former market; there is an immediate need for cotton belting, and also for lubricating oil, which can not be met-all because the channels of trade are barred by war when there is no war. The same is true of raw cotton, of which the Central Empires alone formerly purchased nearly 4,000,000 bales. And these are only examples. There is hardly a single raw material, a single important foodstuff, a single class of manufactured goods which is not in the same case. Our full, normal profitable production waits on peace.

Our military plans of course wait upon it. We can not intelligently or wisely decide how large a naval or military force we shall maintain or what our policy with regard to military training is to be until we have peace not only, but also until we know how peace is to be sustained, whether by the arms of single nations or by the concert of all the great peoples. And there is more than that difficulty involved. The vast surplus properties of the Army include not food and clothing merely, whose sale will affect normal production, but great manufacturing establishments also which should be restored to their former uses, great stores of machine tools, and all sorts of merchandise which must lie idle until peace and military policy are definitively determined. By the same token there can be no properly studied national budget until then.

The nations that ratify the treaty, such as Great Britain, Belgium, and France, will be in a position to lay their plans for controlling the markets of central Europe without competition from us if we do not presently act. We have no consular agents, no trade representatives there to look after our interests.

There are large areas of Europe whose future will lie uncertain and questionable until their people know the final settlements of peace and the forces which are to administer and sustain it. Without determinate markets our production can not proceed with intelligence or confidence. There can be no stabilization of wages because there can be no settled conditions of employment. There can be no easy or normal industrial credits because there can be no confident or permanent revival of business.

But I will not weary you with obvious examples. I will only venture to repeat that every element of normal life amongst us depends upon and awaits the ratification of the treaty of peace; and also that we can not afford to lose a single summer's day by not doing all that we can to mitigate the winter's suffering, which, unless we find means to prevent it, may prove disastrous to a large portion of the world, and may, at its worst, bring upon Europe conditions even more terrible than those wrought by the war itself.

Nothing, I am led to believe, stands in the way of the ratification of the treaty except certain doubts with regard to the meaning and implication of certain articles of the covenant of the league of nations; and I must frankly say that I am unable to understand why such doubts should be entertained. You will recall that when I had the pleasure of a conference with your committee and with the Committee of the House of Representatives on Foreign Affairs at the White House in March last the questions now most frequently asked about the league of nations were all canvassed with a view to their immediate clarification. The covenant of the league was then in its first draft and subject to revision. It was pointed out that no express recognition was given to the Monroe doctrine; that it was not expressly pro

vided that the league should have no authority to act or to express a judgment on matters of domestic policy; that the right to withdraw from the league was not expressly recognized; and that the constitutional right of the Congress to determine all questions of peace and war was not sufficiently safeguarded. On my return to Paris all these matters were taken up again by the commission on the league of nations and every suggestion of the United States was accepted.

The views of the United States with regard to the questions I have mentioned had, in fact, already been accepted by the commission and there was supposed to be nothing inconsistent with them in the draft of the covenant first adopted the draft which was the subject of our discussion in March-but no objection was made to saying explicitly in the text what all had supposed to be implicit in it. There was absolutely no doubt as to the meaning of any one of the resulting provisions of the covenant in the minds of those who participated in drafting them, and I respectfully submit that there is nothing vague or doubtful in their wording.

The Monroe doctrine is expressly mentioned as an understanding. which is in no way to be impaired or interfered with by anything contained in the covenant and the expression "regional understandings like the Monroe doctrine" was used, not because anyone of the conferees thought there was any comparable agreement anywhere else in existence or in contemplation, but only because it was thought best to avoid the appearance of dealing in such a document with the policy of a single nation. Absolutely nothing is concealed in the phrase.

With regard to domestic questions Article XVI of the covenant. expressly provides that, if in case of any dispute arising between members of the league the matter involved is claimed by one of the parties "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." The United States was by no means the only Government interested in the explicit adoption of this provision, and there is no doubt in the mind of any authoritative student of international law that such matters as immigration, tariffs, and naturalization are incontestably domestic questions with which no international body could deal without express authority to do so. No enumeration of domestic questions was undertaken because to undertake it, even by sample, would have involved the danger of seeming to exclude those not mentioned.

