The Republican opposition to Democratic President Wilson formed a majority Senate of 49 to 47. They had opposing ideas of the Covenant. During the Paris Peace Conference, Wilson declined to take Republic leaders with him. In the American Senate, two-thirds of the members’ votes were necessary for the ratification of treaties. The Senate rejected the Treaty first in November 1919 and finally in March 1920. Wilson advised the Democrats in the Senate to vote against the amended treaty; in November 1919 it was defeated 55 to 38. The final vote was 49 to 35 in favour but still short of the two-thirds majority required. Republicans supported the reservations but Democrats opposed them, there was never an agreement because each party wanted to discredit the other.
The problem started in Article 10 of League of Nations Covenant. This term would take away Congress’s power to declare war and give it to the League of Nations. It was clear that this might involve taking military and economic action. It was politically unacceptable to the Senate to not have control over declarations of war. In addition, United States had already violated its policy of isolationism and the Monroe Doctrine by its involvement in World War I. It was unlikely the Senate and the public would allow the United States to violate it again. It was not. Historian Stone argued that American isolationists in the past had equal responsibility of defeat of the League as men who were still alive. Wilson claimed that the moral influence of what he was trying to accomplish should be enough to persuade the Senate to support him. Perhaps it was the ambiguity of Article 10 that allowed its opposition to stand against it, if Wilson had explained the nature of the obligations of Article 10 with more clarity, the Senate might have agreed to it. Article 10 was known by historians as “the stumbling block” that prevented America’s membership to the League.
The Democratic President had a disadvantage from the very beginning having minority seats in the Senate. The different parties had opposite ideologies of isolationism and were abrupt to oppose each other. Wilson might have had a better chance of persuading the Republicans if he had brought a senior party member to Paris with him. Moreover, no steps had been taken by the Democrats to reach an understanding with the Republicans wanting mild reservations on Article 10. There was no way the two parties could have made an agreement, in that case the majority Republicans overrode the Democrats. Furthermore the fact that a majority of the Congress can declare war but two-thirds of the Senate votes required to end a war is completely absurd. Historian Ralph Stone claimed that the two-thirds vote was the real villain of the defeat.
Historian John Milton Cooper argues that the failure to ratify the United States into the League of Nations was entirely Woodrow Wilson’s own fault. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge introduced the fourteen reservations into the Senate debate on the treaties. Two of most important reservations were strengthening of the reference to the Monroe Doctrine and the modification of the guarantee system in Article 10 so that Congressional agreement would be required to accept League advice. Wilson refused to compromise with any of those. Midway through the League fight Wilson suffered a severe stroke which he never fully recovered from. His judgment deteriorated, and it left him unable to deal with the situation at all for more than a month. Wilson was an idealist felt he could never obtain anything worthwhile without fighting for it. He saw Article 10 as critical to preventing future wars and that is why he had gone to war in the first place. Wilson believed any changes would make the Treaty too weak to be effective.
All the conflicts could have been avoided if Wilson agreed to Lodge’s reasonable fourteen reservations that strengthen the Covenant. However, Wilson was an idealist and would make no compromises on what he thought were fundamental principles. Surely, Wilson and Lodge could have met at the middle-ground, but Wilson’s massive stroke complicated matters. He was even more stubborn than before and could not physically or politically function as before. At the final vote came up again in 1920, Wilson advised his fellow Democrats to refuse Article 10 with reservations, but it would have been sensible to have allowed his Senate supporters to vote for all the reservations to the Covenant. Historian John Milton Cooper believed that America did not join the League because Wilson could not persuade the Senate of the need to do so, and because he was unwilling to compromise on his overly idealistic principles.
Many factors played into the defeat of the fight for the membership of United States into League of Nations by the wrongdoings of President Woodrow Wilson. Traditional foreign policies such as isolationism and written in the Monroe Doctrine all opposed Article 10 of the Covenant. Wilson failed to make the wording clear. The Republican majority in the Senate opposed Article 10. Wilson failed to persuade them to his own mindset. However, the most notable error that Wilson made; the issue that he had the most control over was compromising with Lodge’s reservations. He failed to do so and the vote for the Treaty of Versailles was not enough for ratification. If Wilson did accept the reservations, it would have partially satisfied most of the politicians and pleased the majority of the American people. By being idealistic and stubborn, Woodrow Wilson was the League’s most devoted defender but also its worst enemy.
Appendix
Appendix A
Article 10
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 Avalon Project: The Versailles Treaty June 28, 1919." Avalon Project - Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy. Yale Law School. 10 Apr. 2009 <http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/parti.asp>.
WORKS CITED
Cooper, John Milton. Breaking the heart of the world Woodrow Wilson and the fight for the League of Nations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001.
Stone, Ralph A. Wilson and the League of Nations: Why America's rejection? Huntington, N.Y: R. E. Krieger Pub. Co., 1978.
Quoted in Stone, Ralph A. Wilson and the League of Nations: Why America's rejection? Huntington, N.Y: R. E. Krieger Pub. Co., 1978, 19
Cooper, John Milton. Breaking the heart of the world Woodrow Wilson and the fight for the League of Nations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2001, 3.
