It is true that during the long struggle between the President and the Senate on the question of ratification there was in the debates a general return to the original purpose of the League by both the proponents and opponents of the Covenant, but that fact in no way affects the truth of the assertion that, in order to save the League of Nations, its character was changed by extending its powers and duties as a common agent of the nations which had triumphed over the Central Alliance.
The day before the Treaty of Peace was delivered to the German plenipotentiaries (May 6) its terms induced me to write a note entitled "The Greatest Loss Caused by the War," referring to the loss of idealism to the world.

In that note I wrote of the League of Nations as follows: "Even the measure of idealism, with which the League of Nations was at the first impregnated, has, under the influence and intrigue of ambitious statesmen of the Old World, been supplanted by an open recognition that force and selfishness are primary elements in international co-operation.

The League has succumbed to this reversion to a cynical materialism.

It is no longer a creature of idealism.

Its very source and reason have been dried up and have almost disappeared.