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[MLBrandow]

Et Tu, Congress?: How the American Entry into the First World War led to Wilson's Betrayal by the U.S. Senate
April 6, 2006
Michael L. Brandow


World War I abruptly ended after the armistices of Germany and Austria-Hungary in the winter of 1918. Following the acceptance of these armistices by the Triple Entente and its allies, delegates of Great Britain, France, the United States, Italy and Japan (excluding Russia which was engulfed in civil revolution) began treaty negotiations in Paris. Woodrow Wilson, then President of the United States, presented his plan before the nine other council members for a League of Nations, an ideological state-based group where each member state would ally itself with every other member state.

Through this great alliance, each member would appreciate the benefits of a collective security from the league, as well as enjoy the benefits of international diplomacy. Each would be guaranteed the security and protection of its borders as well as its full independence, and each would have a chance to be a part of the next great philosophical progression from the now fundamentally archaic ideals of the Congress of Vienna a century before—which conveyed the balance of power principles prevailing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that resulted in a great European schism and inevitably led to the First World War.

Wilson had a list of fourteen points he hoped to have incorporated into the treaty, but in the end, Britain, France and Italy—Japanese delegates had left the conference shortly after its first meetings—allowed for only two of his fourteen points to be incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles: freedom of the seas and the League of Nations.

Once Germany signed the Treaty, Wilson’s focus shifted to the formidable task of convincing a divided U.S. Senate to grant approval to join this League of Nations. For all of his efforts at the Paris Peace Conference in the Spring of that year, the League would undoubtedly fail if its championing member could not convince his own country to join it. And so began the real task.

While the Senate officially opened debate on whether to join this League of Nations on July 10, 1919, this was not the first time the Senators had been introduced to the League. On May 27, 1916, Wilson introduced the idea before the League to Enforce Peace, a U.S.-founded group the year before that was lobbying for a world organization. And later, just six months before the Senate began open debate of the League, on January 8, 1918, Wilson delivered in a joint session of Congress a speech endearing his fourteen points, of which his main emphasis was the formation of the League of Nations.

As was the prevailing American ideology at the time, isolationism, or, more specifically, unilateralism, chiefly concerned the Senators—should the United States involve itself in international affairs? The U.S. intervention in World War I was received by the American people with mixed results. But now, after its consummation, Wilson began heavily lobbying for a continual international entanglement by the U.S. in the form of this League of Nations. The question of maintaining this unilateralism (as originally advocated in President George Washington’s Farewell Address) became a very hot topic, and both Congress and the American people would become staunchly divided. Subsequently, the members of the Senate began choosing sides.

While the Democratic Party had controlled the majority of seats in the Senate after Wilson’s election in 1912, his public opinion took a significant hit after he and the democratically controlled 65th Congress decided to enter the U.S. into what was essentially still a European war on April 6, 1917. Public opposition was strong enough that it cost the Party the majority in the 66th Congress beginning in 1919. While the they never controlled the necessary two-thirds in order to ratify the treaty and join the League of Nations, losing seven seats (from 54 to 47) complicated matters considerably.

In the battle for Senate ratification, there were varying degrees of opposition, as well as one group of Senators who remained undecided. The irreconcilables—these were the most extreme Republican opponents, joined by two Democrats and later a third—opposed the League in any form. Most Republicans, however, were not completely opposed to the League, but many would only ratify it if a strict list of reservations would limit the level of American commitment. Inside this group were the strong reservationists, led by unofficial majority leader Henry Cabot Lodge, and the mild reservationists, a group of nine Senators who, while in support of these restrictions on U.S. involvement in the League, agreed to oppose amendments “in the interests of expediting action, and to bring about a final ratification of the treaty.”

In all, it was accepted that 44 of 47 Democrats would support ratification and three would not, as well as these nine Republican mild reservationists. Unfortunately, a two-thirds majority required 64 votes, of which these 53 men fell short. The entire events of the Senate debate from its outset on July 10, 1919 to the final rejection on March 19, 1920 were focused on the efforts of President Wilson and the Senatorial proponents of the League to gain these crucial eleven votes.

While general opposition to Wilson’s 14 points dates back to his Congressional address, the outset of this reservationism didn’t take hold until after Wilson delivered his plan for the League at the Paris Peace Conference on February 14, 1919. The heart of these reservationist feelings found itself specifically in Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations: “The Members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.”

The words “undertake” and “advise upon” left open considerable room for very subjective interpretation. But just as James Madison and the other concurrent framers of the Bill of Rights left certain wordings purposely broad in order to assist in the ratification process, so Wilson’s judgment led him down the same line of thinking—the more general the doctrine is, the more likely for Britain, France and Italy to agree to it.

Wilson also understood the Republican Party’s internationalist feelings at the time. Most of the founders of the League to Enforce Peace were Republican, and the organization was headed by former Republican President William Howard Taft, who unsuccessfully ran for reelection in 1912 against Wilson. When Wilson delivered that first speech on the idea for the League of Nations, he did so purposefully in front of the LEP to gain Republican support—and it worked. At the time, Wilson’s party did have control of the Senate, but he knew that he would need at least a dozen Republican supporters in order to get the approval for entry into this organization when the war finally ended.

But Russia’s defeat in December of 1917 gave the Central Powers new hope, and Germany shifted its focus solely on the western front, jeopardizing the outcome of the war. Because of Russia’s collapse, Wilson had to enter the U.S. into the war in order to ensure that Britain, France and Italy were victorious. And while there were internationalist sentiments, there was still strong opposition for actually entering the war, and Wilson’s decision was seen very unfavorably to the American people, who, as a result, voted and replaced seven Democratic Senators with Republicans in the elections of 1918. In losing those seven votes, Wilson now had to rely heavily on the Republican Party to ensure entry into his League of Nations, and this becomes the turning point.

