Cresco plain dealer. (Cresco, Howard County, Iowa) 1913-1945, 1920-03-12
Holds Any Modification of Article
Ten PeriIs Entire League
Covenant.
EFFECT WOULD Be GONE
The "very Heart" Of the Covenant
Would Be ImperiIIed By Weaken
ing Article In Dispute,
Reiterates Executive.

Washington.-Presid Wilson has
re-stated for Democratic senators his
opposition to any Peace treaty reser-
vations which would weaken the full
force Of Article 10. or otherwise ma
terially impair the provisions OF the
League covenant.
Without saying specifically what
qualification he would or would not
accept. he wrote. in q letter to Sena-
tor Hitchcock, that almost all Of the
reservations, he had heard suggested
were Tin effect virtual notification"
Of the treaty articles to which they
applied.
II hear Of reservationists and mild
reservationists." the letter added, but
I cannot understand the difference be-.
tween a nullifier and a mild multi
fer"
Discussing Article 10 particularly,
the President wrote that there was
mo escaping the moral obligations
which are expressed in positive
terms" though there would be no OBJ
lection to explaining in an interpreta.
ton the constitutional methods by
which such an obligation would have
to be fulfilled. The very heart" of
the covenant, he reiterated, would be
imperilled by weakening Article 10.
Regarding this article the president
says:
ANY reservation which seeks to de.
prive the League of Nations OF the
force of Article 10 cuts at the very
heart and life of the covenant ITSELF
Any League OF Nations which does
not guarantee as matter Of incon-
testable right the political indepen-
dence and integrity of each of its
members might be hardly more than
futile scrap of paper, as ineffective
in operation as the agreement between
Belgium and Germany which the Ger
mans violated in 1914 Article 10 as
written into the treaty of Versailles,
represents the remuneration by Great
Britain and Japan, which before the
war had begun to find so many inter
ests in common in the Pacific, by
France, by Italy-by all the great
lighting powers Of the world of the
old pretensions of political conquest
and territorial ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 1t is
new doctrine in the worlds affairs
and must be recognized or there is no
secure basis for the peace which the
whole world SO longingly desires and
so desperately needs. If Article 10 is
ernments which reject it will, think,
be guilty of bad faith to their people
who they induced to make the infinite
sacrifices of the war by the pledge
that they would be fighting to redeem
the world from the old orders of force
and aggression. They will be acting
also in bad faith to the opinion of the
world at large to which they appealed
for support in concerted stand
against the aggressions and preten-
sions Of Germany.
III we were to reject Article 10, or
so to weaken 1t a. to take its full
force out OF it, 1t would mark US as
jealous rivalry and misunderstanding
from which our gallant soldiers have
rescued us, and would leave US with
out any vision or new conception of
Justice and peace. We would have
learned no lesson from the war, but
gained only the regret that it had in
volved us in it's maelstrom of suffer
ing. II America has awakened, as the
rest of the world has, to the vision of
a new day in which the mistakes of
the past are to be corrected, it will
welcome the opportunity to share the
OF Article TO-"