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By Root 845 0

Wilson had snubbed him during a visit to Washington. The League, he said, was Wilson’s toy: “he would not be happy till he got it.” Speaking for Australia and himself, he did not want to see the British empire dragged behind Wilson’s triumphal chariot. Borden added his more sober and tactful criticisms. He liked the idea of a League, but he would have preferred one without too many Europeans. His real dream was always a partnership between the United States and the British empire. The Canadians, who had just won from Britain a measure of control over their own foreign policy, did not intend to turn around and hand it back to another superior body.25

French attempts to sharpen the League’s teeth irritated the other Allies and threatened to hold up the Peace Conference. As the commission on the League rushed to get the first draft finished before Wilson went back to the United States for his brief visit, enough leaked out of its secret meetings to cause alarm. “Dark clouds are gathering in conference quarters,” wrote the American correspondent of the Associated Press, “and there is a general atmosphere of distrust and bitterness prevailing, with the fate of the League Covenant still very much in doubt.” It did not help that the French press was starting to attack Wilson or that Clemenceau gave an interview in which he warned that France must not be sacrificed in the name of noble but vague ideals. Rumors circulated that in retaliation Wilson was going to move the whole Peace Conference from Paris or perhaps give up the attempt to get a League altogether.

On February 11, three days before Wilson was due to sail, the League commission met for most of the day. The French brought up amendments to create a League army. “Unconstitutional and also impossible,” said Wilson. The meeting adjourned without a decision. The next day, David Hunter Miller recorded in his diary, Cecil coldly pointed out their predicament to the French: “In his view they were saying to America, and to a lesser extent to Great Britain, that because more was not offered they would not take the gift that was at hand, and he warned them very frankly that the alternative offer which we have made, if the League of Nations was not successful, was an alliance between Great Britain and the United States.” Bourgeois backed down, but he did make one last, futile attempt a month later, when he suggested that the League should have its own general staff. This, he said mildly, could give the League council information and prepare plans so that it would not be caught flat-footed when wars came. Wilson was enraged. “The French delegates seem absolutely impossible,” he told Grayson, his physician. “They talk and talk and talk and desire constantly to reiterate points that have already been thoroughly thrashed out and completely disposed of.” Bourgeois returned the antipathy. He told Poincaré that Wilson was both authoritarian and deeply untrustworthy: “He conducted everything with the goal of personal exaltation in mind.”26

By February 13, the first draft was ready. Wilson was delighted, both with the auspicious date and with the fact that the articles numbered twenty-six, twice thirteen. The main outlines of the League were in place: a general assembly for all members, a secretariat and an executive council where the Big Five would have a bare majority (the failure of the United States to become a member of the League vitiated that clause). There would be no League army and no compulsory arbitration or disarmament. On the other hand, all League members pledged themselves to respect one another’s independence and territorial boundaries. Because the Great Powers worried that the smaller powers might get together and outvote them, there was also a provision that most League decisions had to be unanimous. This was later blamed for the League’s ineffectiveness. 27

Germany was not allowed to join right away. The French were adamant on this, and their allies were prepared to give way. Indeed, Wilson was all for treating Germany like a convict in need of rehabilitation: “The