The moderate Republicans, while originally in full support of Wilson’s League, also wanted to have a say in how the League would work. Perhaps in his fatal flaw, Wilson thought he had seized enough bipartisan support that he did not need to consult the Republican Party during the conferences, and through the course of his five months overseas in Paris lobbying for incorporation of the League of Nations into the Treaty of Versailles (as well as his other points), he lost his ability to sway these moderate Republicans.

And as a result, the Republican Party shifted. It shifted from majoritarian support of the League to almost unanimous dissent. Republicans then dug their heels into the Covenant, citing that it was overly general in key points, and that it had to be more narrowly tailored to gain Senatorial ratification. Upon coming to the realization sometime in July of 1919 that the very same purposeful generalizations which allowed him to more easily convince Britain, France and Italy to adopt his League had now become the focus for the Republican opposition in Congress, it was too late to modify the treaty—it had been hastily rushed to the presses upon approval in late May and forced upon the Germans, who begrudgingly signed it just days earlier on June 28.

This fulcrum shift by the Republicans had turned what had been a bipartisan move for an international organization into a partisan game of trench warfare. While Wilson’s original estimates before the 1916 address to the LEP came to only about a dozen Republican Senators—because of the change in majority leadership in the Senate resulting from those 1918 elections, and this recent advent of reservationism—he now needed almost half of them to ratify the Treaty and join the League of Nations.

The nine Republican Senators that became the mild reservationists, the target group for his LEP speech, went from securing the two-thirds majority in the Senate to merely compensating for the Democratic seat losses in the previous year’s elections. Effectively Wilson and the new Democratic Minority would have to convince eleven more of these reservationists to concede amendment passages for favor of ratifying the treaty at all.

Amidst all of the ratification debates, on October 2 Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him almost completely incapacitated. The Democrats in the Senate had hoped that Wilson would spearhead the movement as he had been, and irrevocably had to shoulder the load themselves.

During almost five months of debate, the mild reservationists acted as liaisons trying to mend the rift between the “Lodge reservationists”—so named after Lodge seized almost complete control in negotiations of the block vote of the strong reservationists—and the Democratic Party. Lodge demanded that if the senate voted down his proposed amendments restricting U.S. involvement in the League of Nations, the treaty would not be ratified. On the other side, Wilson, through his Secretary of State Joseph P. Tumulty, threatened that if the senate were to pass the treaty with Lodge’s revisions, he would veto it.

Wilson had believed that in the end, the Democrats would call Lodge’s bluff and that the underlying internationalist desires of the Republican-led LEP—which at its height in 1919 had over 300,000 members, mostly Republican—would compel enough of the reservationists to accept the treaty as it had been accepted by the European countries. The treaty’s amendments were in fact voted down in the Senate on November 19, and subsequently, just as Lodge had made clear, the treaty would not be ratified.

Even after the complete remission of the proposed amendments, the debate continued, and ultimately the mild reservationists were forced to make a choice: whether to side with Lodge and win as many as 35 Republicans and hope that enough Democrats would concede and accept the amendments for a two-thirds vote (and that Wilson would not veto the treaty), or whether to side with the Democrats and hope that eleven more Republicans would join them in accepting the treaty quid pro quo in order to achieve their goal of a world organization which would certainly be doomed without the membership of the U.S.

In the end, these reservationists sided with Wilson and the Democrats and were able to sway just four of Lodge’s Senators. The last chance for ratification came on March 19, 1920 and won a majority of the Senate’s votes, 57 to 49, just seven votes shy of the two-thirds needed—the same number of seats lost by the Democrats in those 1918 elections. For Wilson, this marked not only a bitter personal defeat, but would ultimately lead to a heavy conservative shift away from the Democratic Party in the years to come. And for the League of Nations, a few isolated incidents revealed what was essentially just a paper tiger with no real authoritative power. This marked the black spot of death for an organization that would have to be forcibly aborted in its infant stages just fifteen years later.


Michael L. Brandow is an undergraduate student at the University of South Florida double majoring in Political Science and Physics.

[FCTE]

Wilson was a piece of sh!t traitor. No international organization should ever make laws for America or have control of American forces.

[Fido]

FCTE wrote: Wilson was a piece of sh!t traitor. No international organization should ever make laws for America or have control of American forces.

So Goering was right to call it victor's justice? That we would judge other countries, and not be judged; and hang other leaders for what our leaders also ordered? Is this might you call right anything but mindless will devoid of insight?

Capitalism is international, and government should be international to govern business. But why should our businesses submit to governance abroad when it rules with a free hand here? If you wish to say something meaningful say this: That no American should settle for less rights any where on this earth than we settle for right here at home, which is as nig gardly a minimum as anyone anywhere should accept. Say only the same for all God's people: That all our rights are equal. If we are not all Americans, and if the rights of Americans are not those required by all worthy people, then we will not long possess them for unwillingness to share them. It is as possible for the world to be a house divided as it was for the United States.
And, the league of nations was not it, no more able than the willingness of each individual nation to stand up for peace and justice. And the same may be said for the United Nations. It's a bought broad. It is discredited, and dishonored, and like the league after Mussolini's invasion in Africa: A dead thing, stinking too much to stand and crawling too much to bury.

[Clara Listensprechen]

Without a Leage of Nations to hand the Middle East over to Britain under the Palestine Mandate, we wouldn't have as many troubles now with the region that we currently have. Theodor Herzl would have had to take his gang of thugs somewhere else.