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.Wilsonargued that empires must be dismantled (though his specific proposalsonly related to enemy empires), and nations must be allowed to choosetheir own governments.This was the principle of self-determination ofpeoples.The United States was not ready to send substantial forces to Eu-rope s battlefield until 1918, but when they arrived, they provided awelcome freshness to the jaded Allied forces.The Germans knew theyhad to win before American power came fully to play, and when theiroffensive was halted, the high command looked to get out of the warbefore the German home front collapsed, short of food after years ofblockade.The German Kaiser abdicated amid naval mutiny and hungerriots, and the new republican government sued for peace on the basis ofthe Fourteen Points.The firing ceased on 11 November 1918.THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES ANDTHE FIGHT FOR THE LEAGUE OF NATIONSDetermined to shape the peace settlement, Woodrow Wilson becamethe first incumbent U.S.president to travel to Europe, where he wasmet by adoring crowds and feted everywhere.The Republicans had justgained control of the U.S.Senate in the 1918 elections, but Wilson sdelegation to the peace conference in Paris did not include any members xxxvi " INTRODUCTIONof Congress from that party.This was to cost him dear.The negotiationsin Paris lasted a long time and tested Wilson s skills.His fellow leaderswere by no means committed to every aspect of the Fourteen Points.Wilson was forced to compromise on a number of issues, notably theFrench insistence on large reparations payments from Germany andthe written admission of sole war guilt by Germany that provided thejustification for them.Wilson believed such concessions were balancedby the agreement to include reference to the League of Nations in eachtreaty.Wilson hoped that the League could in time rectify whateverflaws emerged from the process of compromise at the conference.These compromises were less understood back in the United States,and Wilson had to journey back to Paris to renegotiate some clauses.He still faced a tough battle to gain the two-thirds majority in the Senatenecessary for the ratification of the Treaty of Versailles.Republicansdid not wish to hand Wilson a personal success, and there was consider-able personal animosity between the president and Henry Cabot Lodge,the chair of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.Taking Lodgeto Paris would have given him greater understanding of the process ofnegotiating with other sovereign powers and would have made it morea bipartisan effort but it is unlikely that Lodge and Wilson couldactually have worked together in such a way.Lodge proposed a set ofreservations to qualify American accession to the treaty.More extremeopponents of the treaty in the Senate, the 16 irreconcilables, ob-jected to the implication of an entangling commitment to future actionenshrined in Article 10 of the League covenant.Others had profoundobjections to other parts of the treaty.What bound them together wasa fixed determination not to compromise.There were also more mildreservationists within Wilson s party.If Wilson had been prepared toaccommodate Lodge, the treaty may well have gained the necessarymajority.However, he ordered Democrats to vote against the Lodgereservations, and in return, Republicans rejected the original treaty andthe mild reservations.A majority of senators supported the treaty (andLeague) in some form.Thus, while blame for its failure has tended tobe ascribed to the irreconcilables, who consistently voted against it, thetreaty could have been approved had Wilson and Lodge been able tocompromise.Wilson, profoundly impressed by the adulation of the crowds in Eu-rope, decided to appeal directly to the American people.He intended INTRODUCTION " xxxviithat the 1920 presidential election would serve as a referendum on thetreaty, and he embarked on a nationwide speaking tour, shadowed bythe irreconcilables.His health suffered from the exertion and he suf-fered a debilitating stroke.This reduced his effectiveness as president inhis last year in office and may have contributed to his stubbornness inrefusing to move in Lodge s direction.Therefore, although Lodge andmany of his followers were not outright opponents of the League, andalthough their reservations about American freedom of action wouldhave fitted in with the way that the League subsequently operated, theUnited States never did join the League, nor did it ratify the Treatyof Versailles.It made its own peace with Germany in 1921 and wastherefore formally uncommitted to any of the agreements that had beensettled in Paris regarding territorial changes, reparations, or securityguarantees to France and Belgium.U.S.FOREIGN POLICY IN THE 1920sCritics writing after World War II tended to see the 1920s and 1930s asan era of isolationism.However, while some aspects of the isolationistimpulse are certainly common to both decades, Americans in the 1920sliked to think they were simply putting America first, and felt theywere justified in doing so
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