763.72119/7737: Telegram
The Secretary of State to the Commission to Negotiate Peace
3769. Confidential to Polk. Your 5137, November 12, 10 a.m. I have no opportunity to confer with President on this subject as he is still seriously ill and Grayson does not desire him to have questions submitted which require constructive thought. While your hypothesis is possible and a natural one judging by the votes taken as to the Lodge Reservations, the tactics adopted by Hitchcock contemplate the adoption of the reservations in Committee of the whole. He proposes then to defeat the ratification resolution with the reservations which will leave the way clear to taking up compromise reservations which he has already introduced. Of course he may be defeated in carrying through this plan and if so your inquiry becomes pertinent.
I cannot give you any idea as to the President’s views but my own are that we would have to discontinue our connection with the work of drafting other treaties since the chief reason for our participation in them, particularly the Bulgarian and Turkish, is that under the Covenant we are bound to unite in the guaranty of their terms. With the Covenant rejected the reason for our being a party largely disappears. While the same state of affairs does not exist in regard to the Hungarian treaty, I think that it would probably be bad policy to attempt to negotiate a treaty embodying the Covenant or confiding any powers to the League of Nations.
Of course the President may hold another opinion.