Political divisions behind America's rejection of the League of Nations

America's Decision To Stay Out Of The League Of Nations

An overwhelming majority of the American people is in favor of the League of Nations. -- President Woodrow Wilson's comments concerning his support of the League of Nations, 1918

God pity the ideals of this Republic if they shall have no defenders save the gathered scum of nations organized into a conglomerate international police force. I am opposed to any league of nations. With me, it is not a question of amendments of any kind. If my country is to be sold I am not interested in the details of the bill of sale. The League of Nations makes it necessary for America to give back to George V what it took away from George III. -- Senator William Borah (R-Idaho)'s comments concerning his opposition to the League of Nations, 1919

Introduction

The epigraphs above are reflective of the diametrically opposed political views that emerged following the proposal of the League of Nations at part of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I. Following the end of the "War to End All Wars," an international forum that was capable of addressing the inevitable political and economic differences that will always take place between nations certainly seemed like a good idea but many modern observers may not realize the enormous controversy that resulted from this seemingly benign proposal. To this end, this paper examines the reasons the United States decided not to enter into the League of Nations while their British counterparts did join. This paper explains that the decision of the U.S. To stay out of the League was largely a political one based on the composition of the U.S. government and the adversarial nature of its political parties. In the U.S. The major legislative making body of the U.S. Congress did not have the same political affiliations or agenda as the president and even many of his supporters, while in Britain, the Prime Minister as the head of the Majority party in Parliament enjoyed more support for the United Kingdom's membership in the League. In support of this argument, this paper examines the peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning the respective positions that emerged on both sides of the Atlantic concerning the reasons in support and those opposed to U.S. And British membership in the League of Nations, followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

The U.S. Debate over Membership in the League of Nations

After the end of World War I, the world was weary of war and the ravages that it had taken on the European continent and it would seem reasonable to suggest that policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic would be eager to form some type of league to resolve future conflicts. According to Margulies (1998), "Following the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the Paris Peace Conference in June 1919, where he played a major role in negotiating that treaty, which established the League of Nations, President Woodrow Wilson turned his attention to persuading the U.S. Senate to ratify the new treaty" (273). The Senate of the 66th Congress was almost equally divided between the Republican Party with 49 and the Democrats who fielded 47 senators (Marguilies). Although the president could rely on the majority of the Democrats in the Senate to support his position on the treaty and the League of Nations, a number of Republican senators would also be required to achieve the two-thirds majority required for ratification (Marguilies). As a result, scholars have intensely examined the reasons for the president's failure to secure the Republican senators needed to ratify the treaty and the U.S. accession to the League of Nations over the years. In this regard, some authorities have suggested that the Republicans were less cohesive than Democrats and could be grouped according to the three different factions that emerged during the debate.

The first faction consisted of Republicans who were termed "irreconcilables" and were opposed to U.S. membership in the League of Nations no matter what; the second and third factions were comprised of the various mild and stronger proponents of various "reservations" that would need to be attached to the resolution in order to achieve Senate ratification. In this regard, Marguilies adds that, "Technically, reservations stated U.S. understanding of various treaty provisions; in practice, they were also statements of American qualifications and intentions" (273). One historian goes so far as to suggest that, "In 1919, a group of patriotic senators saved America from becoming entangled in the fledgling League of Nations. These stalwart souls became known as 'The Irreconcilables'" (Mcmanus 2002:31).

According to Kuehl and Dunn (1997), "On 8 January 1920, Woodrow Wilson issued a clarion call. In a letter to Democrats assembled for a Jackson Day dinner, the president declared that if the Treaty of Versailles foundered in the Senate, 'the clear and single way out is to submit it for determination at the next election to the voters of the nation, to give the next election the form of a great and solemn referendum'" (quoted at 1). Indeed, the American president was not the only one who believed that the foreign policy debate would and should play a substantive part in the electoral campaign of 1920 (Kuehl and Dunn 1). For instance, Kuehl and Dunn point out that, "Leaders in both parties believed that their position on the League of Nations would affect success or failure at the polls. Nor was this concern restricted to the presidential race. Voters recognized that treaty votes in the Senate would be as important as, if not more important than, the position of the man who sat in the White House. League supporters had already targeted a number of opposition senators for defeat. Therefore, party leaders would have to move cautiously to establish a common platform on which to stand" (1).

