Opposition was also to be expected in the country. There was always the ancient prejudice against participation in European affairs, which had not been broken even by the events of the past two years. The people, even more than the Senate, were ignorant of foreign conditions and failed to understand the character of the obligations which the nation would assume under the treaty and the covenant of the League. There was genuine fear lest the United States should become involved in wars and squabbles in which it had no material interest, and lest it should surrender its independence of action to a council of foreign powers. This was accompanied by the belief that an irresponsible President might commit the country to an adventurous course of action which could not be controlled by Congress. The chief opposition to the treaty and covenant, however, probably resulted from the personal dislike of Wilson. This feeling, which had always been virulent along the Atlantic coast and in the industrial centers of the Middle West, had been intensified by the President's apparent disregard of Congress. More than one man of business argued that the treaty must be bad because it was Wilson's work and the covenant worst of all, since it was his pet scheme. One heard daily in the clubs and on the golf-courses of New England and the Middle Atlantic States the remark: "I know little about the treaty, but I know Wilson, and I know he must be wrong."
And yet the game was probably in the President's hands, had he known how to play it. Divided as it was on the question of personal devotion to Wilson, the country was a unit in its desire for immediate peace and normal conditions. Admitting the imperfections of the treaty, it was probably the best that could be secured in view of the conflicting interests of the thirty-one signatory powers, and at least it would bring peace at once. To cast it aside meant long delays and prolongation of the economic crisis. The covenant of the League might not be entirely satisfactory, but something must be done to prevent war in the future; and if this League proved unsatisfactory, it could be amended after trial. Even the opposing Senators did not believe that they could defeat the treaty outright. They were warned by Republican financiers, who understood international economic conditions, that the safety and prosperity of the world demanded ratification, and that the United States could not afford to assume an attitude of isolation even if it were possible. Broad-minded statesmen who were able to dissociate partisan emotion from intellectual judgment, such as ex-President Taft, agreed that the treaty should be ratified as promptly as possible. All that Senator Lodge and his associates really hoped for was to incorporate reservations which would guarantee the independence of American action and incidentally make it impossible for the President to claim all the credit for the peace.
Had the President proved capable of coöperating with the moderate Republican Senators it would probably have been possible for him to have saved the fruits of his labor at Paris. An important group honestly believed that the language of the covenant was ambiguous in certain respects, particularly as regards the extent of sovereignty sacrificed by the national government to the League, and the diminution of congressional powers. This group was anxious to insert reservations making plain the right of Congress alone to declare war, defining more exactly the right of the United States to interpret the Monroe Doctrine, and specifying what was meant by domestic questions that should be exempt from the cognizance of the League. Had Wilson at once combined with this group and agreed to the suggested reservations, he would in all probability have been able to secure the two-thirds vote necessary to ratification. The country would have been satisfied; the Republicans might have contended that they had "Americanized" the treaty; and the reservations would probably have been accepted by the co-signatories. It would have been humiliating to go back to the Allies asking special privileges, but Europe needed American assistance too much to fail to heed these demands. After all America had gained nothing in the way of territorial advantage from the war and was asking for nothing in the way of reparations.
It was at this crucial moment that Wilson's peculiar temperamental faults asserted themselves. Sorely he needed the sane advice of Colonel House, who would doubtless have found ways of placating the opposition. But that practical statesman was in London and the President lacked the capacity to arrange the compromise that House approved.
President Wilson alone either would not or could not negotiate successfully with the middle group of Republicans. He went so far as to initiate private conferences with various Senators, a step indicating his desire to avoid the appearance of the dictatorship of which he was accused; but his attitude on reservations that altered the meaning of any portion of the treaty or covenant was unyielding, and he even insisted that merely interpretative reservations should not be embodied in the text of the ratifying resolution. The President evidently hoped that the pressure of public opinion would compel the Senate to yield to the demand for immediate peace and for guarantees against future war. His appearance of rigidity, however, played into the hands of the opponents of the treaty, who dominated the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate. Senator Lodge, chairman of the committee, adopted a stand which, to the Administration at least, did not seem to be justified by anything but a desire to discredit the work of Wilson. He had, in the previous year, warmly advocated a League of Nations, but in the spring of 1919 he had given the impression that he would oppose any League for which Wilson stood sponsor. Thus he had raised objections to the preliminary draft of the covenant which Wilson brought from Paris in February; but when Wilson persuaded the Allies to incorporate some of the amendments then demanded by Republican Senators, he at once found new objections. He did not dare attack the League as a principle, in view of the uncertainty of public opinion on the issue; but he obviously rejoiced in the President's inability to unite the Democrats with the middle-ground Republicans, for whom Senator McCumber stood as spokesman.
