named in the annex as eligible to membership, the only important one to remain outside was the United States. It was an anomalous situation, something like the play of Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out. It is extremely doubtful whether there would have been any league at all had not President Wilson, fitfully seconded by the opportunist Lloyd George, persisted in his advocacy of it in the face of the skepticism of Clemenceau and the indifference of Orlando. Frequent meetings of the Council and of various committees of the League were held in the spring and summer of 1920. A permanent secretariat of about one hundred persons was organized, domiciled temporarily in London, the budget was established, the National Hotel on the shore of Lake Geneva was purchased for the permanent headquarters of the League, and a vast number of projects were undertaken looking to the political, economic, and social recovery of Europe through the coöperation of men of international good will. Committees were organized to deal with health, labor, the repatriations of war prisoners, the government of mandates, the reparation of finances, the reduction of armaments, the administration of the Saar basin by France, the organization of a World Court, and a score of other important subjects. Though it was not anticipated, as the president, Léon Bourgeois, said in reviewing the work of the League at a meeting of the Council at Paris in September, 1920, that "the rule of right and justice would be set up on the ruins wrought by violence and barbarity in a single night" or that "human passions would give way at once to kindness and virtue," yet the League, even in its first year of existence, could point to possible wars averted (between Finland and Sweden over the Aland Islands, between Lithuania and Poland over Vilna) in a Europe that was seething with national ambitions and rivalries. By October 1, 1920, the League had thirty-four members, and thirteen more states had applied for admission. By the very fact of its existence and growth, more than by any of its specific accomplishments, the League had already justified itself against its detractors when the representatives of forty-one nations met, under the presidency of M. Hymans of Belgium, in the first general assembly at Geneva on November 15, 1920-just thirteen days after the "great and solemn referendum" at the polls had seemed to confirm America's determination to have no part or parcel in it. Since the refusal of the United States Senate to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and the consequent failure of the American delegates to take the chairs reserved for them at the table of the League of Nations was perhaps the most momentous fact in our recent history, a brief comment on the situation is not out of place at the end of our chapter on the relations of America to the World War. To one part of our population our action seemed (and seems) like a deplorable and ridiculous anticlimax. We had been gloriously present at the conflict; we sulked in our tent in the hour of victory. We had gone forth in our strength to make the world safe for democracy, and now we had no confidence that our democracy could be safe in close association with the world. We had appealed to an unselfish and unseeking internationalism to win the war, and now we were retreating into a narrow, selfish nationalism under the slogan "America first!" To another part of the population our behavior was in keeping with American traditions from the days of Washington, Jefferson, and Monroe. We had only asked for the proper guaranties that the authority of Congress should not be in danger of being overridden by the decisions of an international body in which we should be represented by a single vote only, even as Brazil or Japan. Political partisanship and personal animus between the two authorities in whose hands the fate of the treaty lay— the President and the Senate-exacerbated the differences of opinion into mutual defiance. The champions of the President saw in the behavior of the Senate only a diabolical plot to discredit the work of a political opponent, covered by the pretext of defending American rights. The advocates of conditional ratification, on the other hand, accused the President of an obstinate determination to browbeat the Senate into accepting his own interpretation of the League by his pontifical assumption of non possumus. If the guaranties of American sovereignty were implicit in the covenant, it would do no harm to have them explicit. As for the objection of the President, that negotiations would have to be begun all over again if reservations were attached to the treaty, that was a mere pretext. There was nothing in the reservations that the German assembly at Weimar would object to. The peace conference was still in session at Paris. A majority of our own delegates (Lansing's successor, Frank L. Polk, General Bliss, and Mr. White) were still there. The desire of the Allies to have the United States in the League was so strong that they would have gladly welcomed us with the reservations. In fact, Viscount Grey, special ambassador to Washington, acknowledged as much in an open letter to the London Times of January 31, 1920, which was favorably commented upon by the Paris press. We need not commend the motives of many of the Republican senators in their opposition to the covenant as presented by President Wilson, if at the same time we emphasize the fact that it was a condition and not a theory which confronted the President in the Senate's attitude. That body was, after all, the constitutional ratifying agency. It offered him ratification with reservations. He chose the rejection of the treaty altogether rather than accept the reservations offered. For this uncompromising attitude he is commended by some and reprobated by others. But champions and opponents alike must acknowledge that he alone assumed the responsibility for the choice. It was not the Republican senators who defeated the treaty and kept us out of the League of Nations. On the final test, they voted 34 to 15 in favor of ratification-a ratification which they believed would be acceptable to the nations associated with us. in the war. It was the twenty-four Democrats who, in obedience to the President's advice, joined with the irreconcilable Republican minority to defeat the treaty. Such was the disappointing ending of a chapter of unusual glory and inspiration in our history. The generous enthusiasm, the unstinted devotion, the unselfish coöperation of 1917 and 1918, gave place to a reaction of political rivalry, economic strife, and social antagonisms in 1919. It seemed as if the idealism of the nation had been exhausted by the war. "The vision for which we fought" was clouded over by the emergence of a crass materialism. Disillusionment succeeded exaltation, as the prophecies of a new and better world order remained unfulfilled. In the Old World war did not cease with the treaties of peace. Armies and navies were not reduced with the orders. of demobilization. Imperial ambitions were not quenched in the blood bath of Europe's agony. And in our own land, where optimistic voices had proclaimed that the millennium was at hand and that whatever remained of the vestiges of inequality and injustice must die in the grave of autocracy, the path immediately before our feet lay through the valley of humiliation and the slough of despond-through a welter of industrial chaos, social ferment, class struggle, destructive propaganda, commercial profiteering, and reckless plunging. It was the aftermath of war. CHAPTER X THE TEST OF THE REPUBLIC America! America! God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law! KATHARINE LEE BATES PAYING THE PIPER A less auspicious moment could not have been found for urging a spirit of unselfish international coöperation upon the American people than just the period immediately following the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles. By the autumn of 1919 we were so absorbed in the effort to adjust our own political, industrial, and social system to a régime of peace that a call to consider first the conditions of the world's recovery seemed to millions of our citizens an intrusion upon more important matters of concern at home. The social psychology of a people is not suddenly changed by a revolutionary shock, nor are the political habits of generations laid off like a garment. No amount of generous zeal in intrusting to government agencies control over the business and social habits of the country during the acute crisis of war could disguise the fact that such control was utterly repugnant to our traditions; nor was that control exercised long enough either to accustom the government to a smooth and consistent execution of it or to reconcile the people to its continuance. We were as unprepared for peace as we had been for war. The British government, for example, had been at work almost from the beginning of hostilities on constructive plans for the readjustment of industry, commerce, labor, taxation, housing, and health to the new conditions of the post-war era. They had created an able and representative Ministry of Recon |