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THE 
 
 TREATY OF VERSAILLE 
 
 AMERICAN OPINION 
 
 Old Colony Trust Company 
 17 Court Street 
 
 52 Temple Place 222 Boylston Street 
 Boston, Massachusetts 
 
THE 
 
 TREATY OF VERSAILLES 
 
 AMERICAN OPINION 
 
 Old Colony Trust Company 
 
 17 Court Street 
 
 52 Temple Place 222 Boylston Street 
 
 Boston, Massachusetts 
 

 COPYRIGHT, I919, 
 BY OLD COLONY TRUST COMPANY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. 
 
 ©CI.A5 80 8 65 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Speech op Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator from Massa- 
 chusetts, in the Senate, August 12, 1919 5 
 
 Speech of Philander C. Knox, Senator from Pennsyl- 
 vania, in the Senate, August 29, 1919 35 
 
 Speech of Gilbert M. Hitchcock, Senator from Neb- 
 raska, in the Senate, September 3, 1919 69 
 
 Speech of President "Wilson, in St. Louis, Missouri, 
 September 5, 1919 95 
 
SPEECH OF 
 HENRY CABOT LODGE 
 
 Senator from Massachusetts 
 In the Senate, August 12, 1919 
 
 MR. PRESIDENT, in the Essays of Elia, one of 
 the most delightful is that entitled "Popular 
 Fallacies." There is one very popular fallacy, 
 however, which Lamb did not include in his list, and that 
 is the common saying that history repeats itself. Univer- 
 sal negatives are always dangerous, but if there is any- 
 thing which is fairly certain, it is that history never 
 exactly repeats itself. Popular fallacies, nevertheless, 
 generally have some basis, and this saying springs from 
 the undoubted truth that mankind from generation to 
 generation is constantly repeating itself. We have an 
 excellent illustration of this fact in the proposed experi- 
 ment now before us, of making arrangements to secure 
 the permanent peace of the world. To assure the peace 
 of the world by a combination of the nations is no new 
 idea. Leaving out the leagues of antiquity and of med- 
 iaeval times and going back no further than the treaty 
 of Utrecht, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, 
 we find that at that period a project of a treaty to estab- 
 lish perpetual peace was brought forward in 17 13 by the 
 Abbe de Saint-Pierre. The treaty of Utrecht was to be 
 the basis of an international system. A European league 
 or Christian republic was to be set up, under which the 
 members were to renounce the right of making war 
 against each other and submit their disputes for arbitra- 
 tion to a central tribunal of the allies, the decisions of 
 which were to be enforced by a common armament. I 
 need not point out the resemblance between this theory 
 and that which underlies the present league of nations. 
 It was widely discussed during the eighteenth century, 
 
 5 
 
receiving much support in public opinion; and Voltaire 
 said that the nations of Europe, united by ties of religion, 
 institutions, and culture, were really but a single family. 
 The idea remained in an academic condition until 1791, 
 when under the pressure of the French Revolution Count 
 Kaunitz sent out a circular letter in the name of Leopold, 
 of Austria, urging that it was the duty of all the powers 
 to make common cause for the purpose of "preserving 
 public peace, tranquillity of States, the inviolability of 
 possession, and the faith of treaties," which has a very 
 familiar sound. Napoleon had a scheme of his own for 
 consolidating the great European peoples and establish- 
 ing a central assembly, but the Napoleonic idea differed 
 from that of the eighteenth century, as one would expect. 
 A single great personality dominated and hovered over 
 all. In 1804 the Emperor Alexander took up the question 
 and urged a general treaty for the formation of a Euro- 
 pean confederation. "Why could one not submit to 
 it," the Emperor asked, "the positive rights of nations, 
 assure the privilege of neutrality, insert the obligation 
 of never beginning war until all the resources which the 
 mediation of a third party could offer have been ex- 
 hausted, until the grievances have by this means been 
 brought to light, and an effort to remove them has been 
 made ? On principles such as these one could proceed to a 
 general pacification, and give birth to a league of which 
 the stipulations would form, so to speak, a new code of 
 the law of nations, while those who should try to infringe 
 it would risk bringing upon themselves the forces of the 
 new union." 
 
 The Emperor, moved by more immediately alluring 
 visions, put aside this scheme at the treaty of Tilsit and 
 then decided that peace could best be restored to the 
 world by having two all-powerful emperors, one of the 
 east and one of the west. After the Moscow campaign, 
 however, he returned to his early dream. Under the in- 
 fluence of the Baroness von Krudener he became a dev- 
 otee of a certain mystic pietism which for some time 
 guided his public acts, and I think it may be fairly said 
 that his liberal and popular ideas of that period, however 
 vague and uncertain, were sufficiently genuine. Based 
 upon the treaties of alliance against France, those of 
 
 6 
 
Chaumont and of Vienna, was the final treaty of Paris, 
 of November 20, 191 5. In the preamble the signatories, 
 who were Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and Prussia, 
 stated that it is the purpose of the ensuing treaty and 
 their desire "to employ all their means to prevent the 
 general tranquillity — the object of the wishes of man- 
 kind and the constant end of their efforts — from being 
 again disturbed; desirous, moreover, to draw closer the 
 ties which unite them for the common interests of their 
 people, have resolved to give to the principles solemnly 
 laid down in the treaties of Chaumont of March 1, 18 14, 
 and of Vienna of March 25, 181 5, the application the 
 most analogous to the present state of affairs, and to 
 fix beforehand by a solemn treaty the principles which 
 they propose to follow, in order to guarantee Europe 
 from dangers by which she may still be menaced." 
 
 Then follow five articles which arc devoted to an agree- 
 ment to hold France in control and check, based largely 
 on other more detailed agreements. But in Article 6 it is 
 said : 
 
 To facilitate and to secure the execution of the present treaty, and to 
 consolidate the connections which at the present moment so closely unite 
 the four sovereigns for the happiness of the world, the high contracting 
 parties have agreed to renew their meeting at fixed periods, either under 
 the immediate auspices of the sovereigns themselves, or by their respective 
 ministers, for the purpose of consulting upon their common interests, and 
 for the consideration of the measures which at each of those periods shall 
 be considered the most salutary for the repose and prosperity of nations 
 and for the maintenance of the peace of Europe. 
 
 Certainly nothing could be more ingenuous or more 
 praiseworthy than the purposes of the alliance then 
 formed, and yet it was this very combination of powers 
 which was destined to grow into what has been known, 
 and we might add cursed, throughout history as the 
 Holy Alliance. 
 
 As early as 181 8 it had become apparent that upon this 
 innocent statement might be built an alliance which was 
 to be used to suppress the rights of nationalities and 
 every attempt of any oppressed people to secure their 
 freedom. Lord Castlereagh was a Tory of the Tories, 
 but at that time, only three years after the treaty of 
 Paris, when the representatives of the alliance met at 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, he began to suspect that this new 
 
 7 
 
European system was wholly inconsistent with the liber- 
 ties to which Englishmen of all types were devoted. At 
 the succeeding meetings, at Troppau and Laibach, his 
 suspicion was confirmed, and England began to draw 
 away from her partners. He had indeed determined to 
 break with the alliance before the Congress of Verona, 
 but his death threw the question into the hands of George 
 Canning, who stands forth as the man who separated 
 Great Britain from the combination of the continental 
 powers. The attitude of England, which was defined in 
 a memorandum where it was said that nothing could be 
 more injurious to the idea of government generally than 
 the belief that their force was collectively to be prosti- 
 tuted to the support of an established power without 
 any consideration of the extent to which it was to be 
 abused, led to a compromise in 1818 in which it was 
 declared that it was the intention of the five powers, 
 France being invited to adhere, "to maintain the inti- 
 mate union, strengthened by the ties of Christian brother- 
 hood, contracted by the sovereigns; to pronounce the 
 object of this union to be the preservation of peace on 
 the basis of respect for treaties." Admirable and gentle 
 words these, setting forth purposes which all men must 
 approve. 
 
 In 1820 the British Government stated that they were 
 prepared to fulfill all treaty obligations, but that if it 
 was desired "to extend the alliance so as to include all 
 objects, present and future, foreseen and unforeseen, it 
 would change its character to such an extent and carry 
 us so far that we should see in it an additional motive 
 for adhering to our course at the risk of seeing the alliance 
 move away from us, without our having quitted it." 
 The Czar Alexander abandoned his Liberal theories and 
 threw himself into the arms of Metternich, as mean a 
 tyrant as history can show, whose sinister designs prob- 
 ably caused, as much misery and oppression in the years 
 which followed as have ever been evolved by one man of 
 second-rate abilities. The three powers, Russia, Austria, 
 and Prussia, then put out a famous protocol in which it 
 was said that the ' ' States which have undergone a change 
 of government due to revolution, the results of which 
 threaten other States, ipso facto cease to be members of 
 
the European alliance and remain excluded from it until 
 their situation gives guaranties for legal order and stabil- 
 ity. If, owing to such alterations, immediate danger 
 threatens other States, the powers bind themselves, by 
 peaceful means, or, if need be, by arms, to bring back 
 the guilty State into the bosom of the great alliance." 
 To this point had the innocent and laudable declarations 
 of the treaty of Paris already developed. In 1822 Eng- 
 land broke away, and Canning made no secret of his 
 pleasure at the breach. In a letter to the British minis- 
 ter at St. Petersburg he said: 
 
 So things are getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation 
 for itself, and God for us all. The time for Areopagus, and the like of that, 
 is gone by. 
 
 He also said, in the same year, 1823 : 
 
 What is the influence we have had in the counsels of the alliance, and 
 which Prince Metternich exhorts us to be so careful not to throw away? 
 We protested at Laibach; we remonstrated at Verona. Our protest was 
 treated as waste paper; our remonstrances mingled with the air. Our 
 influence, if it is to be maintained abroad, must be secured in the source 
 of strength at home; and the sources of that strength are in the sympathy 
 between the people and the Government; in the union of the public senti-' 
 ment with the public counsels; in the reciprocal confidence and coopera- 
 tion of the House of Commons and the Crown. 
 
 These words of Canning are as applicable and as 
 weighty now as when they were uttered and as worthy 
 of consideration. 
 
 The Holy Alliance, thus developed by the three con- 
 tinental powers and accepted by France under the Bour- 
 bons, proceeded to restore the inquisition in Spain, to 
 establish the Neapolitan Bourbons, who for 40 years 
 were to subject the people of southern Italy to one of the 
 most detestable tyrannies ever known, and proposed fur- 
 ther to interfere against the colonies in South America 
 which had revolted from Spain and to have their case 
 submitted to a congress of the powers. It was then that 
 Canning made his famous statement, "We have called 
 a new world into existence to redress the balance of the 
 old." It was at this point also that the United States in- 
 tervened. The famous message of Monroe, sent to Con- 
 gress on December 2, 1823, put an end to any danger of 
 European influence in the American Continents. A dis- 
 
tinguished English historian, Mr. William Alison Phillips, 
 says: 
 
 The attitude of the United States effectually prevented the attempt 
 to extend the dictatorship of the alliance beyond the bounds of Europe, 
 in itself a great service to mankind. 
 
 In 1825 Great Britain recognized the South American 
 Republics. So far as the New World was concerned the 
 Holy Alliance had failed. It was deprived of the sup- 
 port of France by the revolution of 1830, but it con- 
 tinued to exist under the guidance of Metternich and its 
 last exploit was in 1849, when the Emperor Nicholas sent 
 a Russian army into Hungary to crush out the struggle 
 of Kossuth for freedom and independence. 
 
 I have taken the trouble to trace in the merest outline 
 the development of the Holy Alliance, so hostile and 
 dangerous to human freedom, because I think it carries 
 with it a lesson for us at the present moment, showing as 
 it does what may come from general propositions and 
 declarations of purposes in which all the world agrees. 
 Turn to the preamble of the covenant of the league of 
 nations now before us, which states the object of the 
 league. It is formed "in order to promote international 
 cooperation and to achieve international peace and 
 security by the acceptance of obligations not to resort to 
 war, by the prescription of open, just, and honorable re- 
 lations between nations, by the firm establishment of 
 the understandings of international laws as the actual 
 rule of conduct among governments and by the main- 
 tenance of justice and a scrupulous respect for all treaty 
 obligations in the dealings of organized peoples with one 
 another." 
 
 No one would contest the loftiness or the benevolence 
 of these purposes. Brave words, indeed! They do not 
 differ essentially from the preamble of the treaty of Paris, 
 from which sprang the Holy Alliance. But the covenant 
 of this league contains a provision which I do not find in 
 the treaty of Paris, and which is as follows : 
 
 The assembly may deal at its meetings with any matter within the 
 sphere of action of the league or affecting the peace of the world. 
 
 There is no such sweeping or far-reaching provision as 
 that in the treaty of Paris, and yet able men developed 
 
 10 
 
from that treaty the Holy Alliance, which England, and 
 later France, were forced to abandon and which, for 
 thirty-five years, was an unmitigated curse to the world. 
 England broke from the Holy Alliance and the breach 
 began three years after it was formed, because English 
 statesmen saw that it was intended to turn the alliance 
 — and this league is an alliance — into a means of re- 
 pressing internal revolutions or insurrections. There 
 was nothing in the treaty of Paris which warranted such 
 action, but in this covenant of the league of nations the 
 authority is clearly given in the third paragraph of 
 Article 3 , where it is said : 
 
 The assembly may deal at its meetings with any matter within the 
 sphere of action of the league or affecting the peace of the world. 
 
 No revolutionary movement, no internal conflict of 
 any magnitude can fail to affect the peace of the world. 
 The French Revolution, which was wholly internal at 
 the beginning, affected the peace of the world to such an 
 extent that it brought on a world war which lasted some 
 twenty-five years. Can anyone say that our Civil War 
 did not affect the peace of the world? At this very mo- 
 ment, who would deny that the condition of Russia, with 
 internal conflicts raging in all parts of that great Empire, 
 does not affect the peace of the world and therefore come 
 properly within the jurisdiction of the league. "Any 
 matter affecting the peace of the world" is a very broad 
 statement which could be made to justify almost any in- 
 terference on the part of the league with the internal 
 affairs of other countries. That this fair and obvious 
 interpretation is the one given to it abroad is made per- 
 fectly apparent in the direct and vigorous statement of 
 M. Clemenceau in his letter to Mr. Paderewski, in which 
 he takes the ground in behalf of the Jews and other 
 nationalities in Poland that they should be protected, 
 and where he says that the associated powers would feel 
 themselves bound to secure guaranties in Poland ' ' of cer- 
 tain essential rights which will afford to the inhabitants 
 the necessary protection, whatever changes may take 
 place in the internal constitution of the Polish Republic." 
 He contemplates and defends interference with the in- 
 ternal affairs of Poland — among other things — in 
 
 11 
 
behalf of a complete religious freedom, a purpose with 
 which we all deeply sympathize. These promises of the 
 French prime minister are embodied in effective clauses 
 in the treaties with Germany and with Poland and deal 
 with the internal affairs of nations, and their execution is 
 intrusted to the "principal allied and associated powers"; 
 that is, to the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy' 
 and Japan. This is a practical demonstration of what 
 can be done under Article 3 and under Article 1 1 of the 
 league covenant, and the authority which permits in- 
 terference in behalf of religious freedom, an admirable 
 object, is easily extended to the repression of internal 
 disturbances which may well prove a less admirable pur- 
 pose. If Europe desires such an alliance or league with 
 a power of this kind, so be it. I have no objection, pro- 
 vided they do not interfere with the American Conti- 
 nents or force us against our will but bound by a moral 
 obligation into all the quarrels of Europe. If England, 
 abandoning the policy of Canning, desires to be a member 
 of a league which has such powers as this, I have not a 
 word to say. But I object in the strongest possible way 
 to having the United States agree, directly or indirectly, 
 to be controlled by a league which may at any time, and 
 perfectly lawfully and in accordance with the terms of 
 the covenant, be drawn in to deal with internal conflicts 
 in other countries, no matter what those conflicts may 
 be. We should never permit the United States to be 
 involved in any internal conflict in another country, ex- 
 cept by the will of her people expressed through the Con- 
 gress which represents them. 
 
 With regard to wars of external aggression on a mem- 
 ber of the league the case is perfectly clear. There can 
 be no genuine dispute whatever about the meaning of 
 the first clause of Article 10. In the first place, it differs 
 from every other obligation in being individual and placed 
 upon each nation without the intervention of the league. 
 Each nation for itself promises to respect and preserve 
 as against external aggression the boundaries and the 
 political independence of every member of the league. 
 Of the right of the United States to give such a guaranty 
 I have never had the slightest doubt, and the elaborate 
 arguments which have been made here and the learning 
 
 12 
 
which has been displayed about our treaty with Granada, 
 now Colombia, and with Panama, were not necessary 
 for me, because, I repeat, there can be no doubt of our 
 right to give a guaranty to another nation that we will 
 protect its boundaries and independence. The point I 
 wish to make is that the pledge is an individual pledge. 
 We have, for example, given guaranties to Panama and 
 for obvious and sufficient reasons. The application of 
 that guaranty would not be in the slightest degree affected 
 by ten or twenty other nations giving the same pledge if 
 Panama, when in danger, appealed to us to fulfill our 
 obligation. We should be bound to do so without the 
 slightest reference to the other guarantors. In Article 10 
 the United States is bound on the appeal of any member 
 of the league not only to respect but to preserve its in- 
 dependence and its boundaries, and that pledge, if we 
 give it, must be fulfilled. 
 
 There is to me no distinction whatever in a treaty be- 
 tween what some persons are pleased to call legal and 
 moral obligations. A treaty rests and must rest, except 
 where it is imposed under duress and securities and 
 hostages are taken for its fulfillment, upon moral obliga- 
 tions. No doubt a great power impossible of coercion 
 can cast aside a moral obligation if it sees fit and escape 
 from the performance of the duty which it promises. The 
 pathway of dishonor is always open. I, for one, however, 
 can not conceive of voting for a clause of which I disap- 
 prove because I know it can be escaped in that way. 
 Whatever the United States agrees to, by that agreement 
 she must abide. Nothing could so surely destroy all 
 prospects of the world's peace as to have any powerful 
 nation refuse to carry out an obligation, direct or indirect, 
 because it rests only on moral grounds. Whatever we 
 promise we must carry out to the full, "without mental 
 reservation or purpose of evasion." To me any other 
 attitude is inconceivable. Without the most absolute 
 and minute good faith in carrying out a treaty to which 
 we have agreed, without ever resorting to doubtful in- 
 terpretations or to the plea that it is only a moral obliga- 
 tion, treaties are worthless. The greatest foundation of 
 peace is the scrupulous observance of every promise 
 express or implied, of every pledge, whether it can be 
 
 13 
 
described as legal or moral. No vote should be given to 
 any clause in any treaty or to any treaty except in this 
 spirit and with this understanding. 
 
 I return, then, to the first clause of Article 10. It is, 
 I repeat, an individual obligation. It requires no action 
 on the part of the league, except that in the second 
 sentence the authorities of the league are to have 
 the power to advise as to the means to be employed 
 in order to fulfill the purpose of the first sentence. But 
 that is a detail of execution, and I consider that we 
 are morally and in honor bound to accept and act 
 upon that advice. The broad fact remains that if any 
 member of the league suffering from external aggression 
 should appeal directly to the United States for support 
 the United States would be bound to give that support 
 in its own capacity and without reference to the action 
 of other powers because the United States itself is bound, 
 and I hope the day will never come when the United 
 States will not carry out its promises. If that day should 
 come, and the United States or any other great country 
 should refuse, no matter how specious the reasons, to 
 fulfill both in letter and spirit every obligation in this 
 covenant, the United States would be dishonored and the 
 league would crumble into dust, leaving behind it a 
 legacy of wars, f If China should rise up and attack 
 Japan in an effort to undo the great wrong of the cession 
 of the control of Shantung to that power, we should be 
 bound under the terms of Article 10 to sustain Japan 
 against China, and a guaranty of that sort is never in- 
 voked except when the question has passed beyond the 
 stage of negotiation and has become a question fdr^fehe 
 application of force. I do not like the prospect. It 
 shall not come into existence by any vote of mine. 
 
 Article n carries this danger still further, for it says: 
 
 Any war or threat of war, whether immediately affecting any of the 
 members of the league or not, is hereby declared a matter of concern to 
 the whole league and the league shall take any action that shall be deemed 
 wise and effectual to safeguard the peace of nations-. 
 
 "Any war or threat of war" -that means both ex- 
 ternal aggression and internal disturbance, as I have 
 already pointed out in dealing with Article 3. "Any 
 action" covers military action, because it covers action 
 
of any sort or kind. Let me take an example, not an 
 imaginary ease, but one which may have been over- 
 looked because most people have not the slightest idea 
 where or what a King of the Hedjaz is. The following 
 dispatch appeared recently in the newspapers : 
 
 HEDJAZ AGAINST BEDOUINS. 
 
 The forces of Emir Abdullah recently suffered a grave defeat, the 
 Wahabis attacking and capturing Kurma, east of Mecca. . Ibn Savond is 
 believed to be working in harmony with the Wahabis. A squadron of the 
 royal air force wa < irdered recently to go to the as i i.ince of King Hussein. 
 
 Hussein I take to be the Sultan of Hedjaz. He is 
 being attacked by the Bedouins, as they are known to us, 
 although I fancy the general knowledge about the Waha- 
 bis and Ibn Savond and Emir Abdullah is slight and the 
 names mean but little to the American people. Never- 
 theless, here is a case of a member of the league — for 
 the King of Hedjaz is such a member in good and regular 
 standing and signed the treaty by his representatives, 
 Mr. Rustem Haidar and Mr. Abdul Havi Aouni. 
 