On the 19th of August a conference was held at the White House, in which the President attempted to explain to the Foreign Relations Committee doubtful points and to give the reasons for various aspects of the settlement. A careful study of the stenographic report indicates that his answers to the questions of the Republican Senators were frank, and that he was endeavoring to remove the unfortunate effects of his former distant attitude. His manner, however, had in it something of the schoolmaster, and the conference was fruitless. Problems which had been studied for months by experts of all the Powers, and to the solution of which had been devoted long weeks of intelligent discussion, were now passed upon superficially by men whose ignorance of foreign questions was only too evident, and who barely concealed their determination to nullify everything approved by the President. Hence, when the report of the committee was finally presented on the 10th of September, the Republican majority demanded no less than thirty-eight amendments and four reservations. A quarter of the report was not concerned at all with the subject under discussion, but was devoted to an attack upon Wilson's autocratic methods and his treatment of the Senate. As was pointed out by Senator McCumber, the single Republican who dissented from the majority report, "not one word is said, not a single allusion made, concerning either the great purposes of the League of Nations or the methods by which these purposes are to be accomplished. Irony and sarcasm have been substituted for argument and positions taken by the press or individuals outside the Senate seem to command more attention than the treaty itself."
The President did not receive the popular support which he expected, and the burst of popular wrath which he believed would overwhelm senatorial opposition was not forthcoming. In truth public opinion was confused. America was not educated to understand the issues at stake. Wilson's purposes at Paris had not been well reported in the press, and he himself had failed to make plain the meaning of his policy. It was easy for opponents of the treaty to muddy discussion and to arouse emotion where reason was desirable. The wildest statements were made as to the effect of the covenant, such as that entrance into the League would at once involve the United States in war, and that Wilson was sacrificing the interests of America to the selfish desires of European states. The same men who, a year before, had complained that Wilson was opposing England and France, now insisted that he had sold the United States to those nations. They invented the catchword of "one hundred per cent Americanism," the test of which was to be opposition to the treaty. They found strange coadjutors. The German-Americans, suppressed during the war, now dared to emerge, hoping to save the Fatherland from the effects of defeat by preventing the ratification of the treaty; the politically active Irish found opportunity to fulminate against British imperialism and "tyranny" which they declared had been sanctioned by the treaty; impractical liberals, who were disappointed because Wilson had not inaugurated the social millennium, joined hands with out-and-out reactionaries. But the most discouraging aspect of the situation was that so many persons permitted their judgment to be clouded by their dislike of the President's personality. However much they might disapprove the tactics of Senator Lodge they could not but sympathize to some extent with the Senate's desire to maintain its independence, which they believed had been assailed by Wilson. Discussions which began with the merits of the League of Nations almost invariably culminated with vitriolic attacks upon the character of Woodrow Wilson.
In the hope of arousing the country to a clear demand for immediate peace based upon the Paris settlement, Wilson decided to carry out the plan formulated some weeks previous and deliver a series of speeches from the Middle West to the Pacific coast. He set forth on the 3d of September and made more than thirty speeches. He was closely followed by some of his fiercest opponents. Senators Johnson and Borah, members of the Foreign Relations Committee, who might have been expected to remain in Washington to assist in the consideration of the treaty by the Senate, followed in Wilson's wake, attempting to counteract the effect of his addresses, and incidentally distorting many of the treaty's provisions, which it is charitable to assume they did not comprehend. The impression produced by the President was varied, depending largely upon the political character of his audience. East of the Mississippi he was received with comparative coolness, but as he approached the coast enthusiasm became high, and at Seattle and Los Angeles he received notable ovations. And yet in these hours of triumph as in the previous moments of discouragement, farther east, he must have felt that the issues were not clear. The struggle was no longer one for a new international order that would ensure peace, so much as a personal conflict between Lodge and Wilson. Whether the President were applauded or anathematized, the personal note was always present.
It was evident, during the tour, that the nervous strain was telling upon Wilson. He had been worn seriously by his exertions in Paris, where he was described by a foreign plenipotentiary as the hardest worker in the Conference. The brief voyage home, which was purposely lengthened to give him better chance of recuperation, proved insufficient. Forced to resume the struggle at the moment when he thought victory was his, repudiated where he expected to find appreciation, the tour proved to be beyond his physical and nervous strength. At Pueblo, Colorado, on the 25th of September, he broke down and returned hastily to Washington. Shortly afterwards the President's condition became so serious that his physicians forbade all political conferences, insisting upon a period of complete seclusion and rest, which was destined to continue for many months.
Thus at the moment of extreme crisis in the fortunes of the treaty its chief protagonist was removed from the scene of action and the Democratic forces fighting for ratification were deprived of effective leadership. Had there been a real leader in the Senate who could carry on the fight with vigor and finesse, the treaty might even then have been saved; but Wilson's system had permitted no understudies. There was no one to lead and no one to negotiate a compromise. From his sick-room, where his natural obstinacy seemed to be intensified by his illness, the President still refused to consider any reservations except of a purely interpretative character, and the middle-ground Republicans would not vote to ratify without "mild reservations," some of which seemed to him more than interpretative.