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Henry Cabot Lodge and the League of Nations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

David Mervin
David Mervin
Affiliation:
University of Warwick
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Extract

The first Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts was a congressional leader of the highest calibre. W. Stull Holt has written: ‘no one can read in the Congressional Record during [Lodge's] career without being impressed by his mastery of parliamentary technique, by his adroit maneuvers to extract his party from a tight situation or to entangle his opponents, and by his knowledge of what to do under all circumstances’. Similarly, Denna Frank Fleming has said: ‘in skill of parliamentary maneuver, in ability to manipulate factions against each other and to his own purpose Lodge may never be excelled’. The picture conveyed by these two authorities is one of an extraordinarily talented congressional leader dedicated to the greater glory of the Republican Party. But as Holt and Fleming also recognized, it is not enough to dismiss Lodge as a mere partisan; he was also a devoted son of the Senate, keenly aware of the importance of the separation of powers and particularly sensitive to encroachment on the legislature by the executive. Most of the earlier assessments of Lodge's part in defeating Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations policy were made before the Senator's papers became available, but a re-examination of his role, in the light of his correspondence and other documents, clearly demonstrates his overwhelming concern for the two institutions that he served so long and so well, the Republican Party and the Senate.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , February 1971 , pp. 201 - 214
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1971

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References

page 201 note 1 Treaties Defeated by the Senate (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1933), p. 261.Google Scholar

page 201 note 2 The United States and the League of Nations, 1918–1920 (New York: G. P. Putnams Sons, 1932), p. 485.Google Scholar

page 201 note 3 An exception is Garraty, John A., Henry Cabot Lodge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1953)Google Scholar

page 202 note 1 Lodge, Henry Cabot, War Addresses 1915–1917 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1917), p. 42.Google Scholar

page 202 note 2 Enforced Peace: Proceedings of the First Annual National Assemblage of the League to Enforce Peace, Washington, 26–27 05 1916 (New York: League to Enforce Peace, 1916), p. 165.Google Scholar

page 202 note 3 U.S. Congressional Record, 64th Congress, 2nd Session, 1917, LVI, part 3, 2369.

page 203 note 1 (i) Letter from Lodge, to Washburn, Robert M. dated 22 02 1919, p. 3 (Henry Cabot Lodge PapersGoogle Scholar, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston), (ii) The report of Lodge's debate with President Lowell of Harvard on 19 March 1919 in the New York Times, 20 03 1919, p. 4.Google Scholar (iii) Lodge, Henry Cabot, The Senate and the League of Nations (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1925), p. 130.Google Scholar

page 204 note 1 Hewes, James Ellecott, ‘Henry Cabot Lodge and the League of Nations’ (unpub. mimeograph, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1957), p. 11.Google Scholar

page 204 note 2 Lodge, , The Senate and the League of Nations, p. 74.Google Scholar

page 205 note 1 Lodge, to Washburn, Robert M. on 22 02 1919: ‘I agree with you that at this moment the very great body of honest, excellent and patriotic people are in favour of the principle of the League’ (Lodge Papers).Google Scholar

page 205 note 2 Letter from Lodge, to Chapin, Arthur B. dated 27 02 1919 (Lodge Papers).Google Scholar

page 205 note 3 Letter from Lodge dated 3 March 1919 (Lodge Papers).

page 205 note 4 New York Times, 20 03 1919, p. 4.Google Scholar

page 206 note 1 George H. Haynes has distinguished between amendments and reservations as follows: ‘an amendment to a treaty is a textual change in the instrument itself by way of an addition, alteration, or excision; it makes a part of the identical contract to which the two governments are to give their assent in the exchange of ratifications. A reservation, on the other hand, is an interpretation or construction placed upon some portion of the instrument by the Senate, to indicate the understanding with which the United States enters into the agreement as to the obligations which this country is to assume.’ The Senate of the United States, 2 vols. (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1938) II, (617–18.)Google Scholar

page 206 note 2 Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal (New York: Macmillan Co., 1954)Google Scholar; The United States and the League of Nations, 1918–7920.

page 206 note 3 Letter dated 7 August 1919 (Lodge Papers).

