Bourgeois returned in half an hour and we resumed the discussion. After explaining more at length our constitutional provisions, I told him that if the proposed League were made too strong it would be useless, so far as America was concerned, since it would not be ratified by the Senate. Knowing what a strong advocate he had always been of the League of Nations, as he was and had been for years past the president of the French League of Nations Society, I asked him whether he would prefer having no League rather than a League as drafted, without the two articles he had proposed.
He frankly replied that if that were the alternative, he would prefer to have the League as drafted. He then referred to the fact that at our last Congressional election, the Administration had been defeated, and therefore, as he understood it, the President represented a minority party. I told him that, while such would be the case under the European system, it was not so under our system, and then read to him from my letter of credence "to support the President," explaining that the president of our League, Mr. Taft, along with Dr. Lowell, myself, and many others, was not of the President's party, yet I was authorized and instructed to support the President.
Bourgeois replied that at the Plenary Session of the Conference, which was to be held on the Friday following, namely, on the 14th, at the Quai d'Orsay, in view of the American position which I had made clear to him, he would support the "Draft as Provisionally Approved," but that he wanted me to appreciate that they had politics in France as well as we had, and that therefore he would, at any rate, have to present at the Conference the two articles referred to, if for no other reason than for their popular effect; but that I could rely on it that his Government would in the final analysis accept the covenant or draft as provisionally presented by the representatives of the fourteen nations which had participated in its preparation and had preliminarily agreed to it.
When Bourgeois and d'Estournelles departed, which was at about ten o'clock, I called up Colonel House, and, after briefly informing him what had taken place, I told him that the League was "off the rocks." He expressed his great gratification, and on the following morning when I met him he said that he had informed the President, who desired heartily to congratulate me.
When Colonel House had informed me that "the League was on the rocks," it was more real than figurative; for at the session of the Commission on the League held the evening before, the French members having insisted among other provisions upon an international army to guard the frontier, and President Wilson having point-blank refused to agree to it, an impasse had been reached, since neither side would give way. The Commission thereupon adjourned, apparently without any possibility of coming to an understanding. Considerable bitterness was developed in the discussion, as I learned, between the President and M. Bourgeois. It was at this stage that I fortuitously arrived at the Crillon to report that our committee, by calling on M. Bourgeois, had been able unofficially to take up and discuss with him the situation, which officially had apparently passed beyond the stage of further discussion. Therefore it was, as Holt and I were subsequently informed, a great relief to the President and Colonel House, as well as to Clemenceau and Bourgeois, that we had been able to remove the impasse by inducing the French delegates to agree to support the Covenant as preliminarily drafted.
Some months before, there had been organized in Paris a luncheon club, the Cercle Interallié, as a comfortable and convenient meeting-place for many officials and others. Immediately upon my arrival, I was introduced at the club, where I frequently took lunch and met many people, officials and delegates of the allied nations. The day following our conversation at my apartment, I met Baron d'Estournelles by appointment at lunch, and he informed me that Bourgeois had expressed himself gratified with the clarification I had given him and that I could rely upon the Covenant being adopted as we had agreed.
On the morning of the 14th, while I was at Colonel House's office, I received a copy of the Covenant which had just been put in print, as reëdited by the Sub-Committee of the League of Nations under the chairmanship of Lord Robert Cecil. While I was there, President Wilson came in to meet the representatives of the American press. When he saw me, he expressed his high appreciation for our services and helpfulness. The President made a brief address to the correspondents, beginning in a semi-humorous vein, and then giving a general description of the Covenant as finally drafted, explaining that where so many nations were involved, no one's individual ideas could be fully satisfied, and that there had to be yielding on all sides. Wilson added that he would have liked to see some definite declaration regarding the protection of religious minorities, and referred to several of the other outstanding provisions.
Colonel House asked me to see Bourgeois again before the Plenary Session which was to take place that afternoon, saying that he had heard that Bourgeois was going to oppose the Covenant. I immediately called on Bourgeois again, and told him precisely what the Colonel had said, but Bourgeois assured me that there had been no change, and that the Covenant, or as it was styled in French, Le Pacte, would not be opposed.
That same afternoon, I went with former Ambassador Henry White, one of our official delegates, to the Session of the Plenary Conference at the Quai d'Orsay which convened at 3.30 o'clock. I accompanied him into the Conference room, a large, vaulted, ornate chamber known as the Clock Room, where were seated, at the tables arranged along three sides of a square, with an inner row of seats arranged in the same way, the delegates of the thirty nations.