 Under Article 10, if King Hussein appealed to us for 
 aid and protection against external aggression affecting 
 his independence and the boundaries of his Kingdom, 
 we should be bound to give that aid and protection and to 
 send American soldiers to Arabia. It is not relevant to 
 say that this is unlikely to occur; that Great Britain is 
 quite able to take care of King Hussein, who is her fair 
 creation, reminding one a little of the Mosquito King, 
 a monarch once developed by Great Britain on the 
 Mosquito Coast of Central America. The fact that we 
 should not be called upon does not alter the right which 
 the King of Hedjaz possesses to demand the send- 
 ing of American troops to Arabia in order to preserve 
 his independence against the assaults of the Wahabis 
 or Bedouins. I am unwilling to give that right to King 
 Hussein, and this illustrates the point which is to me the 
 most objectionable in the league as it stands; the right 
 of other powers to call out American troops and American 
 ships to go to any part of the world, an obligation we are 
 bound to fulfill under the terms of this treaty. I know 
 the answer well - that of course they could not be sent 
 without action by Congress. Congress would have no 
 choice if acting in good faith, and if under Article 10 any 
 
 J 5 
 
member of the league summoned us, or if under Article 1 1 
 the league itself summoned us, we should be bound in 
 honor and morally to obey. There would be no escape 
 except by a breach of faith, and legislation by Congress 
 under those circumstances would be a mockery of in- 
 dependent action. Is it too much to ask that provision 
 should be made that American troops and American ships 
 should never be sent anywhere or ordered to take part 
 in any conflict except after deliberate action of the Amer- 
 ican people, expressed according to the Constitution 
 through their chosen representatives in Congress? 
 
 Let me now briefly point out the insuperable difficulty 
 which I find in Article 15. It begins: "If there should 
 arise between members of the league any dispute likely 
 to lead to a rupture." "Any dispute" covers every pos- 
 sible dispute. It therefore covers a dispute over tariff 
 duties and over immigration. Suppose we have a dis- 
 pute with Japan or with some European country as to 
 immigration. I put aside tariff duties as less important 
 than immigration. This is not an imaginary case. Of 
 late years there has probably been more international 
 discussion and negotiation about questions growing out 
 of immigration laws than any other one subject. It 
 comes within the definition of "any dispute" at the 
 beginning of Article 15. In the eighth paragraph of that 
 Article it is said that "if the dispute between the parties 
 is claimed by one of them, and is found by the council to 
 arise out of a matter which, by international law, is solely 
 within the domestic jurisdiction of that party, the council 
 shall so report and shall make no recommendation as to 
 its settlement." That is one of the statements, of which 
 there are several in this treaty, where words are used 
 which it is difficult to believe their authors could have 
 written down in seriousness. They seem to have been 
 put in for the same purpose as what is known in natural 
 history as protective coloring. Protective coloring is 
 intended so to merge the animal, the bird, or the insect 
 in its background that it will be indistinguishable from 
 its surroundings and difficult, if not impossible, to find 
 the elusive and hidden bird, animal, or insect. Protective 
 coloring here is used in the form of words to give an 
 impression that we are perfectly safe upon immigration 
 
 16 
 
and tariffs, for example, because questions which inter- 
 national law holds to be solely within domestic jurisdic- 
 tion are not to have any recommendation from the council, 
 but the dangers are there just the same, like the cun- 
 ningly colored insect on the tree or the young bird crouch- 
 ing motionless upon the sand. The words and the coloring 
 are alike intended to deceive. I wish somebody would 
 point out to me those provisions of international law 
 which make a list of questions which are hard and fast 
 within the domestic jurisdiction. No such distinction 
 can be applied to tariff duties or immigration, nor in- 
 deed finally and conclusively to any subject. Have we 
 not seen the school laws of California, most domestic of 
 subjects, rise to the dignity of a grave international dis- 
 pute? No doubt both import duties and immigration 
 are primarily domestic questions, but they both con- 
 stantly involve and will continue to involve international 
 effects. Like the protective coloration, this paragraph 
 is wholly worthless unless it is successful in screening 
 from the observer the existence of the animal, insect, or 
 bird which it is desired to conceal. It fails to do so and 
 the real object is detected. But even if this bit of decep- 
 tion was omitted — and so far as the question of immigra- 
 tion or tariff questions are concerned it might as well be 
 — the ninth paragraph brings the important point clearly 
 to the front. Immigration, which is the example I took, 
 can not escape the action of the league by any claim of 
 domestic jurisdiction; it has too many international 
 aspects. 
 
 Article 9 says: 
 
 The council may, in any case under this article, refer the dispute to the 
 assembly. 
 
 We have our dispute as to immigration with Japan or 
 with one of the Balkan States, let us say. The council 
 has the power to refer the dispute to the assembly. 
 Moreover the dispute shall be so referred at the request 
 of either party to the dispute, provided that such request 
 be made within fourteen days after the submission of 
 the dispute to the council. So that Japan or the Balkan 
 States, for example, with which we may easily have the 
 dispute, ask that it be referred to "the assembly and the 
 
 17 
 
immigration question between the United States and 
 Jugoslavia or Japan, as the case may be, goes to the 
 assembly. The United States and Japan or Jugoslavia 
 are excluded from voting v and the provision of Article 
 12, relating to the action and powers of the council, 
 apply to the action and powers of the assembly provided, 
 as set forth in Article 15, that a report made by the 
 assembly "if concurred in by the representatives of those 
 members of the league represented on the council and of 
 a majority of the other members of the league, exclusive 
 in each case of the representatives of the parties to the 
 dispute, shall have the same force as a report by the 
 council concurred in by all the members thereof other 
 than the representatives of one or more of the parties to 
 the dispute." This course of procedure having been 
 pursued, we find the question of immigration between 
 the United States and Japan is before the assembly for 
 decision. The representatives of the council, except the 
 delegates of the United States and of Japan or Jugoslavia, 
 must all vote unanimously upon it as I understand it, 
 but a majority of the entire assembly, where the council 
 will have only seven votes, will decide. Can anyone say 
 beforehand what the decision of that assembly will be, 
 in which the United States and Jugoslavia or Japan will 
 have no vote? The question in one case may affect 
 immigration from every country in Europe, although the 
 dispute exists only for one, and in the other the whole 
 matter of Asiatic immigration is involved. Is it too 
 fanciful to think that it might be decided against us? 
 For my purpose it matters not whether it is decided for 
 or against us. An immigration dispute or a dispute over 
 tariff duties, met by the procedure set forth in Article 15, 
 comes before the assembly of delegates for a decision by 
 what is practically a majority vote of the entire assembly. 
 That is something to which I do not find myself able to 
 give my assent. So far as immigration is concerned, 
 and also so far as tariff duties, although less important, 
 are concerned, I deny the jurisdiction. There should be 
 no possibility of other nations deciding who shall come 
 into the United States, or under what conditions they 
 shall enter. The right to say who shall come into a 
 country is one of the very highest attributes of sovereignty. 
 
If a nation can not say without appeal who shall come 
 within its gates and become a part of its citizenship it 
 has ceased to be a sovereign nation. It has become a 
 tributary and a subject nation, and it makes no difference 
 whether it is subject to a league or to a conqueror. 
 
 If other nations are willing to subject themselves to 
 such a domination, the United States, to which many 
 immigrants have come and many more will come, ought 
 never to submit to it for a moment. They tell us that so 
 far as Asiatic emigration is concerned there is not the 
 slightest danger that that will ever be forced upon ns by 
 the league, because Australia and Canada and New 
 Zealand are equally opposed to it. I think it highly im- 
 probable that it would be forced upon us under those 
 conditions, but it is by no means impossible. It is true 
 the United States has one vote and that England, if you 
 count the King of the Hedjaz, has seven — in all eight — 
 votes; yet it might not be impossible for Japan and 
 China and Siam to rally enough other votes to defeat us; 
 but whether we are protected in that way or not does not 
 matter. The very offering of that explanation accepts 
 the jurisdiction of the league, and personally, I can not 
 consent to putting the protection of my country and of 
 her workingmen against undesirable immigration, out of 
 our own hands. We and we alone must say who shall 
 come into the United States and become citizens of this 
 Republic, and no one else should have any power to 
 utter one word in regard to it. 
 . Article 21 says: 
 
 Nothing in this covenant shall be deemed to affect the validity of in- 
 ternational engagements, such as treaties of arbitration or regional under- 
 standings like the Monroe doctrine for securing the maintenance of peace. 
 
 The provision did not appear in the first draft of the 
 covenant, and when the President explained the second 
 draft of the convention to the peace conference he said: 
 
 Article 2 1 is new. 
 
 And that was all he said. No one can question the 
 truth of the remark, but I trust I shall not be considered 
 disrespectful if I say that it was not an illuminating 
 statement. The article was new, but the fact of its 
 novelty, which the President declared, was known to 
 
 19 
 
everyone who had taken the trouble to read the two 
 documents. We were not left, however, without a fitting 
 explanation. The British delegation took it upon them- 
 selves to explain Article 21 at some length, and this is 
 what they said : 
 
 Article 21 makes it clear that the covenant is not intended to abrogate 
 or weaken any other agreements, so long as they are consistent with its 
 own terms, into which members of the league may have entered or may 
 hereafter enter for the assurance of peace. Such agreements would include 
 special treaties for compulsory arbitration and military conventions that 
 are genuinely defensive. 
 
 The Monroe doctrine and similar understandings are put in the same 
 category. They have shown themselves in history to be not instruments 
 of national ambition, but guarantees of peace. The origin of the Monroe 
 doctrine is well known. It was proclaimed in 1823 to prevent America 
 from becoming a theater for intrigues of European absolutism. At first a 
 principle of American foreign policy, it has become an international under- 
 standing, and it is not illegitimate for the people of the United States to 
 say that the covenant should recognize that fact. 
 
 In its essence it is consistent with the spirit of the covenant, and, indeed, 
 the principles of the league, as expressed in Article 10, represent the ex- 
 tension to the whole world of the principles of the doctrine, while, should 
 any dispute as to the meaning of the latter ever arise between the American 
 and European powers, the league is there to settle it. 
 
 The explanation of Great Britain received the assent 
 of France. 
 
 It seems to me monumentally paradoxical and a trifle infantile — 
 
 Says M. Lausanne, editor of the Matin and a chief 
 spokesman for M. Clemenceau — 
 
 to pretend the contrary. 
 
 When the executive council of the league of nations fixes the "reason- 
 able limits of the armament of Peru"; when it shall demand information 
 concerning the naval program of Brazil (Art. 7 of the covenant) ; when it 
 shall tell Argentina what shall be the measure of the "contribution to the 
 armed 'forces to protect the signature of the social covenant" (Art. 16); 
 when it shall demand the immediate registration of the treaty between the 
 United States and Canada at the seat of the league, it will control, whether 
 it wills or not, the destinies of America. 
 
 And when the American States shall be obliged to take a hand in every 
 war or menace of war in Europe (Art. 11) they will necessarily fall afoul 
 of the fundamental principle laid down by Monroe. 
 
 * * * If the league takes in the world, then Europe must mix in the 
 affairs of America; if only Europe is included, then America will violate 
 of necessity her own doctrine by intermixing in the affairs of Europe. 
 
 It has seemed to me that the British delegation traveled 
 a little out of the precincts of the peace conference when 
 they undertook to explain the Monroe doctrine and tell 
 the United States what it was and what ii was not pro- 
 
 20 
 
 
posed to do with it under the new article. That, however, 
 is merely a matter of taste and judgment. Their state- 
 ment that the Monroe doctrine under this article, if any 
 question arose in regard to it, would be passed upon and 
 interpreted by the league of nations is absolutely correct. 
 There is no doubt that this is what the article means. 
 Great Britain so stated it, and no American authority, 
 whether friendly or unfriendly to the league, has dared 
 to question it. I have wondered a little why it was left 
 to the British delegation to explain that article, which so 
 nearly concerns the United States, but that was merely a 
 fugitive thought upon which I will not dwell. The state- 
 ment of M. Lausanne is equally explicit and truthful, 
 but he makes one mistake. He says, in substance, that if 
 we are to meddle in Europe, Europe can not be excluded 
 from the Americas. He overlooks the fact that the 
 Monroe doctrine also says: 
 
 Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted at an early stage of 
 the wars which have so long agitated that quarter of the globe, nevertheless 
 remains the same, which is not to interfere in the internal concerns of any 
 of the powers. ■ 
 
 The Monroe doctrine was the corollary of Washington's 
 neutrality policy and of his injunction against permanent 
 alliances. It reiterates and reaffirms the principle. We 
 do not seek to meddle in the affairs of Europe and keep 
 Europe out of the Americas. It is as important to 
 keep the United States out of European affairs as to keep 
 Europe out of the American Continents. Let us main- 
 tain the Monroe doctrine, then, in its entirety, and not 
 only preserve our own safety, but in this way best pro- 
 mote the real peace of the world. Whenever the preserva- 
 tion of freedom and civilization and the overthrow of a 
 menacing world conqueror summon us we shall respond 
 fully and nobly, as we did in 191 7. He who doubts that 
 we should do so has little faith in America. But let it be 
 our own act and not done reluctantly by the coercion of 
 other nations, at the bidding or by the permission of 
 other countries. 
 
 Let me now deal with the article itself. We have here 
 some protective coloration again. The Monroe doctrine 
 is described as a "regional understanding," whatever 
 that may mean. The boundaries between the States of 
 
 21 
 
the Union, I suppose, are "regional understandings," 
 if anyone chooses to apply to them that somewhat swollen 
 phraseology. But the Monroe doctrine is no more a 
 regional understanding than it is an "international en- 
 gagement." The Monroe doctrine was a policy declared 
 by President Monroe. Its immediate purpose was to 
 shut out Europe from interfering with the South American 
 Republics, which the Holy Alliance designed to do. It 
 was stated broadly, however, as we all know T , and w r ent 
 much further than that. It was, as I have just said, 
 the corollary of Washington's declaration against our 
 interfering in European questions. It was so regarded 
 by Jefferson at the time and by John Ouincy Adams, who 
 formulated it, and by President Monroe, who declared 
 it. It rested firmly on the great law of self-preservation, 
 which is the basic principle of every independent State. 
 
 It is not necessary to trace its history or to point out 
 the extensions which it has received or its universal 
 acceptance by all American statesmen without regard to 
 party. All Americans have always been for it. They 
 may not have known its details or read all the many 
 discussions in regard to it, but the}' knew that it was an 
 American doctrine and that, broadly stated, it meant the 
 exclusion of Europe from interference with American 
 affairs and from any attempt to colonize or set up new 
 States within the boundaries of the American Continent. 
 I repeat it was purely an American doctrine, a purely 
 American policy, designed and wisely designed for our 
 defense. It has never been an "international engage- 
 ment." No nation has ever formally recognized it. It 
 has been the subject of reservation at international con- 
 ventions by American delegates. It has never been a 
 "regional understanding" or an understanding of any 
 kind with anybody. It was the declaration of the United 
 States of America, in their own- behalf, supported by 
 their own power. They brought it into being, and its 
 life was predicated on the force which the United States 
 could place behind it. Unless the United States could 
 sustain it, it would die. The United States has supported 
 it. It has lived — strong, efficient, respected. It is now 
 proposed to kill it by a provision in a treaty for a league 
 of nations. 
 
 22 
 
The instant that the United States, who declared, 
 interpreted, and sustained the doctrine, ceases to be the 
 sole judge of what it means, that instant the Monroe 
 doctrine ceases and disappears from history and from the 
 face of the earth. I think it is just as undesirable to have 
 Europe interfere in American affairs now as Mr. Monroe 
 thought it was in 1823, and equally undesirable that we 
 should be compelled to involve ourselves in all the wars 
 and brawls of Europe. The Monroe doctrine has made 
 for peace. Without the Monroe doctrine we should have 
 had many a struggle with European powers to save our- 
 selves from possible assault and certainly from the neces- 
 sity of becoming a great military power, always under 
 arms and always ready to resist invasion from States in 
 our near neighborhood. In the interests of the peace of 
 the world it is now proposed to wipe away this American 
 policy, which has been a bulwark and a barrier for peace. 
 With one exception it has always been successful, and 
 then success was only delayed. When we were torn by 
 civil war France saw fit to enter Mexico and endeavored 
 to establish an empire there. When our hands were 
 once free the empire perished, and with it the unhappy 
 tool of the third Napoleon. If the United States had not 
 been rent by civil war no such attempt would have been 
 made, and nothing better illustrates the value to the 
 cause of peace of the Monroe doctrine. Why, in the name 
 of peace, should we extinguish it? Why, in the name of 
 peace, should we be called upon to leave the interpreta- 
 tion of the Monroe doctrine to other nations? It is an 
 American policy. It is our own. It has guarded us well, 
 and I, for one, can never find consent in my heart to 
 destroy it by a clause in a treaty and hand over its body 
 for dissection to the nations of Europe. If we need au- 
 thority to demonstrate what the Monroe doctrine has 
 meant to the United States we can not do better than 
 quote the words of Grover Cleveland, who directed Mr. 
 Olney to notify the world that "to-day the United States 
 is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat is 
 law to which it confines its interposition." Theodore 
 Roosevelt, in the last article written before his death, 
 warned us, his countrymen, that we are "in honor bound 
 to keep ourselves so prepared that the Monroe doctrine 
 
 23 
 
shall be accepted as immutable international law." 
 Grover Cleveland was a Democrat and Theodore Roose- 
 velt was a Republican, but they were both Americans, 
 and it is the American spirit which has carried this coun- 
 try always to victory and which should govern us to-day, 
 and not the international spirit which would in the name 
 of peace hand the United States over bound hand and 
 foot to obey the fiat of other powers. 
 
 Another point in this covenant where change must be 
 made in order to protect the safety of the United States 
 in the future is in Article i , where withdrawal is provided 
 for. This provision was an attempt to meet the very 
 general objection to the first draft of the league, that 
 there was no means of getting out of it without denounc- 
 ing the treaty; that is, there was no arrangement for the 
 withdrawal of any nation. As it now stands it reads 
 that — 
 
 Any member of the league may, after two years' notice of its intention 
 to do so, withdraw from the league, provided that all its international 
 obligations, and all its obligations under this covenant shall have been 
 fulfilled at the time of its withdrawal. 
 
 The right of withdrawal is given by this clause, al- 
 though the time for notice, two years, is altogether too 
 long. Six months or a year would be found, I think, 
 in most treaties to be the normal period fixed for notice 
 of withdrawal. But whatever virtue there may be in 
 the right thus conferred is completely nullified by the 
 proviso. The right of withdrawal can not be exercised 
 until all the international obligations and all the obliga- 
 tions of the withdrawing nations have been fulfilled. 
 The league alone can decide whether "all international 
 obligations and all obligations under this covenant" 
 have been fulfilled, and this would require, under the 
 provisions of the league, a unanimous vote, so that any 
 nation desiring to withdraw could not do so, even on the 
 two years' notice, if one nation voted that the obligations 
 had not been fulfilled. Remember that this gives the 
 league not only power to review all our obligations under 
 the covenant but all our treaties with all nations for 
 every one of those is an "international obligation." 
 
 Are we deliberately to put ourselves in fetters and be 
 examined by the league of nations as to whether we have 
 
V 
 
 kept faith with Cuba or Panama before we can be per- 
 mitted to leave the league? This seems to me humiliat- 
 ing to say the least. The right of withdrawal, if it is to 
 be of any value whatever, must be absolute, because 
 otherwise a nation desiring to withdraw could be held 
 in the league by objections from other nations until the 
 very act which induces the nation to withdraw had been 
 completed; until the withdrawing nation had been forced 
 to send troops to take part in a war with which it had 
 no concern and upon which it did not desire to enter. It 
 seems to me vital to the safety of the United States not 
 only that this provision should be eliminated and the 
 right to withdraw made absolute but that the period of 
 withdrawal should be much reduced. As it stands it is 
 practically no better in this respect than the first league 
 draft which contained no provision for withdrawal at 
 all, because the proviso here inserted so incumbers it 
 that every nation to all intents and purposes must re- 
 main a member of the league indefinitely unless all the 
 other members are willing that it should retire. Such a 
 provision as this, ostensibly framed to meet the objec- 
 tion, has the defect which other similar gestures to give 
 an impression of meeting objections have, that it ap- 
 parently keeps the promise to the ear but most certainly 
 breaks it to the hope. 
 
 I have dwelt only upon those points which seem to me 
 most dangerous. There are, of course, many others, but 
 these points, in the interest not only of the safety of the 
 United States but of the maintenance of the treaty and 
 the peace of the world, should be dealt with here before 
 it; is too late. Once in the league the chance of amend- 
 ment is so slight that it is not worth considering. Any 
 analysis of the provisions of this league covenant, how- 
 ever, brings out in startling relief one great fact. What- 
 ever may be said, it is not a league of peace; it is an 
 alliance, dominated at the present moment by five great 
 powers, really by three, and it has all the marks of an 
 alliance. The development of international law is neg- 
 lected. The court which is to decide disputes brought 
 before it fills but a small place. The conditions for which 
 this league really provides with the utmost care are 
 political conditions, not judicial questions, to be reached 
 
 • 25 
 
by the executive council and the assembly, purely political 
 bodies without any trace of a judicial character about 
 them. Such being its machinery, the control being in 
 the hands of political appointees whose votes will be 
 controlled by interest and expediency, it exhibits that 
 most marked characteristic of an alliance — that its 
 decisions are to be carried out by force. Those articles 
 upon which the whole structure rests are articles which 
 provide for the use of force ; that is, for war. This league to 
 enforce peace does a great deal for enforcement and very 
 little for peace. It makes more essential provisions look- 
 ing to war than to peace, for the settlement of disputes. 
 
 Article 10 I have already discussed. There is no ques- 
 tion that the preservation of a State against external 
 aggression can contemplate nothing but war. In Article 
 ii, again, the league is authorized to take any action 
 which may be necessary to safeguard the peace of the 
 world. "Any action" includes war. We also have 
 specific provisions for a boycott, which is a form of 
 economic warfare. The use of troops might be avoided 
 but the enforcement of a boycott would require block- 
 ades in all probability and certainly a boycott in its 
 essence is simply an effort to starve a people into sub- 
 mission, to ruin their trade, and, in the case of nations 
 which are not self-supporting, to cut off their food supi- 
 ply. The misery and suffering caused by such a measure 
 as this may easily rival that caused by actual war. Article- 
 1 6 embodies the boycott and also, in the last paragraph., 
 provides explicitly for war. We are told that the wor.d 
 "recommend" has no binding force; it constitutes a 
 moral obligation, that is all. But it means that if we, for 
 example, should refuse to accept the recommendation 
 that we should nullify the operation of Article 16 and, 
 to that extent, of the league. It seems to me that to 
 attempt to relieve us of clearly imposed duties by say- V 
 ing that the word "recommend" is not binding is an 
 escape of which no nation regarding the sanctity of trea- 
 ties and its own honor would care to avail itself. The 
 provisions of Article 16 are extended to States outside 
 the league who refuse to obey its command to come in 
 and submit themselves to its jurisdiction; another pro- 
 vision for war. 
 
