we heard of no disorders. Prohibition is universal and absolute. Robberies have been reduced in Petrograd below normal of large cities. Warned against danger before we went in, we felt safe. Prostitution has disappeared with its clientele, who have been driven out by the "no-work-no-food law," enforced by the general want and the labor-card system. Loafing on the job by workers and sabotage by upper-class direstors, managers, experts and clerks have been overcome. Russia has settled down to work.

The soviet form of government, which sprang up so spontaneously all over Russia, is established.

This is not a paper thing; not an invention. Never planned, it has not yet been written into the forms of law. It is not even uniform. It is full of faults and difficulties; clumsy, and in its final development it is not democratic. The present Russian Government is the most autocratic government I have ever seen. Lenin, head of the soviet government, is farther removed from the people than the Tsar was, or than any actual ruler in Europe is.

The people in a shop or an industry are a soviet. These little informal soviets elect a local soviet; which elects delegates to the city or country (community) soviet; which elects delegates to the government (State) soviet. The government soviets together elect delegates to the All-Russian Soviet, which elects commissionaires (who correspond to our Cabinet, or to a European minority). And these commissionaires finally elect Lenin. He is thus five or six removes from the people. To form an idea of his stability, independence, and power, think of the process that would have to be gone through with by the people to remove him and elect a successor. A majority of all the soviets in all Russia would have to be changed in personnel or opinion, recalled, or brought somehow to recognize and represent the altered will of the people.

No student of government likes the soviet as it has developed. Lenin himself doesn't. He calls it a dictorship, and he opposed it at first. When I was in Russia in the days of Milyoukov and Kerensky, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were demanding the general election of the constituent assembly. But the soviets existed then; they had the power, and I saw foreign ambassadors blunder, and the world saw Milyoukov

and Kerensky fall, partly because they would not, or could not, comprehend the nature of the soviet; as Lenin did finally, when, against his theory, he joined in and expressed the popular repudiation of the constituent assembly and went over to work with the soviet, the actual power in Russia. The constituent assembly, elected by the people, represented the upper class and the old system. The soviet was the lower class.

The soviet, at bottom, is a natural gathering of the working people, or peasants, in their working and accustomed groupings, instead of, as with us, by artificial geographical sections.

Labor unions and soldiers' messes made up the soviets in the cities; poorer peasants and soldiers at the village inn were the first soviets in the country; and in the beginning, two years ago, these lower class delegates used to explain to me that the "rich peasants" and the "rich people" had their own meetings and meeting places. The popular intention then was not to exclude the upper classes from the government, but only from the soviets, which were not yet the same. But the soviets, once in existence, abosorbed in their own class tasks and their own problems, which the upper class had either not understood or solved, ignored-no; they simply forgot the council of empire and the Duma. And so they discovered (or, to be more exact, their leaders discovered) that they had actually all the power. All that Lenin and the other Socialist leaders had to do to carry through their class-struggle theory was to recognize this fact of power and teach the soviets to continue to ignore the assemblies and the institutions of the upper classes, which, with their "governments," ministries, and local assemblies, fell, powerless from neglect.

The soviet government sprouted and grew out of the habits, the psychology, and the condition of the Russian people. It fitted them. They understand it. They find they can work it and they like it. Every effort to put something else in its place (including Lenin's) has failed. It will have to be modified, I think, but not in essentials, and it can not be utterly set aside. The Tsar himself, if he should come back, would have to keep the Russian Soviet, and somehow rule over and through it. The Communist Party (dubbed "Bolshevik") is in power now in the soviet government.

I think it will stay there a long time. What I have shown of the machinery of change is one guaranty of communist dominance. There are others.

All opposition to the communist government has practically ceased inside of Russia. There are three organized opposition parties: Mincheviks, Social Revolutionary Right, and Social Revolutionary Left. The anarchists are not organized. The Social Revolutionary Left is a small group of very anarchistic leaders, who have hardly any following. The Mincheviks and the Social Revolutionaries Right are said to be strong, but there is no way of measuring their strength, for a very significant reason. These parties have stopped fighting. They are critical, but they are not revolutionary. They also think the revolution is over. They proposed, and they still propose eventually, to challenge and oust the Communist Party by parliamentary and political methods, not by force. But when intervention came upon distracted Russia, and the people realized they were fighting many enemies on many fronts, the two strong opposing parties expressed their own and the public will to stand by the party in power until the menace of foreign invasion was beaten off. These parties announced this in formal statements, uttered by their regular conventions; you have confirmation of it in the memoranda written for you by Martov and Vosky, and you will remember how one of them put it to us personally:

"There is a fight to be made against the Bolsheviks, but so long as you foreigners are making it, we Russians won't. When you quit and leave us alone, we will take up our burden again, and we shall deal with the Bolsheviks. And we will finish them. But we will do it with our people, by political methods, in the Soviets, and not by force, not by war or by revolution, and not with any outside foreign help." This is the nationalistic spirit, which we call patriotism, and understand perfectly; it is much stronger in the new than it was in the old, the Tsar's, Russia. But there is another force back of this remarkable statement of a remarkable state of mind. All Russia has turned to the labor of reconstruction; sees the idea in the plans proposed for the future; and is interested-imaginatively.

Destruction was fun for a while and a satisfaction to a suppressed, betrayed, to an almost destroyed people. Violence was not in their character, however. The Russian people, sober, are said to be a gentle people. One of their poets speaks of them as "that gentle beast, the Russian people," and I noticed and described in my reports of the first revolution how patient, peaceable, and "safe" the mobs of Petro