‘We cannot turn back’ from the League of Nations, said Woodrow Wilson – but did just that

It was a vision that President Woodrow Wilson could not resist. The Treaty of Versailles, and the League of Nations founded during the negotiations, were meant not just to end the first world war but all future wars by ensuring that a country taking up arms against one signatory would be treated as a belligerent by all the others. Wilson took his adviser Edward ‘Colonel’ House’s vision of a new world order and careered off with it.

Against advice, he attended Versailles in person and let none of his staff in with him during the negotiations. He was quickly overwhelmed, saw his principled ‘14 points’ deluged by special provisions and horse-trading, and returned home convinced that his dearest close colleagues had betrayed him (which they hadn’t). He was also sure that the League of Nations alone could mend what the Treaty of Versailles had left broken or made worse (which it didn’t); and that he was the vessel of divine will – that what the world needed from him at this crucial hour was a show of principle and Christ-like sacrifice. ‘The stage is set,’ he declared to a dumbfounded and sceptical Senate; ‘the destiny is disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving but by the hand of God who has led us into this way. We cannot turn back.’

Winston Churchill had Wilson’s number: ‘Peace and goodwill among all nations abroad, but no truck with the Republican party at home. That was his ticket and that was his ruin and the ruin of much else as well.’ When it was clear that Wilson would not get everything he wanted, he destroyed the bill utterly, needlessly ending US involvement in the League before it had even begun.

Several developments followed ineluctably from this.