 26 
 
Taken altogether, these provisions for war present 
 what to my mind is the gravest objection to this league 
 Jri its present form. We are told that of course nothing 
 will be done in the way of warlike acts without the assent 
 of Congress. If that is true, let us say so in the covenant. 
 But as it stands there is no doubt whatever in my mind 
 that American troops and American ships may be or- 
 dered to any part of the world by nations other than the 
 United States, and that is a proposition to which I for 
 one can never assent. It must be made perfectly clear 
 that no American soldiers, not even a corporal's guard, 
 that no American sailors, not even the crew of a sub- 
 marine, can ever be engaged in war or ordered anywhere 
 except by the constitutional authorities of the United 
 States. To Congress is granted by the Constitution the 
 right to declare war, and nothing that would take the 
 troops out of the country at the bidding or demand of 
 other nations should ever be permitted except through 
 congressional action. The lives of Americans must 
 never be sacrificed except by the will of the American 
 people expressed through their chosen Representatives 
 in Congress. This is a point upon which no doubt can 
 be permitted. American soldiers and American sailors 
 have never failed the country when the country called 
 upon them. They went in their hundreds of thousands 
 into the war just closed. They went to die for the great 
 cause of freedom and of civilization. They went at their 
 country's bidding and because their country summoned 
 them to service. We were late in entering the war. We 
 made no preparation, as we ought to have done, for the 
 ordeal which was clearly coming upon us; but we went 
 and we turned the wavering scale. It was done by the 
 American soldier, the American sailor, and the spirit and 
 energy of the American people. They overrode all ob- 
 stacles and all shortcomings on the part of the adminis- 
 tration or of Congress and gave to their country a great 
 place in the great victory. It was the first time we had 
 been called upon to rescue the civilized world. Did we 
 fail? On the contrary, we succeeded, we succeeded 
 largely and nobly, and we did it without any command 
 from any league of nations. When the emergency came 
 we met it and we were able to meet it because we had 
 
 27 
 
built up on this continent the greatest and most power- 
 ful nation in the world, built it up under our own poli- 
 cies, in our own way, and one great element of our strength 
 was the fact that we had held aloof and had not thrust 
 ourselves into European quarrels; that we had no selfish 
 interest to serve. We made great sacrifices. We have 
 done splendid work. I believe that we do not require to 
 be told by foreign nations when we shall do work which 
 freedom and civilization require. I think we can move 
 to victory much better under our own command than 
 under the command of others. Let us unite with the 
 world to promote the peaceable settlement of all inter- 
 national disputes. Let us try to develop international 
 law. Let us associate ourselves with the other nations 
 for these purposes. But let us retain in our own hands 
 and ; "\ our own control the lives of the youth of the land. 
 Let no American be sent into battle except by the con- 
 stituted authorities of his own country and by the will of 
 the people of the United States. 
 
 Those of us, Mr. President, who are either wholly 
 opposed to the league or who are trying to preserve the 
 independence and the safety of the United States by 
 changing the terms of the league and who are endeavor- 
 ing to make the league, if we are to be a member of it, 
 less certain to promote war instead of peace, have been 
 reproached with selfishness in our outlook and with a 
 desire to keep our country in a state of isolation. So far 
 as the question of isolation goes, it is impossible to isolate 
 the United States. I well remember the time, twenty 
 years ago, when eminent Senators and other distinguished 
 gentlemen who were opposing the Philippines and shriek- 
 ing about imperialism, sneered at tht, statement made 
 by some of us, that the United States had become a 
 world power. I think no one now would question that 
 the Spanish War marked the entrance of the United 
 States into world affairs to a degree which had never 
 obtained before. It was both an inevitable and an irre- 
 vocable step, and our entrance into the war with Germany 
 certainly snowed once and for all that the United States 
 was not unmindful of its world responsibilities. We may 
 set aside all this empty talk about isolation. Nobody 
 expects to isolate the United States or to make it a hermit 
 
 28 
 
Nation, which is a sheer absurdity. But there is a wide 
 difference between taking a suitable part and bearing a 
 due responsibility in world affairs and plunging the 
 United States into every controversy and conflict on 
 the face of the globe. By meddling in all the differences 
 which may arise among any portion or fragment of human- 
 kind we simply fritter away our influence and injure 
 ourselves to no good purpose. We shall be of far more 
 value to the world and its peace by occupying, so far as 
 possible, the situation which we have occupied for the 
 last twenty years and by adhering to the policy of Wash- 
 ington and Hamilton, of Jefferson and Monroe, under 
 which we have risen to our present greatness and pros- 
 perity. The fact that we have been separated by our 
 geographical situation and by our consistent policy from 
 the broils of Europe has made us more than any one 
 thing capable of performing the great work which we 
 performed in the war against Germany and our disin- 
 terestedness is of far more value to the world than our 
 eternal meddling in every possible dispute could ever be. 
 Now, as to our selfishness. I have no desire to boast 
 that we are better than our neighbors, but the fact re- 
 mains that this Nation in making peace with Germany 
 had not a single selfish or individual interest to serve. 
 All we asked was that Germany should be rendered in- 
 capable of again breaking forth, with all the horrors 
 incident to German warfare, upon an unoffending world, 
 and that demand was shared by every free nation and 
 indeed by humanity itself. For ourselves we asked 
 absolutely nothing. We have not asked any govern- 
 ment or governments to guarantee our boundaries or our 
 political independence. We have no fear in regard to 
 either. We have sought no territory, no privileges, no 
 advantages, for ourselves. That is the fact. It is ap- 
 parent on the face of the treaty. I do not mean to reflect 
 upon a single one of the powers with which we have been 
 aSvSociated in the war against Germany, but there is not 
 one of them which has not sought individual advantages 
 for their own national benefit. I do not criticize their 
 desires at all. The services and sacrifices of England 
 and France and Belgium and Italy are beyond estimate 
 and beyond praise. I am glad they should have what 
 
 29 
 
they desire for their own welfare and safety. But they 
 all receive under the peace territorial and commercial 
 benefits. We are asked to give, and we in no way seek 
 to take. Surely it is not too much to insist that when 
 we are offered nothing but the opportunity to give and 
 to aid others we should have the right to say what sacri- 
 fices we shall make and what the magnitude of our gifts 
 shall be. In the prosecution of the war we gave un- 
 stintedly American lives and American treasure. When 
 the war closed we had three million men under arms. We 
 were turning the country into a vast workshop for war. 
 We advanced ten billions to our allies. We refused no 
 assistance that we could possibly render. All the great 
 energy and power of the Republic were put at the serv- 
 ice of the good cause. We have not been ungenerous. 
 We have been devoted to the cause of freedom, humanity, 
 and civilization everywhere. Now we are asked, in the 
 making of peace, to sacrifice our sovereignty in impor- 
 tant respects, to involve ourselves almost without limit 
 in the affairs of other nations, and to yield up policies 
 and rights which we have maintained throughout our 
 history. We are asked to incur liabilities to an unlimited 
 extent and furnish assets at the same time which no man 
 can measure. I think it is not only our right but our 
 duty to determine how far we shall go. Not only must 
 we look carefully to see where we are being led into end- 
 less disputes and entanglements, but we must not forget 
 that we have in this country millions of people of foreign 
 birth and parentage. 
 
 Our one great object is to make all these people Ameri- 
 cans so that we may call on them to place America first 
 and serve America as they have done in the war just 
 closed. We can not Americanize them if we are con- 
 tinually thrusting them back into the quarrels and diffi- 
 culties of the countries from which they came to us. We 
 shall fill this land with political disputes about the 
 troubles and quarrels of other countries. We shall have 
 a large portion of our people voting not on American 
 questions and not on what concerns the United States 
 but dividing on issues which concern foreign countries 
 alone. That is an unwholesome and perilous condition 
 to force upon this country. We must avoid it. We 
 
 30 
 
ought to reduce to the lowest possible point the foreign 
 questions in which we involve ourselves. Never forget 
 that this league is primarily — I might say overwhelm- 
 ingly — a political organization, and I object strongly to 
 having the politics of the United States turn upon dis- 
 putes where deep feeling is aroused but in which we have 
 no direct interest. It will all tend to delay the Americani- 
 zation of our great population and it is more important 
 not only to the United States but to the peace of the 
 world to make all these people good Americans than it is 
 to determine that some piece of territory should belong 
 to one European country rather than to another. For 
 this reason I wish to limit strictly our interference in the 
 affairs of Europe and of Africa. We have interests of 
 our own in Asia and in the Pacific which we must guard 
 upon our own account, but the less we undertake to play 
 the part of umpire and thrust ourselves into European 
 conflicts the better for the United States and for the 
 world. 
 
 It has been reiterated here on this floor, and reiterated 
 to the point of weariness, that in every treaty there is 
 some sacrifice of sovereignty. That is not a universal 
 truth by any means, but it is true of some treaties and 
 it is a platitude which does not require reiteration. The 
 question and the only question before us here is how 
 much of our sovereignty we are justified in sacrificing. 
 In what I have already said about other nations putting 
 us into war I have covered one point of sovereignty which 
 ought never to be yielded, the power to send American 
 soldiers and sailors everywhere, which ought never to be 
 taken from the American people or impaired in the 
 slightest degree. Let us beware how we palter with our 
 independence. We have not reached the great position 
 from which we were able to come down into the field of 
 battle and help to save the world from tyranny by being 
 guided by others. Our vast power has all been built up 
 and gathered together by ourselves alone. We forced 
 our way upward from the days of the Revolution, through 
 a world often hostile and always indifferent. We owe no 
 debt to anyone except to France in that Revolution, and 
 those policies and those rights on which our power has 
 been founded should never be lessened or weakened. It 
 
 3i 
 
will be no service to the world to do so and it will be of 
 intolerable injury to the United States. We will do our 
 share. We are ready and anxious to help in all ways to 
 preserve the world's peace. But we can do it best by 
 not crippling ourselves. 
 
 I am as anxious as any human being can be to have the 
 United States render every possible service to the civil- 
 ization and the peace of mankind, but I am certain we 
 can do it best by not putting ourselves in leading strings 
 or subjecting our policies and our sovereignty to other 
 nations. The independence of the United States is not 
 only more precious to ourselves but to the world than 
 any single possession. Look at the United States to-day. 
 We have made mistakes in the past. We have had 
 shortcomings. We shall make mistakes in the future and 
 fall short of our own best hopes. But none the less is there 
 any country to-day on the face of the earth which can 
 compare with this in ordered liberty, in peace, and in the 
 largest freedom? I feel that I can say this without being 
 accused of undue boastfulness, for it is the simple fact, 
 and in making this treaty and taking on these obligations 
 all that we do is in a spirit of unselfishness and in a desire 
 for the good of mankind. But it is well to remember that 
 we are dealing with nations every one of which has a 
 direct individual interest to serve, and there is grave 
 danger in an unshared idealism. Contrast the United 
 States with any country on the face of the earth to-day 
 and ask yourself whether the situation of the United 
 States is not the best to be found. I will go as far as 
 anyone in world service, but the first step to world serv- 
 ice is the maintenance of the United States. You may 
 call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, 
 or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, 
 but an American I was born, an American I have re- 
 mained all my life. I can never be anything else but an 
 American, and I must think of the United States first, 
 and when I think of the United States first in an arrange- 
 ment like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, 
 for if the United States fails the best hopes of mankind 
 fail with it. I have never had but one allegiance — I 
 can not divide it now. I have loved but one flag and I 
 can not share that devotion and give affection to the 
 
 32 
 
mongrel banner invented for a league. Internationalism, 
 illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all 
 countries are alike provided they can make money out 
 of them, is to me repulsive. National I must remain, 
 and in that way I, like all other Americans, can render 
 the amplest service to the world. The United States is 
 the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the in- 
 terests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her 
 in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for 
 good and endanger her very existence. Leave her to 
 march freely through the centuries to come as in the 
 years that have gone. Strong, generous and confident, 
 she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle 
 with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of or- 
 dered liberty, for if we stumble and fall, freedom and 
 civilization everywhere will go down in ruin. 
 
 We are told that we shall ' ' break the heart of the world ' ' 
 if we do not take this league just as it stands. I fear that 
 the hearts of the vast majority of mankind would beat 
 on strongly and steadily and without any quickening if 
 the league were to perish altogether. If it should be 
 effectively and beneficently changed the people who would 
 lie awake in sorrow for a single night could be easily 
 gathered in one not very large room, but those who 
 would draw a long breath of relief would reach to millions. 
 
 We hear much of visions and I trust we shall continue 
 to have visions and dream dreams of a fairer future for 
 the race. But visions are one thing and visionaries are 
 another, and the mechanical appliances of the rhetori- 
 cian designed to give a picture of a present which does 
 not exist and of a future which no man can predict are 
 as unreal and shortlived as the steam or canvas clouds, 
 the angels suspended on wires, and the artificial lights of 
 the stage. They pass with the moment of effect and are 
 shabby and tawdry in the daylight. Let us at least be 
 real. Washington's entire honesty of mind and his fear- 
 less look into the face of all facts are qualities which can 
 never go out of fashion and which we should all do well 
 to imitate. 
 
 Ideals have been thrust upon us as an argument for 
 the league until the healthy mind, which rejects cant, 
 revolts from them. Are ideals confined to this deformed 
 
 33 
 
experiment upon a noble purpose, tainted as it is with 
 bargains, and tied to a peace treaty which might have 
 been disposed of long ago to the great benefit of the world 
 if it had not been compelled to carry this rider on its 
 back? "Post equitem sedet atra cura," Horace tells us, 
 but 'no blacker care ever sat behind any rider than we 
 shall find in this covenant of doubtful and disputed in- 
 terpretation as it now perches upon the treaty of peace. 
 
 No doubt many excellent and patriotic people see a 
 coming fulfillment of noble ideals in the words "league 
 for peace." We all respect and share these aspirations 
 and desires, but some of us see no hope, but rather defeat, 
 for them in this murky covenant. For we, too, have our 
 ideals, even if we differ from those who have tried to 
 establish a monopoly of idealism. Our first ideal is our 
 country, and we see her in the future, as in the past, giv- 
 ing service to all her people and to the world. Our ideal 
 of the future is that she should continue to render that 
 service of her own free will. She has great problems of 
 her own to solve, very grim and perilous problems, and 
 a right solution, if we can attain to it, would largely 
 benefit mankind. We would have our country strong 
 to resist a peril from the West, as she has flung back the 
 German menace from the East. We would not have our 
 politics distracted and embittered by the dissensions of 
 other lands. We would not have our country's vigor 
 exhausted or her moral force abated by everlasting med- 
 dling and muddling in every quarrel, great and small, 
 which afflicts the world. Our ideal is to make her ever 
 stronger and better and finer, because in that way alone, 
 as we believe, can she be of the greatest service to the 
 world's peace and to the welfare of mankind. 
 
 34 
 
SPEECH OF 
 HON. PHILANDER C. KNOX 
 
 Senator from Pennsylvania 
 In the Senate, August 29, 1919 
 
 I WISH at the outset to make my own position per- 
 fectly clear, that reason or excuse for misunderstand- 
 ing or misinterpretation may not exist. No one more 
 abhors Germany's lawlessness, her cruelty, her gross in- 
 humanity in the conduct of this war than do I. No one 
 is more determined than I to make her pay the full penalty 
 for the great wrongs she has inflicted on civilization and 
 on the world whose equipoise she has by her iniquities 
 well nigh destroyed. It must not seem to be profitable for 
 any one to violate the great eternal laws of right and we 
 must vindicate them now against Germany if we are to 
 save ourselves from chaos. The observations I shall make 
 are therefore dictated by no maudlin sympathy for Ger- 
 many, the felon who must suffer the penalty incident to 
 his crime. 
 
 But I am vitally concerned in the peace of this world, 
 and peace we must have if it be attainable. But, Mr. 
 President, I am convinced after the most painstaking con- 
 sideration that I can give, that this Treaty does not spell 
 peace but war — war more w r oeful and devastating than 
 the one we have but now closed. The instrument before 
 us is not the Treaty but the Truce of Versailles. It is for 
 this body — the co-ordinate treaty-making power of this 
 great neutral nation of ours — to make of the document a 
 peace treaty if possible, or if that be impossible then we 
 must put this nation in such relation to the treaty and 
 to the powers of the world that our voice may hereafter 
 as heretofore be ahvays raised for peace. 
 
 It is to be regretted that the whole matter has been so 
 
 35 
 
unfortunately managed, that there has been so much of 
 needless secrecy, so many times mere partial disclosure 
 when the whole truth could and should have been told, so 
 much of assumed mystery in the whole affair, that it has 
 become impossible for any of us not in the confidences, to 
 tell when we have arrived at the whole of any matter. It 
 is no fault of mine if the facts themselves shall speak an 
 impeachment of the wisdom, the purpose, or the result of 
 the negotiations. 
 
 Fortunately it is no longer necessary to insist upon the 
 high importance of this treaty, nor the fact that it marks 
 the point in our history where we turn from our old course 
 of proved happiness, prosperity, and safety, to a new one, 
 for us yet untried, of alliances, balance of power, and 
 coalition with countries and peoples whose interests, aspi- 
 rations and ideals are foreign to our own, because the 
 people are waking to this as the true issue. Little by little 
 they are bringing a divulgence of the facts connected with 
 the treaty and they may now hope finally to see the whole 
 of the great gaunt tragedy into which those whom they 
 had charged with protecting them, were about to betray 
 them. 
 
 But as this treaty itself, as finally placed before us. is 
 so intricate and all-embracing in its conception, is so pon- 
 derous and voluminous in its execution, is so microscopic 
 in detail, and, because of these things, so inaccessible to the 
 people upon whose backs it is proposed to place its mighty 
 burdens, it has seemed due and proper that, to the extent 
 of my power, I should add my bit to the information which 
 other senators are so ably placing before them. For as- 
 suredly it is one of the calamities of this situation that of 
 the hundred million of us who are to sign this great prom- 
 issory note, but a paltry few thousand will be able to read 
 it before signature. And that, Mr. President, is at once 
 my reason and my excuse for again intruding my voice in 
 this discussion, for it is the duty of each of us who are 
 charged with the responsibility of speaking and acting for 
 the people in this matter, to give to them, in as concrete and 
 understandable a form as we may, the actual provisions of 
 this document. The people will judge this matter rightly 
 if they but know and understand its facts. 
 
 But unfortunatelv this treatv, intricate, ponderous and 
 
 36' 
 
voluminous as it is, yet is by no means the whole story. 
 Many documents involved in its making, are before neither 
 the senate nor the people. 
 
 Within the last week, the committee on foreign relations 
 requested that the proceedings of the peace conference and 
 the documents connected therewith should be furnished for 
 our information. The reply was that all were not here, 
 only those immediately at hand having been brought, and 
 that those here were being' sorted and some would be finally 
 sent. Why should these documents need sorting? Do 
 they hold secrets it is thought best the American people 
 should not know ? 
 
 Nor have we yet the treaties with Germany's allies, — 
 the former Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bulgaria, and 
 Turkey, — all of whom if we may credit report are to hr 
 dismembered or shorn of territory, or both. The provi- 
 sions of the treaty before us are intimately and inevitably 
 entwined with those of these other treaties. Can we wisely 
 proceed without those treaties and treat this situation 
 piecemeal ? 
 
 If the negotiators found it necessary, as they did, to 
 consider the whole situation at one time that they might 
 arrive at harmonious arrangements, must not we also to 
 act intelligently and wisely have everything before us? 
 
 What is it, sir, about these things that the people cannot 
 know? What is there to hide from them? Must we take 
 this thing, as the German people must take it, unsight and 
 unseen? Are we to be no more advantaged than our fallen 
 enemies? We are asking neither for a Saar basin, a Fiume, 
 nor a Shantung. We have no hope or desire of aggrandize- 
 ment to be disappointed. We want merely to know what 
 we are promising to do. 
 
 Mr. President, a treaty of peace has two great functions : 
 In the first place it ends the war and brings back peace ; and 
 in the next place it gives to the victor his spoils, which nor- 
 mally take the form of territorial adjustments and monetary 
 or other indemnity, either merely to make good his losses, or 
 in addition to impose a penalty. If the victor be guided by 
 a wise statesmanship he so accommodates his spoils as not 
 to sow seeds for another conflict with his erstwhile enemy. 
 The great war now ending was bottomed on Bismarck's vio- 
 lation of this fundamental principle. France overlooked her 
 
 37 
 
indemnity, but she never forgot or forgave Alsace-Lorraine. 
 There is, I warn you, senators, many another Alsace-Lor- 
 raine in the treaty laid before us for action. 
 
 The first of the named functions of a peace treaty is per- 
 formed in this case not by an article specifically declaring 
 that the treaty brings peace to the parties belligerent, but by 
 two widely separated clauses, one at the very beginning of 
 the document and another at the very end of it, from which 
 you spell out the time and occasion of the termination of 
 this conflict. The initial clause which follows the recitation 
 of the persons signing, says : 
 
 " From the coming into force of the present Treaty the 
 state of war will terminate. From that moment and sub- 
 ject to the provisions of this Treaty official relations with 
 Germany, and with any of the German states, will be re- 
 sumed by the Allied and Associated Powers." 
 
 In the last article, the fourth and third clauses preceding 
 the testimonial clause read as follows : 
 
 " A first proces verbal of the deposit of ratifications will 
 be drawn up as soon as the Treaty has been ratified by Ger- 
 many on the one hand, and by three of the Principal Allied 
 and Associated Powers on the other hand. . . . 
 
