In the formulation of the amendments to the Covenant, which were incorporated in it after the President’s return from the United States and before its final adoption by the Conference, I had no part and I have no reason to think that Mr. White or General Bliss shared in the work.  As these amendments or modifications did not affect the theory of organization or the fundamental principles of the League, they in no way changed my views or lessened the differences between the President’s judgment and mine.  Our differences were as to the bases and not as to the details of the Covenant.  Since there was no disposition to change the former we were no nearer an agreement than we were in January.

The President’s visit to the United States had been disappointing to the friends of a League in that he had failed to rally to the support of the Covenant an overwhelming popular sentiment in its favor which the opposition in the Senate could not resist.  The natural reaction was that the peoples of Europe and their statesmen lost a measure of their enthusiasm and faith in the project.  Except in the case of a few idealists, there was a growing disposition to view it from the purely practical point of view and to speculate on its efficacy as an instrument to interpret and carry out the international will.  Among the leaders of political thought in the principal Allied countries, the reports of the President’s reception in the United States were sufficiently conflicting to arouse doubt as to whether the American people were actually behind him in his plan for a League, and this doubt was not diminished by his proposed changes in the Covenant, which indicated that he was not in full control of the situation at home.

Two weeks after the President had resumed his duties as a negotiator and had begun the work of revising the Covenant, I made a memorandum of my views as to the situation that then existed.  The memorandum is as follows: 

   “March 25, 1919

“With the increasing military preparations and operations throughout Eastern Europe and the evident purpose of all these quarreling nations to ignore any idea of disarmament and to rely upon force to obtain and retain territory and rights, the League of Nations is being discussed with something like contempt by the cynical, hard-headed statesmen of those countries which are being put on a war-footing.  They are cautious and courteous out of regard for the President.  I doubt if the truth reaches him, but it comes to me from various sources.

“These men say that in theory the idea is all right and is an ideal to work toward, but that under present conditions it is not practical in preventing war.  They ask, what nation is going to rely on the guaranty in the Covenant if a jealous or hostile neighbor maintains a large army.  They want to know whether it would be wise or not to disarm under such conditions.  Of course the answers are obvious.  But, if the