Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, Volume II

763.72119/1770½

President Wilson to the Secretary of State

Washington, 1 July, 1918 .

My Dear Mr. Secretary: Will you not be kind enough to have the enclosed message coded as soon as possible and sent to our Minister at Berne?

Faithfully Yours,

W. W.

[Enclosure]

Draft Telegram to the Minister in Switzerland (Stovall)⁹⁸

The President requests that you immediately convey the following message to Professor George D. Herron at Geneva⁹⁹

“I have just received your letter of the thirty-first of May and am deeply moved by it. Please let the Minister transmit to me by cable your answer to this question: Do you think that the immediate formation of a Society of Nations would have the effects you predict if its only members at the outset were the nations now associated in war against Germany? The neutral nations of Europe would in all likelihood not dare to enter such a Society now in such company for fear of becoming involved in the present conflict since some of them lie almost at the mercy of Germany. [”]

98. Telegram sent July 1, 1918, 5 p. m. (file No. 763.72119/1770a).
99. For correspondence previously printed concerning the activities of Professor Herron, see Foreign Relations, 1918, supp. 1, vol. i, pp. 21–297, passim.