Wilson does not seem to have formulated definitely before he reached Paris the kind of League which he desired to see created. He was opposed to such intricate machinery as that proposed by the League to Enforce Peace, and favored an extremely simple organization which might evolve naturally to meet conditions of the future. The chief organ of a League, he felt, should be an executive council, possibly composed of the ambassadors to some small neutral power. If trouble threatened in any quarter, the council was to interfere at once and propose a settlement. If this proved unsuccessful, a commercial boycott might be instituted against the offending state: it was to be outlawed, and, as Wilson said, "outlaws are not popular now." He regarded it as important that the German colonies should not be divided among the Allies, but should be given to the League, to be administered possibly through some smaller power; for an institution, he felt, is always stabilized by the possession of property.
Such were, broadly speaking, the ideas which seemed uppermost in the President's mind when he landed in France, and which he was determined should form the basis of the peace. He anticipated opposition, and he was in a measure prepared to fight for his ideals. But he failed adequately to appreciate the confusion which had fallen upon Europe, after four years and more of war, and which made the need of a speedy settlement so imperative. If he had gauged more accurately the difficulties of his task he would have been more insistent upon the drafting of a quick preliminary peace, embodying merely general articles, and leaving all the details of the settlement to be worked out by experts at their leisure. He might thus have utilized his popularity and influence when it was at its height, and have avoided the loss of prestige which inevitably followed upon the discussion of specific issues, when he was compelled to take a stand opposed to the national aspirations of the various states. Such a general preliminary treaty would have gone far towards restoring a basis for the resumption of normal political and economic activity; it would have permitted Wilson to return to the United States as the unquestioned leader of the world; it would have blunted the edge of senatorial opposition; and finally it might have enabled him to avoid the controversies with Allied leaders which compelled him to surrender much of his original programme in a series of compromises.
It is only fair to Wilson to remember that his original plan, in November, was to secure such a preliminary treaty, which was to embody merely the general lines of a territorial settlement and the disarmament of the enemy. The delays which postponed the treaty were not entirely his fault. Arriving in France on the 13th of December, he expected that the Conference would convene on the seventeenth, the date originally set. But days passed and neither the French nor the British took steps toward the opening of negotiations. They had not even appointed their delegates. Lloyd George sent messages of welcome from across the Channel, but explained that domestic affairs detained him in England. Conscious of the struggle that was likely to arise between the "practical" aspirations of Europe and the "idealism" of America, the Allied leaders evidently were in no hurry to give to the exponent of the ideal the advantage of the popular support that he enjoyed during the early days following his arrival upon European shores. Hence it was not until the second week of January that the delegations began to assemble at Paris. In the interval Wilson had become involved in various detailed problems and he had lost the opportunity, if indeed it ever offered, to demand immediate agreement on preliminary terms of peace.
Notwithstanding the delays, the President secured an early triumph in the matter which he had closest at heart, namely, a League of Nations and its incorporation in the Treaty. Clemenceau had taken issue publicly with Wilson. When the President, in the course of his English speeches, affirmed that this was the first necessity of a world which had seen the system of alliances fail too often, the French Premier replied in the Chamber of Deputies, on the 29th of December, that for his part he held to the old principle of alliances which had saved France in the past and must save her in the future, and that his sense of the practical would not be affected by the "noble candeur" of President Wilson. The polite sneer that underlay the latter phrase aroused the wrath of the more radical deputies, but the Chamber gave Clemenceau an overwhelming vote of confidence as he thus threw down the gage. In the meantime Lloyd George had shown himself apparently indifferent to the League and much more interested in what were beginning to be called the "practical issues."
With the opening of the Conference, however, it soon became apparent that Wilson had secured the support of the British delegates. It is possible that a trade had been tacitly consummated. Certain it is that the "freedom of the seas," which the British delegates were determined should not enter into the issues of the Peace Conference and which had threatened to make the chief difficulty between British and Americans, was never openly discussed. Had Wilson decided to drop or postpone this most indefinite of his Fourteen Points, on the understanding that the British would give their support to the League? At all events, the League of Nations was given an important place on the programme of deliberations, and at the second of the plenary sessions of the Conference, held on January 25, 1919, the principle of a League was approved without a dissentient voice; it was also decided that the League should be made an integral part of the Treaty. Wilson, in addition to acquiring British support had won that of the Italians, to whom he had promised his aid in securing the Brenner frontier in the Tyrol. Clemenceau, according to an American delegate, "had climbed on the band-wagon."
The President's victory was emphasized when he also won the Europeans and the representatives of the British overseas Dominions to acceptance of the principle of "mandatories," according to which the German colonies were not to be distributed as spoils amongst the victors, but to become the property of the League and to be administered by the mandatory states, not for their own benefit but for that of the colonies. The victory was not complete, since Wilson's first intention had been that the mandatory states should not be the great powers, but such states as Holland or one of the Scandinavian nations. He was compelled to admit the right of the British and French to take over the colonies as mandatories. Even so, the struggle over the issue was intense, Premier Hughes of Australia leading the demand that the German colonies should be given outright to the Allies and the British self-governing Dominions. Again the support of Lloyd George brought success to the American policy.
