The mutual guaranty which was advocated by President Wilson appears as
Article III of his original draft of a Covenant. It reads as follows:

"ARTICLE III

"The Contracting Powers unite in guaranteeing to each other political independence and territorial integrity; but it is understood between them that such territorial readjustments, if any, as may in the future become necessary by reason of changes in present racial conditions and aspirations or present social and political relationships, pursuant to the principle of self-determination, and also such territorial readjustments as may in the judgment of three fourths of the Delegates be demanded by the welfare and manifest interest of the peoples concerned, may be effected if agreeable to those peoples; and that territorial changes may in equity involve material compensation. The Contracting Powers accept without reservation the principle that the peace of the world is superior in importance to every question of political jurisdiction or boundary."

In the revised draft, which he laid before the Commission on the League of Nations at its first session Article III became Article 7. It is as follows:

"ARTICLE 7

"The High Contracting Parties undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all States members of the League."

The guaranty was finally incorporated in the Treaty of Peace as Article 10. It reads:

"ARTICLE 10

"The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled."

In the revision of the original draft the modifying clause providing for future territorial readjustments was omitted. It does not appear in Article 7 of the draft which was presented to the Commission on the League of Nations and which formed the basis of its deliberations. In addition to this modification the words "unite in guaranteeing" in Article III became "undertake to respect and preserve" in Article 7. These changes are only important in that they indicate a disposition to revise the article to meet the wishes, and to remove to an extent the objections, of some of the foreign delegates who had prepared plans for a League or at least had definite ideas as to the purposes and functions of an international organization.

It was generally believed that the elimination of the modifying clause from the President's original form of guaranty was chiefly due to the opposition of the statesmen who represented the British Empire in contradistinction to those who represented the self-governing British Dominions. It was also believed that this opposition was caused by an unwillingness on their part to recognize or to apply as a right the principle of "self-determination" in arranging possible future changes of sovereignty over territories.

I do not know the arguments which were used to induce the President to abandon this phrase and to strike it from his article of guaranty. I personally doubt whether the objection to the words "self-determination" was urged upon him. Whatever reasons were advanced by his foreign colleagues, they were successful in freeing the Covenant from the phrase. It is to be regretted that the influence, which was sufficient to induce the President to eliminate from his proposed guaranty the clause containing a formal acceptance of the principle of "self-determination," was not exerted or else was not potent enough to obtain from him an open disavowal of the principle as a right standard for the determination of sovereign authority. Without such a disavowal the phrase remained as one of the general bases upon which a just peace should be negotiated. It remained a precept of the international creed which Mr. Wilson proclaimed while the war was still in progress, for he had declared, in an address delivered on February 11, 1918, before a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, that "self-determination is not a mere phrase. It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril."

"Self-determination" is as right in theory as the more famous phrase "the consent of the governed," which has for three centuries been repeatedly declared to be sound by political philosophers and has been generally accepted as just by civilized peoples, but which has been for three centuries commonly ignored by statesmen because the right could not be practically applied without imperiling national safety, always the paramount consideration in international and national affairs. The two phrases mean substantially the same thing and have to an extent been used interchangeably by those who advocate the principle as a standard of right. "Self-determination" was not a new thought. It was a restatement of the old one.

Under the present political organization of the world, based as it is on the idea of nationality, the new phrase is as unsusceptible of universal application as the old one was found to be. Fixity of national boundaries and of national allegiance, and political stability would disappear if this principle was uniformly applied. Impelled by new social conditions, by economic interests, by racial prejudices, and by the various forces which affect society, change and uncertainty would result from an attempt to follow the principle in every case to which it is possible to apply it.

Among my notes I find one of December 20, 1918—that is, one week after the American Commission landed in France—in which I recorded my thoughts concerning certain phrases or epigrams of the President, which he had declared to be bases of peace, and which I considered to contain the seeds of future trouble. In regard to the asserted right of "self-determination" I wrote:

"When the President talks of 'self-determination' what unit has he in
mind? Does he mean a race, a territorial area, or a community?
Without a definite unit which is practical, application of this
principle is dangerous to peace and stability."

Ten days later (December 30) the frequent repetition of the phrase in the press and by members of certain groups and unofficial delegations, who were in Paris seeking to obtain hearings before the Conference, caused me to write the following:

"The more I think about the President's declaration as to the right of 'self-determination,' the more convinced I am of the danger of putting such ideas into the minds of certain races. It is bound to be the basis of impossible demands on the Peace Congress and create trouble in many lands.

