Treaty Defeaty

Centuryback Saturday returns by popular demand! Okay, just one person said anything, but who am I to disappoint a reader, even a wee bit?

"Out of the Uniform..." by J. N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, November 25, 1919

As it happens, we're just about at the centennial of the the U.S. Senate adjourning a special session on November 19, 1919, without ratifying the Versailles Peace Treaty to end World War I.

"Shamed" by Nelson Harding in Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 21, 1919

Senate Foreign Relations Chair Henry Cabot Lodge (R-MA) offered a counter-proposal to join the League of Nations "with reservations." Chief among his reservations was that under Article X of the League Covenant, the U.S. surrendered to the League the power whether or not to declare war.

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.

"The Convalescents" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 19, 1919

Bill Sykes may have been the only cartoonist to hold out some hope that ratification of the treaty might still be achieved. He is one of very few cartoonists to address President Wilson's health head-on. (A month and a half after his stroke, it was obvious to any observer that Wilson was seriously ill in spite of the administration's lack of complete public transparency. On November 24, a prank phone caller even convinced Vice President Thomas Marshall at a public speaking appearance in Atlanta that Wilson had died.)

"Compromises" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, November 20, 1919

Yet although Lodge was able to patch together a bipartisan coalition in favor of his counter-proposal, Wilson sent Senate Democrats a letter charging that Lodge's resolution "does not provide for ratification but rather for nullification of the treaty. I sincerely hope that the friends and supporters of the treaty will vote against the Lodge resolution." Enough Democrats backing Wilson's opposition, plus isolationist Republicans and Democrats opposed to membership in the League at all, denied Lodge's plan the required two-thirds majority of Senators.

John McCutcheon's cartoon above ignores the fact that Republicans refused even to allow debate on any treaty but Lodge's substitute for the one worked out at Versailles. Lodge, for his part, was more than happy to see Wilson suffer a political defeat, and to have the treaty remain an issue into the 1920 presidential campaign.

"It's Hard to Keep a Mud Turtle..." by Homer Stinson in Dayton Daily News, November, 1919

The Senate was scheduled to return in regular session on December 1, but would again fail to take any action to ratify the treaty, with or without reservations, by the time it adjourned in March. Ironically, as far as Mr. Lodge's concern that the League might commit U.S. to declare war against its will, the Senate's failure to ratify the Treaty of Versailles meant that the U.S. remained at war against the Central Powers.

"Aw-w, Look What You Went an' Done" by Bill Sykes in Philadelphia Public Ledger, November 21, 1919

Even if the guns weren't firing, the continuing state of war still had some pesky practical consequences ...

"The Slip 'Twixt the Cup and the Lip" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, November 22, 1919

But that will have to remain a topic for another Saturday.