w aging w ar to t ransform the w orld 127Negotiating a peace treaty, of course, represented but the fi rst step in
the peace-building process. Wilson also needed to secure the approval
of the treaty by the U.S. Senate to assure American leadership in the
new postwar international order he hoped to establish. Even before the
negotiations were completed in Paris, signs indicated trouble. Histo-
rians contend that Wilson and the Creel Committee had done their
work well enough to win over the American public to the idea of a
League of Nations. But there is good reason to doubt the level of
popular support. In the fi rst place, the polls conducted by magazines
that showed a majority in favor of the League were notoriously unre-
liable. Moreover, conservative forces had been mobilized during the
war in the campaign against dissidents on the political left and
continued active eff orts to persecute those who seemed sympathetic to
Bolshevism. Th e public as a whole already seemed to be turning inward,
increasingly preoccupied with domestic issues ranging from infl ation to
racial strife.
Meanwhile, Senate Republicans, led by Lodge, indicated their skep-
ticism about the League when Wilson returned to the United States in
March 1919. With too few Democrats to approve the Treaty, he
needed signifi cant Republican backing. Recall that he had antagonized
Republicans during the 1918 elections and by excluding them from the
peace delegation. To this we should add the eagerness of Congress,
forced by wartime need to subordinate itself to the chief executive, to
assert its institutional prerogatives as soon as the fi ghting ended. Due to
the combination of his own political miscalculations and the institu-
tional pendulum eff ect triggered by the return of peace, Wilson faced
an uphill struggle to secure the Senate votes he needed.
How events played out over the months following the debate has
been recounted in a number of excellent studies, so I will off er only a
brief review here. Wilson presented the treaty to the Senate in July
1919, urging acceptance of a new international leadership role for the
United States. Th e Senate was divided into three groups: supporters
of the treaty, who formed the largest bloc and counted most Demo-
crats and several Republicans; those who might accept the treaty if
certain reservations were attached; and a small bloc of opponents, the
Irreconcilables, who rejected the treaty in any form. Lodge, as
majority leader and chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, led the