l provided the request contains a written statement of the
subject to be discussed.

"The archives of the Council shall be open at any time to any member
of the Council, who may make and retain copies thereof.

"All expenses of the Supervisory Committee and Secretariat shall be
borne equally by all powers signatory or adherent to this
convention."

As indicated by the caption, this document was intended merely "for
discussion" of the principal features of the organization. It should be
noted that the basic principle is the equality of nations. No special
privileges are granted to the major powers in the conduct of the
organization. The rights and obligations of one member of the League are
no more and no less than those of every other member. It is based on
international democracy and denies international aristocracy.

Equality in the exercise of sovereign rights in times of peace, an
equality which is imposed by the very nature of sovereignty, seemed to
me fundamental to a world organization affecting in any way a nation's
independence of action or its exercise of supreme authority over its
external or domestic affairs. In my judgment any departure from that
principle would be a serious error fraught with danger to the general
peace of the world and to the recognized law of nations, since it could
mean nothing less than the primacy of the Great Powers and the
acknowledgment that because they possessed the physical might they had a
right to control the affairs of the world in times of peace as well as
in times of war. For the United States to admit that such primacy ought
to be formed would be bad enough, but to suggest it indirectly by
proposing an international organization based on that idea would be
far worse.

On January 22, 1917, the President in an address to the Senate had made
the following declaration:

"The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to
last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must
neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations or
small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak. Right
must be based upon the common strength, not the individual strength,
of the nations upon whose concert peace will depend. Equality of
territory or of resources there of course cannot be; nor any other
sort of equality not gained in the ordinary peaceful and legitimate
development of the peoples