 " From the date of this first proces verbal the Treaty will 
 come into force between the High Contracting Parties who 
 have ratified it. For the determination of all periods of time 
 provided for in the present Treaty this date will be the date 
 of the coming into force of the Treaty." 
 
 Germany and Great Britain have already ratified the 
 treaty. So soon, therefore, as the treaty has been ratified 
 by any two of the remaining principal allied and associated 
 powers, the ■ remaining powers being the United States, 
 France, Italy, and Japan, and when the proces-verbal of such 
 deposit of ratifications has been drawn up, "the state of 
 war will terminate," as a reading of the many treaty 
 clauses, coming into force at that time and making the 
 further conduct of the war impossible, will clearly show. 
 
 It results from the foregoing, that in order to bring peace 
 between us and Germany it is not necessary that we shall 
 ratify this treaty. It is true Congress need not accept this 
 treaty termination of our belligerency, and might by proper 
 resolution, either joint, concurrent, or by separate resolution 
 to the same effect bv the senate and house respectively, con- 
 
 38 
 
tinue this war, because to Congress exclusively belongs the 
 authority to create a status of war, and therefore it might 
 continue such a status by a new declaration. But Congress 
 has no desire to do and will not do this thing. 
 
 On the other hand, Congress, while it cannot negotiate a 
 peace with the enemy, can nevertheless end hostilities with 
 him by declaring, as no longer existent, the status of war 
 with him, which the Congress created by its own act. 
 
 Thus so soon as the first proces-verbal is drawn under this 
 treaty, Congress may, with all propriety, and should to en- 
 sure full legality to the act of the executive in negotiating 
 this particular treaty provision, pass a 'resolution — concur- 
 rent, because the executive having already committed him- 
 self to the substance thereof, his approval would be superflu- 
 ous — which shall declare that the status of war created by 
 its resolution of April 6, 191 7, no longer exists and that a 
 status of peace from that moment obtains. Thus we shall 
 put the country immediately upon a complete peace basis 
 and may at once resume all our normal commercial and 
 other relations with Germany, unhampered by any restric- 
 tions. So much for that part of the treaty which ends the 
 war. 
 
 I pass now to the second branch of the treaty, which com- 
 prises its whole volume aside from the brief clauses I have 
 quoted, and which deals with the victor's spoils. 
 
 In order that we may better appraise the value of the pro- 
 visions to which I shall call your attention, it seems well that 
 we recall the bearings of the course we laid for ourselves 
 when we entered this war, when we literally pledged the lives 
 of our own sons to the accomplishment of a purpose stated, 
 — a pledge redeemed in full necessary measure as the mourn- 
 ing in fifty thousand homes bears witness. To refresh our 
 recollection of a few salient facts, I shall in the first place 
 read the words of President Wilson when he invited Con- 
 gress to declare war. Said he, after adverting to the course 
 of the Imperial German government in submarine warfare, 
 " I advise that the Congress declare the recent course of the 
 Imperial German Government to be in fact nothing less than 
 war against the Government and people of the United States ; 
 that it formally accept the status of belligerent which has 
 thus been thrust upon it; and that it take immediate steps 
 not only to put the country in a more thorough state of de- 
 
 39 
 
fense, but also to exert all its power and employ all its re- 
 sources to bring the Government of the German Empire to 
 terms and end the war." 
 
 A little later in the same address he said : " We have no 
 quarrel with the German people. We have no feeling 
 towards them but one of sympathy and friendship. It was 
 not upon their impulse that their Government acted in enter- 
 ing the war. It was not with their previous knowledge and 
 approval." Still further on, asserting that Prussian autoc- 
 racy " has filled our unsuspecting communities and even our 
 offices of Government with spies and set criminal intrigues 
 everywhere afoot against our national unity of counsel, our 
 peace within and without, our industries and our commerce," 
 he said, " we knew that their source lay, not in any hostile 
 feeling or purpose of the German people towards us (who 
 were no doubt as ignorant of them as we ourselves were), 
 but only in the selfish designs of a Government that did what 
 it pleased and told its people nothing." Again still later, 
 " we are glad, now that we see the facts with no veil of false 
 pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of 
 the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German 
 peoples included; for the rights of nations great and small 
 and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of 
 life and of obedience. The world must be made safe for 
 democracy." And finally he said: " It will be all the easier 
 for us to conduct ourselves as belligerents in a high spirit of 
 right and fairness because we act without animus, not in 
 enmity towards a people or with a desire to bring any injury 
 or disadvantage upon them, but only in armed opposition to 
 an irresponsible Government which has thrown aside all con- 
 sideration of humanity and of right and is running amuck. 
 We are, let me say ag'ain, the sincere friends of the German 
 people, and shall desire nothing so much as the early re- 
 establishment of intimate relations of mutual advantage 
 between us." 
 
 Or to put it shortly our purposes as stated by Mr. Wilson 
 were threefold, — first, the defeat and elimination of the 
 Imperial German government and Prussian autocracy ; next, 
 the liberation from their yoke of despotism of the German 
 people themselves ( for whom we had nothing but sympathy 
 and friendship) to the end that they might be masters of 
 their own fates and fortunes ; and lastly the re-establishment, 
 
 40 
 
as sincere friends of the German people, " of intimate re- 
 lations of mutual advantage between them and us." 
 
 But we here in Congress were not quite' so sure-footed in 
 our estimate of our relations to the German people in case 
 we went to war. It became difficult for us to work out just 
 how we could confine our hostility to the Imperial German 
 government when the German people and not the German 
 royalty were to shoot down our sons, and while we were 
 bending all our efforts to kill the German people. But we 
 did see this in the situation, — our own citizens of German 
 ancestry were among our best, most stalwart and freedom- 
 loving, patriotic citizens, whose ancestors in many cases had 
 fled Germany to escape the despotism against which we 
 were about to wage war. We recalled that the Teutonic 
 peoples were in origin and early tradition a free people who 
 knew no masters. And we judged that rid of those rulers 
 who had debauched their intellects for generations, this 
 mighty people would reassert their racial characteristics as 
 had their sons who had come to us, and that they would 
 become in turn a great, free people, as they had been a great 
 monarchical nation. And this is my faith to-day, if we but 
 give that great people a fair chance, consistent with the 
 punishment they have earned and must suffer. 
 
 But no one here was such an ecstatic as to conceive that, 
 going forward, we should not make war on the German 
 people, or that before the war should end we should not 
 have engendered hostility towards them. Congress, there- 
 fore, on April 6, four days after the delivery of the Presi- 
 dent's address, declared, in a joint resolution, the existence 
 of a state of war between the United States and the Im- 
 perial German government, solemnly affirmed that the 
 Imperial government had so " committed repeated acts of 
 war against the Government and people of the United 
 States " that a state of war has been thrust upon them by 
 that government, and therefore formally pledged the 
 whole military and national resources of the country " to 
 bring the conflict to a successful termination." 
 
 These were the aims, the purposes, and the reasons for 
 entry into the conflict as stated in our former record. How 
 mighty was the accord of our whole people therein was 
 shown by their full and quick approval of the measures 
 Congress took to make good the pledge we gave, — the 
 
 4i 
 
passing of the Selective Service Act and of the measures 
 imposing" our enormous financial powers and obligations. 
 
 These were the ends and the purposes which threw into 
 the conflict with their whole hearts and souls, our great, 
 splendid body of loyal citizens of German ancestry. Fired 
 with the spirit of liberty and freedom and weighted with 
 the blessings of free government, they saw in the war an 
 opportunity to bring to the home folk in the old father- 
 land, the same inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the 
 pursuit of happiness. Their sons rushed to our standards, 
 to fight first that we might continue to live free, and next 
 that liberty and its blessings might come to their kindred 
 across the sea. 
 
 We did have, we had to have a quarrel with the German 
 people; it was inevitable that we should entertain towards 
 them hostile feeling's. But we had and have a sympathy 
 for them as misguided and misdirected, and we did hope 
 that, winning the war, we should liberate them from an in- 
 tellectual despotism they seemed not to sense, and that 
 thereafter they would arise a free great people. 
 
 So we entered the war. Eighteen months later, Ger- 
 many, staggering, asked for an armistice to arrange a peace. 
 Before the armistice was granted, the Emperor and the 
 Crown Prince fled their dominions, followed by certain of 
 their military chieftains. Next came the abdication of the 
 Emperor, and the initiation of proceedings looking to the 
 democratization of Germany. 
 
 Thus, prima facie, we had achieved the full purpose for 
 which we entered the war; our enemy was defeated, the 
 Imperial government destroyed, and the German people 
 were liberated, free, — -again quoting the President, — to 
 "choose their way of life and of obedience." 
 
 Following this came the signing" of the armistice of 
 November n, the terms of which wisely and properly put 
 it beyond the power of Germany thereafter effectively to 
 continue this war. 
 
 There we, who sought no territory, nor indemnity, nor 
 aggrandized power, should have rested, signed our peace 
 when our associates made peace, and quit the war as we 
 entered it, still free and independent, masters of our own 
 destiny, able to work for the benefit of all mankind, un- 
 hampered by entangling alliances or commitments. 
 
 42 
 
We should have left the political adjustments and the 
 indemnities to the powers of Europe who alone were im- 
 mediately concerned, we at most exercising a restraining 
 hand to see, first, that justice was done to a fallen foe — 
 and this in spite of the fact that he initiated and carried 
 out the most cruel, relentless, inhuman war -of modern 
 times — and in the next place to ensure that no more 
 dragon's teeth were sown in Europe than the indispensable 
 necessities imperatively required. Such a course would 
 neither have endangered nor sacrificed those threatened 
 peoples to whose assistance we came, for Germany had 
 been disarmed, and our two millions of young men, now 
 for the first time fairly equipped, were still in France at 
 the behest of any military exigency which might arise. 
 
 But such was not the course followed, and our represen- 
 tatives sat at the peace table as co-equal negotiators. 
 
 Twenty-seven powers (besides Germany) have signed 
 this treaty. Five of these, — the United States, the British 
 Empire, France, Italy, and Japan are designated as the 
 principal allied and associated powers. These five with the 
 other twenty-two signing the treaty (besides Germany) are 
 termed the allied and associated powers. Of these twenty- 
 two, four only were European powers in existence at the 
 outbreak of the war — namely, Belgium, Greece, Portugal, 
 and Roumania ; three others of Europe are created or rec- 
 ognized by the treaty — Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, and the 
 Serb-Croat-Slovene State, the boundaries of which nor its 
 location the treaty does not disclose. Of the remaining 
 fifteen states, three are Asiatic, — Siam, China — who has 
 the sole distinction of being robbed by her allies — and the 
 Hedjaz — likewise with undefined boundaries and, as to 
 the treaty, unlocated. The eleven remaining states are of 
 Latin America as follows : Bolivia, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, 
 Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, 
 and Uruguay. I have mentioned these twenty-two states 
 so we may have clearly in mind the fact that all of them 
 combined could not under the most favorable conditions 
 one could hope for, withstand the armies of Germany one 
 day, or enforce against Germany's will the most inoffensive 
 treaty stipulation. In the domain of force, in which Ger- 
 many has lived and will continue for a time to live, these 
 powers count for naught. The great responsibilities of the 
 
 43 
 
treaty, the only power behind the treaty, is that of the five 
 principal allied and associated powers. Nor does the treaty 
 in any of its parts blink this. There is no single important 
 function in the treaty, performable by the victor powers, 
 which is not consigned to the five great powers. There is 
 no single important immediate function consigned to the 
 league of nations, which does not run to the council of the 
 league which these five powers control and of which they 
 are the sanctioning force. The small powers are named 
 that may be granted benefits. The load of the world, the 
 keeping of the peace of the world, under this treaty rests 
 on the five powers. 
 
 But there is one power we miss in all this, the power 
 which met the brunt of the German shock while the rest 
 of the world got ready; the power that mobilized in the 
 allied cause some twenty-one million men; that lost — 
 killed in action — two and a half millions; that lost in other 
 casualties three and a half millions of whom one and a half 
 million are absolute invalids and badly mutilated ; that lost 
 in prisoners two millions, of whom half died in prison; a 
 power whose armies at the beginning of February in 19 17 
 numbered fourteen million men under arms ; who fought 
 during the war over a front of thirty-five hundred miles, 
 and who had there pitted against her one-third of the whole 
 German Army, two-thirds of the whole Austrian Army, 
 all of the Hungarian Army, and two-thirds of the whole 
 Turkish Army ; a power who took as prisoners of war 
 four hundred thousand Germans, three hundred thousand 
 Hungarians, three hundred thousand Turks, and one mil- 
 lion Austrians. I speak of poor, ever despot-ridden Russia. 
 I have but said China enjoyed a unique position, but I 
 spoke in haste. Russia, who raised three times as many 
 men as we planned to raise as a maximum ; Russia whose 
 losses if imposed on us would have made every home in 
 this land a house of mourning; Russia whose men in battle 
 front, unarmed and unequipped, stopped the German on- 
 rush of cold steel with bare breasts and clenched fists, so 
 saving us and Europe from slavery ; Russia whose people 
 and rulers stood forefront, our friends, even in the hours of 
 our sore and most threatening distress, this Russia, with 
 this record, is mentioned in this treaty but only with omi- 
 nous words that presage her national destruction. 
 
 44 
 
Russia, sir, is a problem, but dismemberment by others 
 is not its solution. And shall I tell you, Mr. President, 
 what the intelligent Russians, those of the great so-called 
 middle classes, are saying? It is this, — we must first re- 
 cover ourselves and wipe out the dishonor of our collapse, 
 the dishonor of forsaking our allies in the hour of their 
 dire need. And then we must readjust our dominions as 
 we wish them, for Russia can never be bound by the 
 Russia-disposing portions of a treaty to which Russia is 
 not a party. And I ask you, sir, would we? 
 
 And this thought brings me to speak again of what I 
 have said heretofore, that this treaty, stripped of its mean- 
 ingless beatific provisions, provides merely and simply for 
 an alliance between the five great powers in a coalition 
 against the balance of the world. And again I ask, has 
 history ever answered this save in one way — by destroy- 
 ing the coalition and at times all or some of its constituent 
 members. 
 
 Think you Germany — smarting and staggering under 
 the terms of this, the hardest treaty of modern times — 
 will, even if we were to set up the league and she should 
 join it, supinely rest content with the dole of grace and 
 sufferance we are vouchsafing her, the crumbs from her 
 victors' table? It is beside the point to say that such is 
 but her just deserts and the full measure thereof. Lacking 
 the wisdom to go forward and inflict a military punishment 
 that would have uprooted their philosophy of force and 
 taught them the lesson of live and let live, we have left 
 them, beaten, but proud and arrogant, with their mighty 
 spirit bent for the time but unbroken, with their damning 
 philosophy unchanged, and with a will, fired by hate, to 
 mete out revenge. 
 
 That people will no more cease to plot and plan to re- 
 cover their former high estate, than did Satan plunged into 
 the abysmal depths of Hell. Whether they are in the 
 league if formed or out of it, Germany's agents, secretly or 
 openly, will be at work with her former allies, and with 
 injured Russia, and with Japan — whose conceptions, 
 ideals, aspirations, and ambitions are of Imperiad Germany, 
 not democratic America, Britain, and France. As Russia 
 goes, so will go the whole Slavic and affiliated peoples. 
 And if Germany succeed in this and be able to unite these 
 
 45 
 
powers to herself, to turn the teeming millions of Russia 
 to swell her own ranks, and to augment this by the great 
 yellow races of the Pacific who through Russia would have 
 unimpeded access to the battle front, western Europe, at 
 least, must perish. Think you, Germany, revengeful, will 
 turn aside from so imposing and grateful a vision in order 
 to grace for generations a conqueror's triumph? 
 
 Why have we invited this vision? Was there none at all 
 of that much vaunted forward-looking at the peace table? 
 The wise, the obviously wise course required not months of 
 inventing and piling up penalties, but a few hours devoted 
 to a plan that should rid Germany of the Hohenzollerns, that 
 should provide for her democratization, that should impose 
 a lesson-bearing indemnity, and that should then bind with 
 rivets of steel, because rivets of friendship, the German 
 people to Western Europe, to France, who cannot hope to 
 keep Germany under her feet. Napoleon tried to conquer 
 a people and failed, — this should be France's lesson. The 
 only possible wise course for France, her only permanent 
 safety, is closest friendship with Germany. The restoration 
 of Alsace-Lorraine, the payment of a suitable indemnity, 
 and then forgetfulness as to the past, hard as that might 
 prove, — this should have sufficed. It may seem I am un- 
 sympathic, unmindful and forgetful of wrongs and injuries, 
 unmoved by suffering and grief. I am none of these. I 
 am trying to point out how France herself might escape 
 further and more overwhelming wrong, suffering, and grief. 
 For as certain as the sun rises, if we follow the road in 
 which this treaty sets our feet, France and ourselves shall 
 meet those on the way. 
 
 The treaty of peace is divided into fifteen parts. All of 
 them deal with territorial adjustments, penalties, and in- 
 demnities of the war, except Part I (containing the Cove- 
 nant of the League of Nations) and Part XIII, Labor (pro- 
 viding for an international labor organization). The other 
 parts are in their order, — Part II, Boundaries of Germany; 
 Part III, Political Clauses for Europe; Part IV, German 
 rights and interests outside Germany ; Part V, Military, 
 Naval, and Air Clauses; Part VI, Prisoners of War and 
 Graves; Part VII, Penalties; Part VIII, Reparation; Part 
 IX, Financial Clauses ; Part X, Economic Clauses; Part XI, 
 Aerial Navigation; Part XII, Ports, Waterwavs, and Rail- 
 
 46 
 
ways; Part XIV, Guaranties; and Part XV, Miscellaneous 
 Provisions. 
 
 It is, of course, impossible to give even a detailed sum- 
 mary of a volume of some eighty thousand odd words, 
 doubtless the longest treaty in history. But I shall also aim 
 to give a picture of certain general features to which I wish 
 to invite special attention. 
 
 P>y this treaty Germany cedes outright portions of her 
 European territory to Belgium, to France (a recession of 
 Alsace-Lorraine), to Poland, to the Czecho-Slovak State, 
 and to the principal allied and associated powers, — includ- 
 ing the United States, — who get unconditionally Memel 
 (a small strip of territory in the extreme northeastern tip 
 of Germany) and the free city of Danzig with its adjacent 
 territory, to be placed under the protection of the league of 
 nations. Germany also cedes, contingent upon the wishes 
 of the people in the area affected, as expressed by a vote, 
 further portions of her territory to Belgium, to Poland, and 
 to the allied and associated powers, who thus take Schleswig 
 with an obligation at some time to hand it over to Denmark, 
 if the people so vote. The Czecho-Slovak state secures a 
 further bit of territory if a determination of the Polish fron- 
 tier should isolate it from Germany; and the league of na- 
 tions takes as trustee the Saar basin, which shall be gov- 
 erned, however, by a commission appointed, not by the 
 league, but by the council of the league, pending the plebi- 
 scite of fifteen years hence. Thus the United States becomes 
 the owner in fee of a tenant in common of European terri- 
 tory, and a trustee as to other territory. 
 
 For this territory so ceded nobody pays Germany any- 
 thing, nor is any credit allowed Germany for it on her 
 reparation account, to which I shall shortly refer. How- 
 ever, all cessionary powers, except France and the league 
 of nations as to the Saar basin, assume that portion of the 
 imperial and state debt attaching to the ceded area — fixed, 
 stated roughly, upon the basis of the pre-war revenue of the 
 area to the pre-war total imperial and state revenue respec- 
 tively. 
 
 The imperial and state property in all these areas, includ- 
 ing the private property of the former German Emperor 
 and other royal personages, is turned over to the cessionary 
 of the area who must pay the value of the same to the repa- 
 
 47 
 
ration commission which places the same to the credit of 
 Germany on the reparation account. This does not apply 
 to France, who takes such property in Alsace-Lorraine with- 
 out payment, nor to Belgium, nor to the Saar basin. 
 
 Germany cedes all her overseas possessions in lee simple 
 to the allied and associated powers, who do not assume the 
 debts and who take all the property, without any compensa- 
 tion whatever running to Germany either for the territory 
 ceded or for the actual property taken. Thus the United 
 States becomes a tenant in common with the British Em- 
 pire, France, Italy, and Japan, of Germany's African pos- 
 sessions comprising" Togo, Kamerun, German Southwest 
 Africa, and German East Africa, with an area of nearly 
 one million square miles (almost one-third the size of the 
 United States) and a native population of about eleven and 
 a half millions ; of her Pacific possessions, including Kaiser 
 Wilhelm's Land, Bismarck's Archipelago, Caroline Islands, 
 Palau or Pelew Islands, Marianne Islands, Solomon Islands, 
 and Marshall Islands. It may be noted in passing that cer- 
 tain of these island possessions form a barrier ring to ac- 
 cess to the Philippines, and their possession by any power 
 other than ourselves is big with potential troubles for us. 
 
 Germany cedes also without compensation of any sort or 
 description her extraterritorial and analogous rights in 
 Siam, Morocco, Egypt, and Samoa, and recognizes the 
 French protectorate in Morocco and the British protectorate 
 in Egypt. The imperial and state property in these areas 
 go to the cessionaries without compensation. The same is 
 true of such property located in and ceded to China. Ger- 
 many's rights in Shantung and German property also are 
 ceded to Japan " free and clear of all charges and encum- 
 brances." 
 
 Thus territorially Germany has been closed out in all the 
 world without a penny's compensation. Moreover, she 1< >ses 
 the efforts of a generation to provide an outlet for her 
 rapidly increasing surplus population which now must and 
 will find expanding" room elsewhere. To this situation is 
 added a restriction of Germany's European area which 
 would have taken care of a part of this expansion. 
 