The right of any sovereign State to withdraw had been taken for granted, but no objection was made to making it explicit. Indeed, so soon as the views expressed at the White House conference were laid before the commission it was at once conceded that it was best not to leave the answer to so important a question to inference. No proposal was made to set up any tribunal to pass judgment upon the question whether a withdrawing nation had in fact fulfilled "all its international obligations and all its obligations under the covenant." It was recognized that that question must be left to be resolved by the conscience of the nation proposing to withdraw; and I must say that it did not seem to me worth while to propose that the article be made more explicit, because I knew that the United States would

never itself propose to withdraw from the league if its conscience was not entirely clear as to the fulfillment of all its international obligations. It has never failed to fulfill them and never will.

Article 10 is in no respect of doubtful meaning when read in the light of the covenant as a whole. The council of the league can only "advise upon" the means by which the obligations of that great article are to be given effect to. Unless the United States is a party to the policy or action in question, her own affirmative vote in the council is necessary before any advice can be given, for a unanimous vote of the council is required. If she is a party, the trouble is hers anyhow. And the unanimous vote of the council is only advice in any case. Each Government is free to reject it if it pleases. Nothing could have been made more clear to the conference than the right of our Congress under our Constitution to exercise its independent judgment in all matters of peace and war. No attempt was made to question or limit that right. The United States will, indeed, undertake under article 10 to "respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the league," and that engagement constitutes a very grave and solemn moral obligation. But it is a moral, not a legal, obligation, and leaves our Congress absolutely free to put its own interpretation upon it in all cases that call for action. It is binding in conscience only, not in law.

Article 10 seems to me to consitute the very backbone of the whole covenant. Without it the league would be hardly more than an influential debating society.

It has several times been suggested, in public debate and in private conference, that interpretations of the sense in which the United States accepts the engagements of the covenant should be embodied in the instrument of ratification. There can be no reasonable objection to such interpretations accompanying the act of ratification provided they do not form a part of the formal ratification itself. Most of the interpretations which have been suggested to me embody what seems to me the plain meaning of the instrument itself. But if such interpretations should constitute a part of the formal resolution of ratification, long delays would be the inevitable consequence, inasmuch as all the many governments concerned would have to accept, in effect, the language of the Senate as the language of the treaty before ratification would be complete. The assent of the German Assembly at Weimar would have to be obtained, among the rest, and I must frankly say that I could only with the greatest reluctance approach that assembly for permission to read the treaty as we understand it and as those who framed it quite certainly understood it. If the United States were to qualify the document in any way, moreover, I am confident from what I know of the many conferences and debates which accompanied the formulation of the treaty that our example would immediately be followed in many quarters, in some instances with very serious reservations, and that the meaning and operative force of the treaty would presently be clouded from one end of its clauses to the other.

Pardon me, Mr. Chairman, if I have been entirely unreserved and plain spoken in speaking of the great matters we all have so much at heart. If excuse is needed, I trust that the critical situation of affairs may serve as my justification. The issues that manifestly

hang upon the conclusions of the Senate with regard to peace and upon the time of its action are so grave and so clearly insusceptible of being thrust on one side or postponed that I have felt it necessary in the public interest to make this urgent plea, and to make it as simply and as unreservedly as possible.

I thought that the simplest way, Mr. Chairman, to cover the points that I knew to be points of interest.

The CHAIRMAN. Mr. President, so far as I am personally concerned and I think I represent perhaps the majority of the committee in that respect-we have no thought of entering upon argument as to interpretations or points of that character; but the committee is very desirous of getting information on certain points which seem not clear and on which they thought information would be of value to them in the consideration of the treaty which they, I think I may say for myself and others, desire to hasten in every possible way.

Your reference to the necessity of action leads me to ask one question. If we have to restore peace to the world it is necessary, I assume, that there should be treaties with Austria, Hungary, Turkey, and Bulgaria. Those treaties are all more or less connected with the treaty with Germany. The question I should like to ask is, what the prospect is of our receiving those treaties for action.

