idence of this conviction.

On the other hand, I favored the speedy negotiation of a short and
simple preliminary treaty, in which, so far as the League of Nations was
concerned, there would be a series of declarations and an agreement for
a future international conference called for the purpose of drafting a
convention in harmony with the declarations in the preliminary treaty.
By adopting this course a state of peace would have been restored in the
early months of 1919, official intercourse and commercial relations
would have been resumed, the more complex and difficult problems of
settlement would have been postponed to the negotiation of the
definitive Treaty of Peace, and there would have been time to study
exhaustively the purposes, powers, and practical operations of a League
before the organic agreement was put into final form. Postponement would
also have given opportunity to the nations, which had continued neutral
throughout the war, to participate in the formation of the plan for a
League on an equal footing with the nations which had been belligerents.
In the establishment of a world organization universality of
international representation in reaching an agreement seemed to me
advisable, if not essential, provided the nations represented were
democracies and not autocracies.

It was to be presumed also that at a conference entirely independent of
the peace negotiations and free from the influences affecting the terms
of peace, there would be more general and more frank discussions
regarding the various phases of the subject than was possible at a
conference ruled by the Five Great Powers and dominated in its
decisions, if not in its opinions, by the statesmen of those Powers.

To perfect such a document, as the Covenant of the League of Nations was
intended to be, required expert knowledge, practical experience in
international relations, and an exchange of ideas untrammeled by
immediate questions of policy or by the prejudices resulting from the
war and from national hatreds and jealousies. It was not a work for
politicians, novices, or inexperienced theorists, but for trained
statesmen and jurists, who were conversant with the fundamental
principles of international law, with the usages of nations in their
intercourse with one another, and with the successes and failures of
previous experiments in international association. The President was
right in his conception as to the greatness of the task to be