The next afternoon (January 21) at a meeting of the Council of Ten, the discussion developed in a way that gave me an excuse to present the proposal informally to the Council.

The advantages to be gained by adopting the suggested action apparently appealed to the members, and their general approval of it impressed the President, for he asked me in an undertone if I had prepared the resolution.

I replied that I had been working upon it, but had ceased when he said to me the day before that he did not think it necessary or advisable, adding that I would complete the draft if he wished me to do so.

He said that he would be obliged to me if I would prepare one.
Encouraged by the support received in the Council and by the seeming willingness of the President to give the proposal consideration, I proceeded at once to draft a resolution.
The task was not an easy one because it would have been useless to insert in the document any declaration which seemed to be contradictory of the President's theory of an affirmative guaranty or which was not sufficiently broad to be interpreted in other terms in the event that American public opinion was decidedly opposed to his theory, as I felt that it would be.

It was also desirable, from my point of view, that the resolution should contain a declaration in favor of the equality of nations or one which would prevent the establishment of an oligarchy of the Great Powers, and another declaration which would give proper place to the administration of legal justice in international disputes.
The handicaps and difficulties under which I labored are manifest, and the resolution as drafted indicates them in that it does not express as clearly and unequivocally as it would otherwise do the principles which formed the bases of the articles which I handed to the President on January 7 and which have already been quoted _in extenso_.
The text of the resolution, which was completed on the 22d, reads as follows: "_Resolved_ that the Conference makes the following declaration: "That the preservation of international peace is the standing policy of civilization and to that end a league of nations should be organized to prevent international wars; "That it is a fundamental principle of peace that all nations are equally entitled to the undisturbed possession of their respective territories, to the full exercise of their respective sovereignties, and to the use of the high seas as the common property of all peoples; and "That it is the duty of all nations to engage by mutual covenants-- "(1) To safeguard from invasion the sovereign rights of one another; "(2) To submit to arbitration all justiciable disputes which fail of settlement by diplomatic arrangement; "(3) To submit to investigation by the league of nations all non-justiciable disputes which fail of settlement by diplomatic arrangement; and "(4) To abide by the award of an arbitral tribunal and to respect a report of the league of nations after investigation; "That the nations should agree upon-- "(1) A plan for general reduction of armaments on land and sea; "(2) A plan for the restriction of enforced military service and the governmental regulation and control of the manufacture and sale of munitions of war; "(3) Full publicity of all treaties and international agreements; "(4) The equal application to all other nations of commercial and trade regulations and restrictions imposed by any nation; and "(5) The proper regulation and control of new states pending complete independence and sovereignty." This draft of a resolution was discussed with the other American Commissioners, and after some changes of a more or less minor character which it seemed advisable to make because of the appointment of a Commission on the League of Nations at a plenary session of the Conference on January 25, of which Commission President Wilson and Colonel House were the American members, I sent the draft to the President on the 31st, four days before the Commission held its first meeting in Colonel House's office at the Hotel Crillon.
As the Sixty-Fifth Congress would come to an end on March 4, and as the interpretation which had been placed on certain provisions of the Federal Constitution required the presence of the Chief Executive in Washington during the last days of a session in order that he might pass upon legislation enacted in the days immediately preceding adjournment, Mr.Wilson had determined that he could not remain in Paris after February 14.