No acknowledgment, either written or oral, was ever made of my letter of February 3.  Possibly President Wilson considered it unnecessary to do so in view of the provision in his revised Covenant postponing discussion of the subject.  At the time, however, I naturally assumed that my voluntary advice was unwelcome to him.  His silence as to my communications, which seemed to be intended to discourage a continuance of them, gave the impression that he considered an uninvited opinion on any subject connected with the League of Nations an unwarranted interference with a phase of the negotiations which he looked upon as his own special province, and that comment or suggestion, which did not conform wholly to his views, was interpreted into opposition and possibly into criticism of him personally.

This judgment of the President’s mental attitude, which was formed at the time, may have been too harsh.  It is possible that the shortness of time in which to complete the drafting of the report of the Commission on the League of Nations, upon which he had set his heart, caused him to be impatient of any criticism or suggestion which tended to interrupt his work or that of the Commission.  It may have been that pressure for time prevented him from answering letters of the character of the one of February 3.  Whatever the real reason was, the fact remains that the letter went unnoticed and the impression was made that it was futile to attempt to divert the President from the single purpose which he had in mind.  His fidelity to his own convictions and his unswerving determination to attain what he sought are characteristics of Mr. Wilson which are sources of weakness as well as of strength.  Through them success has generally crowned his efforts, success which in some instances has been more disastrous than failure would have been.

By what means the change of Article V of the original draft of the Covenant took place, I cannot say.  In the memorandum of Messrs. Miller and Auchincloss no suggestion of a Court of International Justice appears, which seems to indicate that the provision in the revised draft did not originate with them or with Colonel House.  In fact on more than one occasion I had mentioned arbitration to the Colonel and found his views on the subject extremely vague, though I concluded that he had almost as poor an opinion of The Hague Tribunal as did the President.  The probability is that the change was suggested to Mr. Wilson by one of the foreign statesmen in a personal interview during January and that upon sounding others he found that they were practically unanimous in favor of a Permanent Court of Justice.  As a matter of policy it seemed wise to forestall amendment by providing for its future establishment.  If this is the true explanation, Article 12 was not of American origin, though it appears in the President’s revised draft.