President Woodrow Wilson (right) attends the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 where the League of Nations was born. Also pictured are, from left, Italian Premier Vittorio Orlando, British Prime Minister David Lloyd George and French Premier Georges Clemenceau. This Day In Politics Senate spurns the League of Nations, Nov. 19, 1919

A Republican-controlled Senate on this day in 1919 refused to ratify the Treaty of Versailles — a pact that had formally ended World War I while providing for a new world body, designed and championed by Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, to be called the League of Nations.

Earlier that month, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Mass.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and the majority leader, had sent the treaty to the Senate floor. Lodge’s draft included 14 “reservations,” that curbed the League’s influence over any future U.S. decision-making. After Wilson asked his supporters to oppose Lodge’s proposed caveats, the Senate divided 55-39, falling short of the two-thirds majority needed for ratification.


Another faction, led by Sen. William Borah (R-Neb.), known as the “irreconcilables,” opposed the treaty on any terms. In a two-hour speech, Borah said, that by accepting it, “We [would] have forfeited and surrendered, once and for all, the great policy of ‘no entangling alliances’ upon which the strength of this Republic has been founded for 150 years.”

A second vote on a “clean” version, stripped of reservations, ended in a 53-38 vote, this time with the pro-Lodge Republicans and the “irreconcilables” forming the opposition. Those twin votes marked the first time in Senate annals that the body had ever rejected a peace treaty.

Enmity between Wilson and Lodge played a part in framing the result. Historians have speculated that matters might have turned out differently had Wilson asked Lodge to accompany him to Paris.

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Wilson's poor health further weakened the treaty’s prospects, as did some ethnic groups. Some German-Americans felt Germany had been treated too harshly. Some Italian-Americans felt more territory should have been awarded to Italy. Some Irish-Americans criticized the treaty for failing to address the issue of Irish independence. Moreover, isolationists inside and outside the Senate railed against permanent global involvement by the United States.

The Senate reconsidered the treaty once more, this time with reservations, on March 19, 1920. That vote, 49-35, fell seven votes short of the required two-thirds majority. In 1921, Congress passed the Knox-Porter Resolution, ending the war with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian government. By then, the treaty was widely seen as lifeless. It would remain so.

After Wilson died in 1924, Lodge’s fellow committee members asked him to represent them at his funeral. Learning of the plan, Wilson’s widow, Edith, sent Lodge a note that read: “Realizing that your presence would be embarrassing to you and unwelcome to me, I write to request that you do not attend.”

As the threat of another global conflict mounted, Nazi Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain and others. The League was officially dissolved in April 1946 at a ceremony in Geneva, to be succeeded by the United Nations.

SOURCE: WWW.SENATE.GOV; “BREAKING THE HEART OF THE WORLD: WOODROW WILSON AND THE FIGHT FOR THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS” BY JOHN MILTON COOPER JR. (2001)