oom, where his
natural obstinacy seemed to be intensified by his illness, the President
still refused to consider any reservations except of a purely
interpretative character, and the middle-ground Republicans would not
vote to ratify without "mild reservations," some of which seemed to him
more than interpretative.

Senatorial forces were roughly divided into four groups. There were the
"bitter-enders," typified by Johnson, Borah, and Brandegee, who frankly
wanted to defeat the treaty and the League outright; there were the
"reservationists," most of whom, like Lodge, wanted the same but did not
dare say so openly; there were the "mild reservationists," most of whom
were Republicans, who sincerely desired immediate peace and asked for no
important changes in the treaty; and finally there were those who desired
to ratify the treaty as it stood. The last-named group, made up of
Democrats, numbered from forty-one to forty-four, and obviously needed
the assistance of the "mild reservationists," if they were to secure a
two-thirds vote of the Senate. During October, all the amendments which
the Foreign Relations Committee brought forward were defeated through the
combination of the last two groups. Early in November, however, fourteen
reservations were adopted, the "mild reservationists" voting with Senator
Lodge, for lack of any basis of compromise with the Democrats. The effect
of these reservations would, undoubtedly, have been to release the
United States from many of the obligations assumed by other members,
while assuring to it the benefits of the League. The most serious of the
reservations was that concerned with Article X of the covenant, which
stated that the United States would assume no obligations to preserve the
territorial integrity or political independence of any other country, or
to interfere in controversies between nations, unless in any particular
case Congress should so provide. From the moment when Wilson first
developed his policy of international service, cooeperative interference
in order to prevent acts of aggression by a strong against a weaker power
had been the chief point in his programme. It was contained in his early
Pan-American policy; it ran through his speeches in the campaign of 1916;
it was in the Fourteen Points. It was his specific contribution to the
covenant in Paris. Article X was the one point in the covenant which
Wilson would not consent to modify or, as he expressed it, see
"n