By the end of the month Henry Cabot Lodge was ready, as chairman of the Committee for Foreign Affairs, to inaugurate public hearings on the question of ratification. The Republicans, perhaps in somewhat mischievous deference to the President’s call for open covenants, openly arrived at, insisted on these hearings being open to the reporters and to the public. Sensationally reported in the press, the hearings brought dismay to the White House.
August 19 the President invited the entire Senate committee to a private conference in the East Room. He greeted the senators amiably. He had taken the liberty, he said, of writing out a little statement on the points of controversy which had so far come up. This he proceeded to read.
He repeated his arguments for ratification of the treaty at the earliest practicable moment. At home and abroad the revival of trade and commerce and industry, and reconstruction, and every sort of plan for the orderly life of the world, waited on the peace. He reminded the senators that he had already introduced revisions on points which some of them had brought up.
He spoke vigorously in defense of Article X, “the heart of the covenant,” by which the United States joined the Allied powers in undertaking to “preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence” of all members of the League; but he pointed out, in a disarming tone, that this obligation was moral, rather than legal.
The senators presented their questions. They asked about the disposition of the Pacific Islands under the mandate system. How would that affect American control of the Pacific cables? The President’s answers did not satisfy them.
The chief stumbling block was Article X. The conference became involved in a tangled argument on the difference between a moral and a legal obligation. The argument became heated.
The Democratic senators had little to say.
The President seemed reluctant to reveal how decisions had been reached at the Peace Conference. He was particularly evasive on the subject of Shantung. Had the Japanese been offered Shantung in return for their signature?
Senator Hiram Johnson of California read the minutes of his examination of Secretary Lansing a few days before. After some squirming, the Secretary of State had admitted that in his opinion the Japanese would have signed even without Shantung.
Johnson read out his question: “So that the result of the Shantung decision was simply to lose China’s signature, rather than to gain Japan’s?
“Secretary Lansing: ‘That is my personal view, but I may be wrong about it.’ ”
The President exclaimed testily that his conclusion was different from Mr. Lansing’s.
The discussion continued until one of the Democrats suggested that maybe they’d better recess. The President graciously invited the senators to lunch with him. While waiting for the lunch hour Senator Brandegee in acid tones summarized the points at issue.
Senator Johnson asked to be informed on the practical details. Would American troops be expected to help the French garrison on the Rhine? Would they be expected to enforce every provision of the treaty in Europe, Asia and Africa? The President admitted American troops might have to be stationed for the next fifteen years on the Rhine.
The senator brought up the paragraph on ratification.
President Wilson seemed a little vague as to how many signatures, besides Germany’s, it would take to put the treaty in force. Senator Hitchcock came to the President’s rescue by reading a paragraph to the effect that the treaty would be binding on a nation only from the date of that nation’s signature.
Senator Moses of New Hampshire came back to the mandates: “Mr. President, under the terms of the treaty, Germany cedes to the principal allied and associated powers all her overseas possessions?
“The President: Yes.
“Senator Moses: We hereby, as I view it, become possessed in fee of an undivided fifth part of those possessions.
“The President: Only as one of five trustees, Senator. There is no thought in any mind of sovereignty.
“Senator Moses: Such possessions as we acquire by means of that cession would have to be disposed of by congressional action.
“The President: I have not thought about that at all.
“Senator Moses: You have no plan to suggest or recommendation to make to Congress?
“The President: Not yet, sir, I am waiting until the treaty is disposed of.”
At that point Senator Lodge remarked that it was thirtyfive minutes past one. They had been talking for three hours and a half. The conference adjourned and the senators followed the President into the dining-room.
Though he managed to keep his temper the conference left Wilson in angry turmoil. It was now clear that without modifications the Senate would never ratify the treaty. He was determined to appeal to the people. The voice of the people would cry down these crabbed criticisms. Already he was planning with Tumulty a swing around the country that would bring his great League plan home to the people. The Republicans in the Senate would never dare face a popular uprising.
Tumulty was all for it. As a practical politician the President’s secretary was appalled by the disrepair into which the Democratic Party had fallen during the President’s absence abroad. In bringing the League home to the people, the President, in whose gifts as a campaign orator Tumulty had childlike faith, would revive the party machinery at the grassroots. Enthusiastically he went to work to plan a speaking tour through the middlewest and down the Pacific coast. The President would meet the erstwhile Progressives like Johnson and Borah, who were the most fervent opponents of the treaty, on their home ground.
Although Wilson intended to urge the people to insist on ratification of every word of the treaty as he had laid it before the Senate, without dotting an i or crossing a t, at that moment he was admitting to himself that he might have to consent to some modifications. Late in August he drew up a document on his own typewriter for the information of Senator Hitchcock.
Gilbert M. Hitchcock was a wellmeaning smalltown publisher from Nebraska who, with little parliamentary experience, found himself, through the illness of the aged minority leader, Senator Martin of Virginia, in the position of minority leader pro tem in the Senate. Consequently it was upon Hitchcock that devolved the task of sponsoring the Versailles treaty. What he lacked in knowhow he made up in loyalty to the President as head of the Democratic Party.
Wilson noted, for Hitchcock’s private information, that he was willing, if absolutely necessary, to agree to four reservations. More emphasis could be placed on the provision that any state could withdraw from the League at any time. States could use their own judgement as to whether they would use armed force to carry out the League’s decisions. It should be specified that the League might not meddle in questions of immigration, naturalization or tariffs; and he was willing to restate in stronger terms his original reservation as to the Monroe Doctrine.
Hitchcock told the President he was convinced that these concessions would go far towards meeting the views of all but the most irreconcilable of the Republicans. In his opinion a twothirds majority would not be too hard to obtain.
Wilson hated the senators and all they stood for. He would arouse the people. He hoped to lash public opinion to such a pitch of enthusiasm for the League that the senators would not dare oppose him. Even so, at that moment, he was willing to go along with those Republican and Democratic senators who were in favor of moderate reservations.
As the day for the President’s departure approached, Grayson and Edith Wilson grew more and more uneasy about the possible effect on his health of such a gruelling trip. He had not really recovered from his illness in Paris in April. The summer heat had been unusually hard on him. Although he took long periods of rest each day he did not seem able to throw off fatigue as he used to. Edith Wilson urged Grayson to assert himself as the President’s personal physician. They both begged him to call the trip off.