Opponents to U.S. membership in the League of Nations were a relatively small coalition of politicians at the time; however, they represented a prominent and influential minority that the mainstream political machine had to taken into account. In this regard, Kuehl and Dunn note that the opposition to the League "insisted that the party renounce Wilsonian ideals and set a course of traditional unilateralism. At the opposite extreme, the internationalist wing of the party, led by former president William Howard Taft, Harvard University president A. Lawrence Lowell, and influential editor and internationalist Hamilton Holt, supported a Republicanized Wilsonianism" (2). The human and economic toll that wrought by World War I were powerful reasons for advocates of the League to continue to hammer away at the opposition and their support for U.S. membership was virtually unequivocal. For instance, Kuehl and Dunn point out that the proponents of the League "insisted that the United States should provide an unqualified endorsement of the World Court and should join the League on any reasonable terms. Recognizing this difference in emphasis among the party faithful, many Republican leaders counseled caution, especially prior to the convention, hoping that other issues would distract voters" (Kuehl and Dunn 2).

The fundamental differences in perspectives concerning the pros and cons of U.S. membership in the League became clear quickly thereafter as the leading candidates for office began articulating their respective positions which were based both on personal as well as political reasoning. For instance, Governor Frank O. Lowden of Illinois counseled against the League and suggested that the Hague Conferences was the proper body to formalize international law and to create an alternative system of peace-keeping that was based in a court of justice. By contrast, General Leonard Wood was in support of U.S. membership in the League; however, he was a proponent of the "reservations" faction and recommended that it should be "completely Americanized" (quoted in Kuehl and Dunna at 2). General Wood also maintained that the issue should be determined prior to the election, a position that was consistent with Senator Philander C. Knox's call for a congressional resolution that would end the war formally but would separate the peace treaty from the decision to join the League (Kuehl and Dunn 3). Other critics of the League of Nations such as Senator Hiram Johnson of California who was universally recognized as being uncompromising in his views on the issue and was therefore an "irreconciliable," consistently railed against U.S. membership in the League every chance he got (Kuehl and Dunn). According to Mcmanus, "By themselves, the 16 irreconcilables didn't have sufficient clout to defeat Wilson's drive for world government. Their cause was aided by Wilson's prideful intransigence, inflamed by personal antagonism between the president and Senator Lodge, who chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. If President Wilson had been willing to play ball with "Mr. Wobbly" and other "reservationists," he would likely have gotten enough support to gain Senate passage of the treaty. But he was unwilling to do so" (32).

Taken together, this amount of dissension between the leading candidates and the president himself compelled Columbia University professor John Bates Clark to assert that the party ". . . would either oppose the League or be so ambiguous as to avoid any 'pledge of support'" (quoted in Kuehl and Dunn at 3). This divisiveness, experienced at length in the Senate debates concerning the Treaty of Versailles, also compelled Henry Cabot Lodge to seek some middle ground in the debate over the U.S. entry into the League of Nations. According to these historians, "The national committee was dominated by persons hostile to the League, and the choice of Chicago for the convention site sent a clear message. Robert McCormick's Chicago Tribune had already established its isolationist reputation, and much of the press of that city revealed hostility toward the League" (Kuehl and Dunn 3). Based on his political acumen that emphasized the need for party unity, Lodge sought to strategize his party's approach to what would transpire at the convention carefully and thoughtfully to avoid further splintering among the Republicans. As a result, Lodge was able to gain a platform for expressing his views to the party elite as well as the nation at large. According to Kuehl and Dunn, Lodge "campaigned in the Massachusetts primary as a delegate-at-large and then publicly interpreted his victory as an endorsement of his position during the treaty fight. Thereafter, he sought and obtained the post of temporary chairman so that he could present the party's position on the League in his keynote address" (3).

