Declaration to the World

Twenty-four years ago this month, two days before Woodrow Wilson's departure on his second trip to Paris, Massachusetts' eloquent, elegant Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. rose in the Senate to offer a resolution. It began: "Whereas under the Constitution it is a function of the Senate to advise and consent to, or dissent from, the ratification of any treaty. . . ." It concluded: "Resolved . . . that the constitution of the league of nations in the form now proposed . . . should not be accepted by the United States. . . ."

When objection was made to considering his resolution, Senator Lodge agreed to lay it aside, added, with sardonic significance: "The undersigned Senators declare that, if they had the opportunity, they would have voted for the resolution." The undersigned names added up to 37; it was the first clear warning to Woodrow Wilson that his pet treaty could not muster a two-thirds majority. Angrily Woodrow Wilson sailed off to Europe; in the resulting clash between a dogmatic President and the "Irreconcilables," the treaty and the League were lost.

Years later, Senator Lodge, admitting that the resolution was "clearly out of order," explained: "Our purpose, however, had been served. The declaration went out to the world."

Last week, as Britain's dapper Anthony Eden arrived in Washington to begin discussions on policy (see p. 9). four U.S. Senators prepared to send another declaration to the world. Again it took the form of a Senate resolution, but it differed mightily from Senator Lodge's. It bore the names of two Democrats--Alabama's Lister Hill, New Mexico's Carl Hatch--and two Republicans--Minnesota's Joseph H. Ball and Ohio's Harold Burton.

The resolution would put the Senate on record as favoring U.S. initiative in forming a United Nations organization to: 1) finish the war; 2) establish temporary governments in Axis-controlled countries; 3) administer postwar rehabilitation; 4) set up machinery for settlement of future disputes between the nations; and 5) provide for a United Nations world police.

"Minimum Agreement." Two decades of a false peace and the impact of global war had changed at least some sections of Senate thinking. The resolution's sponsors, who had sweated over the draft of their document for several weeks and buttonholed many a Senator for his ideas on it, hoped to muster a two-thirds majority.

Three of the sponsors--Senators Hill, Hatch and Ball--have been stanch supporters of Administration foreign policy. For Senator Burton, who often voted with the Republican Isolationist bloc before Pearl Harbor, the resolution showed a courageous change of mind. The sponsors hoped to win over other onetime Isolationists.

Explained Joe Ball: U.S. foreign policy should not be determined on the basis of past debates, but on the facts of life. The resolution represents a "minimum as to what the U.S. and other United Nations might agree upon." It would pave the way for nonpartisan cooperation between the Congress and the President in planning the peace.

Franklin Roosevelt quickly invited the four sponsors to a White House conference, where the resolution was discussed with Harry Hopkins and Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles. The President approved it, in theory. But apparently the Administration was loth to touch off a Congressional debate: a little movement developed almost at once to stop the resolution's introduction. This was of no avail --Joe Ball has a hard jaw. While the resolution could never bind the Senate's vote on specific details of a peace treaty, it would be, if passed by a two-thirds majority, definite progress toward making the United Nations a positive and working organization.

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