“The members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all Members of the League.  In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the Council shall advise upon the means by which this obligation shall be fulfilled.”

In the revision of the original draft the modifying clause providing for future territorial readjustments was omitted.  It does not appear in Article 7 of the draft which was presented to the Commission on the League of Nations and which formed the basis of its deliberations.  In addition to this modification the words “unite in guaranteeing” in Article III became “undertake to respect and preserve” in Article 7.  These changes are only important in that they indicate a disposition to revise the article to meet the wishes, and to remove to an extent the objections, of some of the foreign delegates who had prepared plans for a League or at least had definite ideas as to the purposes and functions of an international organization.

It was generally believed that the elimination of the modifying clause from the President’s original form of guaranty was chiefly due to the opposition of the statesmen who represented the British Empire in contradistinction to those who represented the self-governing British Dominions.  It was also believed that this opposition was caused by an unwillingness on their part to recognize or to apply as a right the principle of “self-determination” in arranging possible future changes of sovereignty over territories.

I do not know the arguments which were used to induce the President to abandon this phrase and to strike it from his article of guaranty.  I personally doubt whether the objection to the words “self-determination” was urged upon him.  Whatever reasons were advanced by his foreign colleagues, they were successful in freeing the Covenant from the phrase.  It is to be regretted that the influence, which was sufficient to induce the President to eliminate from his proposed guaranty the clause containing a formal acceptance of the principle of “self-determination,” was not exerted or else was not potent enough to obtain from him an open disavowal of the principle as a right standard for the determination of sovereign authority.  Without such a disavowal the phrase remained as one of the general bases upon which a just peace should be negotiated.  It remained a precept of the international creed which Mr. Wilson proclaimed while the war was still in progress, for he had declared, in an address delivered on February 11, 1918, before a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, that “self-determination is not a mere phrase.  It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril.”