"What effect will it have on the Irish, the Indians, the Egyptians, and the nationalists among the Boers? Will it not breed discontent, disorder, and rebellion? Will not the Mohammedans of Syria and Palestine and possibly of Morocco and Tripoli rely on it? How can it be harmonized with Zionism, to which the President is practically committed?

"The phrase is simply loaded with dynamite. It will raise hopes which can never be realized. It will, I fear, cost thousands of lives. In the end it is bound to be discredited, to be called the dream of an idealist who failed to realize the danger until too late to check those who attempt to put the principle in force. What a calamity that the phrase was ever uttered! What misery it will cause!"

Since the foregoing notes were written the impracticability of the universal or even of the general application of the principle has been fully demonstrated. Mr. Wilson resurrected "the consent of the governed" regardless of the fact that history denied its value as a practical guide in modern political relations. He proclaimed it in the phrase "self-determination," declaring it to be an "imperative principle of action." He made it one of the bases of peace. And yet, in the negotiations at Paris and in the formulation of the foreign policy of the United States, he has by his acts denied the existence of the right other than as the expression of a moral precept, as something to be desired, but generally unattainable in the lives of nations. In the actual conduct of affairs, in the practical and concrete relations between individuals and governments, it doubtless exercises and should exercise a measure of influence, but it is not a controlling influence.

In the Treaty of Versailles with Germany the readjustment of the German boundaries, by which the sovereignty over millions of persons of German blood was transferred to the new states of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia, and the practical cession to the Empire of Japan of the port of Kiao-Chau and control over the economic life of the Province of Shantung are striking examples of the abandonment of the principle.

In the Treaty of Saint-Germain the Austrian Tyrol was ceded to the Kingdom of Italy against the known will of substantially the entire population of that region.

In both the Treaty of Versailles and the Treaty of Saint-Germain Austria was denied the right to form a political union with Germany, and when an article of the German Constitution of August, 1919, contemplating a "reunion" of "German Austria" with the German Empire was objected to by the Supreme Council, then in session at Paris, as in contradiction of the terms of the Treaty with Germany, a protocol was signed on September 22, 1919, by plenipotentiaries of Germany and the five Principal Allied and Associated Powers, declaring the article in the Constitution null and void. There could hardly be a more open repudiation of the alleged right of "self-determination" than this refusal to permit Austria to unite with Germany however unanimous the wish of the Austrian people for such union.

But Mr. Wilson even further discredited the phrase by adopting a policy toward Russia which ignored the principle. The peoples of Esthonia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Georgia, and Azerbaidjan have by blood, language, and racial traits elements of difference which give to each of them in more or less degree the character of a distinct nationality. These peoples all possess aspirations to become independent states, and yet, throughout the negotiations at Paris and since that time, the Government of the United States has repeatedly refused to recognize the right of the inhabitants of these territories to determine for themselves the sovereignty under which they shall live. It has, on the contrary, declared in favor of a "Great Russia" comprising the vast territory of the old Empire except the province which belonged to the dismembered Kingdom of Poland and the lands included within the present boundaries of the Republic of Finland.

I do not mention the policy of President Wilson as to an undivided Russia by way of criticism because I believe the policy was and has continued to be the right one. The reference to it is made for the sole purpose of pointing out another example of Mr. Wilson's frequent departure without explanation from his declared standard for the determination of political authority and allegiance. I think that it must be conceded that he has by his acts proved that "self-determination" is "a mere phrase" which ought to be discarded as misleading because it cannot be practically applied.

It may be pointed out as a matter of special interest to the student of American history that, if the right of "self-determination" were sound in principle and uniformly applicable in establishing political allegiance and territorial sovereignty, the endeavor of the Southern States to secede from the American Union in 1861 would have been wholly justifiable; and, conversely, the Northern States, in forcibly preventing secession and compelling the inhabitants of the States composing the Confederacy to remain under the authority of the Federal Government, would have perpetrated a great and indefensible wrong against the people of the South by depriving them of a right to which they were by nature entitled. This is the logic of the application of the principle of "self-determination" to the political rights at issue in the American Civil War.

