The signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the Galerie des Glaces on June 28, 1919. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Worst Decision

5

Senate Rejection of the Treaty of Versailles

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Introduction

The U.S. entry into World War I broke with the United States’ longstanding practice of keeping out of Europe’s political affairs. President Woodrow Wilson saw that shift as an opportunity to try to restructure world politics to make future conflict less likely. He went to Paris in December 1918 to negotiate the war’s end. There he negotiated the Treaty of Versailles, which embraced his vision to create a League of Nations that would work to preserve peace. Wilson did not have similar success, however, at home. In November 1919 and again in March 1920, the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, and with it, the League of Nations. The league began operating in 1920, but the absence of the United States handicapped its work. Declining to join the league also made it easier for the United States to ignore growing world crises over the next two decades, a decision it would come to regret. SHAFR historians ranked the Senate rejection of the Treaty of Versailles as the fifth-worst U.S. foreign policy decision.

World War I

Wilson long resisted calls for the United States to join World War I. At its start, he insisted that “the United States must be neutral in fact as well as in name.” That did not mean, however, that he favored doing nothing. He hoped to mediate an end to the fighting, a role the belligerents rejected. In January 1917, he addressed the Senate, the first president to have done so since George Washington. Wilson called for “peace without victory” and the creation of a “League for Peace.”

The idea of creating a multinational organization to prevent war had been gaining popularity in the United States. In 1910, a year after stepping down as president, Theodore Roosevelt called for creating “a League of Peace” to keep the peace among its members and “prevent, by force if necessary, its being broken by others.” Five years later, a League to Enforce Peace was established with former President William Howard Taft as its head.

President Woodrow Wilson. Courtesy of the White House Historical Association.

The Fourteen Points

The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917. Nine months later, Wilson gave his Fourteen Points speech to declare what the country was fighting for. His remarks covered many proposals familiar to Americans: freedom of navigation on the high seas, more opportunities for trade, an end to colonies, and self-determination for all nations. Point fourteen, though, was Wilson’s passion. It called for a “general association of nations” to guarantee “political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike”: the League of Nations.

The armistice ending World War I took effect on November 11, 1918. Convinced that only his personal involvement could produce the league, Wilson decided to travel to Paris to negotiate the war’s settlement. His advisors urged him to stay home. They noted that no president had left the country during his presidency. They feared difficult negotiations that might damage his reputation. And days before the armistice went into effect, Republicans had taken control of Congress in the midterm elections, putting Democrats on the defensive. Wilson went anyway.

The Fourteen Points from President Woodrow Wilson's address. Courtesy of the National WWI Museum and Memorial.

The Paris Peace Conference

Massive crowds thrilled by the idealism of the Fourteen Points greeted Wilson upon his arrival in Europe in December 1919. His British, French, and Italian counterparts in Paris, however, felt differently. They disdained his idealist ambitions as unworkable and a threat to their national interests. They had agreed to negotiate on the basis of the Fourteen Points only because Wilson had threatened to strike a separate peace with Germany if they refused.

The negotiations were difficult. Wilson compromised on many of the Fourteen Points, but he doggedly pushed for the league. When the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, its first twenty-six articles formed “the Covenant of the League of Nations.” The core provision was 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.”

The "Big Four" world leaders at the Paris Peace Conference, from left to right: David Lloyd George (Great Britain), Vittorio Orlando (Italy), Georges Clemenceau (France), and Woodrow Wilson (United States), May 27, 1919. Courtesy of the Library of Congres

Skeptical Senators

Wilson’s task now became persuading the Senate to embrace the treaty and the league. But many senators were skeptical. He had returned to the United States in late February 1919 for three weeks and briefed senators on the status of the negotiations. He hoped to win them over to his vision. Instead, his answers to their questions left many of them unsettled. One Republican senator complained: “I feel as if I had been wandering with Alice in Wonderland and had tea with the Mad Hatter.”

Little had changed in Senate attitudes by the time Wilson returned to the United States in early July. On July 10, he went to Capitol Hill to personally deliver a copy of the Treaty of Versailles. In an address to the full Senate, he described the proposed League of Nations in messianic terms: “The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who led us into the way.” When asked how he would respond if senators sought to revise the treaty, as was their constitutional right, Wilson replied: “I shall consent to nothing. The Senate must take its medicine.”

A political cartoon depicting the Senate objecting to the League of Nations. Courtesy of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University.

A political cartoon depicting the Senate objecting to the League of Nations. Courtesy of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum at Ohio State University.

Henry Cabot Lodge

Wilson’s leading opponent was Republican Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts, the Senate majority leader and chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The two men detested each other. Lodge had signaled his concerns with the league during Wilson’s February return to Washington by getting thirty-nine senators to sign a statement raising doubts about the Paris negotiations.

