who represented the self-governing British
Dominions. It was also believed that this opposition was caused by an
unwillingness on their part to recognize or to apply as a right the
principle of "self-determination" in arranging possible future changes
of sovereignty over territories.

I do not know the arguments which were used to induce the President to
abandon this phrase and to strike it from his article of guaranty. I
personally doubt whether the objection to the words "self-determination"
was urged upon him. Whatever reasons were advanced by his foreign
colleagues, they were successful in freeing the Covenant from the
phrase. It is to be regretted that the influence, which was sufficient
to induce the President to eliminate from his proposed guaranty the
clause containing a formal acceptance of the principle of
"self-determination," was not exerted or else was not potent enough to
obtain from him an open disavowal of the principle as a right standard
for the determination of sovereign authority. Without such a disavowal
the phrase remained as one of the general bases upon which a just peace
should be negotiated. It remained a precept of the international creed
which Mr. Wilson proclaimed while the war was still in progress, for he
had declared, in an address delivered on February 11, 1918, before a
joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, that
"self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle
of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril."

"Self-determination" is as right in theory as the more famous phrase
"the consent of the governed," which has for three centuries been
repeatedly declared to be sound by political philosophers and has been
generally accepted as just by civilized peoples, but which has been for
three centuries commonly ignored by statesmen because the right could
not be practically applied without imperiling national safety, always
the paramount consideration in international and national affairs. The
two phrases mean substantially the same thing and have to an extent been
used interchangeably by those who advocate the principle as a standard
of right. "Self-determination" was not a new thought. It was a
restatement of the old one.

Under the present political organization of the world, based as it is on
the idea of nationality, the new phrase is as unsusceptible of universal
application as the old one was found to be. Fixity of national