confidence.

In spite of this frank avowal of prejudice by the President there was no
outward change in the personal and official relations between him and
myself. The breach, however, regardless of appearances, was too wide and
too deep to be healed. While subsequent events bridged it temporarily,
it remained until my association with President Wilson came to an end in
February, 1920. I never forgot his words and always felt that in his
mind my opinions, even when he sought them, were tainted with legalism.

CHAPTER IX

A RESOLUTION INSTEAD OF THE COVENANT

As it seemed advisable, in view of the incident of January 10, to have
nothing to do with the drafting of the Covenant unless the entire theory
was changed, the fact that there prevailed at that time a general belief
that a preliminary treaty of peace would be negotiated in the near
future invited an effort to delay the consideration of a complete and
detailed charter of the League of Nations until the definitive treaty or
a separate treaty dealing with the League alone was considered. As delay
would furnish time to study and discuss the subject and prevent hasty
acceptance of an undesirable or defective plan, it seemed to me that the
advisable course to take was to limit reference to the organization in
the preliminary treaty to general principles.

The method that I had in mind in carrying out this policy was to secure
the adoption, by the Conference on the Preliminaries of Peace, of a
resolution embodying a series of declarations as to the creation, the
nature, and the purposes of a League of Nations, which declarations
could be included in the preliminary treaty of peace accompanied by an
article providing for the negotiation of a detailed plan based on these
declarations at the time of the negotiation of the definitive treaty or
else by an article providing for the summoning of a world congress, in
which all nations, neutrals as well as belligerents, would be
represented and have a voice in the drafting of a convention
establishing a League of Nations in accordance with the general
principles declared in the preliminary treaty. Personally I preferred a
separate treaty, but doubted the possibility of obtaining the assent of
the Conference to that plan because some of the delegates showed a
feeling of resentment toward certain neutral nations on account of their
attitude during the war, while the inclusion of the four powers which
had formed the Cen