guaranty is not sufficient, or accepted as sufficient, protection, what becomes of the central purpose of the League and the chief reason for creating it?

“I believe that the President and Colonel House see this, though they do not admit it, and that to save the League from being cast into the discard they will attempt to make of it a sort of international agency to do certain things which would normally be done by independent international commissions.  Such a course would save the League from being still-born and would so interweave it with the terms of peace that to eliminate it would be to open up some difficult questions.

“Of course the League of Nations as originally planned had one supreme object and that was to prevent future wars.  That was substantially all that it purposed to do.  Since then new functions have been gradually added until the chief argument for the League’s existence has been almost lost to sight.  The League has been made a convenient ‘catch-all’ for all sorts of international actions.  At first this was undoubtedly done to give the League something to do, and now it is being done to save it from extinction or from being ignored.

“I am not denying that a common international agent may be a good thing.  In fact the plan has decided merit.  But the organization of the League does not seem to me suitable to perform efficiently and properly these new functions.

“However, giving this character to the League may save it from being merely an agreeable dream.  As the repository of international controversies requiring long and careful consideration it may live and be useful.

“My impression is that the principal sponsors for the League are searching through the numerous disputes which are clogging the wheels of the Conference, seizing upon every one which can possibly be referred, and heaping them on the League of Nations to give it standing as a useful and necessary adjunct to the Treaty.

“At least that is an interesting view of what is taking place and opens a wide field for speculation as to the future of the League and the verdict which history will render as to its origin, its nature, and its real value.”

I quote this memorandum because it gives my thoughts at the time concerning the process of weaving the League into the terms of peace as the President had threatened to do.  I thought then that it had a double purpose, to give a practical reason for the existence of the League and to make certain the ratification of the Covenant by the Senate.  No fact has since developed which has induced me to change my opinion.