Yet the most satisfactory treaty of peace, said Mr. Wilson, would have little value unless it were backed by the united nations to defend it, with great forces combined to make it good, and the assurance given to oppressed peoples of the world that they should be safe. America would not disappoint the hopes of the world, and would make men free. "If we did not do that, the fame of America would be gone and all her power would be dissipated. She then would have to keep her power for those narrow, selfish, provincial purposes which seem so dear to some minds that have no sweep beyond the nearest horizon." He spoke of the claims of Poland, and the wrongs of Armenia, and of the aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs, and how certain powers would pounce upon them if there were not the guarantees of the world behind their liberty.

President Wilson said he had returned to report progress which would not stop short of the goal. The people were in the saddle and they would see to it that if their own present governments did not do their will some other governments shall. "And the secret is out and the present governments know it."

Before President Wilson returned to America the League of Nations covenant had already been discussed in the United States Senate. The Republican members in particular were vehement and even bitter in denouncing the project as set forth in the original draft. Senator Poindexter declared in the course of a three-hour speech that the charter of the League meant surrender of American sovereignty to European nations. Article X bound the United States as one of the contracting parties, he said, to preserve against aggressions the territory and political independence in all states members of the League. This, argued the Senator, would compel the United States to tax its people and sacrifice its soldiers to make war on behalf of a foreign country. In mixing in the affairs of small European nations, these small nations would intrude into the affairs of the United States. To place into the hands of the council of the League of Nations—all but one foreigners with different ideals and interests—such control over the sovereign action of the American people for which so many heroes had labored "would be as though it were a pitiful murder of the very souls of our fathers in their own house, builded by their hands...."

Senator Borah, Republican, attacked the League as a radical departure from the policy laid down in Washington's Farewell Address and the Monroe Doctrine. Article X, which provided for the preservation of the territorial integrity of the nations of the League, the Senator said, would first obligate America to protect the territorial integrity of Great Britain. If the British Empire was threatened in any part, not the United States Congress, or the people, or the Government would determine what should be done, but the executive council, of which the American people had one member, would determine what should be done. The British Empire, united in interest with Italy and Japan, would outvote America in the League. The whole project, he believed, would sterilize the principle of nationalism and abrogate the American Constitution.

The League found a sturdy and eloquent champion in Senator Hitchcock, Democrat, of Nebraska, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In the course of a speech delivered on February 27, 1919, Senator Hitchcock expressed his belief that the League was a positive guaranty against future world wars. The attitude Japan might take regarding her nationals was not a cause for worry. Japan had already recognized the exclusion laws of the United States. There was no question about Mexico, which could not give guaranties of international obligations and therefore would not be admitted to the League.

Senator Hitchcock declared that those who opposed the League were thinking in the terms of the past. The fear expressed that the League would open the way to European despotism was without foundation, for the spirit of despotism had vanished. Democracy was the mastering spirit in all the nine nations represented in the executive council, yes, even in Japan. Such a league, he argued, with its provision of arbitration and delay for calm consideration, would make war improbable. The restrictions on armaments would save the great nations billions and eliminate oppressive tax burdens.

One of the principal arguments against the League was that in joining it America would have to renounce the Monroe Doctrine and relinquish the right to attack any nation that attempted to establish itself in the Western Hemisphere. Senator Hitchcock argued that the League of Nations included the very purposes of the Monroe Doctrine in that it prevented the aggression of nations upon each other. An unfriendly act, or attack, upon any American republic, or upon the United States, would at once be the subject of inquiry and action by the League of Nations. America also would no longer be compelled to defend alone the Western Hemisphere, but would be backed by the sympathy and help of the League of Nations.

"We have been told that this is one of those entangling alliances against which Washington warned us. I deny it. In Washington's day the world was full of alliances, the nations of the world were seeking to maintain, through the theories of the balance of power, their rival interest. Alliances were for the very purpose of waging war, whereas the League of Nations is a great covenant among the democracies of the world for the purposes of preserving peace."

Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, Republican leader in the Senate, expressed the definite opposition of his party to the League as proposed in a speech before the Senate on February 28, 1919.

Senator Knox, Republican, of Pennsylvania, ex-Secretary of State and a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, speaking on March 1, 1919, before the Senate, expressed himself in favor of a modified League that would preserve our sovereignty. The chief points in his argument may be summarized.