In his efforts to seek a viable compromise among the various positions being advanced, Lodge collaborated with former secretary of state Elihu Root who was an well-known advocate of an international court but whose would not attending the Republican national convention (Kuehl and Dunn 3). During the opening ceremonies at the convention on June 8 in Chicago, Root was scheduled to be in attendance with the commission that was already coordinating the establishment of the Permanent Court of International Justice in The Hague (Kuehl and Dunn 3). At the time, though, Root explained his viewpoints to Lodge and insisted that the so-called irreconcilables who were adamantly opposed to U.S. membership in the League not be allowed to change the Republican position that have been developed during the previous debates in the Senate concerning this issue (Kuehl and Dunn 3). According to these authors, "The former secretary of state insisted that that position 'rested upon the principle of reservations; the declaration of the platform approving that policy ought to be perfectly clear and unmistakable.' Convinced that the Senate vote 'does not mean a policy of isolation,' Root moved in advance of Lodge, penning a plank and sending it to former senator Murray Crane for consideration by the resolutions committee" (quoted in Kuehl and Dunn at 3). The ever-solicitous Lodge, though, refused to be as frank in his keynote speech to the convention given the disparate views that were being advanced concerning the U.S. membership in the League and sought to use the opportunity to establish a more comprising tone (Kuehl and Dunn 3). Like many opponents of the UN today, the debate at the time involved serious reservations about the League's ability to involve the United States in international affairs, including military adventures, that were not in the nation's best interests and which ultimately would subject U.S. policymakers, including the chief executive, to the whims of foreign powers (Kuehl and Dunn 3). As Kuehl and Dunn explain, "

It was 'an alliance and not a league of peace,' one that threatened the lives of Americans in 'quarrels not their own, at the bidding of foreign Governments'" (Kuehl and Dunn 3).

During deliberations by the convention's resolutions committee concerning a plank for the party's position on the League, a subcommittee that was comprised of, among others, Irvine L. Lenroot of Wisconsin, Senators Frank B. Kellogg of Minnesota, Porter J. McCumber of North Dakota, and Frederick Hale of Maine, sought to draft a position that would support U.S. membership in the League with some added stipulations; this initiative was well underway and was gaining momentum among the convention delegates but was railroaded by a coalition of irreconcilables headed by William Borah, Frank Brandegee, Hiram Johnson, and Joseph M. McCormick who insisted they would leave the convention before allowing such a plank to be introduced. In response, Lodge stated that he would not support any position that threatened the unity of the party and the measure failed (Kuehl and Dunn 3). Thereafter, the subcommittee reviewed Root's draft plank and, following some revisions the resolutions committee and, ultimat3ely the entire Republican convention adopted it (Kuehl and Dunn 3). The contentious nature of the Republican Party's debate over the League of Nations was not surprising in reality. For instance, according to Neu (2003), "Given the adversarial nature of the American political system, the Republicans were bound to offer some measure of opposition to Wilson's program," and concludes that "Lodge, despite his partisanship and traditional great-power approach to world politics, may actually have genuinely desired American membership in the League of Nations" (733).

The circumstances that preceded the debate are revealing in the manner in which the opposing sides maneuvered their way through the process, and serve to highlight how the measured ultimately failed. The Treaty of Versailles and its objectionable -- to some -- League of Nations provisions original arrived at the U.S. Senate on July 10, 1918; the treaty was then submitted to Lodge's Foreign Relations Committee at once (Mcmanus 32). The concept of an international body such as the League was appealing to the vast majority of average American citizens who were tired of war and its costly consequences. Indeed, about 80% of the American public supported the entire treaty including the provisions for the League and critics in the Senate recognized they had an uphill battle to fight if they were going to be successful in defeating the initiative (Mcmanus 32). According to this historian, "League opponents knew they faced a formidable challenge. Throughout the nation, the press, the clergy, farm and labor organizations, and even state legislatures expressed hope that the League of Nations would end wars of the type just experienced" (Mcmanus 32).

