of Secretary Lansing's resignation "to take effect at once" began with a note from the President dated February 7, asking if it was true "that during my illness you have frequently called the heads of the executive departments of the Government into conference," and affirming that "under our constitutional law and practise, as developed hitherto, no one but the President has the right to summon the heads of the executive departments into conference, and no one but the President and the Congress has the right to ask their views or the views of any one of them on any public question." Mr. Lansing replied that, being denied communication with the President, he had frequently "requested the heads of the executive departments to meet for informal conference." His note continued:

"I can assure you that it never for a moment entered my mind that I was acting unconstitutionally or contrary to your wishes, and there certainly was no intention on my part to assume powers and exercise the functions which under the Constitution are exclusively confided to the President.

"During these troublous times, when many difficult and vexatious questions have arisen and when in the circumstances I have been deprived of your guidance and direction, it has been my constant endeavor to carry out your policies as I understood them and to act in all matters as I believed you would wish me to act.

"If, however, you think that I have failed in my loyalty to you, and if you no longer have confidence in me and prefer to have another conduct our foreign affairs, I am, of course, ready, Mr. President, to relieve you of any embarrassment by placing my resignation in your hands."

The President replied that Mr. Lansing's explanations did not justify his "assumption of Presidential authority," and that the Secretary's resignation would relieve him of embarrassment, adding:

"While we were still in Paris, I felt, and have felt increasingly ever since that you accepted my guidance and direction on questions with regard to which I had to instruct you only with increasing reluctance, and since my return to Washington I have been struck by the number of matters in which you have apparently tried to forestall my judgment by formulating action and merely asking my approval when it was impossible for me to form an independent judgment because I had not had an opportunity to examine the circumstances with any degree of independence.''

Mr. Lansing, denying that he "sought to usurp Presidential authority," and expressing the belief that he would have been derelict in his duty if he had failed to act as he did, handed in his resignation "with a sense of profound relief."

President Wilson issued on January 12, 1920, a call for the first

meeting of the Council of the League of Nations to convene at Paris on January 16. In accordance with this summons the League was formally launched on that date with representatives of Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Portugal and Brazil in attendance.

On March 19, after more than eight months of discussion, the Senate returned unratified to the President the Treaty that the Peace Conference had worked nearly half a year to frame. While some papers joined in frank rejoicing over the Treaty's rejection, a majority of the press, like a majority of the Senate (but not the necessary two-thirds majority), seemed to desire ratification with reservations that would interpret but not stultify. The question arose as to who was to blame for thwarting the will of the public. Some regarded President Wilson himself as responsible, others declared that the Republican Senators were the real culprits, while some divided the blame.

In reply to criticism of the Senate for failure to ratify the Treaty Senator Lodge replied:

"Reservations were placed upon the Treaty which a decisive majority of the Senate felt were necessary for the protection of the independence, the sovereignty, and the peace of the United States. The President's followers in the Senate under his direction refused to ratify the Treaty with those reservations.

"The Treaty can be ratified with those reservations, but not without them, and it is for the President to determine whether he is ready to accept them in order that the Treaty may be ratified."

On the other hand it was said that heretofore Senators had ratified and rejected treaties, but that the grave offense that the Senate under the leadership of Henry Cabot Lodge had committed was in making a treaty of peace a partizan issue.25

More important than the assessment of the blame, however, was the consideration of what was next to be done. Some of the solutions proposed and discust were: A separate peace with Germany by Congressional resolution; a new treaty; a temporary modus vivendi to be arranged with Germany by the President; or a return of the Treaty to the Senate with the understanding that President Wilson would accept ratification with a single reservation holding over the League of Nations issue until after the elections.

On May 27, 1920, President Wilson vetoed the Knox peace resolution which had been recently passed by both Houses of Congress. This resolution repealed the declarations of war with Germany and Austria and provided for a resumption of commercial and diplomatic relations with those countries. The President, in taking this action, 25 The World (New York).

deliberately placed upon his own shoulders for the third time the weight of responsibility for keeping the nation in a technical state of war. He declared in his message to the House that the Knox resolution was "a complete surrender of the rights of the United States so far as the German Government is concerned" and "an ineffaceable stain upon the gallantry and honor of the United States."

An attempt was made on May 28, in the House, to pass this resolution over the President's veto, but this failed, the vote being 219 to 152, thus lacking twenty-nine votes of the necessary two-thirds to override the veto.