I do not believe that there are many Americans of the present generation who would support the proposition that the South was inherently right and the North was inherently wrong in that great conflict. There were, at the time when the sections were arrayed in arms against each other, and there may still be, differences of opinion as to the legal right of secession under the Constitution of the United States, but the inherent right of a people of a State to throw off at will their allegiance to the Federal Union and resume complete sovereignty over the territory of the State was never urged as a conclusive argument. It was the legal right and not the natural right which was emphasized as justifying those who took up arms in order to disrupt the Union. But if an American citizen denies that the principle of "self-determination" can be rightfully applied to the affairs of his own country, how can he consistently maintain that it is a right inseparable from a true conception of political liberty and therefore universally applicable, just in principle, and wise from the practical point of view?

Of course, those who subscribe to "self-determination" and advocate it as a great truth fundamental to every political society organized to protect and promote civil liberty, do not claim it for races, peoples, or communities whose state of barbarism or ignorance deprive them of the capacity to choose intelligently their political affiliations. As to peoples or communities, however, who do possess the intelligence to make a rational choice of political allegiance, no exception is made, so far as words go, to the undeviating application of the principle. It is the affirmation of an unqualified right. It is one of those declarations of principle which sounds true, which in the abstract may be true, and which appeals strongly to man's innate sense of moral right and to his conception of natural justice, but which, when the attempt is made to apply it in every case, becomes a source of political instability and domestic disorder and not infrequently a cause of rebellion.

In the settlement of territorial rights and of the sovereignty to be exercised over particular regions there are several factors which require consideration. International boundaries may be drawn along ethnic, economic, geographic, historic, or strategic lines. One or all of these elements may influence the decision, but whatever argument may be urged in favor of any one of these factors, the chief object in the determination of the sovereignty to be exercised within a certain territory is national safety. National safety is as dominant in the life of a nation as self-preservation is in the life of an individual. It is even more so, as nations do not respond to the impulse of self-sacrifice. With national safety as the primary object to be attained in territorial settlements, the factors of the problem assume generally, though not always, the following order of importance: the strategic, to which is closely allied the geographic and historic; the economic, affecting the commercial and industrial life of a nation; and lastly the ethnic, including in the terms such conditions as consanguinity, common language, and similar social and religious institutions.

The national safety and the economic welfare of the United States were at stake in the War of Secession, although the attempt to secede resulted from institutional rather than ethnic causes. The same was true when in the Papineau Rebellion of 1837 the French inhabitants of the Province of Lower Canada attempted for ethnic reasons to free themselves from British sovereignty. Had the right of "self-determination" in the latter case been recognized as "imperative" by Great Britain, the national life and economic growth of Canada would have been strangled because the lines of communication and the commercial routes to the Atlantic seaboard would have been across an alien state. The future of Canada, with its vast undeveloped resources, its very life as a British colony, depended upon denying the right of "self-determination." It was denied and the French inhabitants of Quebec were forced against their will to accept British sovereignty.

Experience has already demonstrated the unwisdom of having given currency to the phrase "self-determination." As the expression of an actual right, the application of which is universal and invariable, the phrase has been repudiated or at least violated by many of the terms of the treaties which brought to an end the World War. Since the time that the principle was proclaimed, it has been the excuse for turbulent political elements in various lands to resist established governmental authority; it has induced the use of force in an endeavor to wrest the sovereignty over a territory or over a community from those who have long possessed and justly exercised it. It has formed the basis for territorial claims by avaricious nations. And it has introduced into domestic as well as international affairs a new spirit of disorder. It is an evil thing to permit the principle of "self-determination" to continue to have the apparent sanction of the nations when it has been in fact thoroughly discredited and will always be cast aside whenever it comes in conflict with national safety, with historic political rights, or with national economic interests affecting the prosperity of a nation.

This discussion of the right of "self-determination," which was one of the bases of peace which President Wilson declared in the winter of 1918, and which was included in the modifying clause of his guaranty as originally drafted, is introduced for the purpose of showing the reluctance which I felt in accepting his guidance in the adoption of a principle so menacing to peace and so impossible of practical application. As a matter of fact I never discussed the subject with Mr. Wilson as I purposed doing, because a situation arose on January 10, 1919, which discouraged me from volunteering to him advice on matters which did not directly pertain to legal questions and to the international administration of legal justice.