page 206 note 4 Letter from Beck, James M. to Lodge, dated 20 11 1919 (Lodge Papers).Google Scholar

page 207 note 1 U.S. Cong. Record, 66th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1920, LIX, part 4, 4262.

page 207 note 2 A detailed account of these negotiations is to be found in Darling, H. Maurice, ‘Who Kept the United States Out of the League of Nations?’ The Canadian Historical Review, 10, 09 1929, 196–211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 207 note 3 Quoted by Kendrick, Jack E. in his ‘The League of Nations and the Republican Senate, 1918–1921’ (unpub. Ph.D. thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1952).Google ScholarMcKenna, Marion C., Borah (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), p. 150.CrossRefGoogle ScholarBailey, , Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, p. 407.Google Scholar

page 208 note 1 The Senate and the League of Nations, p. 193.Google Scholar

page 208 note 2 Lodge Papers. Italics mine.

page 208 note 3 Bailey, , Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, p. 402.Google Scholar

page 209 note 1 Senator Borah and other progressives had threatened to bolt the party if ‘Old Guard’ reactionaries like Boies Penrose and Francis Warren were given the chairmanships of important Senate Committees. See letter from Gifford Pinchot to Lodge dated 7 February, 1919 and letter from Lodge, to Williams, J. T. dated 19 05 1919 (Lodge Papers).Google Scholar

page 209 note 2 As reported in the New York Times, 3 04 1919, p. 2.Google Scholar

page 210 note 1 U.S. Cong. Record. 66th Cong., 1st Sess., 1919, LVIII, part 9, 8791.

page 210 note 2 Ibid. part 5, 5219.

page 210 note 3 Lodge's assessment of the issue in a letter to Samuel Colcord dated 27 February 1919 (Lodge Papers).

page 210 note 4 Of the group of Strong Reservationists no contributions whatsoever were made to the innumerable lengthy debates on the League by senators Ball, Calder, Curtis, Elkins, Page, Newberry, and Sutherland. See U.S. Cong. Record, LVII, LVIII, LIX. The contrast with the irrepressibly garrulous Irreconcilables could hardly be more marked.

page 210 note 5 See, for example, U.S. Cong. Record: (i) 66th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1920, LIX, part 4, 4211; (ii) 66th Cong., 1st Sess., 1919, LVIII, part 7, 7064; (iii) 66th Cong., 1st Sess., 1919, LVIII, part 4, 3633–45.

page 211 note 1 Bailey, , Woodrow Wilson and the Great Betrayal, p. 57.Google Scholar

page 211 note 2 U.S. Cong. Record, 66th Cong., 2nd Sess., 1920, LIX, part 4, 4211.

page 211 note 3 Wilson the Diplomatist (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1957), p. 139.Google Scholar

page 212 note 1 Letter from Lodge, to Governor Coolidge, dated 24 02 1919 (Lodge Papers).Google Scholar

page 212 note 2 Letter from Lodge, to Colcord, Samuel dated 27 02 1919 (Lodge Papers).Google Scholar

page 212 note 3 2 December 1919 (Lodge Papers).

page 213 note 1 For Wilson's views, see Wilson, Woodrow, Congressional Government (Boston, Mass.: Houghton Miffiin Co., 1885), pp. 233–4Google Scholar, and Wilson, Woodrow, Constitutional Government (New York: Columbia University Press, 1908), pp. 77–8.Google Scholar For Lodge's opinions, see Lodge, Henry Cabot, ‘The Treaty-Making Powers of the Senate’, Scribner's Magazine, 21, no. 1. (01 1902), 33–43.Google Scholar

page 213 note 2 See, for example, A Many Colored Toga: The Diary of Henry Fountain Ashurst, ed. Sparks, George F. (Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press, 1962), pp. 90–1.Google Scholar

page 213 note 3 2 July 1919 (Lodge Papers).

page 213 note 4 U.S. Cong. Record, 66th Cong., 1st Sess., 1919, LVIII, part 9, 8777–8.

page 214 note 1 Letter from Lodge, to Charnwood, Lord dated 24 01 1920 (Lodge Papers).Google Scholar