President Wilson sent to Congress on May 24, a request to be given the power to accept, on behalf of the United States, a mandate for Armenia. The Supreme Council in Paris had asked the President to fix the boundaries of the State of Armenia and had at the same time offered the mandate for that State to the United States. In reply to the President's request, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved three days later the following resolution:

"Resolved, That the Congress hereby respectfully declines to grant to the Executive the power to accept a mandate over Armenia as requested in the message of the President of May 24, 1920," which was adopted by the Senate on June 1 by a vote of 52 to 23.

On the debit side in accounts of this war, the world found that it had to set down in dead from all causes, battle and disease, a few tens of millions; in crippled, perhaps 20,000,000; in homes destroyed, 1,000,000; in money loss, $120,000,000,000; besides anarchic conditions with disrupted industries over the most of Europe and parts of Asia and Africa. The war, besides the inevitable halting of the producing capabilities of the nations, had left behind it a universal disinclination, apparently, on the part of Labor to take up again the tools compulsorily laid aside in the hour of danger. It had left, as well to already overtaxed statesmen the dangerous task of preserving during the adjustment of new boundaries and the imposing of penalties, the friendly relations aroused among the Allied nations in the heat of the conflict. The menace of Bolshevism, the most embarrassing legacy of the World War, primed with all the accessories of a renewed universal struggle, was also to be placed on the debit side.

On the credit side, however, it had vivid and lasting demonstration that liberty is so prized among men that no sacrifices are regarded as too great to save it, new proof that man is a moral being and that he reacts to moral ideals. There had also sprung up a greater sense of fraternity among different races-brothers of the soul who had fought together for the same ideal. The losses, therefore, were in material things; the gains in spiritualities. While the world had been impoverished in temporal goods, it had grown

richer in others; a jewel had been found in the mire of war. A generation capable of performing such prodigies of genius and valor as this war had brought into the light of day, had proclaimed to distant generations that man was master of his fate; that not far distant was the day when the work of the military beast in human government would have disappeared and men would sit lost in wonder that it had survived so late.26

26 Principal Sources: The Outlook, The Evening Post, The Times, The Tribune, The Literary Digest, New York; Associated Press dispatches.

VIII

THE COVENANT OF THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS

AND THE PEACE TREATIES

The story of the labors of the Peace Conference, and of the signing of the several Treaties, has been fully told in the preceding pages of this volume. The following list of the names of the plenipotentiaries who signed the Treaty with Germany, it is believed, will lend an additional interest to this work:

UNITED STATES. President Wilson, Secretary of State Robert Lansing, Mr. Henry White (Ambassador to France), Colonel E. M. House and General Tasker H. Bliss;

GREAT BRITAIN. Premier Lloyd George, Mr. Bonar Law, Viscount Milner, Mr. A. J. Balfour;

CANADA. Sir. George E. Foster, Mr. C. J. Doherty;

AUSTRALIA. Mr. W. H. Hughes and Sir Joseph Coo':;

SOUTH AFRICA. General Louis Botha and Lieut.-General J. C. Smuts; NEW ZEALAND. Mr. W. F. Massey;

INDIA. Mr. E. S. Montagu and the Maharaja of Bikaner;

FRANCE. Mr. Georges Clémenceau, M. Pichon, M. L. L. Klotz, Mr. André Tardieu, and Mr. Jules Cambon;

ITALY. Mr. Tittoni, Mr. Scialoja Marconi, Mr. Maggiorino, Mr. Ferrario, and The Marquis Imperiali;

JAPAN. Marquis Saionji, Baron Makino, Viscount Chinda, Mr. K. Matsui, and Mr. H. Ijuin;

BELGIUM. Mr. Hymans, Mr. Van der Henvel, and Mr. Vandervelde; BOLIVIA. Mr. Ismael Moetes;

BRAZIL. Mr. Epitacio Pessoa, Mr. Pandia Calogeras, and Mr. Raul Fernandes;

CUBA. Mr. A. S. de Bustamante;

CZECHO-SLOVAKIA. Mr. Charles Kramar and Mr. E. Benes;

ECUADOR. Mr. Dorn y De Alsua;

GREECE. Mr. E. Venizelos and Mr. N. Politis;

GUATEMALA. Mr. Joaquin Mendez;

HAITI. Mr. Tertullien Guilbaud;

HEDJAZ. Mr. Rustem Haidar and Mr. Abdul Hadi Aouni;

HONDRAS. Dr. Policarpo Bonilla;

LIBERIA. Mr. C. D. B. King;

NICARAGUA. Mr. Salvador Chamorro;