The conflict between President Wilson and the majority of the
Senate over the Covenant seems, as we write, to be approaohing a crisis. The Senate is again voting for reservations on much the same lines as before. On the other hand, the President in a letter to the Democratic leader, Senator Hitchcock, describes the reservations as " in effect a rather sweeping nullification of the Treaty." He declares that Article 10—by which 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 "—is the fundamental clause, since it means that the Allies renounce all ambitions. He says that " a militaristic party under most influential leader- ship," though defeated last year, is now in control in France, and that the Italian claims in the Adriatic are based on military arguments, and he asks for the ratification of the Treaty so thut America may curb this militarism. We cannot foresee the result. But if the Treaty falls between the President and the Senate, it will become the main issue in the Presidential election next summer and autumn, and the League of Nations will be deprived of American support for the first and most critical year of its existence. From our point of view, this would be a most lamentable misfortune.
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