“Mr. Lansing said that he, too, considered many parts of the Treaty thoroughly bad, particularly those dealing with Shantung and the League of Nations.  He said:  ’I consider that the League of Nations at present is entirely useless.  The Great Powers have simply gone ahead and arranged the world to suit themselves.  England and France have gotten out of the Treaty everything that they wanted, and the League of Nations can do nothing to alter any of the unjust clauses of the Treaty except by unanimous consent of the members of the League, and the Great Powers will never give their consent to changes in the interests of weaker peoples.’

“We then talked about the possibility of ratification by the Senate.  Mr. Lansing said:  ’I believe that if the Senate could only understand what this Treaty means, and if the American people could really understand, it would unquestionably be defeated, but I wonder if they will ever understand what it lets them in for.’” (Senate Doc. 106, 66th Congress, 1st Session, p. 1276.)

It does not seem an unwarranted conjecture that the President believed that this statement, which was asserted by Mr. Bullitt to be from a memorandum made at the time, indicated that I had been unfaithful to him.  He may even have concluded that I had been working against the League of Nations with the intention of bringing about the rejection of the Covenant by the Senate.  If he did believe this, I cannot feel that it was other than natural in the circumstances, especially if I did not at once publicly deny the truth of the Bullitt statement.  That I could not do because there was sufficient truth in it to compel me to show how, by slight variations and by omissions in the conversation, my words were misunderstood or misinterpreted.

In view of the fact that I found it impossible to make an absolute denial, I telegraphed the President stating the facts and offering to make them public if he considered it wise to do so.  The important part of the telegram, which was dated September 16, 1919, is as follows: 

“On May 17th Bullitt resigned by letter giving his reasons, with which you are familiar.  I replied by letter on the 18th without any comment on his reasons.  Bullitt on the 19th asked to see me to say good-bye and I saw him.  He elaborated on the reasons for his resignation and said that he could not conscientiously give countenance to a treaty which was based on injustice.  I told him that I would say nothing against his resigning since he put it on conscientious grounds, and that I recognized that certain features of the Treaty were bad, as I presumed most every one did, but that was probably unavoidable in view of conflicting claims and that nothing ought to be done to prevent the speedy restoration of peace by signing the Treaty.  Bullitt then discussed the numerous European commissions provided for by the Treaty on which the United States was to be represented.  I