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Updated: August 28, 2024
This group differed among themselves as to the character of the reservations that were necessary, and some of them became known as "mild reservationists."
Early in November, however, fourteen reservations were adopted, the "mild reservationists" voting with Senator Lodge, for lack of any basis of compromise with the Democrats. The effect of these reservations would, undoubtedly, have been to release the United States from many of the obligations assumed by other members, while assuring to it the benefits of the League.
A few days later Senator McCumber presented a third report representing the views of the "mild reservationists." It objected to the phraseology of the Committee's reservations as unnecessarily severe and recommended substitute reservations. The treaty then became the regular order in the Senate and was read section by section and debated each day for over two months.
It is the bulwark, and the only bulwark of the rising democracy of the world against the forces of imperialism and reaction." The deadlock was complete, and on March 19, 1920, when the vote on ratification was taken, the necessary two-thirds were lacking by seven votes. At the last moment a number of Democrats joined with the Republican reservationists, making fifty-seven in favor of ratification.
It is probable that at the outset only the small group of "irreconcilables" hoped or intended to bring about the defeat of the treaty, but as the debate proceeded and the opposition to the treaty received more and more popular support, the reservationists determined to defeat the treaty altogether rather than to accept any compromise.
There were the "bitter-enders," typified by Johnson, Borah, and Brandegee, who frankly wanted to defeat the treaty and the League outright; there were the "reservationists," most of whom, like Lodge, wanted the same but did not dare say so openly; there were the "mild reservationists," most of whom were Republicans, who sincerely desired immediate peace and asked for no important changes in the treaty; and finally there were those who desired to ratify the treaty as it stood.
The "mild reservationists" led by McCumber voted with the Lodge group for the resolution; but the "bitter-enders," combining with the supporters of the original treaty, outnumbered them. The vote stood thirty-nine in favor of the resolution and fifty-five against.
The country received with interest, to say the least, the announcement from Chicago, where the national convention was assembled, that a platform plank dealing with the subject of world peace, had been drawn leaving out the Lodge reservations, and yet remaining agreeable to all interests, meaning thereby, the Lodge reservationists, the mild reservationists and the group of Republican senators that openly opposed the League of Nations in any form.
The last-named group, made up of Democrats, numbered from forty-one to forty-four, and obviously needed the assistance of the "mild reservationists," if they were to secure a two-thirds vote of the Senate. During October, all the amendments which the Foreign Relations Committee brought forward were defeated through the combination of the last two groups.
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