MY DEAR MR. PRESIDENT: I have submitted to-day to the
Secretary of State my resignation as an assistant in the
Department of State, attaché to the American commission to
negotiate peace. I was one of the millions who trusted
confidently and implicitly in your leadership and believed
that you would take nothing less than "a permanent peace"
based upon "unselfish and unbiased justice." But our
Government has consented now to deliver the suffering
peoples of the world to new oppressions, subjections, and
dismemberments--a new century of war. And I can convince
myself no longer that effective labor for "a new world
order" is possible as a servant of this Government.
Russia, "the acid test of good will," for me as for you, has
not even been understood. Unjust decisions of the conference
in regard to Shantung, the Tyrol, Thrace, Hungary, East
Prussia, Danzig, the Saar Valley, and the abandonment of the
principle of the freedom of the seas make new international
conflicts certain. It is my conviction that the present
league of nations will be powerless-to prevent these wars,
and that the United States will be involved in them by the
obligations undertaken in the covenant of the league and in
the special understanding with France. Therefore the duty of
the Government of the United States to its own people and to
mankind is to refuse to sign or ratify this unjust treaty,
to refuse to guarantee its settlements by entering the
league of nations, to refuse to entangle the United States
further by the understanding with France.
That you personally opposed most of the unjust settlements,
and that you accepted them only under great pressure, is
well known. Nevertheless, it is my conviction that if you
had made your fight in the open, instead of behind closed
doors, you would have carried with you the public opinion of
the world, which was yours; you would have been able to
resist the pressure and might have established the "new
international order based upon broad and universal
principles of right and justice" of which you used to speak.
I am sorry that you did not fight our fight to the finish
and that you had so little faith in the millions of men,
like myself, in every nation who had faith in you.
Very sincerely, yours,