[26] This article by Mr. Wickersham was prepared prior to the Senate deadlock and the rejection of the Treaty with the Lodge reservations.

Dr. Hill again sums up the case against the treaty—the final basis which the confused gropings after some means of making it unpopular with the people finally have evolved—in these words:

"The League of Nations, as proposed, includes not only obligations not related to the reasons for engaging in the war, but also obligations opposed to the traditions, the time-honored policies, and even the constitutional provisions of the United States. It commits the whole future policy of this country to the decisions of an international body in which it would have only a single voice; it permits that body to intrude its judgments, and thereby its policies into a sphere hitherto regarded as exclusively American, and, in addition, it demands that the territories held by each of the members of the League under this treaty shall receive the permanent protection of the United States as integral parts of the Nations that now claim them."

Is it true? What is the real meaning of the Peace Treaty and its effect upon the people of the United States? The answer to these questions, and indeed to most of the criticism of the Covenant, is conclusively met by a reading of the treaty. But first let us turn for a moment to the fourteen points of Mr. Wilson's address of January 8, 1918. The basis of the territorial readjustment of Europe which he then proposed, was the giving of national expression to racial aspiration. Alien imperial rule such as that of Austria over Hungary and Bohemia, and that of Germany, Austria or Russia over Poland, was to end, and the Poles, the Croats, Serbs, Hungarians, Bohemians, and the Czechoslavs and Jugoslavs each were to be allowed national existence, with the right of self-determination. Whatever may now be thought of the wisdom of this theory, it was accepted by all of the Allies, who thereby were committed to a responsibility for the protection, certainly in the early years of their existence, of the new nations they united to call into being. Recognizing this fact, the fourteenth of the Wilson points provided for the creation of an Association of the Allied Nations to protect the work of their arms. Aside from that practical purpose, the League of Nations was recognized by many in every land as furnishing the only practicable machinery for the removal of causes of war and the prevention of new assaults upon civilization, such as that which Germany had launched in August, 1914.

Copyright Underwood & Underwood

Victoria Hall at Geneva

Selected by the Council of the Powers as the meeting place of the League of Nations.

[Click for a larger image.]

The first Chapter of the Peace Treaty, therefore, is a Covenant or Compact forming a League of Nations, whose purpose, as expressed in the Preamble, is "to promote international coöperation and to achieve international peace and security." Worthy objects, these: how are they to be attained? The Preamble answers,