"The President said to-day that the decision made at the Peace Conference in its Plenary Session, January 25, 1919, to the effect that the establishment of a League of Nations should be made an integral part of the Treaty of Peace, is of final force and that there is no basis whatever for the reports that a change in this decision was contemplated." …On March 26th, it was announced, grudgingly enough, that there would be a league of nations as an integral part of the Peace Treaty. It was now the task of the President to take up the changes that had been suggested by his Republican enemies, and this was the straw that broke his back. There was not a single suggested change that had honesty back of it. The League was an association of sovereigns, and as a matter of course any sovereign possessed the right of withdrawal. The League, as an international advisory body, could not possibly deal with domestic questions under any construction of the Covenant. No power of Congress was abridged, and necessarily Congress would have to act before war could be declared or a single soldier sent out of the country. Instead of recognizing the Monroe Doctrine as an American policy, the League legitimized it as a world policy. The President, however, was bound to propose that these plain propositions be put in kindergarten language for the satisfaction of his enemies, and it was this proposal that gave Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and their associates a new chance for resistance. All of the suggested changes were made without great demur until the question of the Monroe Doctrine was reached, and then French and English bitterness broke all restraints. Why were they expected to make every concession to American prejudice when the President would make none to European traditions? They had gone to the length of accepting the doctrine of Monroe for the whole of the earth, but now, because American pride demanded it, they must make public confession of America's right to give orders. No! A thousand times no! It was high time for the President to give a little consideration to French and English and Italian prejudices—time for him to realize that the lives of these governments were at stake as well as his own, and that Lloyd George, Clemenceau, and Sonnino had parliaments to deal with that were just as unreasonable as the Congress of the United States. If the President asked he must be willing to give. As if at a given signal, France renewed her claim for the Rhine Valley and the Saar Basin; Italy clamoured anew for Fiume and the Dalmatian coast; and Japan, breaking a long silence, rushed to the fore with her demand for Shantung in fee simple and the right of her nationals to full equality in the United States.