assumption, or the effect which the fiction
could be supposed to have on the minds of those legislators who might be
opposed to the measure on the ground that it involved undue interference
in the internal affairs of sovereign states. The motion was referred to
a commission, which in due time presented a report. Mr. Wilson was
absent when the report came up for discussion, his place being taken by
Colonel House. The atmosphere was chilly, only a couple of the delegates
being disposed to support the clause--Rumania's representative, M.
Diamandi, was one, and another was Baron Makino, whose help Colonel
House would gladly have dispensed with, so inacceptable was the
condition it carried with it.

Baron Makino said that he entirely agreed with Colonel House and the
American delegates. The equality of religious confessions was not merely
desirable, but necessary to the smooth working of a Society of Nations
such as they were engaged in establishing. He held, however, that it
should be extended to races, that extension being also a corollary of
the principle underlying the new international ordering. He would
therefore move the insertion of a clause proclaiming the equality of
races and religions. At this Colonel House looked pensive. Nearly all
the other opinions were hostile to Colonel House's motion.

The reasons alleged by each of the dissenting lawgivers were
interesting. Lord Robert Cecil surprised many of his colleagues by
informing them that in England the Catholics, who are fairly treated as
things are, could not possibly be set on a footing of perfect equality
with their Protestant fellow-citizens, because the Constitution forbids
it. Nor could the British people be asked to alter their Constitution.
He gave as instances of the slight inequality at present enforced the
circumstance that no Catholic can ascend the throne as monarch, nor sit
on the woolsack as Lord Chancellor in the Upper House.

M. Larnaude, speaking in the name of France, stated that his country had
passed through a sequence of embarrassments caused by legislation on the
relations between the Catholics and the state, and that the introduction
of a clause enacting perfect equality might revive controversies which
were happily losing their sharpness. He considered it, therefore,
inadvisable to settle this delicate matter by inserting the proposed
declaration in the Covenant. Belgium's first delegate, M. Hymans,
pointed out that the objection taken