In order to assure his victory in the foundation of a League of Nations, it was necessary that before returning home Wilson should see some definite scheme elaborated. Until the 14th of February he labored with the special committee appointed to draft a specific plan, which included much of the best political talent of the world: Lord Robert Cecil, General Smuts, Venizelos, Léon Bourgeois. In order to avoid the criticism that consideration of a League was delaying the preparation of peace terms, the commission met in the evenings so as not to interrupt the regular meetings of the Council of Ten. It was a tour de force, this elaboration of a charter for the new international order, in less than three weeks. At times the task seemed hopeless as one deadlock after another developed. Wilson, who presided over the commission, lacked the skill and courage displayed by Clemenceau in his conduct of the plenary sessions, and proved unable to prevent fruitless discussion; possibly he feared lest he be regarded as autocratic in pushing his pet plan. At all events precious moments were dissipated in long speeches, and general principles threatened to be lost in a maze of details. With but two days left before the plenary session of the Conference and the date set for Wilson's sailing, the commission had approved only six of the twenty-seven articles of the Covenant. Fortune intervened. The presence of Wilson was demanded at the Council of Ten and his place as chairman was taken by Lord Robert Cecil. The latter showed himself effective. Ably seconded by Colonel House, he passed over all details and pushed the final stages of the report through at top speed; on the 14th of February the Covenant of the League was completed. It was sanctioned by the plenary session of the Conference that afternoon, and in the evening Wilson left for America with the document in his pocket. Doubtless it seemed to him that the major portion of his task had been accomplished.
The mechanism of the League thus proposed is said to have been largely evolved by Smuts and Cecil, but it coincided roughly with the ideas that Wilson had already conceived. Much of the language of the Covenant is Wilson's; its form was mainly determined by the British and American legal experts, C. J. B. Hurst and D. H. Miller. It provided for an executive council representing nine powers, and a deliberative assembly of all the members of the League. The Council must meet annually and take under advisement any matters threatening to disturb international peace. Its recommendations must be unanimous. The Assembly was entirely without executive power. The members of the League were to agree not to make war without first submitting the matter under dispute to arbitration or to the consideration of the Council. Failure to abide by this agreement would constitute an act of war against the League, which upon recommendation of the Council, might boycott the offending state economically or exercise military force against it. The Covenant declared it "to be the friendly right of each Member of the League to bring to the attention of the Assembly or of the Council any circumstance whatever affecting international relations which threatens to disturb international peace or the good understanding between nations upon which peace depends." The members of the League, furthermore, undertook "to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing independence of all members of the League. In case of any such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled" (Article X). These two provisions embodied the particular contributions of Wilson to the Covenant, who believed that the capacity of the League to preserve justice and peace depended chiefly upon them. The Covenant also provided in some measure for military and naval disarmament by giving to the Council the right to recommend the size of the force to be maintained by each member of the League, and it attacked secret diplomacy by abrogating previous obligations inconsistent with the Covenant and by providing that every future treaty must be registered and published.
If the President expected to be hailed at home as conquering hero, he was destined to bitter disappointment. He must now pay the price for those tactical mistakes which had aroused opinion against him in the previous autumn. The elements which he had antagonized by his war-policies, by his demand for a Democratic Congress, by his failure to coöperate with the Senate in the formulation of American policy and in the appointment of the Peace Commission, and which had opposed his departure in person to Paris—all those elements now had their chance. Having won a difficult victory over reactionary forces in Europe, Wilson was now compelled to begin the struggle over again at home. And whereas at Paris he had displayed some skill in negotiation and an attitude of conciliation even when firm in his principles, upon his return he adopted a tone which showed that he had failed to gauge the temper of the people. He probably had behind him the majority of the independent thinkers, even many who disliked him personally but who appreciated the importance and the value of the task he was trying to carry through. The mass of the people, however, understood little of what was going on at Paris. The situation abroad was complex and it had not been clarified adequately by the press. Opinion needed to be educated. It wanted to know why a League was necessary and whether its elaboration was postponing peace and the return of the doughboys. Why must the League be incorporated in the Treaty? And did the League put the United States at the mercy of European politicians and would it involve our country in a series of European wars in which we had no interest?
What followed must be counted as little less than a tragedy. The man of academic antecedents with masterly powers of exposition, who had voiced popular thought during the years of the war so admirably, now failed completely as an educator of opinion. The President might have shown that the League Covenant, instead of postponing peace, was really essential to a settlement, since it was to facilitate solutions of various territorial problems which might otherwise hold the Conference in debate for months. He could have demonstrated with a dramatic vigor which the facts made possible, the anarchical condition of Europe and the need for some sort of international system of coöperation if a new cataclysm was to be avoided, and he might have pictured the inevitable repercussive effect of such a cataclysm upon America. He might have shown that in order to give effect to the terms of the Treaty, it was necessary that the League Covenant should be included within it. He could have emphasized the fact that the Covenant took from Congress no constitutional powers, that the Council of the League, on which the United States was represented, must be unanimous before taking action, and then could only make recommendations. But the President failed to explain the situation in terms comprehensible to the average man. However adequate his addresses seemed to those who understood the situation abroad, they left the American public cold. His final speech in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City was especially unfortunate, for his statement that he would bring back the Treaty and the League so intertwined that no one could separate them sounded like a threat. At the moment when he needed the most enthusiastic support to curb the opposition of the Senate, he alienated thousands and lost the chance to convince tens of thousands.