The PRESIDENT. I think it is very good, sir, and, so far as I can judge from the contents of the dispatches from my colleagues on the other side of the water, the chief delay is due to the uncertainty as to what is going to happen to this treaty. This treaty is the model for the others. I saw enough of the others before I left Paris to know that they are being framed upon the same set of principles and that the treaty with Germany is the model. I think that is the chief element of delay, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. They are not regarded as essential to the consideration of this treaty?

The PRESIDENT. They are not regarded as such; no, sir; they follow this treaty.

The CHAIRMAN. I do not know about the other treaties, but the treaty with Poland, for example, has been completed?

The PRESIDENT. Yes, and signed; but it is dependent on this treaty. My thought was to submit it upon the action on this treaty. The CHAIRMAN. I should like, if I may, to ask a question in regard to the plans submitted to the commission on the league of nations, if that is the right phrase.

The PRESIDENT. Yes, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. You were kind enough to send us the draft of the American plan. When we were here in February, if I understood you rightly-I may be incorrect but I understood you to say that there were other drafts or plans submitted by Great Britain, by France, and by Italy. Would it be possible for us to see those other tentative plans?

The PRESIDENT. I would have sent them to the committee with pleasure, Senator, if I had found that I had them. I took it for granted that I had them, but the papers that remain in my hands remain there in a haphazard way. I can tell you the character of the other drafts. The British draft was the only one, as I remember, that was in the form of a definite constitution of a league. The

French and Italian drafts were in the form of a series of propositions laying down general rules and assuming that the commission, or whatever body made the final formulation, would build upon those principles if they were adopted. They were principles quite consistent with the final action.

I remember saying to the committee when I was here in MarchI have forgotten the expression I used something to the effect that the British draft had constituted the basis. I thought afterwards that that was misleading, and I am very glad to tell the committee just what I meant.

Some months before the conference assembled, a plan for the league of nations had been drawn up by a British committee, at the head of which was Mr. Phillimore-I believe the Mr. Phillimore who was known as an authority on international law. A copy of that document was sent to me, and I built upon that a redraft. I will not now say whether I thought it was better or not an improvement; but I built on that a draft which was quite different, inasmuch as it put definiteness where there had been what seemed indefiniteness in the Phillimore suggestion. Then, between that time and the time of the formation of the commission on the league of nations, I had the advantage of seeing a paper by Gen. Smuts, of South Africa, who seemed to me to have done some very clear thinking, particularly with regard to what was to be done with the pieces of the dismembered empires. After I got to Paris, therefore, I rewrote the document to which I have alluded, and you may have noticed that it consists of a series of articles and then supplementary agreements. It was in the supplementary agreements that I embodied the additional ideas that had come to me not only from Gen. Smuts's paper but from other discussions. That is the full story of how the plan which I sent to the committee was built up.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, it is obvious that the Gen. Smuts plan has been used. That appears on the face of the document.

The PRESIDENT. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Then there was a previous draft in addition to the one you have sent to us? You spoke of a redraft. The original draft was not submitted to the committee?

The PRESIDENT. No; that was privately, my own.

The CHAIRMAN. Was it before our commission?

The PRESIDENT. No; it was not before our commission.

The CHAIRMAN. The one that was sent to us was a redraft of that? The PRESIDENT. Yes. I was reading some of the discussion before the committee, and some one, I think Senator Borah, if I remember correctly, quoted an early version of article 10.

Senator BORAH. That was Senator Johnson.

Senator JOHNSON of California. I took it from the Independent. The PRESIDENT. I do not know how that was obtained, but that was part of the draft which preceded the draft which I sent to you. Senator JOHNSON of California. It was first published by Mr. Hamilton Holt in the Independent; it was again subsequently published in the New Republic, and from one of those publications I read it when examining, I think, the Secretary of State.

The PRESIDENT. I read it with the greatest interest, because I had forgotten it, to tell the truth, but I recognized it as soon as I read it. Senator JOHNSON of California. It was the original plan?