 The indemnities provided by the treaty may be classed 
 roughly into two divisions: (i) restitution in case of cash 
 taken away, seized, or sequestrated, and also restitution of 
 
 48 
 
animals, objects of every nature and securities taken away, 
 seized, or sequestrated in the cases in which it proves pos- 
 sible to identify them in territory belonging to Germany 
 or to her allies; and (2) reparation for all the damage 
 done to the civilian population of the allied and associated 
 powers and to their property during the period of the bel- 
 ligerency of each as an allied or associated power against 
 Germany by her aggression by land, by sea, and from the 
 air, and this includes damages inflicted not only by Germany 
 but by Germany's allies, and also by the allied and associated 
 powers themselves upon their own nationals. 
 
 There can of course be no question as to the propriety 
 of compelling Germany to disgorge the loot which she seized 
 and which she still has, nor in requiring her to replace that 
 which she seized and has since consumed or otherwise used 
 or destroyed. No matter what this may mean to Germany, 
 no matter how it may leave her, this must be done. The 
 thief must not be heard to plead necessity for the article he 
 stole, nor inconvenience from restoring it. This is the most 
 elemental justice and the wholesomest morality. Thus far 
 we move on solid ground. 
 
 But when we get away from and go beyond this it be- 
 hooves us to proceed with care, lest we go beyond the 
 bounds of wise statesmanship, and in the homely adage, kill 
 the goose that we expect to lay the golden eggs. 
 
 But the treaty edges in on the perfectly proper theory 
 of restitution, by a theory designated as replacement, which 
 places Germany under rather startling obligations. She is 
 first made to "recognize (s) the right of the Allied and 
 Associated Powers to the replacement ton for ton (gross 
 tonnage) and class for class of all merchant ships and fish- 
 ing boats lost or damaged owing to the war"; she then 
 acknowledges " that the tonnage of German shipping at 
 present in existence is much less than that lost by the Allied 
 and Associated Powers in consequence of the German ag- 
 gression " and agrees that " the right thus recognized will 
 be enforced on German ships and boats under the follow- 
 ing conditions"; — -Germany cedes to the allied and asso- 
 ciated powers on behalf of herself and of all other parties 
 interested all German merchant ships which are of sixteen 
 hundred tons gross and upwards. Included in these will 
 doubtless be the thirty-two auxiliary cruisers and fleet aux- 
 
 49 
 
iliary (named in another part of the treaty) which are to be 
 disarmed and treated as merchant ships. In addition to the 
 foregoing, Germany further cedes one-half reckoned in ton- 
 nage, of the ships which are between one thousand tons and 
 sixteen hundred tons gross ; one-quarter reckoned in tonnage 
 of the steam trawlers; and onc-quartcr reckoned in tonnage, 
 of the other fishing boats. All the foregoing must be. de- 
 livered to the reparation commission within two months of 
 the coming into force of the present treaty. 
 
 Thus we take practically all of Germany's means of con- 
 ducting commerce through her own vessels with overseas 
 countries, of whom we are the farthest away and of which 
 we shall stand most in need, for it is an open secret that 
 before the war the German shipping was the peer at least 
 of any shipping in the world. 
 
 But the treaty goes further than this and compels Ger- 
 many to lay down in her own shipyards a maximum of two 
 hundred thousand tons of shipping for each of the next 
 five years, — approximately half, I am told, of her ship- 
 building- capacity, — and our representatives, the reparation 
 commission, determine the specifications, conditions of build- 
 ing, price to be paid — by giving credit against the repara- 
 tion bill the commission will make up — and all other ques- 
 tions relating to the accounting, building", and delivery of 
 the ships. 
 
 Thus for a number of years at least we have pretty effec- 
 tively barred German vessels from the seas. 
 
 But this is only half the story. She is also in good part 
 stripped of her inland shipping, for by this treaty she very 
 properly undertakes to restore in kind and in normal con- 
 dition of upkeep to the allied and associated powers, any 
 hoats and other moveable appliances belonging- to inland 
 navigation which since August i, 19 14, have by any 
 means -whatever come into her possession or into the pos- 
 session of her nationals, and which can be identified. This 
 would of course cover boats purchased by Germans for 
 f nil value, transactions that might have been carried out 
 through neutrals. 
 
 Nor is this all. With a view to making good the loss of 
 the allied and associated powers in inland navigation ton- 
 nage which cannot be made good by the restitution already 
 recited, Germany agrees to cede to the reparation commis- 
 
 5o 
 
sion a portion of her river fleet up to the amount of the 
 loss mentioned, to a maximum extent of twenty per cent 
 of the river fleet as it existed November n, 1918. 
 
 As to all the foregoing ocean-going and inland naviga- 
 tion vessels Germany agrees to take any measures indi- 
 cated to her by the reparation commission for. obtaining the 
 full title to the property in all ships which have during the 
 war been transferred, or are in process of transfer, to 
 neutral flags, without the consent of the allied and associ- 
 ated governments. 
 
 Nor is this all. She waives all claims against the allied 
 or associated powers for the detention, employment, loss, 
 or damage of any German ships, except as called for by 
 the armistice agreement; all claims to vessels or cargoes 
 sunk by naval action, and subsequently salved, in which the 
 nationals of the allied and associated powers or the powers 
 themselves may be interested either as owners, charterers, 
 insurers, or otherwise, notwithstanding any decree of con- 
 demnation which may have been made by a prize court of 
 Germany or her allies. 
 
 But I am compelled to note still further shipping de- 
 liveries. The treaty obliges Germany to cede to France 
 tugs and vessels from among those remaining registered 
 in German Rhine ports (after the above deductions) to an 
 amount fixed, not by the treaty even in maximum, but by 
 an arbitrator appointed by the United States. The tugs 
 and vessels so taken must have with them their fittings 
 and gear, shall be in a good state of repair to carry on 
 traffic, and shall be selected from among those most re- 
 cently built. 
 
 Similarly and under like conditions, tugs and vessels to 
 an unnamed amount must be transferred to the allied and 
 associated powers from those used on the river systems 
 of the Elbe, the Oder, the Niemen, and the Danube; and 
 in addition Germany must cede material of all kinds neces- 
 sary for the utilization of these river systems by the allied 
 and associated powers concerned. 
 
 France also gets all installations, berthing and anchorage 
 accommodations, platforms, docks, warehouses, plants, 
 etc., which German subjects or German companies owned 
 on August t, 1914, in Rotterdam, and the shares or in- 
 terests possessed by such nationals or companies therein. 
 
 5i 
 
Thus seemingly tinder a theory of replacement the 
 treaty likewise strips Germany of much of her inland 
 shipping. 
 
 The effect of all this upon Germany's future and upon 
 her ability to meet the other requirements of this treaty 
 are well worthy of deep and mature reflection. 
 
 But drastic and possibly ruinous as all this is, it yet is 
 but the beginning. 
 
 The next inroad on the doctrine of restitution is made 
 under the name of physical restoration. Germany under- 
 takes to devote her economic resources directly to the 
 physical restoration of the invaded areas of the allied and 
 associated powers to the extent that these powers may 
 determine. Under this provision the allied and associated 
 governments may list the animals, machinery, equipment, 
 tools, and like articles of a commercial character, which 
 have been seized, consumed, or destroyed by Germany or 
 destroyed in direct consequence of military operations — 
 this would include military operations by the allied and 
 associated powers themselves — which such powers ur- 
 gently and immediately need and which they desire to have 
 replaced by animals and articles of the same nature, in 
 being in Germany at the coming into force of this treaty. 
 As an immediate advance of animals on this account, Ger- 
 many must within three months deliver to France 30,500 
 horses, 92,000 cattle, 101,000 sheep, and 10,000 goats; and 
 to Belgium 10,200 horses, 92,000 cattle, 20,200 sheep, and 
 15,000 sows. As to such animals, machinery, equipment, 
 tools, and like articles of a commercial character, the repa- 
 ration commission in deciding the amount which shall ulti- 
 mately be given by Germany must take into consideration 
 Germany's needs, having in mind the maintenance of Ger- 
 many's social and economic life and the general interest of 
 the allied and associated powers that the industrial life of 
 Germany shall not be so impaired as adversely to affect 
 Germany's ability to perform the other acts of reparation 
 called for. It is, however, provided that of machinery, 
 tools, equipment, and like commercial articles a maximum 
 of thirty per cent may be taken of the quantity actually in 
 use in any one establishment. 
 
 Similar lists, subject to the same regulations may be 
 made by the allied and associated powers of reconstruction 
 
 52 
 
materials (stones, bricks, refractory bricks, tiles, wood, 
 window glass, steel, lime, cement, etc.), machinery, heat- 
 ing apparatus, and like commercial articles which the 
 powers may desire to have produced in Germany. 
 
 In addition to the foregoing and of like character is the 
 obligation of Germany to furnish coal to France at France's 
 option, up to a maximum of twenty million tons for each 
 of the first five years and eight million tons for any one of 
 the succeeding five years ; to Belgium, at her option, eig'ht 
 million tons per year for ten years ; to Italy, at her option, 
 amounts beginning at four and a half million tons for the 
 first year and increasing to eight and a half million tons 
 for the last six years; and to Luxembourg, her annual 
 pre-war supply, if the reparation commission so directs; 
 — a possible total of thirty-two to thirty-five millions of 
 tons for the first five years and of twenty-five million tons 
 for the next five years. At the option of the vendees, metal- 
 lurgical coke instead of coal must be delivered at fixed 
 ratios. In this category also is to be placed the German 
 obligation to deliver to France for the next three successive 
 years some one hundred and fifteen thousand tons of coal 
 distillation products, and to the reparation commission fifty 
 per cent of the total dyestuffs and chemical drugs in Ger- 
 many or under German control at the date of the coming 
 into force of the present treaty. 
 
 In considering the question of supplying coal we must 
 not lose sight of the cession of the Saar basin coal mines 
 to France. 
 
 But we come now to an item which is not to be accounted 
 for as restitution, as replacement, or physical restoration. 
 I refer to the cession by Germany on her own behalf and 
 behalf of her nationals of her submarine cables. By this 
 act the treaty takes from Germany all direct telegraph 
 relations with overseas countries. 
 
 As a final entry under this general head I wish to ob- 
 serve that speaking generally, Germany also cedes to the 
 states which secure portions of her territory, all railways 
 situated therein ; and I find in the treaty no positive provi- 
 sion for the payment therefor by any one. This cession 
 carries with it the works and installations; the rolling stock, 
 complete where a ceded road has its own stock, in a nor- 
 mal state of upkeep, and where a ceded road has no rolling 
 
 53 
 
stock of its own, then rolling" stock from German lines with 
 which the ceded portion forms a system; and stocks of 
 stores, fitting's, and plants. And while on this point I may 
 add that Germany must build for Czecho-Slovakia a desig- 
 nated railroad if that state so elects, at the latter's cost, 
 and must build for Belgium the German portion of a deep 
 draught Rhine-Meuse navigable waterway at her own 
 cost (seemingly) if Belgium decides the canal should be 
 built. 
 
 Now as to the bill against Germany, — 
 
 Germany is made to admit as a basis of her liability, the 
 responsibility for herself, and for all her allies, for caus- 
 ing all the loss and damage to which the allied and asso- 
 ciated governments and their nationals have been subjected 
 as a consequence of the war. 
 
 The allied and associated powers, recognizing the bur- 
 den thus stated is too heavy for German resources to bear 
 " after taking into account permanent diminution of such 
 resources which will result from other provisions of the 
 present treaty," require, and she so undertakes, that Ger- 
 many make compensation for all damage done to the civil- 
 ian population of the allied and associated powers and to 
 their property during the period of belligerency of each 
 as an allied or associated power, by land, by sea, and by 
 air. 
 
 The reparation commission is to find one bill against Ger- 
 many for this damage, the elements of which are of such 
 importance that I feel I ought to cover them in some detail. 
 They are as follows: i. Damage to injured persons and to 
 surviving dependents by personal injury to or death of 
 civilians caused by aets of -tear including" all attacks on land, 
 on sea, or in the air, and all the direct consequences thereof, 
 and of all operations of war by the two groups of belliger- 
 ents wherever arising". 2. Damage to civilian persons, 
 caused by Germany or her allies, by acts of cruelty, violence, 
 or maltreatment ( including injuries to life or health as a 
 consequence of imprisonment, deportation, internment, or 
 evacuation, of exposure at sea or of being forced to labor) 
 wherever arising and to the surviving dependents of such 
 victims. 3. Damage to civilian persons injured either in 
 German territory or invaded territory, caused by Germany 
 or her allies by acts injurious to health or capacity to work 
 
 54 
 
or to honor, as well as to their surviving- dependents. 
 4. Damage caused by any kind of maltreatment of pris-. 
 oners of war. 5. As damages, the pensions and compensa- 
 tions in the nature of pensions to naval and military (in- 
 cluding members of the air force) victims whether mutilated, 
 wounded, sick or invalided, and to the dependents of such 
 victims, sums so due to be capitalized on- the basis of the 
 French scale in force on the coming into effect of the present 
 treaty. 6. The cost of assistance extended to prisoners of 
 war and their families. 7. Allowances by the governments 
 of the allies and associated powers to the families and de- 
 pendents of mobilized persons or persons serving in the 
 forces, the sum to be paid to be capitalized on the basis of 
 the French scale in force during the year the payment was 
 made. 8. Damage to civilians by being" forced by Germany 
 or her allies to work without just remuneration. 9. Dam- 
 age to all property, wherever situated belonging' to any of 
 the allied or associated states or their nationals, with the 
 exception of naval or military works or materials, which has 
 been carried off, seized, injured or destroyed by the acts of 
 Germany or her allies on land, on sea or from the air, or 
 damages directly in consequence of hostilities or of any 
 operations of war. ro. Damages in the form of levies, 
 fines, and other similar exactions imposed by Germany or 
 her allies upon the civil population. 
 
 It is admitted that certain of these damage rules violate 
 the principles of international law as hitherto recognized 
 and observed by the family of nations. The reason why we 
 as well as the enemy should discard such benign principles 
 as have been worked out by the nations in the last centuries 
 is not clear. 
 
 The thought has been entertained that the treaty fixes, at 
 least tentatively, the German indemnity under these rules 
 at one hundred and twenty billion gold marks, — about 
 twenty-four billion dollars, — but such an idea is not 
 justified. 
 
 In the first place Germany agrees, in addition to the sum 
 named, to pay Belgium's debt to the allies and associated 
 powers, whatever the debt may be. This payment is to be 
 considered restoration. 
 
 In the next place, the treaty stipulates that the twenty- 
 four billion dollars' worth of gold bonds which Germany 
 
 55 
 
undertakes to issue, is to cover "whatever part of the full 
 amount of the approved claims is not paid in gold, or in 
 ships, securities, and commodities or otherzvise." Thus the 
 total values of all the materials to be turned over as hereto- 
 fore mentioned, seem quite clearly to be in addition to this 
 twenty-four billions" of gold bonds. 
 
 Moreover, it is provided that " further issues (of bonds) 
 by way of acknowledgment and security may be required as 
 the (reparation) Commission subsequently determined from 
 time to time." 
 
 So that the bill against Gerany will clearly not stop at 
 twenty-four billion dollars and may run to any amount. 
 
 I may here also correct another impression that has gone 
 out, namely, that somehow the reparation commission can 
 reduce the amounts to be paid by Germany if they decide 
 such a course is wise and just. Now the reparation com- 
 mission is made up of representatives of the United States, 
 Great Britain, France, and Italy, who always sit at its ses- 
 sions and the representatives of one other power, either 
 Belgium, Japan, or the Serb-Croat-Slovene State. While 
 each other allied and associated power may have a repre- 
 sentative present when its interests are involved, such repre- 
 sentative may not vote. This commission decides the 
 amount of the claims against Germany by a majority vote, 
 that is to say the representatives of Great Britain, France, 
 and Italy, or Belgium, or Japan, or the Serb-Croat-Slovene 
 state, — any three of them, —may fix the amount of this 
 indemnity. But a decision to cancel the whole or any part 
 of the German debt or obligation requires a unanimous vote 
 of all of them sitting and before this decision can become 
 operative the commission must have the specific authority 
 of the several governments represented on the commission. 
 In other words, unless the four great powers and Belgium 
 or Japan, or the Serb-Croat-Slovene state unanimously so 
 agree, the claims once fixed by a majority of the commis- 
 sion cannot be abated one penny, except by the consent of 
 all the powers represented on the commission. Moreover, 
 the commission is closely limited even as to the postpone- 
 ment of total or partial reparation payments, for all such 
 postponements beyond 1930 of payments falling due be- 
 tween May 1, 1 92 1, and the end of 1926, and of anv post- 
 
 56 
 
ponement, for more than three years, of any installment 
 falling dne after 1926, requires a unanimous vote. 
 
 Assuming for the sake of the argument that some one 
 of the powers represented on the commission is determined 
 to exact the pound of flesh, there is no way under this 
 treaty to prevent it, short of the application of coercive 
 measures. The reparation commission is not and is not in- 
 tended to he a beneficent philanthropic or eleemosynary 
 institution ; it is and must be the enforcer of stern retribu- 
 tion, imposing on the vanquished the utmost burden his back 
 will bear. 
 
 But these measures are by no means the end of the story. 
 Reference has already been made to the payment by Ger- 
 many in securities, of what I shall designate as her non- 
 bond debt. On this point I quote from the treaty: "Ger- 
 many will within six months from the coming into force of 
 the present Treaty, deliver to each Allied and Associated 
 Power all securities, certificates, deeds, or other documents 
 of title held by its nationals and relating to property, rights 
 or interests situated in the territory of that Allied or As- 
 sociated Power, including any shares, stock, debentures, 
 debenture stock or other obligations of any Company in- 
 corporated in accordance with the laws of that power." 
 That is to say, German investments in allied or associated 
 countries and held in Germany are to be wholly closed out. 
 
 Moreover, all other property held by Germans or German 
 companies in allied or associated countries, or territories, 
 colonies, possessions, and protectorates may be retained or 
 liquidated by such powers. This completes the closing 
 out of German interests in allied and associated countries. 
 Nor is this all, for this last provision applies to territories 
 ceded to the allied and associated powers by this treaty, so 
 that Poland, Czecho-Slovakia, the free city of Danzig, the 
 principal allied and associated powers in Memel, Denmark, 
 Belgium, and France may sell out property and interest 
 of every German national or company within their newly 
 acquired territory. 
 
 Furthermore, the reparation commission may require, 
 by a majority vote, the German government to acquire and 
 turn over to it the rights and interests of German nationals 
 in any public utility or concession operating in Russia, 
 China, Turkey, Austria, Hungary, and Bulgaria, or in the 
 
 57 
 
possessions or dependencies of these states, or in any terri- 
 tory formerly belonging to Germany or her allies, or to 
 be administered by a mandatory tinder this treaty. 
 
 Nor is this the end. Germany must fully compensate, 
 and most properly so — the nationals of all allied and asso- 
 ciated powers for the losses they have suffered with refer- 
 ence to property located in German territory, and this in- 
 cludes all property acquired or in course of acquisition by 
 the German alien property custodian, this compensation 
 to be reduced by the actual value of any property restored 
 to the owners. 
 
 For all property rights or interests taken by the allied 
 and associated powers from German nationals, Germany 
 undertakes to compensate them. 
 
 Now the disposition of the proceeds of all this German 
 property is obviously of the utmost importance. The treaty 
 proposes two methods, one of which is so fantastic that it 
 is difficult to believe our wildest dreamer would, on study, 
 care to adopt it. I shall give you the effect of a few of its 
 salient features: If we should proceed under it, the United 
 States would guarantee the payment of all specified debts 
 owed by our citizens (who were solvent at the beginning of 
 the war) to Germans. We would establish a clearing office 
 which would take over all such debts due to our citizens 
 from Germans and we would undertake to act as a col- 
 lection agent for all such debts due from our citizens to 
 Germans, making good any we did not collect. From 
 the coming into force of this treaty all payments or accept- 
 ance of payments and all communications regarding the 
 settlement of specified obligations would be absolutely pro- 
 hibited between our citizens and Germans, under penalties 
 imposed for trading with the enemy, except correspondence 
 through our clearing office, and each government would 
 promise to do its utmost to ferret out and report violations 
 of the prohibitions to the others. 
 
 If an American citizen made a claim which was not 
 allowed, he would be fined. If he contested a claim which 
 was allowed, he would be fined. 'Where he and the German 
 could not agree, the two clearing - offices would settle it if 
 they could; if they could not agree, it would go to the 
 mixed arbitral tribunal. If, finally, a debt were held either 
 by the clearing offices or the mixed tribunal not to be 
 
 58 
 
within the specified classes, permission is graciously given 
 to the parties to go to court. 
 
 When all such debts are liquidated any credit balance 
 in favor of Germany goes to the reparation commission 
 to be credited on Germany's account. That is to say, the 
 excess proceeds of German property in the United States 
 would go to compensate Italian or Greek or some other 
 power's losses. 
 
 If this clearing office system be not adopted, then Ger- 
 many pays directly to the allied and associated governments 
 or their interested nationals the cash assets and the pro- 
 ceeds of the property, rights, and interests, in her hands 
 belonging to them ; but each of the allied and associated 
 powers shall dispose of the proceeds of the property rights 
 and interests and of the cash assets of German nationals 
 in accordance with its laws and regulations. They may 
 apply them if they wish to the payment of claims and 
 debts held by their nationals against German nationals, 
 including claims against the German government for acts 
 committed by it after July 31, 19 14, and before the par- 
 ticular power concerned entered the war ag'ainst Germany. 
 Or, and this is most remarkable, the power may use this 
 money derived from the proceeds of property owned by 
 German nationals to pay debts due the power's nationals 
 from nationals of German allies. That is, we may use Ger- 
 man money to pay a Turk's debt. 
 
 And in all of this it is well to remember that by the 
 treaty the property rights and interests of German na- 
 tionals will continue to be subject to exceptional war 
 measures that have been or will be taken against them. 
 * It had not been and is not my purpose to attempt a dis- 
 cussion of the number of provisions of this instrument 
 which run counter to our constitutional guarantees, but 
 I cannot forbear the observation that no one will, I appre- 
 hend, be so hardy as to contend that, peace being estab- 
 lished, we shall continue to have power to take private 
 property without compensation. 
 
