suggestion and called on Colonel House.  He, too, however, declared that it was a momentous as well as a thorny topic, and for that reason had best be referred to the head of the American delegation.  President Wilson, having originated the amendment, was the person most qualified to take direct action.  It is further affirmed that they sounded the President as to the advisability of mooting the question anew, but that he declined to face another vote, and the matter was dropped for good—­in that form.

It was publicly asserted later on that the Japanese decided to abide by the rejection of their amendment and to sign the Covenant as the result of a bargain on the Shantung dispute.  This report, however, was pulverized by the Japanese delegation, which pointed out that the introduction of the racial clause was decided upon before the delegates left Japan, and when no difficulties were anticipated respecting Japan’s claim to have that province ceded to her by Germany, and that the discussion on the amendment terminated on April 11th, consequently before the Kiaochow issue came up for discussion.  As a matter of fact, the Japanese publicly announced their intention to adhere to the League of Nations two days[362] before a decision was reached respecting their claims to Kiaochow.

This adverse note on Mr. Wilson’s pet scheme to have religious equality proclaimed as a means of hindering sanguinary wars brought to its climax the reaction of the Conference against what it regarded as a systematic endeavor to establish the overlordship of the Anglo-Saxon peoples in the world.  The plea that wars may be provoked by such religious inequality as still survives was so unreal that it awakened a twofold suspicion in the minds of many of Mr. Wilson’s colleagues.  Most of them believed that a pretext was being sought to enable the leading Powers to intervene in the domestic concerns of all the other states, so as to keep them firmly in hand, and use them as means to their own ends.  And these ends were looked upon as anything but disinterested.  Unhappily this conviction was subsequently strengthened by certain of the measures decreed by the Supreme Council between April and the close of the Conference.  The misgivings of other delegates turned upon a matter which at first sight may appear so far removed from any of the pressing issues of the twentieth century as to seem wholly imaginary.  They feared that a religious—­some would call it racial—­bias lay at the root of Mr. Wilson’s policy.  It may seem amazing to some readers, but it is none the less a fact that a considerable number of delegates believed that the real influences behind the Anglo-Saxon peoples were Semitic.