The critical issue facing the Senate was less whether the United States should join the League of Nations and more the terms on which it should become a member. A dozen so-called irreconcilable senators opposed the league in principle because it would entangle the United States in the affairs of other countries. Lodge, however, had supported Roosevelt’s call for a League of Peace. His main concern was Article 10, which he said would deny the United States a free hand to conduct its foreign policy and drag it into conflicts not of its own making. He put the question to Americans bluntly: “Are you willing to put your soldiers and your sailors at the disposition of other nations?”

A photographed of Henry Cabot Lodge by Harris and Ewing. Curtesy of the Library of Congress.

A photographed of Henry Cabot Lodge by Harris and Ewing. Curtesy of the Library of Congress.

I never expected to hate anyone in politics with the hatred I feel toward Wilson.

Senator Henry Cabot Lodge

No Compromises

Lodge proposed attaching Fourteen Reservations to the Treaty of Versailles to address his concerns with the covenant. Among other things, the reservations stated that the league would have no say over U.S. domestic law and that Congress would retain its power to declare war. Whether Lodge offered his reservations in good faith or as a way to torpedo the treaty, Wilson rejected all changes to the treaty. He insisted the reservations would handicap the league and require more international negotiations. He stuck to his position even after Britain and France indicated they would accept Lodge’s reservations.

Wilson instead took his case to the nation. He did so despite suffering a minor stroke in mid-July. Over three weeks in September 1919, he traveled more than eight thousand miles and gave forty speeches to rally support for the league. After speaking in Pueblo, Colorado, on September 25, severe headaches and nausea forced him to return to Washington. A week later he suffered a major stroke, the effects of which he kept hidden from members of Congress and the American public.

President Woodrow Wilson at a parade in Los Angeles, California, September 20, 1919, Courtesy of the Online Archive of California, Ernest Marquez Photograph Collection.

The Senate Votes

The Treaty of Versailles came to a vote in the Senate on November 19, 1919. Senators voted first on the treaty with Lodge’s reservations attached. The motion failed, 39 to 55, with both Wilson’s supporters and irreconcilable senators opposed. Senators then rejected the treaty without reservations by virtually the same margin, this time with those favoring the reservations joining the irreconcilables in opposition. The breakdown of the two votes showed that the treaty likely would have gained the required level of Senate support for passage if Wilson had been willing to compromise with his critics.

Four months later, the Senate again considered the treaty with reservations. Although Wilson demanded that his supporters vote no, some broke ranks. The vote was 49 to 35 in favor, 7 votes shy of the two-thirds needed for Senate passage. Confronted with yet another defeat, Wilson vowed to make the 1920 election a “solemn referendum” on the league. But the moment had passed. U.S. participation in the League of Nations was dead. In 1921, the Senate approved a treaty with Germany that accepted the Treaty of Versailles, minus the Covenant of the League of Nations.

The New York Tribune announces the Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, November 20, 1919. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

It’s dead. Every morning I put flowers on its grave.

Woodrow Wilson after the defeat of the Treaty of Versailles

The Legacy of the Senate’s Rejection of the Treaty of Versailles

The League of Nations came into existence on January 10, 1920. The Senate’s rejection of the Treaty of Versailles meant that the league never counted among its members the country that was emerging as the world’s economic superpower. The league may have always been destined to fail because of its organizational flaws and because the harsh peace struck in Paris sowed the seeds for a future war, but without the United States the league clearly operated less effectively than it might have. Standing apart from the league also made it easier for the United States to turn inward over the next two decades and to view growing world crises as someone else’s problem. After Pearl Harbor, many Americans concluded that Wilson had been right—fueling support for what became the United Nations.

What Historians Say

  • Andrew Pace

    Andrew Pace

    The Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Versailles isolated the United States for nearly a generation and greatly weakened the League of Nations.
    Professor of History, University of Southern Mississippi
  • Charles Laubach

    Charles Laubach

    The Senate rejection of the Treaty of Versailles began the trend of U.S. disengagement in global affairs in the interwar years. It prevented the League of Nations from becoming a viable body for settling international disputes, which contributed to the outbreak of World War II.
    Professor of History, The Ohio State University
  • Nick Sarantakes

    Nick Sarantakes

    With great power comes great responsibility, but petty partisanship triumphed over the interests of the nation when the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles. The result was that after the United States walked away from its role in world affairs, it was filled by others that were either weak (UK, France) or dangerous (Germany, USSR).
    Professor, U.S. Naval War College
  • David C. Atkinson

    David C. Atkinson

    The rejection of the Treaty of Versailles diminished a potential force for peace and order in the early twentieth century, removing the only realistic bulwark to German and Soviet revanchism while leaving intact the punitive structures of the Paris Conference.
    Associate Professor of History and Social Studies and Director of the History Honors Program, Purdue University
  • Jared Pack

    Jared Pack

    The failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles was an unfathomable abdication of global leadership. It ultimately handicapped the League of Nations and failed to prevent the coming of World War II.
    Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History, York University

National Security Archive, GWU

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