OUR RESPONSIBILITY

...He was proceeding in the same bighand-ed and arbitrary manner with the framing of the League of Nations...

...Such discussion might have disclosed the need of other important amendments to that instrument at a time when they could have re-ceived the consideration of the Paris Conference...

...Every word, phrase, sentence in the complicated mass of material will be pregnant with meaning...

...If their decree summon us to the grim business of drafting a new army to fight another foreign war, in India, or Africa, or China, or Italy, or France, or Japan, we will be bound to make the terrible sacrifice...

...It must therefore be analyzed, weighed, considered with infinite patience and with all of the enlightened understanding which can be brought to bear upon it...

...Senators are receiving by every mail the strongest protests against concurrence in it, and the most insistent demands that it be agreed to without delay...

...These common experiences in our daily life,—each more or less a tragedy to the unfortunate litigants, might have been averted had the parties to the agreement exercised a greater caution, acted with more mature deliberation, taken wider and better counsel before obligating themselves under the terms of the contract, which once executed became irrevocably binding upon them, their heirs and assigns...

...It was necessary to authorize some one to open negotiations, establish communication with the other nation or nations party to the treaty...

...And again he says: "The history of human conduct does not warrant that exalted opinion of human virtue, which would make it wise in a nation to commit interests of so delicate and momentous a kind, AS THOSE WHICH CONCERN ITS INTERCOURSE WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD, TO THE SOLE DISPOSAL OF A MAGISTRATE, CREATED AND CIRCUMSTANCED AS WOULD BE A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES...

...I will have none of it...

...Speaking of the danger of lodging with one man, the President of the United States, the exclusive authority to make treaties and control foreign relations, he said: "However proper and safe it may be, in governments where the Executive magistrate is an hereditary monarch, to commit to him the entire power of making treaties, it would be utterly unsafe and improper to intrust that power to an elective magistrate of four years duration...

...We cannot then refuse because we deem the occasion inadequate or the cause unjust...

...We know that if it be adopted and ratified it will be enforced against us by the combined power of the greatest nations of the world...

...He "discloses no step of negotiations until it is complete, and when it is completed," he counts on "the government" as being "virtually committed," and he counts on the Senate as being "committed also...

...So too of the Tfeaty...

...Terence...

...without it dangers gather thick and fast around the frail bark of man, and hurry him on to destruction...

...We will no longer be a free people, with the American right to back American convictions and maintain American ideals...

...It will then be too late to say: "We did not so understand our obligations...

...If disputes thereafter arise, as to the true meaning of any of its provisions, we will not be permitted to put our construction upon the controverted terms...

...and we ought to enter with mature deliberation on those measures which, if they once get a wrong bias, cannot be set to rights...

...In other words, he says that: "The initiative in foreign affairs, which the President possesses without any restriction whatever, is virtually the power to control them absolutely...

...Finally Senators, necessarily uninformed as to its secret terms, so vigorously assailed it upon the general principle that it would bind up our fortunes with the unstable destinies of European governments, that in fear of an aroused public opinion against it, he was forced at last to give out a draft of that document...

...We cannot then make choice of the side upon which we will fight...

...DISPUTES arise among men, lawsuits follow, money is squandered, success converted into dismal failure, friendships broken, lives spoiled,—all because contracts were badly drawn, the terms of vitally important covenants ambiguously stated...

...Consequently we have no definite information as to the exact terms of the Treaty, and as it will have to be read and considered in connection with the League Compact of which it is a part, we must remain in the dark waiting on the pleasure of President Wilson...

...This gives him command of the channels of communication...

...Guicciar-dini...

...The time of trial courts in every county of each state is largely taken up in an effort to determine the real meaning of contracts and to enforce the construction which it is finally decided must be accepted as the true intent and purpose of the contracting parties...

...Moreover the several judges of the appellate court may not be united in their opinion as to the proper construction to be given to the controverted provisions of the contract...

...Its obligations are of the most solemn and exacting character...

...The President has the lawful right to open negotiations for a treaty—that is, he has "the initiative in foreign affairs...

...But we now have a President with the effrontery to assert that: "He (the President) need disclose no step of negotiation until it (the treaty) is complete, and when in any critical matter it is completed, the government is virtually committed...

...In no other way can you be assured that the contract will achieve that which you desire...

...And so in this "critical matter" the President usurps the sole and exclusive power to make this treaty...

...it is the real ballast of human life...

...ROBERT M. LA FOLLETTE...

...And it often happens that the construction of the trial court as to the terms of the agreement is not sustained by the appellate court...

