The discussions that took place after the President’s return from the United States were animated, interesting, and symptomatic.  In April the commission had several sittings, at which various amendments and alterations were proposed, some of which would cut deep into international relations, while others were of slight moment and gave rise to amusing sallies.  One day the proposal was mooted that each member-state should be free to secede on giving two years’ notice.  M. Larnaude, who viewed membership as something sacramentally inalienable, seemed shocked, as though the suggestion bordered on sacrilege, and wondered how any government should feel tempted to take such a step.  Signor Orlando was of a different opinion.  “However precious the privilege of membership may be,” he said, “it would be a comfort always to know that you could divest yourself of it at will.  I am shut up in my room all day working.  I do not go into the open air any oftener than a prisoner might.  But I console myself with the thought that I can go out whenever I take it into my head.  And I am sure a similar reflection on membership of the League would be equally soothing.  I am in favor of the motion.”

The center of interest during the drafting of the Covenant lay in the clause proclaiming the equality of religions, which Mr. Wilson was bent on having passed at all costs, if not in one form, then in another.  This is one example of the occasional visibility of the religious thread which ran through a good deal of his personal work at the Conference.  For it is a fact—­not yet realized even by the delegates themselves—­that distinctly religious motives inspired much that was done by the Conference on what seemed political or social grounds.  The strategy adopted by the eminent American statesman to have his stipulation accepted proceeded in this case on the lines of a humanitarian resolve to put an end to sanguinary wars rather than on those which the average reformer, bent on cultural progress, would have traced.  Actuality was imparted to this simple and yet thorny topic by a concrete proposal which the President made one day.  What he is reported to have said is briefly this:  “As the treatment of religious confessions has been in the past, and may again in the future be, a cause of sanguinary wars, it seems desirable that a clause should be introduced into the Covenant establishing absolute liberty for creeds and confessions.”  “On what, Mr. President,” asked the first Polish delegate, “do you found your assertion that wars are still brought about by the differential treatment meted out to religions?  Does contemporary history bear out this statement?  And, if not, what likelihood is there that religious inequality will precipitate sanguinary conflicts in the future?” To this pointed question Mr. Wilson is said to have made the characteristic reply that he considered it expedient to assume this nexus between religious inequality and war as the safest way of bringing the matter forward.  If he were to proceed on any other lines, he added, there would be truth and force in the objection which would doubtless be raised, that the Conference was intruding upon the domestic affairs of sovereign states.  As that charge would damage the cause, it must be rebutted in advance.  And for this purpose he deemed it prudent to approach the subject from the side he had chosen.