From Isolation to Leadership, Revised / A Review of American Foreign Policy

by John Holladay Latané

During the last week of January a compromise was discussed by an informal by-partisan committee, and the President wrote a letter saying he would accept the Hitchcock reservations, but Lodge refused to accept any compromise. On February 9 the Senate again referred the treaty to the Committee on Foreign Relations with instructions to report it back immediately with the reservations previously adopted. After several weeks of fruitless debate a fifteenth reservation, expressing sympathy for Ireland, was added to the others, by a vote of 38 to 36. It was as follows: "In consenting to the ratification of the treaty with Germany the United States adheres to the principle of self-determination and to the resolution of sympathy with the aspirations of the Irish people for a government of their own choice adopted by the Senate June 6, 1919, and declares that when such government is obtained by Ireland, a consummation it is hoped is at hand, it should promptly be admitted as a member of the League of Nations."

With a few changes in the resolutions previously adopted and an important change in the preamble, the ratifying resolution was finally put to the vote March 19, 1920. The result was 49 votes for and 35 against. On the following day the secretary of the Senate was instructed by a formal resolution to return the treaty to the President and to inform him that the Senate had failed to ratify it.

The treaty thus became the leading issue in the presidential campaign, but unfortunately it was not the only issue. The election proved to be a referendum on the Wilson administration as a whole rather than on the treaty. The Republican candidate, Senator Harding, attacked the Wilson administration for its arbitrary and unconstitutional methods and advocated a return to "normalcy." He denounced the Wilson League as an attempt to set up a super-government, but said he favored an association of nations and an international court. Governor Cox, the Democratic candidate, came out strongly for the treaty, particularly during the latter part of his campaign. The result was an overwhelming victory for Harding. President Wilson had been too ill to take any part in the campaign. His administration had been the chief issue, and the people had, certainly for the time being, repudiated it. He accepted the result philosophically and refrained from comments, content, apparently, to leave the part he had played in world affairs to the verdict of history. In December, 1920, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to him as a foreign recognition of the services he had rendered to humanity.

XII

THE WASHINGTON CONFERENCE

After the rejection of the Treaty of Versailles by the Senate, President Wilson withdrew as far as possible from participation in European affairs, and after the election of Harding he let it be known that he would do nothing to embarrass the incoming administration. The public had been led to believe that when Harding became President there would be a complete reversal of our foreign policy all along the line, but such was not to be the case. The new administration continued unchanged the Wilson policy toward Mexico and toward Russia, and before many months had passed was seeking from Congress the authority, withheld from Wilson, to appoint a member on the Reparations Commission. On the question of our rights in mandated areas, Secretary Hughes adopted in whole the arguments which had been advanced by Secretary Colby in his note to Great Britain of November 20, 1920, in regard to the oil resources of Mesopotamia. By the San Remo agreement of April 25, 1920, Great Britain and France had agreed upon a division of the oil output of Mesopotamia by which France was to be allowed 25 per cent. and Great Britain 75 per cent. The British Government had intimated that the United States, having declined to join the League of Nations, had no voice in the matter. On this point Secretary Colby took sharp issue in the following statement: "Such powers as the Allied and Associated nations may enjoy or wield, in the determination of the governmental status of the mandated areas, accrued to them as a direct result of the war against the Central Powers. The United States, as a participant in that conflict and as a contributor to its successful issue, cannot consider any of the Associated Powers, the smallest not less than herself, debarred from the discussion of any of its consequences, or from participation in the rights and privileges secured under the mandates provided for in the treaties of peace."

Japan likewise assumed that we had nothing to do with the disposition of the former German islands in the Pacific. When the Supreme Council at Paris decided to give Japan a mandate over the islands north of the equator, President Wilson reserved for future consideration the final disposition of the island of Yap, which lies between Guam and the Philippines, and is one of the most important cable stations in the Pacific. The entire question of cable communications was reserved for a special conference which met at Washington in the autumn of 1920, but this conference adjourned about the middle of December without having reached any final conclusions, and the status of Yap became the subject of a very sharp correspondence between the American and Japanese governments. When Hughes became Secretary of State, he restated the American position in a note of April 2, 1921, as follows:

"It will not be questioned that the right to dispose of the overseas possessions of Germany was acquired only through the victory of the Allied and Associated Powers, and it is also believed that there is no disposition on the part of the Japanese Government to deny the participation of the United States in that victory. It would seem to follow necessarily that the right accruing to the Allied and Associated Powers through the common victory is shared by the United States and that there could be no valid or effective disposition of the overseas possessions of Germany, now under consideration, without the assent of the United States."

The discussion between the two governments was still in progress when the Washington Conference convened, and at the close of the Conference it was announced that an agreement had been reached which would be embodied in a treaty. The United States recognized Japan's mandate over the islands north of the equator on the condition that the United States should have full cable rights on the island of Yap, and that its citizens should enjoy certain rights of residence on the island. The agreement also covered radio telegraphic service.

During the presidential campaign Harding's position on the League of Nations had been so equivocal that the public knew not what to expect, but when Hughes and Hoover were appointed members of the Cabinet, it was generally expected that the new administration would go into the League with reservations. This expectation was not to be fulfilled, however, for the President persistently ignored the existence of the League, and took no notice of the establishment of the permanent Court of International Justice provided for in Article 14 of the Covenant. Meanwhile Elihu Root, who as Secretary of State had instructed our delegates to the Hague Conference of 1907 to propose the establishment of such a court, had been invited by the Council of the League to be one of a commission of distinguished jurists to draft the statute establishing the court. This service he performed with conspicuous ability. As another evidence of Europe's unwillingness to leave us out, when the court was organized John Bassett Moore, America's most distinguished authority on international law, was elected one of the judges.