Yet the most satisfactory treaty of peace, said Mr. Wilson, would have little value unless it were backed by the united nations to defend it, with great forces combined to make it good, and the assurance given to oppressed peoples of the world that they should be safe. America would not disappoint the hopes of the world, and would make men free. "If we did not do that, the fame of America would be gone and all her power would be dissipated. She then would have to keep her power for those narrow, selfish, provincial purposes which seem so dear to some minds that have no sweep beyond the nearest horizon." He spoke of the claims of Poland, and the wrongs of Armenia, and of the aspirations of the Czecho-Slovaks and Jugoslavs, and how certain powers would pounce upon them if there were not the guarantees of the world behind their liberty. President Wilson said he had returned to report progress which would not stop short of the goal. The people were in the saddle and they would see to it that if their own present governments did not do their will some other governments shall. "And the secret is out and the present governments know it." Before President Wilson returned to America the League of Nations covenant had already been discussed in the United States Senate. The Republican members in particular were vehement and even bitter in denouncing the project as set forth in the original draft. Senator Poindexter declared in the course of a three-hour speech that the charter of the League meant surrender of American sovereignty to European nations. Article X bound the United States as one of the contracting parties, he said, to preserve against aggressions the territory and political independence in all states members of the League. This, argued the Senator, would compel the United States to tax its people and sacrifice its soldiers to make war on behalf of a foreign country. In mixing in the affairs of small European nations, these small nations would intrude into the affairs of the United States. To place into the hands of the council of the League of Nations--all but one foreigners with different ideals and interests--such control over the sovereign action of the American people for which so many heroes had labored "would be as though it were a pitiful murder of the very souls of our fathers in their own house, builded by their hands...."