This reply was listened to in silence and unfavorably commented upon later.  The alleged relation between such religious inequality as has survived into the twentieth century and such wars as are waged nowadays is so obviously fictitious that one can hardly understand the line of reasoning that led to its assumption, or the effect which the fiction could be supposed to have on the minds of those legislators who might be opposed to the measure on the ground that it involved undue interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.  The motion was referred to a commission, which in due time presented a report.  Mr. Wilson was absent when the report came up for discussion, his place being taken by Colonel House.  The atmosphere was chilly, only a couple of the delegates being disposed to support the clause—­Rumania’s representative, M. Diamandi, was one, and another was Baron Makino, whose help Colonel House would gladly have dispensed with, so inacceptable was the condition it carried with it.

Baron Makino said that he entirely agreed with Colonel House and the American delegates.  The equality of religious confessions was not merely desirable, but necessary to the smooth working of a Society of Nations such as they were engaged in establishing.  He held, however, that it should be extended to races, that extension being also a corollary of the principle underlying the new international ordering.  He would therefore move the insertion of a clause proclaiming the equality of races and religions.  At this Colonel House looked pensive.  Nearly all the other opinions were hostile to Colonel House’s motion.

The reasons alleged by each of the dissenting lawgivers were interesting.  Lord Robert Cecil surprised many of his colleagues by informing them that in England the Catholics, who are fairly treated as things are, could not possibly be set on a footing of perfect equality with their Protestant fellow-citizens, because the Constitution forbids it.  Nor could the British people be asked to alter their Constitution.  He gave as instances of the slight inequality at present enforced the circumstance that no Catholic can ascend the throne as monarch, nor sit on the woolsack as Lord Chancellor in the Upper House.

M. Larnaude, speaking in the name of France, stated that his country had passed through a sequence of embarrassments caused by legislation on the relations between the Catholics and the state, and that the introduction of a clause enacting perfect equality might revive controversies which were happily losing their sharpness.  He considered it, therefore, inadvisable to settle this delicate matter by inserting the proposed declaration in the Covenant.  Belgium’s first delegate, M. Hymans, pointed out that the objection taken by his government was of a different but equally cogent character.  There was reason to apprehend that the Flemings might avail themselves of the equality clause to raise awkward issues and to sow seeds of