...Whatever its disinclination the Senate may feel itself committed also...

...We will have small part in the decision...

...But all who desire to more closely and permanently weave American destiny with foreign power, must agree before advocating a blind acceptance of all of the binding covenants of this treaty, including the League Compact, that it is supremely important to make a diligent, patient, critical, unprejudiced, non-partisan analysis and study of every provision of the ponderous document...

...I cite these experiences, familiar to every community because at this time agreements are being framed at Paris, intended to bind this nation and every man, woman and child in it, by hard and fast covenants...

...Whether we join in the Compact, or propose amendments to it, or reject it, and make a separate peace, as we have the right to do, are all matters to be determined after we shall have thoroughly considered its every phase and are better prepared to pass an intelligent judgment upon the manifold obligations which it will impose upon us...

...Great Britain alone will have five times our voting power in deciding what the disputed provisions mean...

...When the draft was exposed to analysis, it proved so vulnerable that he made haste to change some of its indefensible provisions...

...If the President had been more mindful of the requirements of the Constitution, convened the Senate in Executive Session and submitted its provisions for consideration from time to time, such discussion and interchange of views might well have developed the importance of needed amendments to that document, while the Paris Conference were still in session to give them such consideration as might have contributed to an earlier and more favorable result than will be otherwise possible...

...He spurns the Constitution...

...No such understanding can be had from a brief synopsis of the Treaty...

...Judson...

...The more important the affair is, about which we are engaged, the more cautious ought we to be...

...Those who are opposed to any political alliance or entanglements with European governments, may very well say: "I care nothing about the details of the proposed agreement for a political partnership with European ambitions, intrigues, jealousies and antagonisms...

...It was never conceived as possible by the framers of the Constitution that a treaty would be negotiated and framed by one man without the concurrent counsel and advice of the United States Senate...

...When once assumed, this nation and every citizen in it, will be pledged to the last man and the last dollar, to fulfill its terms with scrupulous fidelity...

...One grain of prudence is of more value than a cranium crowded with unbridled genius, or a flowing stream of vain wit...

...Wisdom consists, not in seeing what is before us, but in discerning those things which may come to pass...

...A Treaty is a contract...

...Permitted to know nothing of the definite terms of the Treaty now being written at Paris, with but a vague conception, at best, of the far-reaching, complex, iron clad obligations of the League Covenants, men and women, some of them believing that it all means an enduring peace, others that in reality it means well-nigh perpetual war, are arraying themselves for or against immediate action...

...his iniquitous plan "of disclosing no step of negotiation until the treaty is complete" and until he believes he has "virtually committed the government," and "the Senate also...

...We do know that the Paris Conference by the time its work is completed will have taken some five or six months in their snug seclusion, to consider and frame the Treaty including the League Compact...

...We will be forced to bow to the will of others...

...In no other way can you be certain that it will not "keep the word of promise to our ear and break it to our hope...

...In no other way can you furnish reasons to commend your judgment...

...And President Wilson boldly asserts that from this position of advantage, he can seize a power that was not conferred on him by the Constitution...

...We must, without demur, accept the part assigned to us by the authority to which we have bound ourselves to be subservient...

...And not infrequently the court of last resort finally ends the protracted dispute by a five to four decision...

...Alexander Hamilton, fresh from active participation in the Constitutional Convention, addressing the people of New York pending their ratification of the Constitution, emphasized the importance of the Senate's joint and concurrent participation in making treaties...

...If we are to bind ourselves by the terms of this solemn covenant, then it behooves us to be sure that we understand in its minutest detail every obligation which it will impose upon us...

...In no other way can you discharge your duty to your country...

...We are told that it will contain some eighty to one hundred thousand words, in bulk the equivalent of a large printed volume...

...If the term of Congress had not expired on March fourth, or if the President had convened Congress immediately to continue its unfinished work, or if he had called an executive session of the Senate as he clearly should have done in compliance with the Constitution, the discussion upon the the League Covenant would certainly have continued...

...But President Wilson has seen fit to pursue his arbitrary plan of "absolute control...

...We may feel that we are made the instrument of a cruel wrong...

...The making of a treaty is the exercise of a vast power...

...But having given the President that authority it was never thought, much less suggested, that he would take advantage of that position to arrogate to himself the sole and exclusive power to frame and complete the treaty without consulting and advising with the Senate, as distinctly and positively provided in the Constitution...

...We will have become subject to the will of Foreign Powers...

...He makes a jest and a mockery of his oft repeated assurances of "open covenants of peace, openly arrived at...