 Under this plan also, the excess of German property 
 over American debts will go to the reparation commission, 
 if we retain the excess. The treaty is not clear as to any 
 other disposition of the surplus. 
 
 Now for all this German property so disposed of, and 
 
 59 
 
for which Germany assumes liability to her own nationals, 
 no credit is given on the reparation account, save as to that 
 part which may be ultimately turned over to the reparation 
 commission. 
 
 One point more and I shall be done with this part of 
 the treaty. It is stipulated that all investments whereso- 
 ever affected with the cash assets of nationals of the high 
 contracting- parties, including companies and associations 
 in which such nationals were interested, by persons respon- 
 sible for the administration of enemy properties or having 
 control over such administration, or by order of such per- 
 sons or of any authority whatsoever, shall be annulled. 
 That is to say either the treaty annuls or we obligate our- 
 selves to annul all investments by our alien property custo- 
 dian of enemy funds. The disposition of such funds is not 
 clear. 
 
 Thus we close out German interests in all allied and 
 associated countries. 
 
 But we also take other commercial measures no less far 
 reaching. The treaty terminates all multilateral treaties to 
 which Germany is a part except those specifically named 
 in the instrument, and all bilateral treaties and conventions 
 between her and other powers save only those which the 
 other powers notify their intention to revive. Thus another 
 presumed tenet of international law passes out with this 
 treaty. 
 
 Moreover, under this treaty the allied and associated 
 powers acquire all the treaty and conventional rights and 
 advantages enjoyed by Austria, Hungary, Bulgaria, or 
 Turkey, and such rights and advantages granted to and 
 enjoyed by non-belligerent states or their nationals since 
 August i, 1914, so long as such treaties, conventions, or 
 agreements remain in force. Thus no power having - with 
 Germany a treaty which gave to Germany a favored posi- 
 tion, at the expense of the power, will revive such a treaty, 
 antl every power having- a treaty which gives her an ad- 
 vantage over Germany will revive that treaty. Further- 
 more, if Germany shall undertake to make with any foreign 
 country any reciprocity treaty in regard to the importation, 
 exportation, or transit of any goods, then all favors, im- 
 munities, and privileges granted by it shall simultaneously 
 and unconditionally and without request or compensation be 
 
 60 
 
extended to all the allied and associated states. The treaty 
 thus effectually prevents Germany from fostering her com- 
 merce by special trade agreements with other countries. 
 
 The tariff and customs provisions are equally drastic. 
 Notwithstanding the increased costs of production through- 
 out the world, Germany may not, for the first six months 
 after the coming into force of this treaty, impose higher 
 tariffs than the most favorable duties applied to imports 
 into Germany on July 31, 1914; and for a period of thirty 
 months thereafter the same rule shall apply to all imports 
 covered by a designated schedule which enjoyed rates con- 
 ventionalized by treaties, to which imports are added other 
 named articles. 
 
 Furthermore, as to all duties, charges, prohibitions, and 
 restrictions on both exports and imports, the allied and as- 
 sociated powers enjoy favored nation treatment. I shall 
 make no attempt even to list the exceptional tariff privileges 
 granted to France, to Poland, to Luxembourg, to Morocco, 
 and to Egypt. 
 
 The nationals of allied and associated powers, resident in 
 Germany, have as to all measures relating to occupation, 
 professions, trade, and industry, most favored nation treat- 
 ment ; and as to taxes, charges, and imports, direct or in- 
 direct, touching the property, rights, or interests of na- 
 tionals or companies of such powers, or restrictions, the 
 treatment must be that accorded to German nationals. In 
 all the foregoing I do not recall one reciprocal favor granted 
 to Germany or her nationals. 
 
 The general principle of favored nation treatment, and 
 in some cases national treatment, is granted to the allied 
 and associated countries and their nationals, in all matters 
 referring to transit, which Germany must expedite, over 
 and through German territory, and as to all charg'es con- 
 nected therewith, all without any reciprocal undertaking in 
 favor of Germany. All regulations governing such traffic 
 must be equal, and non-discriminating as against the allied 
 or associated powers or their nationals. Moreover, all in- 
 land traffic, our "coastwise" trade, is open to the vessels 
 of the allied and associated powers on the same terms as 
 German vessels, while Germany may not engage without 
 permission in the like traffic of any other power. 
 
 Existing free zones in ports shall be maintained, and in 
 
 61 
 
addition Germany shall lease to Czecho-Slovakia areas in 
 Hamburg and Stettin which shall be placed under the re- 
 gime of free zones. 
 
 Certain specified areas of the great German river systems 
 of the Elbe, the Oder, the Niemen, and additional parts of 
 the Danube and all navigable parts of these river systems 
 are internationalized and placed under the administration 
 of international commissions. The internationalization of 
 the Rhine is extended. On these the traffic is open to the 
 vessels of all nations on terms of perfect equality. Special 
 concessions are given to France and Belgium on the Rhine 
 which need not be farther noted. 
 
 Finally Germany undertakes so to adapt her railway roll- 
 ing stock that it may accommodate the inclusion in German 
 trains of the rolling stock of the allied and associated 
 powers, and that the trains of the latter may incorporate 
 German rolling stock. In addition to this regulations are 
 laid down as to rates and traffic on through trains which 
 Germany undertakes to accept and operate. 
 
 These are broad statements covering an almost infinity 
 of details on these various subjects. For no one of these 
 various trade concessions and agreements is Germany given 
 any credit or compensation, nor any direct or conspicuous 
 advantage named in the treaty. 
 
 In addition to all this, she waives all claims arising out 
 of the internment or repatriation of German nationals, and 
 all claims arising out of the capture and condemnation of 
 German ships or the liquidation of German property in 
 China and Siam. Germany waives to all of the allied and 
 associated powers and their nationals (as already noted ) all 
 claims of any description in respect to the detention, em- 
 ployment (except under the armistice terms), loss or dam- 
 age of any German ships or boats, and all claims to vessels 
 or cargoes sunk by or in consequence of naval action and 
 subsequently salved, in which any of the allied or asso- 
 ciated governments or their nationals may have any interest 
 either as owner, charterer, insurer, or otherwise, notwith- 
 standing any decree or condemnation by a German prize 
 court. ■ Finally Germany undertakes not to put forward 
 directly or indirectly against any allied or associated power 
 signatory of the present treaty, including those which with- 
 out having declared war, have broken off diplomatic rela- 
 
 62 
 
tions with the German Empire, any pecuniary claim based 
 on events which occurred at any time before the coming 
 into force of the present treaty, such claims by this provi- 
 sion to be finally and completely barred. 
 
 And as a capstone to this whole remarkable edifice, let 
 me refer to that provision by which Germany on the one 
 hand accepts and agrees to be bound by all decrees, and 
 orders concerning German ships and goods made by any 
 prize court of the allied and associated powers and agrees 
 to put forward no claim arising out of such orders and de- 
 crees, and on the other hand acknowledges the right of the 
 allied and associated powers to challenge all German prize 
 court decisions and orders. 
 
 As to that part of the treaty which deals with labor. T 
 shall now merely say: Either it will never be enforced as 
 drawn, and perhaps was never intended to be enforced as 
 drawn but to be merely a sop thrown to labor, or if en- 
 forced as written and in the spirit its provisions seem to 
 carry, it will wreck the world. It compels the class antagon- 
 ism between capital and labor which wisdom requires that 
 we lessen, not increase, if we are to remain a free people; 
 and makes possible an ultimate interference of foreign na- 
 tions in our labor disputes at the instance of residents of our 
 own country. 
 
 I regret, sir, that this has been a long and tedious proc- 
 ess, but its importance could be satisfied in no other way. 
 It has shown us the treaty takes Germany's territory, Euro- 
 pean and foreign, without compensation ; that it takes from 
 her practically all of her ocean shipping, and a larg-e por- 
 tion of her inland vessels ; that it deprives her of all special 
 benefits of treaties and conventions; that it takes her 
 cables; that it compels her to supply large quantities of raw 
 materials ; that it internationalizes her great river systems 
 and throws them open to traffic of all nations on a national 
 basis, as if they were the high seas ; that it opens her coast- 
 wise shipping to all nations ; that it compels her to grant 
 exceptional import and export privileges and to accept im- 
 portant restrictions ; that it lays down far-reaching prin- 
 ciples governing her internal commerce and transportation ; 
 that it closes out German interests in practically the whole 
 civilized world (outside the territories of her late allies) 
 — including those areas which have been taken from her 
 
 63 
 
and given to others; that it closes out the interests of 
 that same world in Germany. It has shown that having 
 done all this it assesses against her provisionally, with 
 a stipulation permitting an increase, a debt of one hun- 
 dred and twenty billion gold marks, which is in addition 
 to the property restored in kind and to the value of the 
 boats, gold and securities delivered ; that it makes her 
 responsible for these damages inflicted not only by her- 
 self, but by her allies, and even by the allied and associated 
 powers themselves, with a list of items which includes 
 some admittedly contrary to the rules of international 
 law hitherto existing; and that finally and in addition 
 she is compelled to answer to her own nationals for the 
 value of the property taken by the allied and associated 
 powers. 
 
 It remains for me to add that the United States is bound 
 up in every one of the obligations and duties incident to 
 the enforcement of these terms with the great responsibili- 
 ties attached thereto. 
 
 We are participants, either as one of the principal allied 
 and associated powers, or as a member of the council ©f the 
 league of nations, in the Belgian, Saar Basin, Czecho- 
 slovak State, Polish, Free City of Danzig, and Schleswig 
 boundary commissions. We are in like manner partici- 
 pants in the Saar Basin governing commission with all 
 the inevitable difficulties and dangers attached thereto. 
 We participate in plebiscite commissions of Poland, 
 Schleswig, and East Prussia, and the inter-allied military, 
 naval and aeronautical commissions of control charged 
 with enforcing the disarmament provisions of this treaty. 
 In addition we have our own prisoners and graves com- 
 missions, our own clearing offices if we adopt that method 
 of adjusting the enumerated debts. Finally, we are one 
 of the four powers whose representatives are to sit as a 
 reparation commission to assess damages against Germany, 
 to appraise credits, to judge of her economic requirements 
 as affecting her ability to furnish certain raw materials, to 
 pass on her tax system, to postpone payment on her debts, 
 to prescribe the conditions of her bonds, to recommend 
 abatement of her debt, to appraise the value of public prop- 
 erty in ceded territories, and a great bulk of other duties 
 that need not be here referred to, all of which may make 
 
 64 
 
or break the peace of Europe, with an obligation on our part 
 that having so participated in the breaking we shall once 
 more contribute our millions of men and our billions of 
 dollars to the readjustments. 
 
 In addition to this the United States is to appoint arbi- 
 trators to determine the amount of river craft that shall 
 go to France on the Rhine and to the allied and associated 
 powers (including ourselves) on the Elbe, the Oder, the 
 Niemen, and the Danube, and to determine the conditions 
 under which the international convention relative to the 
 St. Gothard railway may be denounced. 
 
 Mr. President, the more I consider this treaty, the more 
 I am convinced that the only safe way for us to deal with 
 it is to decline to be a party to it at all. I think we should 
 renounce in favor of Germany any and all claims for 
 indemnity because of the war and see that she gets credit 
 for what we renounce, as indeed she should for the value 
 of all she gives up as against a fixed and ample indemnity. 
 I agree with the President when he says the indemnity 
 should have been a fixed amount. We ought to renounce 
 all participation or membership in commissions, commit- \ 
 tees, boards or otherwise provided for in the treaty in aid 
 of its execution to which by its terms we are parties. We 
 ought not to accept cessions of German territory. We 
 ought to declare a general policy to regard with concern 
 any threat of disturbance of g'eneral world peace, but at 
 the same time we should reserve complete liberty of action 
 either independently or in conjunction with other powers 
 in taking such steps as we determine wise for preserving 
 the peace. We ought then to carry out the spirit of the 
 Act of 1916, which authorized the President to convene 
 the nations of the world together to establish a code of 
 international law, reduce armaments, to establish an inter- 
 national tribunal and go as far as possible in the direction 
 of securing peace through justice, through a league to 
 which all the world are parties in its formation. This 
 would be a fitting, generous and dignified exit from a situ- 
 ation in which primarily we had no direct concern. 
 
 It is indeed a hard and cruel peace that this treaty stipu- 
 lates and I have no objections to its being so, but see no 
 reason why we, who do not partake in its spoils, should 
 become parties to its harshness and cruelty. I see no reason 
 
 65 
 
why we should be parties to imposing upon Germany a 
 treat)- whose terms, our negotiators say, she will not be able 
 to meet; a treaty that robs our ancient friend, China, in a 
 way disapproved by our negotiators; a treaty that lays the 
 foundation for centuries of blood letting into which we 
 should not be drawn, a treaty that, contrary to our own 
 judgment, fails to fix the amount of indemnity to be paid, 
 leaving that vast question to the whim of a majority of a 
 commission on reparations, a treaty predicated upon the 
 assertion that a stricken and helpless world requires our 
 counsel and support but leaves to the beneficiaries the deci- 
 sion as to the measure and character of the benefactions 
 they are to receive; a treaty that with ominous words pre- 
 sages our involvement in the eruptions of suppressed vol- 
 canic world conditions ; a treaty that would require us to 
 underwrite all the regional understandings between nations 
 recognized by the league, most of which are based upon 
 oppression of weaker nations, many of which are as yet 
 secret and undisclosed, and when disclosed might drive us 
 to acts of injustice similar to that in which the President 
 felt himself compelled to acquiesce in the case of Shantung. 
 
 The mind stands appalled and refuses to grasp the infinite 
 possibilities which arise from the ramifications of the obli- 
 gations we are asked to assume. Looking at the treaty as 
 a whole is it to be wondered at that we are asked to guar- 
 antee by our arms and our resources the territorial status 
 which it creates. 
 
 Sir, I have all but finished. I have not sought to propound 
 or establish any thesis beyond this : The treaty as it stands 
 cannot be enforced. This is admitted by its proponents. 
 The treaty as it stands is but a harbinger of other and 
 greater wars. This being true, the question must come — 
 Why was this treaty so drawn and the vanquished compelled 
 to sign it? It may be when we get all the documents this 
 will appear. And yet in spite of all these great duties and 
 obligations we assume for the future, in spite of our great 
 contribution in men and resources to the successful fruition 
 of the great joint enterprise we entered, it seems to be pro- 
 posed that we are to waive all participation in the benefits 
 of this treaty, and that we are to add further to the general 
 burdens of the people by ourselves compensating our citi- 
 zens who have suffered losses in this war. 
 
 66 • 
 
The weight of the task resting upon us is not light, but 
 the people demand that we fully perform it, in accordance 
 with our sworn duty. We can in this matter take the ipse 
 dixit of no man. 
 
 I have sought in my remarks to put before the people as 
 tersely as I could the salient features of this treaty, so that 
 knowing them their counsel might assist us in our work. 
 For one of the great defects thus far incident to the treaty 
 is that too few minds have functioned on its provisions, and 
 perusing it one finds it impossible to believe that any resp< vi- 
 sible mind had sought to coordinate its provisions, and trace 
 out their ultimate logical conclusions. 
 
 Nothing- in all our history, sir, has called for a clearer 
 perception of present and future, a keener or juster under- 
 standing of our free institutions, a clearer vision of the 
 mighty mission of our great nation in the world, or the 
 dedication of a purer and loftier patriotism, than the con- 
 sideration of this treaty. 
 
 Unless, sir, we shall have the guidance of the Infinite wis- 
 dom, we shall fail in our duty, and wrecking - our beloved 
 country, earn the odium of its treasonable betrayance. 
 
 67 
 
SPEECH OF 
 GILBERT M. HITCHCOCK 
 
 Senator from Nebraska 
 
 In the Senate, September 3, 1919 
 
 {Reprinted from Congressional Record) 
 
 MR. HITCHCOCK. Mr. President, the action 
 of the Committee on Foreign Relations upon 
 the pending peace treaty has been foreshadowed 
 by the progress of that treaty through the committee so 
 that we may now clearly see what issue it is which is to 
 be presented by that committee to the Senate of the 
 United States. By a vote of nine to eight the committee 
 has formally decided to adopt amendments to the treaty 
 which are absolutely destructive of America's participa- 
 tion in it. By this vote the committee has raised the 
 issue squarely if indirectly whether this nation is to 
 participate in the treaty which has been negotiated after 
 such a long struggle at Paris and Versailles, or whether it 
 is to discard all the provisions in that treaty that are for 
 the benefit of the United States, whether this govern- 
 ment is to desert at this juncture the nations with which 
 we have been associated during the war and stand before 
 the world unwilling to carry to their whole limit the steps 
 necessary to perpetuate the victory which our arms in 
 connection with those of the other nations achieved. 
 The committee does not do this by a direct and specific 
 proposal to reject the treaty. Although a majority of 
 the committee is in favor of that action, they seem to 
 hesitate at taking it. They prefer by indirection to ac- 
 complish the same thing; that is, by adopting amend- 
 ments which make the treaty impossible. 
 
 Mr. President, I shall not discuss the merit of any of 
 the amendments. It is utterly unimportant to consider 
 whether they are good, bad, or indifferent. The Senator 
 from Arkansas [Mr. Robinson] has discussed the Shan- 
 tung amendment, which is said to have the strongest 
 
 69 
 
sentiment back of it. The Senator from North Dakota 
 [Mr. McCumber] has made an absolutely unanswerable 
 argument to demonstrate that the adoption of the so- 
 called amendment relating to Shantung can not by any 
 possibility benefit China, in whose interest it is assumed 
 to be proposed. 
 
 I repeat that I am not going to discuss the nature of 
 the amendments; but I lay down this proposition, and I 
 challenge anybody to meet it: That the adoption of any 
 amendment to this treaty — and the committee proposes 
 many — means its defeat so far as we are concerned. 
 
 Fortunately neither this committee nor the Senate 
 possesses the. power to defeat the treaty. It will go on ; 
 it will go into effect; it will be in. effect in a few weeks; 
 for its provisions are that when three of the great powers 
 in addition to Germany have ratified it, it goes into 
 operation. Great Britain as well as Belgium has done 
 so; France will do so within a very short time; Italy and 
 Japan will undoubtedly follow in rapid succession; and 
 the treaty, so far as those nations are concerned, will be 
 in effect. 
 
 How about the United States? We shall be in the 
 attitude, if we follow the policy of folly which the com- 
 mittee is pursuing, of proposing amendments which are 
 certain to be rejected. Does anybody suppose that if the 
 Senate adopts the so-called Shantung amendment, and 
 if the President, in the exercise of his power, sends it to 
 Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan for concurrence 
 that any one of them will concur in it. Such action is 
 impossible and unthinkable. Great Britain has ratified 
 the treaty, and she will stand by that ratification; France 
 will ratify it, and 'so will Japan and Italy. Japan cer- 
 tainly would never consent to have herself humiliated in 
 the eyes of the world and be compelled to have the pro- 
 visions changed as the committee proposes. Great 
 Britain, France, and Italy are under a treaty obligation 
 with Japan to stand by her in the disposition of the Ger- 
 man interests in the Shantung. How absurd, then, to 
 suppose that those nations will violate their contract, 
 will repudiate their obligation to Japan, even if Japan's 
 consent could be secured. 
 
 But, moreover, be it remembered that France, Great 
 
 70 
 
Britain, and Italy have enormous benefits in this treaty. 
 They can not afford to endanger it, even if they would 
 be willing to affront Japan. They know, if the members 
 of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations do not 
 know, that these nations possess no further power to 
 compel Germany to make any concessions. Gathered in 
 council at Versailles, they said to Germany, "Sign; sign 
 within so many days; sign here; and ratify within such a 
 time." Germany did it. When Germany did that thing 
 she ended compulsion. Any change in the treaty, any 
 new treaty made with Germany, can not be made under 
 compulsion; it can only be made by negotiation. Does 
 anybody suppose that Germany is in any frame of mind 
 at the present time to negotiate? 
 
 So I say, Mr. President, that any proposed amendment 
 to this treaty, whether it is the dotting of an "i" or the 
 crossing of a "t," whether it is good, bad, or indifferent, 
 means that the United States retires from the treaty. 
 We might as well meet that issue here and now. It would 
 be a great deal better faith if the Senators who propose to 
 advocate these amendments did so frankly and declared 
 that they were in favor of rejecting the treaty. 
 
 Mr. Williams. As the Senator from Pennsylvania 
 [Mr. Knox] has done. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Yes, Mr. President, as the Senator 
 from Mississippi says, the Senator from Pennsylvania 
 [Mr. Knox] has done so. Much as I condemn the atti- 
 tude- that the Senator from Pennsylvania took here a 
 few days ago, it must be admitted that he is at least en- 
 titled to the credit of candor and courage in taking it. He 
 seems to have wearied of voting for amendments to kill 
 the treaty; he seems to have realized that he would ulti- 
 mately be forced into the open; that he would have to 
 admit that the amendments would kill it, and that a 
 virtue might as well be made of necessity at once. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. Mr. President — 
 
 The Vice President. Does the Senator from Nebraska 
 yield to the Senator from Washington? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I will yield for a question, but not 
 for delay. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. It is only a question which I desire 
 to ask. 
 
 7i 
 
Mr. Hitchcock. Make it very short, if the Senator 
 please. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. I understand the Senator's attitude 
 to be that — 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. If the Senator will permit me, I will 
 state my attitude, but if he will ask any question, I shall 
 be very glad to answer it. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. Does the Senator advocate the rati- 
 fication of this treaty by the United States without the 
 crossing of a "t" or the dotting of an "i," regardless of 
 the character of the treaty or the effect it will have upon 
 the vital interests of the United States ? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I favor the unqualified ratification 
 of this treaty at the earliest possible date, regardless of 
 any arguments that Senators may make as to the interests 
 of the United States. My investigation shows me that 
 if we do not ratify it our material interests will suffer 
 tremendously; and I shall undertake to show that before 
 I get through. 
 
