ence at Paris have nothing in common. If he does accept it, the League, as it must be amended before it can be adopted, is in its essence nothing but a written form of an understanding for mutual defense against an enemy not wholly overcome. If the enemy had been made to acknowledge defeat at the moment when he really was defeated, all this circumlocution would have been avoided. The Entente would have obtained la victoire intégrale and a chastened Germany would now be rehabilitating her national life, as it is her right and duty to do, in order to suppress Bolshevism instead of allying herself with it, and preparing to take a normal and useful part in the Society of States.

VIII

THE PRESIDENT'S CHALLENGE TO THE

SENATE

AT Paris the President of the United States has had considerable apparent success in securing the embodiment of his own personal terms and at least a part of his plan for a League of Nations in the treaty of peace prepared by the Entente Allies. The reason for this is obvious. The United States was necessary to a victorious conclusion of the Great War, and it is equally necessary to the future maintenance of peace. Representing in his own person, as it appeared, the future policy of America, it was possible for the President at any time to order his ship, to abandon the Conference, and to leave the Entente Allies to face Germany alone. That decision would have created a great embarrassment for the exposed countries like Belgium and France. Such a desertion,

it is true, would not have met the approval of the American people, but they would have been powerless to avert its consequences.

When the President, after his brief visit to the United States, returned to Paris to resume negotiations in the Conference, he found that in his absence great progress had been made toward the completion of a treaty that would end the long suspense and bring the war to a formal conclusion; but this treaty did not contemplate the inclusion of the Constitution of the League of Nations. The President had, however, thrown down to the Senators who had declared their unwillingness to ratify the Constitution of the League as it had been presented to them a challenge which he intended to carry out.1 "When that treaty comes back,” he had said in his address in New York, on March 4th, "gentlemen on this side will find the covenant not only in it, but so many threads of the treaty tied to the covenant that you cannot dissect the covenant from the treaty with

For the declaration of the Senators, see the "Round Robin" at the end of this volume.

out destroying the whole vital structure."

Thirty-nine Senators, elected by the people, representing more than two-thirds of the entire population of the United States, were thus virtually informed that the "advice and consent" of the Senate would receive no consideration. They might, if they chose, privately regard the Constitution of the League of Nations as a defiance of their judgment and even a violation of the fundamental law of the Republic, which they had solemnly sworn to defend, but they would find themselves placed in a position in which they would have to accept this document as it had been formulated, without alterations, or they would be compelled to bear the odium of preventing the conclusion of peace, because the League of Nations would be an essential part of the peace treaty.

It is not necessary to dwell upon this defiance of the constitutional division of the treaty-making power and of the purpose with which that division was originally made and should always be maintained. This defiance assumed what every autocratic usur

pation of authority assumes, namely, that power could be invoked to sustain it. In this case it would no doubt be an attempt, in the nominal interest of peace, to bring political pressure to bear upon refractory Senators, in order to compel them to yield to a superior will. It requires no reflection to perceive that if this were done and were successful, it would mark the extinction of representative and even of constitutional government in the United States. That it was ever even contemplated indicates a departure from the principles on which our government is based which should awaken a deep concern for the future and call attention to the perils of autocratic as distinguished from representative democracy.

How serious the incident is from this point of view becomes clear when we compare the status of the American representation in the Peace Conference with that of any other of the Great Powers. In that conclave, the United States is the only country not represented by a single person confirmed by the legislative branch of Government;