personal influence on the delegates in favor of its acceptance by
publicly addressing the Conference. This he could hardly have done
without becoming a delegate. It would seem, therefore, that the purpose
of creating a League of Nations and obtaining the incorporation of a
plan of organization in the treaty to be negotiated had much to do with
the President's presence at the peace table.

From the time that the United States entered the war in April, 1917, Mr.
Wilson held firmly to the idea that the salvation of the world from
imperialism would not be lasting unless provision was made in the peace
treaty for an international agency strong enough to prevent a future
attack upon the rights and liberties of the nations which were at so
great a cost holding in check the German armies and preventing them from
carrying out their evil designs of conquest. The object sought by the
United States in the war would not, in the views of many, be achieved
unless the world was organized to resist future aggression. The
essential thing, as the President saw it, in order to "make the world
safe for democracy" was to give permanency to the peace which would be
negotiated at the conclusion of the war. A union of the nations for the
purpose of preventing wars of aggression and conquest seemed to him the
most practical, if not the only, way of accomplishing this supreme
object, and he urged it with earnestness and eloquence in his public
addresses relating to the bases of peace.

There was much to be said in favor of the President's point of view.
Unquestionably the American people as a whole supported him in the
belief that there ought to be some international agreement, association,
or concord which would lessen the possibility of future wars. An
international organization to remove in a measure the immediate causes
of war, to provide means for the peaceable settlement of disputes