 Senators here have denounced and condemned the 
 league of nations as altruistic, as an attempt upon the 
 part of the United States to benefit the whole world, 
 sacrificing somewhat, as they claim, the material in- 
 terests of the United States. Those same Senators come 
 here now and defend a destruction of the very important 
 material interests and national interests which this treaty, 
 secured from Germany at the point of the cannon, pro- 
 vides for the United States. 
 
 Suppose we fail to ratify this treaty, suppose we adopt 
 an amendment which defeats the treaty, where will the 
 United States stand? It will stand as a deserter, in the 
 first place, in the great cause in which we enlisted when 
 we entered this war; it will stand as a deserter, leaving 
 the nations associated with us to enforce, as they must, 
 the terms of this treaty against Germany; it will stand 
 as a poltroon amongst the nations of the world, begging 
 Germany for terms of peace. 
 
 Mr. France. Mr. President — 
 
 The Vice President. Does the Senator from Nebraska 
 yield to the Senator from Maryland? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. % Very briefly, if it is a question simply, 
 but not for delay. 
 
 72 
 
Mr. France. Is the Senator aware of the fact that 
 the British labor party, representing 20,000,000 of the 
 British working men, have condemned this treaty in 
 unequivocal terms? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. No, I am not; and I do not care 
 what they have done. 
 
 Mr. President, if the United States takes the position 
 to which I have referred it is then reduced to one of two 
 alternatives: Either it must go hat in hand to Germany 
 and ask Germany to enter into negotiations for a peace 
 settlement, or it must, as some Senators have recom- 
 mended, pass a resolution in Congress declaring that we 
 have reached an unconditional peace with Germany. 
 
 Mr. France. Mr. President — 
 
 The Vice President. Does the Senator from Ne- 
 braska yield further to the Senator from Maryland ? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Under the same conditions, I yield. 
 
 Mr. France. I did not understand the Senator's 
 reply. Does he deny that the great British Labor Party, 
 which will undoubtedly control the destiny of Great 
 Britain after the next election, is unequivocally opposed 
 to the league of nations? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I deny it because I do not know it, 
 and I do not care if it is so. 
 
 Mr. France. Mr. President — 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I ask the Senator not to interrupt 
 me further; it does not comport with what I am saying, 
 and I do not want to have the continuity of my remarks 
 destroyed. 
 
 Unquestionably, Mr. President, the treaty is going to 
 be in operation very soon and the United States will be 
 out in the cold. 
 
 I have said that we will be confronted with two alter- 
 natives; either we will have to go to Germany and ask 
 Germany to negotiate a treaty of peace settlement with 
 us, or we will have to adopt a resolution — a concurrent 
 resolution, as the Senator from Pennsylvania and the 
 Senator from New Mexico have advocated — declaring 
 a state of unconditional peace with Germany. 
 
 Where, then, are the issues of the war with Germany? 
 We leave Germany angry and resentful toward the 
 United States because we, the great democracy on the 
 
 73 
 
western hemisphere, threw our weight into the conflict 
 and defeated her. We lose all the benefits and provisions 
 of this treaty, and Germany will be free to assert against 
 the United States enormous claims, which she undoubt- 
 edly will make, for indemnity. Germany declared no 
 war against us; she will be in a position to say to us, 
 "You declared war against Germany; we did not want 
 war with the United States. You seized the property of 
 thousands of German nationals in the United States con- 
 trary to the treaties of 1799 and 1828; you liquidated 
 that property in violation of international law; your 
 Congress has taken possession of it; we want an indem- 
 nity." We would have with Germany on that account 
 alone, for years to come, a controversy which would in- 
 evitably in time run into the dangers of war. 
 
 Mr. Pittman. Mr. President — 
 
 The Vice President. Does the Senator from Nebraska 
 yield to the Senator from Nevada? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I yield. 
 
 Mr. Pittman. The Senator is referring to the con- 
 tention that Germany would undoubtedly make. He 
 does not of course adopt that contention himself. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. No; I am adopting the contention 
 which Germany would make and which Germany has 
 made since this treaty was signed. Since Germany has 
 realized what we have done in this country — and right- 
 fully done, as I believe — her papers have been aflame 
 with indignation that we have done it. ' Under the treaty 
 Germany validates the acts of Congress, she validates 
 the acts of the Alien Property Custodian under which 
 we have seized from $750,000,000 to $1,000,000,000 
 worth of property belonging to German nationals and 
 hold it. Under this treaty we can hold the proceeds of 
 the sale of that property not only to idemnify ourselves 
 for pre-war losses, not only to indemnify ourselves for 
 losses similar to those occasioned by the sinking of the 
 Lusitania, but also to indemnify and pay the claims 
 of Americans against Germany and against German 
 nationals. What becomes of that? Who is to look out 
 for the payment of claims which German nationals owe 
 to American nationals, if we lose this protection? What 
 is going to become of this $700,000,000 or $800,000,000 
 
 74 
 
of property in the United States which, in the eyes of 
 Germany, if this treaty is not signed, still belong to Ger- 
 man nationals? Senators who are so fond of measuring 
 the material interests of the United States and the 
 nationalism of our country against great world benefit 
 had better think before they reject this treaty and throw 
 the United States into a controversy with Germany which 
 may last for years and may lead to war. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. Mr. President — ■ 
 
 The Vice President. Does the Senator from Nebraska 
 yield to the Senator from Washington? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Under the same conditions, yes. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. Does the Senator mean to say that 
 he would sacrifice the national interests of the United 
 States of America, one of the Commonwealths of which 
 he, in part, represents here in the Senate, for the sake of 
 what he calls world benefits? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I mean to say that the Senators who 
 undertake to advise the United States to play the part of 
 a poltroon and deserter and get out of this treaty would 
 not only put themselves in a bad moral attitude but they 
 would sacrifice these enormous material interests as well. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. Does the Senator agree with the 
 President of the United States who denominates this 
 treaty as a supreme sacrifice by the people of the United 
 States ? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Mr. President, it is a great act, an 
 altruistic act, for the United States to throw its strength 
 into the society of nations and propose to steady the world 
 in this hour of danger. Undoubtedly the United States 
 is able to confer upon the world at this time a benefit 
 greater than any other country can confer. The United 
 States is young; the United States is strong; the United 
 States is rich. It alone of all the nations of the world is 
 able at the present moment to confer upon the world, 
 the distressed and despairing world, benefits such as no 
 other nation can confer. It is an act of altruism; but I 
 am pointing out to Senators that what they propose is 
 going to sacrifice some of the precious material interests 
 about which they are talking all the time. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. Mr. President, I assume 'from what 
 the Senator says that he cares nothing whatever, since he 
 
 75 
 
speaks of them rather contemptuously, for the material 
 interests of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I am attempting to show the Senator 
 that he and his associates are attempting to sacrifice, 
 and propose to sacrifice, the very material interests for 
 which they assume to stand. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. I say to the Senator that he is here 
 as a Senator sworn to protect and guard the material in- 
 terests of the people of the United States. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I have submitted to all the inter- 
 ruptions I propose to; but I will say to the Senator also 
 that I propose to stand by that oath ; and I am standing 
 by it when I insist upon the ratification of this treaty. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. I should like to ask the Senator one 
 other question. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I can not submit to any further 
 questions. I decline to yield further at the present 
 time. 
 
 Mr. President, one of the declarations made in this 
 treaty by Germany is that she assumes full responsibility 
 for this war. If we retire from the treaty she will not 
 assume toward us full responsibility for this war. She 
 will seek to hold us to that responsibility, and in German 
 eyes and in German minds she will have considerable 
 warrant for that claim. 
 
 In this treaty Germany agrees to pay damages. Now, 
 it is up to Congress when the time comes to decide whether 
 or not we will insist upon what we are entitled to under 
 this treat}''; but certainly we should not release Germany 
 from that promise. 
 
 The Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Knox] comes 
 boldly before the Senate and before the country and 
 pleads the German cause. He makes very much the same 
 arguments that the German peace commission made in 
 its communications to the peace conference representing 
 the nations of the world. He makes practically the same 
 arguments against indemnities, the same arguments 
 against excesses, which they made and which the peace 
 conference representing the other nations answered. It 
 is only necessary to read those communications to see 
 where the Senator from Pennsylvania derived his thoughts. 
 
 Mr. President, there are many other benefits which the 
 
 76 ' 
 
United States derives under this treaty, and which the 
 majority of the committee on foreign relations proposes 
 to sacrifice. 
 
 The treaty provides that for six months arfter its 
 ratification Germany will impose no higher customs 
 duties upon imports, as against the nations which sign 
 this treaty, than the customs duties which prevailed for 
 the first six months of 191 4. As against the United 
 States, if we failed to join in executing the treaty, she 
 could put in any tariff she pleased. 
 
 She promises that she will not prohibit or restrict the 
 importation of goods from any of the countries signing 
 this treaty, but there will be no such promises in regard 
 to the United States. 
 
 She promises that there will be no discrimination, 
 direct or indirect, against any of the nations signing this 
 treaty, but she would not make that promise to us if we 
 did not enter into the treaty. 
 
 She promises that there shall be no discrimination in 
 shipping, based on the flag of any country signing this 
 treaty, in any of the German ports. There are no such 
 promises to us if we fail to sign the treaty. 
 
 In this treaty Germany agrees that the nations which 
 sign it can revive, in their own discretion, such former 
 treaties as existed with Germany, but that promise will 
 not exist, so far as we are concerned, if we fail to enter 
 this treaty. 
 
 In this treaty Germany promises to restore the prop- 
 erty of our citizens seized in Germany or to compensate 
 the owners. .No such promise would exist if we failed to 
 ratify the treaty. All American property in Germany 
 would be subject to confiscation. 
 
 Many other promises of that sort are made. I shall 
 not here catalogue them all. Some of them are less im- 
 portant than those I have cited and some of them are 
 fully as important. 
 
 I desire, however, to mention another thing of tremen- 
 dous value in the United States which is provided for in 
 this treaty, and which we will lose if we amend it, because 
 if we amend it we kill it as far as we are concerned. We 
 lose our membership on the great commission of repara- 
 tion. Do Senators realize what that commission is to be? 
 
 77 
 
Each of the nations — the United States, Great Britain, 
 France, Italy, Japan, the Jugo-Slovene State — is to 
 have membership on that commission. Only five nations, 
 however, are to participate in any of its decisions. The 
 United States will always participate. Sometimes Japan 
 will, sometimes the Jugo-Slovene State will, sometimes 
 Belgium will, but always the United States will partici- 
 pate in every one of its decisions. Do Senators realize 
 the tremendous power of this commission? Do they 
 know that it holds the power over Germany to compel 
 her to use all her economic resources to the very limit 
 for carrying out the promises of this treaty? Do they 
 realize that that commission receives from Germany all 
 of the reparation which Germany pays, and distributes it 
 to the various countries? Do they realize that that com- 
 mission has the power to say to Germany how much she 
 shall pay out in gold, what she shall pay out in other 
 forms of property, and how the bonds that she is com- 
 pelled to execute shall be deposited and distributed? 
 Do they realize, moreover, that this commission has the 
 power to say to Germany : ' ' You are importing too much ; 
 you have got to economize ; you can not pay your debts ; 
 you can not comply with the terms of this treaty unless 
 you cut down your imports"? Do Senators realize what 
 that means? It means that the reparation commission 
 can say to Germany: "Cut down your imports of cotton, 
 cut down your imports of wheat, cut down your imports 
 of copper and other mining products, cut down your 
 imports of agricultural and manufactured food." Do 
 Senators think that the United States can -afford not to 
 have representation on that powerful commission? How 
 else are you going to protect the exports of the United 
 States in cotton, copper, wheat, cattle, and all the other 
 products which we hope to sell to Germany, in common 
 with the rest of the world? How are we to protect our- 
 selves against discrimination, as against the rest of the 
 world, if we have no membership upon that commission? 
 Mr. President, to my mind it is unthinkable for the 
 United States not to be represented on this great, power- 
 ful, international body, holding the control of the economic 
 resources of Germany and having the power, until she 
 makes a final settlement, to dictate to her what shall be 
 
 78 
 
done with her products, where they shall be sent, and 
 what she shall import. We can not afford not to be 
 represented on that commission, and we can not be 
 represented on it if we retire from this treaty. 
 
 I am talking material things; I am talking national 
 interests now, that Senators have been disposed to bring 
 into the foreground as the only things to be considered. 
 What do they propose? How do they propose to protect 
 American exports — wheat, cotton, cattle, mining prod- 
 ucts? How do they propose to see that America gets 
 her share? 
 
 The commission is going to be in operation, and it is 
 going to be in operation very soon, and it is going to use 
 its powers, and the United States is going to be in com- 
 petition with Great Britain and France and Japan and 
 other countries; and we can not afford not to be repre- 
 sented on that powerful committee, possessing these 
 enormous powers. The disasters to be contemplated by 
 our retirement from this commission are, to my mind, 
 appalling disasters to our commerce, disasters to our 
 banking interests, disasters to us politically in the larger 
 sense, because it means the isolation of the United States 
 in the world. It means that we affront Japan; it means 
 that we lose our control over the benefits that Germany 
 must pay out in settlement of this war; it means that we 
 leave Great Britain, France, Italy, Japan, and the other 
 twenty-odd nations that sign this treaty in a combination, 
 and we, having secured the hatred of Germany and of 
 Japan, will also earn and merit the contempt of the 
 nations that we desert at this time. Political isolation 
 for the United States — - that is what retirement from 
 this treaty means, and it means nothing less. 
 
 Mr. President, that is the program of the majority of 
 the Foreign Relations Committee. The majority of the 
 Foreign Relations Committee does not represent the 
 dominant majority of this Chamber. It is a committee 
 organized for the very purpose of seizing this treaty and 
 impounding it, holding it there in cold storage, as it has 
 done now for weeks, since the ioth of July, as I recall, 
 because it went to the Foreign Relations -Committee 
 within two weeks after it was signed, and there it remains 
 practically in cold storage. That committee does not 
 
 79 
 
represent the dominant element of the Senate. The 
 majority of the Senate wants that treaty ratified. The 
 overwhelming majority of the American people want it 
 ratified. I have shown here by incontrovertible evidence 
 from time to time that almost invariably, when a test of 
 public opinion has been made in Republican or Demo- 
 cratic communities, the overwhelming sentiment has been 
 shown to be in favor of the ratification of this treaty. 
 Yet that committee, formed and stacked for the purpose, 
 has locked up this great treaty while the whole world is 
 on fire. While our industrial and commercial and finan- 
 cial conditions are imperiled, that committee holds the 
 treaty locked up there, conducting useless hearings about 
 impossible features of the treaty. 
 
 But finally the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Knox] 
 comes frankly into the open and, in his speech of Friday 
 last, takes a position which, as I have said, at least 
 possesses the merit of candor. Some time last October 
 the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Knox], in a speech 
 in this Chamber, stated that the war could only be 
 brought to a conclusion by a treaty, and that the Senate 
 had to participate in the making of the treaty. Now he 
 takes a different position. Now he comes before the 
 Senate and states: 
 
 On the other hand, Congress, while it cannot negotiate a peace with 
 the enemy, can nevertheless end hostilities with him by declaring as no 
 longer existent the status of war with him, which the Congress created by 
 its own act. 
 
 Thus so soon as the first proce s-verbal is drawn under this treaty, 
 Congress may with all propriety, and should to insure full legality to the 
 act of the Executive in negotiating this particular treaty provision, pass a 
 resolution — concurrent, because the Executive having already committed 
 himself to the substance thereof, his approval would be superfluous — - 
 which shall declare that the status of war created by its resolution of 
 April 6, 191 7, no longer exists, and that a status of peace from that 
 moment obtains. Thus we shall put the country immediately upon a 
 complete peace basis and may at once resume all our normal commercial 
 and other relations with Germany, unhampered by any restrictions. So 
 much for that part of the treaty which ends the war. 
 
 The Senator from Pennsylvania takes the preposterous 
 position that because France, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, 
 and the other belligerents in the war have made a peace 
 settlement with Germany therefore we are at peace with 
 Germany. It is an absolutely unthinkable condition. 
 What are the terms of the peace? What have become of 
 
 80 
 
our former treaties with Germany? Who is to pay the 
 damages of the war with Germany ? What are our rights 
 in German ports? Can our shipping be discriminated 
 against? Can Germany make tariffs adverse to us? All 
 those questions remain unsettled, and they were con- 
 sidered important enough in the peace conference in 
 Paris to take up the time of the negotiators for months. 
 And yet the Senator from Pennsylvania blandly says we 
 can now have an unconditional peace with Germany. 
 
 There has been a most tremendous change since 
 October, 191 8. What was then the position of the 
 Senator from Pennsylvania ? What was then the position 
 of the Senator from Washington [Mr. Poindexter], 
 and the Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge], and 
 the Senator from Connecticut [Mr. Brandegee], and all 
 these other Senators who are now so anxious to make an 
 unconditional peace with Germany? Mr. President, 
 even when the President of the United States had simply 
 answered a diplomatic note from Germany asking for 
 terms of armistice, this Chamber rang with denunciations 
 by Republican Senators, who said nothing but an un- 
 conditional surrender of Germany. They shouted until 
 the rafters rang with the statement that we could not 
 possibly have a negotiated peace with Germany. "Un- 
 conditional surrender!" And now they come here and 
 blandly propose an unconditional peace. Then they pro- 
 tested that it would be an outrage for the United States 
 to act independently of the nations associated with us in the 
 war, and now they come and denounce the President be- 
 cause in association with those nations he has made a 
 peace with Germany and imposed the terms of uncondi- 
 tional surrender on Germany. 
 
 Mr. President, why this change? What has happened? 
 Has the President done anything more or different from 
 what he had been required to do? Did any senator rise 
 here in his place, before the peace conference met in 
 Paris, and insist that the United States should make a 
 separate peace with Germany? I do not remember any. 
 There were none until the present time, when there is a fond 
 hope to discredit the President of the United States now 
 just as they attempted to discredit him then because they 
 thought he might make a separate peace with Germany. 
 
 81 
 
Mr. Poindexter. Mr. President — 
 
 The Vice President. Does the Senator from Ne- 
 braska yield to the Senator from Washington ? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Under the same condition as before. 
 
 Mr. Poindexter. The Senator mentioned my name. 
 I do not care to ask a question. I was just going to make 
 a brief statement. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I will ask the Senator to postpone 
 that brief statement. 
 
 I will read first from some things said by the Senator 
 from Pennsylvania [Mr. Knox]. This was October 28, 
 1918. He said : 
 
 It was always true and was early recognized by all that the object of 
 this war was and is the permanent removal of the German menace. 
 
 Not the temporary, but "the permanent." 
 
 In the formula "restitution, reparation, and guaranties," the word 
 guaranty is not to mean written guaranties, such as we have seen treated 
 as scraps of paper in the cases of Belgium's neutrality, of accepted inter- 
 national law, of Hague conventions, of the rules of civilized warfare on 
 land and seas. We shall have the guaranties we seek only when we know 
 as a fact, irrespective of the solemnities of diplomatic promises, that the 
 German menace is at an end once for all. 
 
 How can it be at an end once for all if a treaty does not 
 go into effect? Can it be put into effect by an uncondi- 
 tional deed, by a concurrent resolution of the Senate and 
 House of Representatives that peace has arrived because 
 we have quit fighting ? 
 
 Even "restitution and reparation"; even the return of Alsace-Lorraine 
 to France; even just frontiers for Italy and Roumania and the rescue and 
 restoration of Russia and independence for Jugo-Slavs, Czecho-Slovaks, 
 and Poles, and for the nationalities oppressed by Turkey; even the libera- 
 tion of Africans and others from German colonial oppression — all these 
 matters — however absloute their intrinsic importance — for the prime 
 purpose of the war, which is, I say again, for our guaranty against 
 the German menace — are of chief interest because they subserve that 
 guaranty. 
 
 Yet now the Senator from Pennsylvania proposes to 
 scuttle and run and leave the other nations that were 
 associated with us in the war to make good those guar- 
 anties ? 
 
 We shall require also evidence that the German grip upon Russia, the 
 Balkans, and Turkey has been loosed. We must never allow to be obscured 
 the prime purpose of the war. From that purpose flows as a corollary the 
 purpose to strive to make the menace of unjust war from any quarter as 
 improbable as we can. 
 
 82 
 
What are we going to do with Russia? What is to 
 achieve this purpose if we make an unconditional peace 
 with Germany by a joint or concurrent resolution? 
 
 From that, again, and from the chivalrous spirit of the entente allies 
 flows the demands for restitution and reparation and for all the com- 
 plicated territorial and racial readjustments, to some of which I have 
 referred. 
 
 And now the Senator from Pennsylvania stands upon 
 the floor and denounces the treaty because it gives to the 
 nations of the world reparation and restitution and he 
 proposes that the United States shall waive any claim 
 that it has against Germany, the thing which is provided 
 for in the treaty, and he says with a most naive humor 
 that when the United States waives its claim against 
 Germany it should see to it that the other nations give 
 Germany credit for what we release. How are we going 
 to do that if we are not a party to the treaty? What 
 right have we to say to Great Britain and France and the 
 other nations that get restitution, "You ought not to 
 press Germany so far if we are not a party to the treaty ' ' ? 
 Does the Senator from Pennsylvania think that we can 
 desert our associates and leave them to enforce the terms 
 of this treaty alone and then see that they give Germany 
 credit for what we have sacrificed ? 
 
 Mr. McCormick. Mr. President, will the Senator 
 yield for a question? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Such a policy of folly and pol- 
 troonery was never proposed on the floor of the Senate 
 before. 
 
 I yield to the Senator from Illinois for a brief question. 
 
 Mr. McCormick. I only wish to ask if in that con- 
 nection it would be consistent for us to interfere with 
 Greece obtaining Thrace or Italy obtaining Fiume? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. The Senator is very desirous on all 
 occasions of bringing in some other subject. I am con- 
 fining myself to this treaty and the effect which will be 
 produced if we adopt amendments and therefore destroy our 
 participation in the treaty. I do not propose on this occa- 
 sion to discuss either the labor situation in Great Britain 
 or any of the remote diplomatic questions of the East. 
 
