In the circumstances, which seemed to be due to the President’s failure to appreciate the necessity for a definite programme, I felt that something ought to be done, as the probable result would be that the terms of the Treaty, other than the provisions regarding a League of Nations, would be drafted by foreign delegates and not by the President.

Impressed by the unsatisfactory state of affairs and desirous of remedying it if possible, I asked Dr. James Brown Scott and Mr. David Hunter Miller, the legal advisers of the American Commission, to prepare a skeleton treaty covering the subjects to be dealt with in the negotiations which could be used in working out a complete programme.  After several conferences with these advisers concerning the subjects to be included and their arrangement in the Treaty, the work was sufficiently advanced to lay before the Commissioners.  Copies were, therefore, furnished to them with the request that they give the document consideration in order that they might make criticisms and suggest changes.  I had not sent a copy to the President, intending to await the views of my colleagues before doing so, but during the conference of January 10, to which I have been compelled reluctantly to refer in discussing the Covenant of the League of Nations, I mentioned the fact that our legal advisers had been for some time at work on a “skeleton treaty” and had made a tentative draft.  The President at once showed his displeasure and resented the action taken, evidently considering the request that a draft be prepared to be a usurpation of his authority to direct the activities of the Commission.  It was this incident which called forth his remark, to which reference was made in Chapter VIII, that he did not propose to have lawyers drafting the Treaty.

In view of Mr. Wilson’s attitude it was useless for Dr. Scott and Mr. Miller to proceed with their outline of a treaty or for the Commissioners to give consideration to the tentative draft already made.  It was a disagreeable situation.  If the President had had anything, however crude and imperfect it might have been, to submit in place of the Scott-Miller draft, it would have been a different matter and removed to an extent the grounds for complaint at his attitude.  But he offered nothing at all as a substitute.  It is fair to assume that he had no programme prepared and was unwilling to have any one else make a tentative one for his consideration.  It left the American Commission without a chart marking out the course which they were to pursue in the negotiations and apparently without a pilot who knew the channel.

Six days after the enforced abandonment of the plan to prepare a skeleton treaty as a foundation for a definite and detailed programme, I made the following note which expresses my views on the situation at that time: 

   “January 16, 1919