Critics of the League Covenant articulated four fundamental objections as follows:

1. The League Covenant permitted interference in the nation's domestic affairs, with the League Council, not the U.S. government, making decisions about the international body's jurisdiction.

2. The amendment addressing the Monroe Doctrine was flawed in that it addressed "international agreements and regional understandings," while the Monroe Doctrine was a unilateral policy of the United States and therefore exempt from foreign interpretation.

3. A Covenant provision permitted withdrawal from the League only after a nation's "international obligations under this Covenant" had been fulfilled -- but didn't specify how or by whom that fulfillment would be determined.

4. Article X of the Covenant required member nations to take action in response to aggression "against the territorial integrity and existing political independence" of member nations, leaving it to the League Council to define when such aggression existed and how to deal with it. This amounted to overriding the U.S. Constitution by giving the League Council the power to commit our nation to war (Mcmanus 32).

To help persuade the mild and strong holdouts to the treaty that might make a difference in the voting outcome, League advocates insisted that the formal reservations to the Covenant be incorporated but the president refused, emphasizing that alterations of that type would involve obtaining approval from all signatories to the treaty, a step he was not prepared to take and potentially jeopardize or delay the measure entirely (Mcmanus 32). According to Mcmanus, by way of comprise, though, the president stated he would permit a separate "statement of interpretations" to be crafted and distributed to all signatories to the treaty; however, this statement would not be codified as a formal part of the treaty (Mcmanus 32). This statement was regarded as a half-measure only and a poor one at that by critics of the treaty and viewed the president's compromise as totally unacceptable. In response, Mcmanus states that, "They added that the Senate's constitutional authority was being usurped, and that the president was acting as though their branch of the government had no role except to supply rubber stamp approval for whatever the president wanted (Mcmanus 32). Thereafter, the president as well as his opponents fanned out across the country to drum up support for their respective positions. According to Janas (2006), "Most view [the president's] tour, and particularly the Pueblo speech, as high points of Wilson's rhetoric. However, the reception accorded his speeches was unremarkable. Only in the reflected light of Wilson's physical challenges and his elevation to martyr in the cause of the League of Nations do they stand out as exceptional" (229). While the president's health was waning, his adamancy about refusing to compromise on the treaty and the League was not. In this regard, Mcmanus notes that, "Senator Gilbert Hitchcock (D-Neb.), the president's chief Senate advocate, into the convalescing president's quarters. Hitchcock told Wilson that without reservations not even a majority, much less the needed two-thirds, could be counted on to vote for the treaty. When he suggested compromise, the incapacitated president whispered a vindictive reply: 'Let Lodge compromise'" (quoted at 32).

The opponents of the treaty ultimately prevailed with 38 for and 53 against, far short of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification (Mcmanus 32). The United States eventually concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany, and the League of Nations was formed without the United States as a member. It operated out of a headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, until 1947 when it closed its doors and turned over all of its assets to the new United Nations. Had the president been willing to compromise a bit over his terms, Mcmanus suggests that things might have gone very differently in the Senate voting. "In retrospect, the treaty's defeat was largely the work of an irreconcilable from the other camp -- President Wilson himself" (Mcmanus 32).

