In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson was lobbying hard for the Senate to accept the Draft Covenant of the League of Nations, which he had hammered out during peace negotiations in Paris. With scores of allies in Congress and the well-financed League to Enforce Peace, led by former President William Howard Taft, pushing the idea, Wilson seemed unstoppable. And yet a sizable minority of senators, led by the Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, opposed the treaty. As Lodge later said, “our purpose had been served.”Wilson and the draft covenant never fully recovered. In Paris, he had to reopen negotiations over the league in an effort to meet senators’ objections.

Source: New York Times July 21, 2019 22:52 UTC