Woodrow Wilson to Albert B. Fall

COPY

THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON

My dear Senator Fall:

You left yesterday in my hands certain written questions which I promised you I would answer. I am hastening to fulfil that promise.

I feel constrained to say in reply to your first question not only that in my judgment I have not the power by proclamation to declare that peace exists, but that I could in no circumstances consent to take such a course prior to the ratification of a formal treaty of peace. I feel it due to perfect frankness to say that it would in my opinion put a stain upon our national honor which we never could efface, if after sending our men to the battle field to fight the common cause, we should abandon our associates in the war in the settlement of the terms of peace and dissociate ourselves from all responsibility with regard to those terms.

I respectfully suggest that, having said this, I have in effect answered also your second, third, and fourth questions, so far as I myself am concerned.

Permit me to answer your fifth question by saying that the provisions of the treaty to which you refer operate merely to establish peace between the powers ratifying, and that it is questionable whether it can be said that the League of Nations is in any true sense created by the association of only three of the Allied and Associated Governments.

In reply to your sixth question, I can only express the confident opinion that the immediate adoption of the treaty, along with the Articles of the Covenant of the League as written, would certainly within the near future reduce the cost of living in this country as elsewhere, by restoring production and commerce to their normal strength and freedom.

For your convenience, I will number the remaining paragraphs of this letter as the questions to which they are intended to reply are numbered.

Seven.
I have had no official information as to whether Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, or Switzerland will join the League.

Eight.
I answered your eighth question in reply to a question asked me at our conference the other day.

Nine.
In February, 1917, Spain was requested to take charge of American interests in Germany through her diplomatic and consular representatives, and no other arrangement has since been made.

Ten.
The committee to prepare plans for the organization of the League, for the establishment of the seat of the League, and for the proceedings of the first meeting of the assembly, has been appointed but has not reported.

Eleven.
Article 118 of the peace treaty, Part IV, under which Germany renounces all her rights to territory formerly belonging to herself or to her allies was understood, so far as special provision was not made in the treaty itself for its disposition, as constituting the Principal Allied and Associated Powers the authority by which such disposition should ultimately be determined. It conveys no title to those Powers, but merely entrusts the disposition of the territory in question to their decision.

Twelve.
Germany's renunciation in favor of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers or her rights and titles to her overseas possessions is meant similarly to operate as vesting in those powers a trusteeship with respect tof their final disposition and government.

Thirteen.
There has been a provisional agreement as to the disposition of these overseas possessions, whose confirmation and execution is dependent upon the approval of the League of Nations, and the United States is a party to that provisional agreement.

Fourteen.
The only agreement between France and Great Britain with regard to African territory, of which Iaam cognizant, concerns the redisposition of rights already possessed by those countries on that continent. The provisional agreement referred to in the preceding paragraph covers all the German overseas possessions, in Africa as well as elsewhere.

Fifteen.
No mention was made in connection with the settlement of the Saar Basin of the service of an American member of the Commission of Five to be set up there.

Sixteen.
It was deemed wise that the United States should be represented by one member of the Commission for settling the new frontier lines of Belgium and Germany, because of the universal opinion that America's representative would add to the Commission a useful element of entirely disinterested judgment.

Seventeen.
The choice of the Commission for Saar Basin was left to the Council of the League of Nations, because the Saar Basin is for fifteen years to be directly under the care and direction of the League of Nations.

Eighteen.
Article 83 does in effect provide that five of the members of the Commission of Seven to fix the boundaries between Poland and Czecho-Slovakia should be nominated by certain countries, because there are five Principal Allied and Associated Powers, and the nomination of five representatives by those Powers necessarily means the nomination of one representative by each of those Powers.

Nineteen.
No such commission has yet been appointed.

Twenty.
It was deemed wise that the United States should have a representative on the commission set up to exercise authority over the plebiscite of Upper Silesia, for the same reason that I have given with regard to the commission for settling the frontier line of Belgium and Germany.

Sincerely yours,
WOODROW WILSON


Hon. Albert B. Fall,
United States Senate.