Senator Borah, Republican, attacked the League as a radical departure from the policy laid down in Washington's Farewell Address and the Monroe Doctrine. Article X, which provided for the preservation of the territorial integrity of the nations of the League, the Senator said, would first obligate America to protect the territorial integrity of Great Britain. If the British Empire was threatened in any part, not the United States Congress, or the people, or the Government would determine what should be done, but the executive council, of which the American people had one member, would determine what should be done. The British Empire, united in interest with Italy and Japan, would outvote America in the League. The whole project, he believed, would sterilize the principle of nationalism and abrogate the American Constitution. The League found a sturdy and eloquent champion in Senator Hitchcock, Democrat, of Nebraska, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. In the course of a speech delivered on February 27, 1919, Senator Hitchcock expressed his belief that the League was a positive guaranty against future world wars. The attitude Japan might take regarding her nationals was not a cause for worry. Japan had already recognized the exclusion laws of the United States. There was no question about Mexico, which could not give guaranties of international obligations and therefore would not be admitted to the League. Senator Hitchcock declared that those who opposed the League were thinking in the terms of the past. The fear expressed that the League would open the way to European despotism was without foundation, for the spirit of despotism had vanished. Democracy was the mastering spirit in all the nine nations represented in the executive council, yes, even in Japan. Such a league, he argued, with its provision of arbitration and delay for calm consideration, would make war improbable. The restrictions on armaments would save the great nations billions and eliminate oppressive tax burdens. One of the principal arguments against the League was that in joining it America would have to renounce the Monroe Doctrine and relinquish the right to attack any nation that attempted to establish itself in the Western Hemisphere. Senator Hitchcock argued that the League of Nations included the very purposes of the Monroe Doctrine in that it prevented the aggression of nations upon each other. An unfriendly act, or attack, upon any American republic, or upon the United States, would at once be the subject of inquiry and action by the League of Nations. America also would no longer be compelled to defend alone the Western Hemisphere, but would be backed by the sympathy and help of the League of Nations.