The British Debate over Membership in the League of Nations

Although it did not measure up to the squabbling that took place in America, there was also a good deal of ambivalence about joining the League of Nations among the British as well. For example, Egerton (1978) maintains that there were those in the British government's military and diplomatic ranks who strongly opposed the project and that "Lloyd George as Prime Minister cared nothing about the idea of a League"; likewise, Lord Robert Cecil, leader of the British delegation on the League of Nations Commission at Paris, maintained thereafter that although the prime minister officially supported the league, his approval was always "chilly," and he regarded it "as of secondary importance" (quoted in Egerton at xii). The political and social environment in the United Kingdom was also substantively different than that which existed in the United States following the end of World War I, due in part perhaps to the geographic proximity of Britain to the combatants but also to various movements that had taken place prior to the war.

Most government leaders and advisors wanted to create some type of league of nations that would be congruent with traditional British strategies (e.g., one that based on naval superiority and strength or on a commitment to continental stability that would maintain the European status quo in terms of the balance of power, as well as to encourage Anglo-American cooperation in future world political affairs) (Egerton xii). Concomitantly, the concept of such an international league followed hard on the heels of the peace movement that had emerged in the 19th century was well as the dissidence and radicalism that had characterized British politics before the war. These trends represented a fundamental obstacle to pursuing such traditional British strategies and interests after the war. In this regard, Egerton advises that, "For its proponents, the league project offered Britain the chance to surmount the inadequacies and dangers of her traditional strategies and lay the foundations for world peace and British security through a new strategy of liberal internationalism. Given President Wilson's championing of the New Diplomacy, the league idea also suggested the alluring prospect of a lasting pax Anglo-Americana" (p. xii).

Indeed, these trends amounted to a veritable revolution in political thought in the UK after the war and the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations became inextricably bound up in the environment that ensued. For instance, Eber notes that "The challenge of the league idea to traditional strategies was doubly potent because, after 1917, the social and ideological consequences of the war made it impossible to divorce politics from war-aims declarations and strategic planning in what had become a revolutionary era" (p. xii). In fact, the isolationism that characterized the United States prior to and following World War I was nowhere to be found in the UK given its intimate social, political and economic relationship with the rest of the European continent. As Eber points out, "Because the war saw the rise of a powerful league of nations movement and wide-ranging popular commitment to the ideology of the New Diplomacy, it is necessary to place British debate on the league question in its broader social and strategic context" (p. xiii). In this regard, the League of Nations initiative accomplished the British objectives of satisfying those who wanted to prevent future wars as well as those who were opposed to Britain's involvement in the war during its prosecution. According to Eber, "Not only did the league of nations movement see the realization of its immediate goal in the creation of the league at the Paris peace conference, but the ideas of wartime dissenters and proleaguers had a powerful impact on the political attitudes and values of postwar British society. The League of Nations trilogy of 'collective security,' arbitration, and disarmament had an irresistible effect on the domestic underpinnings of interwar British foreign policy" (Egerton xiii). This irresistible effect was facilitated by the ability of the British government to approve treaties without the same level of support required on the other side of the Atlantic wherein a two-thirds majority of a divided Senate was required. Taken together, the political, economic and social exigencies of the day suggest that British approval of the Treaty of Versailles and its provisions for a League of Nations were foregone conclusions from the outset.

Conclusion

During its 27-year history, the research showed that the League of Nations set the stage for its successor, the United Nations, but like its contemporary counterpart, the League experienced a number of constraints in effectuating its international agenda given its dearth of enforcement powers. The research showed that the reluctance of the United States to approve the Treaty of Versailles and the Covenant that created the League may have contributed to its demise, but the debate over U.S. accession to the League served to emphasize the opposing views concerning such an international organization, many of which remain firmly in place today. In sharp contrast to the prolonged and heated debate that took place over membership in the League in the United States, the debate that took place in the United Kingdom was a cakewalk by comparison and Britain's membership in the League and approval of the Treaty of Versailles were largely viewed as in the nation's best interests. Whether the decision by the U.S. To remain outside of this original international organization was the correct one likely depends on who is asking and who is being asked, since many of the issues that surrounded U.S. membership in the League of Nations continue to characterize the debate over continuing U.S. membership in the United Nations.