MAY 17, 1919.

MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT:  I have submitted to-day to the Secretary of State my resignation as an assistant in the Department of State, attache to the American commission to negotiate peace.  I was one of the millions who trusted confidently and implicitly in your leadership and believed that you would take nothing less than “a permanent peace” based upon “unselfish and unbiased justice.”  But our Government has consented now to deliver the suffering peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, and dismemberments—­a new century of war.  And I can convince myself no longer that effective labor for “a new world order” is possible as a servant of this Government.

Russia, “the acid test of good will,” for me as for you, has not even been understood.  Unjust decisions of the conference in regard to Shantung, the Tyrol, Thrace, Hungary, East Prussia, Danzig, the Saar Valley, and the abandonment of the principle of the freedom of the seas make new international conflicts certain.  It is my conviction that the present league of nations will be powerless-to prevent these wars, and that the United States will be involved in them by the obligations undertaken in the covenant of the league and in the special understanding with France.  Therefore the duty of the Government of the United States to its own people and to mankind is to refuse to sign or ratify this unjust treaty, to refuse to guarantee its settlements by entering the league of nations, to refuse to entangle the United States further by the understanding with France.

That you personally opposed most of the unjust settlements, and that you accepted them only under great pressure, is well known.  Nevertheless, it is my conviction that if you had made your fight in the open, instead of behind closed doors, you would have carried with you the public opinion of the world, which was yours; you would have been able to resist the pressure and might have established the “new international order based upon broad and universal principles of right and justice” of which you used to speak.  I am sorry that you did not fight our fight to the finish and that you had so little faith in the millions of men, like myself, in every nation who had faith in you.

     Very sincerely, yours,

     WILLIAM C. BULLITT.

     To the honorable WOODROW WILSON,
     President of the United States.

Senator KNOX.  Did you ever get a reply to that letter?

Mr. BULLITT.  I did not, sir.  The only intimation I had in regard to it was that Mr. Close, secretary of the President, with whom I was lunching, said to me that the President had read my letter and had said that he would not reply.  In connection with that I wrote Col.  House a letter at the same time as follows: 

     MAY 17, 1919.