present the proposal informally to the Council. The advantages
to be gained by adopting the suggested action apparently appealed to the
members, and their general approval of it impressed the President, for
he asked me in an undertone if I had prepared the resolution. I replied
that I had been working upon it, but had ceased when he said to me the
day before that he did not think it necessary or advisable, adding that
I would complete the draft if he wished me to do so. He said that he
would be obliged to me if I would prepare one.

Encouraged by the support received in the Council and by the seeming
willingness of the President to give the proposal consideration, I
proceeded at once to draft a resolution.

The task was not an easy one because it would have been useless to
insert in the document any declaration which seemed to be contradictory
of the President's theory of an affirmative guaranty or which was not
sufficiently broad to be interpreted in other terms in the event that
American public opinion was decidedly opposed to his theory, as I felt
that it would be. It was also desirable, from my point of view, that the
resolution should contain a declaration in favor of the equality of
nations or one which would prevent the establishment of an oligarchy of
the Great Powers, and another declaration which would give proper place
to the administration of legal justice in international disputes.

The handicaps and difficulties under which I labored are manifest, and
the resolution as drafted indicates them in that it does not express as
clearly and unequivocally as it would otherwise do the principles which
formed the bases of the articles which I handed to the President on
January 7 and which have already been quoted _in extenso_.

The text of the resolution, which was completed on the 22d, reads as
follows:

"_Resolved_ that the Conference makes the following declaration:

"That the preservation of international peace is the standing policy
of civilization and to that end a league of nations should be
organized to prevent international wars;

"That it is a fundamental principle of peace that all nations are
equally entitled to the undisturbed possession of their respective
territories, to the full exercise of their respective sovereignties,
and to the use of the high seas as the common property of all
peoples; and

"That it is the duty of all nations to engage by mutual covenants-