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By Root 1000 0

nationals suffered from similar discrimination, felt they would probably vote for the clause but, as one Chinese delegate told an American, they had much more important things to worry about—in particular, Japan’s claims in China. Wilson had to worry about opinion at home, and he was becoming suspicious of the Japanese. Although he had trusted them before, he told one of his experts, “in fact they had broken their agreement about Siberia.” Moreover, Wilson himself was not especially enlightened when it came to race. He was a Southerner, after all, and although he had appealed for black votes in his first campaign for the presidency, he had done little for blacks once in office and had refused to allow black combat troops to fight alongside white Americans in the war, preferring to place them under French command.34

The loudest opposition to the racial equality clause came from the British empire delegation, in particular from Billy Hughes. Like many of his compatriots, Hughes firmly believed that the clause was the first breach in the dike protecting Australia. “No Govt. could live for a day in Australia if it tampered with a White Australia,” wrote one of his subordinates from Paris. “The position is this—either the Japanese proposal means something or it means nothing: if the former, out with it; if the latter—why have it?” Hughes refused to accept any of the compromises House came up with. “It may be all right,” he scribbled on one attempt. “But sooner than agree to it I would walk into the Seine—or the Folies Bergeres—with my clothes off.” Massey of New Zealand followed in Hughes’s wake.35 This put the British in an awkward position. They wanted very much to maintain the alliance with Japan but, yet again, they had to pay attention to their dominions.

While Wilson was away in the United States, the British did their best to resolve the issue. The French, who had nothing at stake, watched with amusement. Borden and Smuts went back and forth between Hughes and the Japanese delegation. They arranged for Makino and Chinda to call on Hughes. (Saionji remained, as always, in the background.) The Japanese thought Hughes “a peasant”; he complained that they had been “beslobbering me with genuflexions and obsequious deference.” The Australian allowed that he might accept the clause if it contained a proviso that it did not affect national immigration policies. It was the turn of the Japanese to refuse. Makino and Chinda appealed to House repeatedly for help, but they were looking in the wrong quarter. House was not prepared to fight for something that was bound to be unpopular in the United States. Privately, he was delighted that the British were taking the heat. “It has taken considerable finesse to lift the load from our shoulders and place it upon the British, but happily, it has been done.”36

The Japanese delegates, under pressure from Tokyo, decided to go ahead with the clause. As Chinda told House, a defeat would at least show their own public that they had tried. On April 10, at a meeting of the Commission on the League of Nations, the Japanese let it be known that they would be introducing their amendment the next day. They had put it off so often, said House’s son-in-law Gordon Auchincloss, that it had become something of a joke. On April 11, the commission met until late in the evening, trying to come up with a formula that would allow the United States to keep the Monroe Doctrine and join the League. Everyone was exhausted when the Japanese finally moved that a reference to racial equality be included in the preamble to the covenant. They had by now watered down their original proposal so that the clause would simply ask for “the principle of equality of nations and just treatment of their nationals.” Makino and Chinda both spoke moderately and calmly. They made a very good impression. One by one the other delegates on the commission— Venizelos, Orlando, Wellington Koo from China, the French delegates, Bourgeois and Larnaude, and the Czech prime minister—spoke in favor of the amendment. Looking extremely uncomfortable,