To whom will the sovereignty pass?
"If the reply is, 'The League of Nations,' the question is: Does the League possess the attributes of an independent state so that it can function as an owner of territory?
If so, what is it?
A world state?
"If the League does not constitute a world state, then the sovereignty would have to pass to some national state.

What national state?
What would be the relation of the national state to the League?
"If the League is to receive title to the sovereignty, what officers of the League are empowered to receive it and to transfer its exercise to a mandatory?
"What form of acceptance should be adopted?
"Would every nation which is a member of the League have to give its representatives full powers to accept the title?
"Assuming that certain members decline to issue such powers or to accept title as to one or more of the territories, what relation would those members have to the mandatory named ?" There is no attempt in the memorandum to analyze or classify the queries raised, and, as I review them in the light of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, I do not think that some of them can be asked with any helpful purpose.

On the other hand, many of the questions, I believe the large majority, were as pertinent after the Treaty was completed as they were when the memorandum was made.
As Colonel House was the other member of the Commission on the League of Nations and would have to consider the practicability and expediency of including the mandatory system in the Covenant, I read the memorandum to him stating that I had orally presented most of the questions to the President who characterized them as "legal technicalities" and for that reason unimportant.

I said to the Colonel that I differed with the President, as I hoped he did, not only as to the importance of considering the difficulties raised by the questions before the system of mandates was adopted, but also as to the importance of viewing from every standpoint the wisdom of the system and the difficulties that might arise in its practical operation.

I stated that, in my opinion, a simpler and better plan was to transfer the sovereignty over territory to a particular nation by a treaty of cession under such terms as seemed wise and, in the case of some of the newly erected states, to have them execute treaties accepting protectorates by Powers mutually acceptable to those states and to the League of Nations.
Colonel House, though he listened attentively to the memorandum and to my suggestions, did not seem convinced of the importance of the questions or of the advantages of adopting any other plan than that of the proposed mandatory system.