A few days before the Convention the President delivered to a trusted friend a copy of a proposed "wet" plank, and asked his friend to submit it to the Committee on Resolutions at the Convention in San Francisco. The tentative draft of the plank was as follows:
We recognize that the American saloon is opposed to all social, moral, and economic order, and we pledge ourselves to its absolute elimination by the passage of such laws as will finally and effectually exterminate it. But we favour the repeal of the Volstead Act and the substitution for it of a law permitting the manufacture and sale of light wines and beer.
Evidently, the trusted friend who had this matter in charge felt that the "dry" atmosphere of the Convention was unfavourable and so the President's plank, prepared by himself, was not even given a hearing before the Committee on Resolutions.
CHAPTER XLI
THE TREATY FIGHT
Upon his return home from Paris, the President immediately invited, in most cordial fashion, the members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to confer with him at the White House. Some of those who received the invitation immediately announced that as a condition precedent to their acceptance they would insist that the conference should not be secret in character and that what would happen there should be disclosed to the public. The President quickly accepted the conditions proposed by the Republican senators and made a statement from the White House that the conditions which the conferees named were highly acceptable to him and that he was willing and anxious to give to the public a stenographic report of everything that transpired.
In view of subsequent history, the conversation between the President and Senator Harding about the distinction between "legal" and "moral" obligations, which was interesting at the time, takes on an added interest. Said Senator Harding: "If there is nothing more than a moral obligation on the part of any member of the league, what avail articles X and XI?"
The President: Why, Senator, it is surprising that that question should be asked. If we undertake an obligation, we are bound in the most solemn way to carry it out.
Senator Harding: If you believe there is nothing more to this than a moral obligation, any nation will assume a moral obligation on its own account. Is it a moral obligation? The point I am trying to get at is: Suppose something arises affecting the peace of the world, and the council takes steps as provided here to conserve or preserve, and announces its decision, and every nation in the League takes advantage of the construction that you place upon these articles and says: "Well, this is only a moral obligation, and we assume that the nation involved does not deserve our participation or protection," and the whole thing amounts to nothing but an expression of the league council.
The President: There is a national good conscience in such a matter. I should think that was one of the most serious things that could possibly happen. When I speak of a legal obligation, I mean one that specifically binds you to do a particular thing under certain sanctions. That is a legal obligation, and, if I may say so, has a greater binding force; only there always remains in the moral obligation the right to exercise one's judgment as to whether it is indeed incumbent upon one in those circumstances to do that thing. In every moral obligation there is an element of judgment. In a legal obligation there is no element of judgment.