President Wilson went to the Peace Confer ence as no other man went there. Received in Europe. as a herald of a new world, he had for the moment the plaudits of a suffering con tinent, who looked to him for whatever they thought it needed in its sorrow. He had given the peoples of the belligerent countries a good ideal to fight for when he announced that the war was a war for democracy. The cry heartened the Allies and undermined the authority of the kaisers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. His suggestion of a League of Nations as a means of reducing future wars to restricted circles made a strong appeal to a world sick of battle horrors. He w'ho had given peoples the hope that an ideal that men had dreamed of since the days of Henry of Navarre might now become a reality was certain to have a devoted follow ing among men who wished well for the future. More than all else, he was in a peculiarly favorable position for taking a great part in the conference. He led the greatest, nchest and least damaged nation by the war that was represented at the conference. Every other nation hoped to get aid from this nation in the era of reconstruction, and in the fawning spirit of the diplomacy of 1815 they dared not offend its President. Moreover, President Wilson had taken the earliest stages of the peace negotia tion into his hands when he acted as inter mediary to arrange the terms under which the Germans appealed for peace. His Fourteen Points had been accepted by both groups of Allies as the basis of peace. Although they were to bc sadly distorted by his friends, the assumption when the conference met was that they would be the basis of all deliberations, and who could better guide such discussion and stimulate it than he who wrote them? Thus his personal influence in Europe, the weight he acquired from the position in whkh his country found itself, and his leadership in the ideals that seemed about to be made the foundation of the treaty all pointed to the high leadership of Presi dent Wilson at the Conference of Versailles in 1919.
Although the mass of business that seemed likely to come up had been parceled out among the eight commissions narne_d, it soon became evident that nothing important was to be done that did not go through die hands of the Council of Ten. Here was the chief power, and here was the chief action. The Big Ten, in fact, decided every important matter before it went to the conference. After a while the habit was established of dropping the for eign secretaries from the meetings, so that the council now became the Big Five. It is said that the reason the body was so reduced was that in its first form the secret business of the sessions seeped out to the French and British press to such an extent that it was thought well to debate the most important affairs in the smallest possible circle. From that time the tneetings were generally in President Wilson's private rooms, and as the Japanese representa tive rarely attended the body became the Big Four.
The League of The first busi ness brought forward was the proposed League of Nations. It was, in fact, the most
important thing suggested in the conference; for if such a league could be founded and made to worlc it would transform the political constitution of the world. If it could not be made to work it was a thing that should not be attempted. President Wilson went to Parts determined to carry it through the conference, if possible. In every European country were some persons of influence who believed it could be made to work, if adopted. But a larger por tion of the men of political ideas looked on the suggestion with some of that good-humored tolerance with which Metternich received the tsar's suggested Holy Alliance. To overcome this lukewarmness was Mr. INilson's task. Each statesman had tome demand to make on the conference, and Wilson's demand was the adop tion of the League of Nations. In the final balancing of demands there was a disposition to make the President pay for his favorite idea by forcing him to give up something in favor of each of the other demands.
President Wilson was chairman of the com mission to which was entrusted the task of preparing a covenant of the Leag.ue of Na tions and submitted a plan which had the ap proval of the American delegates. Another plan was submitted by General Smuts, of South Africa, and other suggestions were re ceived. After much debate by the commission a tentative covenant was reported to the con ference in plenary session on 14 Feb. 1919, and by it made public. It was given out with the hope that the criticism made would give its au thors an opportunity to determine in what re spects it would have to be amended before it v as finally accepted. No strong demand for : r-e tdment was heard in any nation except the United States, where a group of Republican senators issued a statement that the covenant would have to be amended before they would accept it They did not specify the exact terms in which the document ought to be modified.
During the long period in which the idea of a league to promote peace had been discussed before 1919 m various societies in the world the suggestions fell in two groups. One series implied the creation of a common organization with no other power than public opimon to enforce its decisions. Such a league was analo gous to the Hague Conferences whith did not succeed in arousing much respect before 1914. The other group favored the creation of a league with a central power strong enough to make and enforce international faw. When President VVilson went to Paris many persons who desired a league in some form feared that the first type would be all that he could get adopted. Before the discussions at Paris ceased the opinion in the conference shifted in such a way that those who voted at all favored a league strong enough to execute its laws and pledged to enforce them in some important re spects. The covenant as finally annonnced leaned more to the second than to the first type of a league.