THE SENATE AND THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS CHAPTER I BEGINNING OF THE WILSON ADMINISTRATION AND THE QUESTION OF PANAMA CANAL TOLLS My purpose in writing the ensuing pages is to give an account of the opposition and consequent debate which arose in the Senate of the United States when that body was asked by President Wilson to give their advice and consent to the Treaty of Versailles containing the Covenant of the League of Nations. Whatever the future may have in store for us, the importance of the Senate debate and of their rejection of the Treaty in 1919 and 1920 cannot, I think, be questioned. It so happened that having been unanimously selected as Republican minority leader after the death of Senator Gallinger in the summer of 1918, I was again unanimously chosen by my colleagues leader of the Republicans in the Senate after March 4, 1919, and at the same time I became Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations of which I had been a member for twenty-three years. These positions brought with them grave responsibilities and also, I think, gave me opportunities for acquiring knowledge and information as to the phases and conditions of this momentous transaction which perhaps in some respects were not so fully possessed by anyone else. I shall tell the story, of course, from my own standpoint; and in order that those who read this account may understand what was |