With a Senate advising, as the Constitution contemplates, I would hopefully approach the nations of Europe and of the earth, proposing that understanding which makes us a willing participant in the consecration of nations to a new relationship, to commit the moral forces of the world, America included, to peace and international justice, still leaving America free, independent, and self-reliant, but offering friendship to all the world. If men call for more specific details, I remind them that moral committals are broad and all-inclusive, and we are contemplating peoples in the concord of humanity’s advancement. From our own view-point the programme is specifically American, and we mean to be American first, to all the world. Mr. Cox says, “I favor going in”; and meets squarely the criticism that the Democratic platform is not explicit as to reservations. He would “state our interpretations of the Covenant as a matter of good faith to our associates and as a precaution against any misunderstanding in the future,” and quotes from an article of his own, published in the New York _Times_ before his nomination, these words: In giving its assent to this treaty, the Senate has in mind the fact that the League of Nations which it embodies was devised for the sole purpose of maintaining peace and comity among the nations of the earth and preventing the recurrence of such destructive conflicts as that through which the world has just passed. The co-operation of the United States with the league, and its continuance as a member thereof, will naturally depend upon the adherence of the league to that fundamental purpose. He proposes an addition to the Covenant of some such paragraph as this: It will, of course, be understood that, in carrying out the purpose of the league, the government of the United States must at all times act in strict harmony with the terms and intent of the United States Constitution, which cannot in any way be altered by the treaty-making power. There is no echo here of the President’s uncompromising declaration that the Covenant must be accepted precisely as he presented it. To the lay mind there is no discernible difference between a reservation and an interpretation, when the sole purpose in either case would be to make it clear to the other signatories, through the text of the instrument itself, that we could bind ourselves in no manner that transcended the Constitution.