 Mr. Wadsworth. Mr. President, will the Senator 
 yield ? 
 
 83 
 
Mr. Hitchcock. I yield. 
 
 Mr. Wadsworth. The Senator was speaking a moment 
 ago, as I understood him, about claims of the United 
 States exercised under this treaty. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Yes. 
 
 Mr. Wadsworth. Will the Senator recite what claims 
 the United States is pressing under the treaty ? I thought 
 the United States was not to get anything. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. The United States can hardly be 
 said to be in the attitude of pressing claims, but under the 
 terms of the treaty it is entitled to all the claims that any 
 other participant in the treaty is entitled to, equally 
 situated. I do not suppose that the Congress of the United 
 States would care to compel Germany to pay the cost of 
 American intervention. Other nations may do so; I 
 do not know whether they will or not; but whatever the 
 United States shall do is at least reserved for the Govern- 
 ment of the United States to decide after the treaty is 
 ratified. Then will be the time if Senators are anxious 
 to sacrifice American claims for the benefit of Germany 
 to do so, but we can not do that unless we are a party to 
 this treaty. 
 
 Mr. Wadsworth. I understand that the President 
 has already stated officially, or in such way as to have it 
 understood, that the United States does not intend to 
 collect anything from Germany. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. There has been no statement of that 
 sort made to Germany. 
 
 Mr. Wadsworth. He made it to the people of the 
 United States. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. The President has perhaps made it 
 in his discussions, and possibly in association with the 
 representatives of other nations in Europe echoed the 
 sentiment, which I believe is general in this country, that 
 this country does not propose to exact a pound of flesh 
 from Germany, that this country is going to hold to a high 
 altruistic position, but that is no reason why we should 
 not sign the treaty. If we want to collect an indemnity 
 from Germany in any form under the terms of the treaty, 
 we can if desired be generous and give it back to her, 
 provided we sign the treaty. 
 
 Mr. Williams. As we did in the Boxer case. 
 
 84 
 
Mr. Hitchcock. Yes; as. the Senator from Mississippi 
 suggests, as we did in the Boxer case. 
 
 Mr. McCumber. Mr. President — 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I yield to the Senator from North 
 Dakota. 
 
 Mr. McCumber. As a matter of fact, whatever right 
 we obtain under the treaty is a right obtained in favor of 
 the United States, and neither the President nor anyone 
 else but Congress can renounce those rights. Is not that 
 correct ? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. That is correct, Congress, with the 
 approval of the President. It requires the whole Govern- 
 ment of the United States as I understand it. 
 
 Mr. McCumber. It is the Government which must 
 renounce and not the President. 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. In his speech the other day the 
 Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Knox] made this 
 declaration : 
 
 And this thought brings me to speak again of what I have said here- 
 tofore, that this treaty, stripped of its meaningless beatific provisions — 
 
 Whatever they are — 
 
 provides merely and simply for an alliance between the five great powers 
 in a coalition against the balance of the world. And again I ask, has history 
 ever answered this save in one way — by destroying the coalition and at 
 times all or some of its constituent members? 
 
 Aside from the inaccuracies of this statement, which 
 implies that only five great powers are in the treaty, 
 whereas there are twenty-seven signers as I recall it, em- 
 bracing a very wide scope of nations all over the world 
 — aside from the inaccuracies of the statement made by 
 the Senator from Pennsylvania last Friday, contrast it 
 with the statements he made a year ago upon the floor of 
 the Senate on the 28th day of October, when he said: 
 
 The league of nations that now challenges our solicitude is the league of 
 nations of which we are now a member — the glorious present alliance of 
 the many powers with whom we are now fighting as a league to enforce 
 and to maintain peace from disturbance by the German menace. 
 
 Not merely to fight the war, but to establish and main- 
 tain peace. The Senator from Pennsylvania last October 
 denomiated as a glorious league of nations that which he 
 now condemns as an alliance inimical to the world. He 
 called it a "glorious alliance." 
 
 85 
 
He continues: 
 
 If we should allow that league to fall apart or to be pried apart by- 
 German machinations, who can say when this world will ever again be 
 so near to having a general league to enforce peace as it is to-day? 
 
 And yet the Senator from Pennsylvania and his asso- 
 ciates upon the Committee on Foreign Relations now 
 deliberately propose to pry apart this glorious alliance of 
 which he sounded the praises only last October when he 
 thought he could bring by his declaration condemnation 
 upon the President of the United States. I do not assert 
 that it is being pried apart by German machinations, but 
 I heard in the Senator's speech a very distinct appeal to 
 German sentiment, and I would suggest to the Senator 
 from Pennsylvania, if he really desires to plead German 
 sentiment to the logical conclusion, German sentiment 
 in Europe or in America, that he suggest that the United 
 States make reparation to Germany for the damage she 
 suffered by our entry into the war. That would be logical. 
 
 The Senator from Pennsylvania then proceeded last 
 October : 
 
 Out of the present alliance to-day, and quite irrespective of any dis- 
 cussions with the enemy, it would seem possible to perpetuate the league 
 'we have, already embracing the majority of the population of the globe, 
 as a league for one single purpose of enforcing peace. 
 
 Perpetuate, he said, the league we have. Now he pro- 
 poses to disrupt it and break it up when the President of 
 the United States has done the very thing the Senator 
 then declared should be done. 
 
 The function of such a league," I take it, would be to examine any con- 
 troversy that threatened war and then to throw its weight to the side of 
 such controversy where justice and equity lay, and also to suppress with 
 its overwhelming power any war that might break out and to indicate the 
 just solution of the contention. Such a league, like any league, will de- 
 mand some encroachment upon the conception of complete and independ- 
 ent sovereignty. 
 
 But the Senator from Pennsylvania advocated it only 
 last October and now he denounces it and attempts to do 
 the very thing that he then condemned, namely, to pry 
 apart what he then denominated as a "glorious, league" 
 or a "glorious alliance." 
 
 But enough of the Senator from Pennsylvania, and yet 
 not enough. I forgot one thing concerning the' Senator 
 from Pennsylvania which I want to include. 
 
 86 
 
On the 17 th of July the Senate had under consideration 
 a resolution presented by the Senator from Pennsylvania, 
 which had for its purpose to tear out of this treaty the 
 league of nations. I am not going to discuss the league 
 of nations. The Senator from Pennsylvania is on both 
 sides of the fence, just as is the Senator from Massachu- 
 setts [Mr. Lodge], and many other Senators who now 
 oppose it, but I want to read what the Senator from 
 Pennsylvania said on July 1 7 of this year. He said : 
 
 The resolution before us does not call for a vote for or against the 
 league of nations; it does not call for even an expression of an opinion 
 either for or against the league. On these points this resolution is wholly 
 colorless. This resolution asks merely and solely that the treaty embody- 
 ing the league shall be in words so framed that the Senate may advise 
 and consent to that part of it — ■ 
 
 That is, that part of the treaty — 
 
 which shall bring us peace, and that it may reserve for further considera- 
 tion that part of it by which it is proposed to make us a part of a projected 
 league of nations. 
 
 What has come over the spirit of the dreams of the 
 Senator from Pennsylvania that has brought about this 
 change since July 17? Then he wanted to tear the league 
 of nations out of the treaty and ratify the rest of it. Now 
 he proposes that we withdraw from the treaty absolutely. 
 I suspect this has come to his attention, that he could not 
 eliminate the league of nations from the treaty. A ma- 
 jority of the Senate is determined to see the league of 
 nations remain in the treaty. Having reached that con- 
 clusion he now takes the position that the only hope is to 
 defeat the whole treaty. I suppose that is the explana- 
 tion of the otherwise inexplicable change made by the 
 Senator from Pennsylvania. 
 
 I said that this Chamber rang last October with decla- 
 rations of Senators that the United States must be a 
 party to a treaty, that this treaty must be imposed on 
 Germany by force, and that the United States must unite 
 with the allied nations in imposing the treaty, and they 
 must not on any account negotiate a treaty separately 
 with Germany. I will just state haphazard a few state- 
 ments made by Senators on that subject. 
 
 On October 14, 1918, the Senator from Indiana [Mr. 
 New] said: 
 
 87 
 
I am against a negotiated peace now, as I have been from the moment 
 the United States entered the war. Nothing short of absolute, complete, 
 and unconditional surrender, carrying with it full reparation for the dam- 
 age wrought, will be accepted or tolerated, and it is my belief that any- 
 thing that has even the appearance of willingness to accept anything less 
 will be taken as a failure to carry out the purposes for which we entered 
 this war and will be resented with a unanimity and an emphasis that will 
 permit of no misunderstanding. 
 
 We have neither hope nor desire to regain the fabulous sums of money 
 we have spent and may yet spend before the end is reached. But, sir, 
 while all this is true, I do not believe that the American people will wit- 
 tingly or complacently submit to seeing themselves placed at a permanent 
 and irremediable commercial disadvantage through the medium of the 
 terms of peace, whenever or wherever they may be submitted. 
 
 And yet the Senator from Indiana now proposes by the 
 action he takes in the Committee on Foreign Relations 
 to commit the United States to a separate peace with 
 Germany, unconditional if need be. He undertakes by 
 his vote to deprive the United States of the great benefits 
 which that treaty secured at the cannon's mouth and 
 leave the United States helpless, burdened with a con- 
 troversy with Germany, which may last for years and 
 may lead to war. There is a wonderful change there in 
 attitude. 
 
 Mr. Walsh of Montana. Mr. President — 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I yield to the Senator from Montana. 
 
 Mr. Walsh of Montana. I desire to know if the posi- 
 tion of the Senator, as to any treaty that shall be here- 
 after made with Germany, if this is rejected, is that it must 
 be a negotiated and not a dictated treaty? Why could 
 we not dictate another treaty with Germany as this has 
 been dictated? Does the military situation render that 
 impracticable? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. I, perhaps, have not been specific 
 enough on that point, and I thank the Senator from 
 Montana for calling it to my attention. 
 
 I have stated that compulsion was exhausted when we 
 laid down in the treaty which our representatives signed 
 the terms with Germany. When Germany signed, and 
 certainly when the German assembly ratified it, Germany 
 accepted the stipulations and it is too late for us to go to 
 Germany, it- is too late to reassemble the council in Paris 
 and have the council undertake to say to Germany, "You 
 must accept this change." Our allies' armies have been 
 demobilized, our Army has been brought home, and, 
 
even if that were not the case, diplomatic usage and in- 
 ternational law will excuse Germany from further conces- 
 sions. 
 
 Germany would have a right to say if we asked. new 
 conditions, "We accepted this treaty; we have signed 
 this treaty; we have ratified the treaty; and any further 
 changes you want in the treaty you have got to secure 
 from us, and we will impose the terms." Germany can 
 take that position; and because Germany can take that 
 position, none of the other nations — Great Britain, 
 France, or Japan — will take any chances in encouraging 
 us to make impossible amendments; they will not risk 
 their hold on Germany by any such act; and I can not 
 think that the Senate of the United States will be guilty 
 of that ridiculous folly. 
 
 Mr. Williams. If the Senator will pardon me one 
 question, even if we could resummon the council that 
 made this treaty, and even if we could make Germany 
 by compulsion accept a virtually new treaty or amended 
 treaty, what reason could there be why the council could 
 not meet once a month or once a week and still compel 
 Germany once a month or once a week to accept a new 
 treaty ? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. Certainly. 
 
 Mr. Williams. Would there ever be any finality about 
 it at all? 
 
 Mr. Hitchcock. There never would be any finality. 
 That shows the preposterous nature of the suggestion, if 
 there be such a suggestion; and I have not heard any 
 deliberate suggestion from Senators who advocate an 
 unconditional peace. They have simply come down from 
 unconditional surrender to unconditional peace, and they 
 give no reasons. 
 
 The Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Lodge], on 
 October 10 of last year, used this language: 
 
 Mr. President, in the principles, with many of which I find no fault — 
 in the principles laid down of the 14 points or 4 points I find nothing that 
 is satisfactory to me at least about reparation. 
 
 The Senator from Massachusetts was then criticizing 
 and condemning the President of the United States be- 
 cause he did not demand reparation, but now he is sup- 
 porting and backing up the Senator from Pennsylvania 
 
 89 
 
[Mr. Knox] who denounces reparation. Later in the 
 same speech the Senator from Massachusetts said: 
 
 Though I think we ought to have a large reparation for some of our 
 merchants ships and for our passengers who went down on the Lusitania, 
 the world ought to have, must have, large reparation. There is such a 
 thing as retributive justice; there is such a thing as punitive justice. 
 
 Now, the Senator from Massachusetts, the chairman 
 of the Committee on Foreign Relations, is cooperating 
 with Senators constituting a majority of that committee 
 who propose that the United States shall back out of and 
 run away from the only possible means by which we can 
 enforce reparation and justice, and he is willing absolutely 
 to deprive us of membership upon the commission which 
 is to make permanent the achievements of this war. 
 
 Later on, the Senator from Massachusetts said: 
 
 Mr. President, the best diplomatists in Europe at this moment are the 
 armies of France and Italy, of England, and of the United States. The 
 best men to carry on discussion with Germany are Haig and Pershing and 
 Diaz and, over all, the great commander, Marshal Foch. Those are the 
 negotiators with whom I would leave the question of peace. They will 
 win it. They will win it on German soil. They will bring back the peace 
 which the whole American people desire, for they desire, I believe, uncon- 
 ditional surrender; and unconditional surrenders are not obtained by 
 clever discussion and exchange of notes. They are won by armies in the 
 field. 
 
 Now the Senator from Massachusetts and his associates 
 upon the committee propose to repudiate those negotia- 
 tors, those military forces that negotiated this peace and 
 secured these concessions ; they propose to repudiate those 
 negotiators they then glorified and come down to an ex- 
 change of notes with Germany. Later on in the same speech 
 the Senator from Massachusetts said : 
 
 The way to compel the peace of the world is to break Germany down and 
 make her accept our terms. 
 
 He did not want the President of the United States to do 
 anything which would impair that great purpose. He con- 
 tinues : 
 
 The Republican — 
 
 Here we get a little partnership — 
 The Republican — 
 
 That is, as distinguished from the Democratic Presi- 
 dent — l 
 
 90 
 
The Republican stands for unconditional surrender and complete vic- 
 tory, just as Grant stood. My own belief is that the American people 
 mean to have an unconditional surrender. They mean to have a dictated 
 peace and not a negotiated peace. That is my own belief here deeper in 
 my heart than any belief I have ever had. 
 
 What is the reason for the change? Now that we have 
 secured a dictated peace, do we propose to abandon it at the 
 suggestion of the majority of the Committee on Foreign 
 Relations and enter upon negotiations to secure a peace? It 
 is because the President of the United States has secured 
 the benefits of a dictated peace and they want to discredit 
 him. 
 
 Again, on another day in the Senate, October 7, 19 18, 
 the Senator from Massachusetts used this language: 
 
 Mr. President, the mischief is in any discussion of the principles upon 
 which peace should be debated. When Germany has surrendered, when 
 she holds up her hands and says, "We are beaten; what terms will you 
 impose?" then the Allies and the United States can tell her what terms 
 they will impose. There is, there must be, no other end, no other solution. 
 
 And yet the Senator from Massachusetts at the present 
 time is cooperating with the Senators who are attempting to 
 bring about directly the opposite solution of that question. 
 
 The Senator from Washington [Mr. Poindexter] on 
 October 10 of last year said: 
 
 The German chancellor can well answer each one of the inquiries of 
 the President in such way as will be most calculated to accomplish his 
 object. He can say that he represents both the Government and the 
 people of Germany, and who can dispute his statement? In this he un- 
 doubtedly would be correct, as, for the purposes of this war, there is no 
 difference between the German people and the German Government. 
 
 I read that, Mr. President, lest some one may arise here 
 and say that the attitude of the majority of the Committee 
 on Foreign Relations is based upon the fact that we are now 
 dealing with representatives of the German people instead 
 of representatives of the German Empire. 
 
 Again, on the 10th of October, 1918, the Senator from 
 Washington [Mr. Poindexter] used this language: 
 
 We have just heard the views of the Senator from Massachusetts as to 
 the way the war with Germany should end. He is in favor of an unqualified 
 victory; he is in favor of subduing the military power of Germany and of 
 imposing upon her a peace and a reestablishment of conditions after- the 
 war to be dictated by the allies. 
 
 That is what the Senator from Washington wanted last 
 October. Yet now the Senator is cooperating with those 
 
 9i 
 
who seek to destroy the dictated peace and relegate the 
 United States to the uncertainties of a negotiated peace. 
 
 I could cite the statements of other Senators and will 
 cite something by one of the Senators now determined on 
 destroying this treaty. On October 14 last the Senator 
 from Missouri [Mr. Reed] used this language". 
 
 An unfortunate impression is, I fear, being made upon the country. 
 Nothing in the Senate does aught to add thereto. It seems to me that 
 the country is getting the notion that the President of the United States 
 intends to enter upon a system of parleying and negotiations with Ger- 
 many, and that at the end of the negotiations Germany is to come off 
 unscathed. 
 
 I tell you, sirs, when the conditions of peace are written the name of 
 Woodrow Wilson will not be, it can not be, subscribed to any treaty that 
 does not compel Germany to tread the wine press of repentance — to pay 
 back, to pay back to the world, as far as she can, in her own suffering 
 for the agonies that she has wrought, for the desolation she has brought 
 upon the earth. 
 
 Yet it is now. proposed to destroy this treaty — the only 
 one that can be exacted from Germany by force, the only 
 one that can be imposed upon her — and relegate the United 
 States to a negotiated treaty. 
 
 I shall close my references to the speeches of Senators by 
 reading some remarks by the Senator from Iowa [Mr. 
 Cummins], who, I have no doubt, stands by those remarks 
 to-day. I read them merely because they express what I 
 believe represents the overwhelming sentiment of the ma- 
 jority of the Senate, including Senators on both sides of the 
 Chamber. The Senator from Iowa, on October 14, 1918, 
 said: 
 
 My concern relates mainly to our attitude toward Germany after the 
 victory has been won and after her surrender is complete, for it will be 
 just as fatal to impose inadequate terms through negotiation. 
 
 There is but one answer that will meet the demands of justice and 
 satisfy the claims of an outraged world. There must be reparation for 
 the past and security for the future. 
 
 First. Germany must pay, pay to the last farthing of her capacity to 
 pay, pay until the generations yet to come will remember and curse the 
 insane ambition which well nigh destroyed civilization itself, and so she 
 will repair in some small measure the destruction she has wrought. 
 
 Second. Germany is a menace to mankind, because she has a cruel, 
 wicked, malicious intent toward the remainder of the world, and because 
 she has a powerful Army and Navy to execute her murderous designs. 
 We can not change her intent, for it is the result of years and years of 
 training and teaching in a false and selfish philosophy, but we can disarm 
 her and leave her helpless and harmless. 
 
 Viewed from the ordinary standpoint, these terms are severe beyond 
 precedent, but the situation itself has no parallel in history. I understand 
 perfectly that these conditions mean the degradation, possibly the disin- 
 
 92 
 
tegration, of a once mighty nation; but if we are to be safe, if the world is 
 to be secure, they must be imposed. 
 
 It will be gratifying to see Germany supplant her existing Government 
 with a better and freer one; but that will not suffice, for republics are as 
 strong in their purposes as autocracies. Oftentimes they are as ambitious 
 as the most absolute of monarchies, and we are now witnessing the ease 
 with which they mobilize and the success with which they fight. 
 
 Mr. President, that, was the situation a year ago ; it was 
 the situation last October. The statements made by those 
 Senators represent not only the overwhelming public opin- 
 ion of the United States, but they represent practically the 
 unanimous opinion of the Senate of the United States. 
 Many of those remarks were made in criticism of the Pres- 
 ident because it was thought or assumed that he was going 
 to enter into negotiations with Germany and permit her to 
 escape from the decision of a great military victory ; but they 
 were statements just the same, and they are binding upon 
 the Senators who made them. I should like to have those 
 Senators rise upon the floor of the Senate and explain what 
 has caused their change of front and why when they con- 
 demned the President of the United States because they 
 thought he proposed to make a separate peace with Germany 
 then, they now condemn him because he has united with the 
 Allies in making peace. I should like to have them rise in 
 their places and explain why they have come down from 
 the heights of unconditional surrender to the depths of un- 
 conditional peace. I should like to have them explain why 
 they called loudly for reparation to the uttermost farthing 
 last October and now boldly come here and advocate aban- 
 doning all American claims for restitution. I should like 
 to have them explain to the people of the United States how 
 they are going to protect the material interests of the United 
 States if they abdicate and give away the protection of the 
 provisions of this treaty to which I have specifically re- 
 ferred. It can not be done. 
 
 The Senators who are taking the course of destroying 
 this treaty by amendments are in a position absolutely incon- 
 sistent with that which they held a year ago. They dare 
 not go before the American people and advocate a nego- 
 tiated peace with Germany. They dare not go before the 
 American people and say: "We are going to waive all 
 the benefits the United States secures from Germany un- 
 der this treaty — the reparations, the repayment of the loss 
 
 93 
 
of the Lusitania and other horrors, the payment of Ameri- 
 can nationals who have claims against German nationals, 
 the disposition of the German property in this country 
 which the Congress of the United States declared shall be 
 liquidated and wiped out." They dare not go before the 
 people of the United States and say : " We are not going to 
 provide for the protection of American exports, which are 
 going to be largely under the control of the reparations 
 commission of Europe." 
 
 Mr. President, 1 had expected to say something on the 
 league of nations, but I have talked too long already, and 
 I shall postpone that for a future time. I have sought in this 
 address to meet upon their own ground Senators who 
 glorify nationalism and constantly shout for material inter- 
 ests, when other Senators stand here advocating that the 
 United States shall take its great part in reorganizing the 
 world for peace. I have met them upon their own ground 
 to-day, and I should like to have them answer how they 
 can excuse the poltroonery of the United States if it deserts 
 its associates in this war at the very hour when it is neces- 
 sary to make permanent the achievements of the war. 
 
 H . 46- 73 
 
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