these opponents of the plan will go back to the time of which I am
writing, and avoid the impressions made upon them by subsequent events,
they will find, I believe, that even their own views have materially
changed since December, 1918. It is true that concrete plans had then
been suggested, but so far as the public knew the President had not
adopted any of them or formulated one of his own. He had not then
disclosed the provisions of his "Covenant."

The mass of the people were only concerned with the general idea. There
was no well-defined opposition to that idea. At least it was not vocal.
Even the defeat of the Democratic Party in the Congressional elections
of November, 1918, could not be interpreted to be a repudiation of the
formation of a world organization. That election, by which both Houses
of Congress became Republican, was a popular rebuke to Mr. Wilson for
the partisanship shown in his letter of October addressed to the
American people, in which he practically asserted that it was
unpatriotic to support the Republican candidates. The indignation and
resentment aroused by that injudicious and unwarranted attack upon the
loyalty of his political opponents lost to the Democratic Party the
Senate and largely reduced its membership in the House of
Representatives if it did not in fact deprive the party of control of
that body. The result, however, did not mean that the President's ideas
as to the terms of peace were repudiated, but that his practical
assertion, that refusal to accept his policies was unpatriotic, was
repudiated by the American people.

It is very apparent to one, who without prejudice reviews the state of
public sentiment in December, 1918, that the trouble, which later
developed as to a League of Nations, did not lie in the necessity of
convincing the peoples of the world, their governments, and their