TLS signed “Wm. H. Taft,” three pages, 8 x 10.5, personal letterhead, November 8, 1919. Letter to newspaper correspondent Gus Karger. In part: “I was in the throes of preparing my article for for the Ledger, which appeared this morning, and also an address which I delivered today at Carnegie Hall in New York before the League for Political Education. Carnegie Hall was crowded with women…I don’t think they liked my statement that we must consent to the reservations in order to get the League through. They are all for the League, and they are of course bitterly disappointed that the Senate resists ratification…The League to Enforce Peace is prepared now to declare for the ratification of this treaty with these reservations, but we have some Democrats in the Executive Committee, and they keep postponing the action. My own impression is they are just like the Democrats in the Senate.” Taft adds a lengthy handwritten postscript at the conclusion of the letter: “Since dictating above, the senate has adopted the first reservation and insisted on retaining the ‘concurrent’ resolution. I regret this first because though Wilson personally deserves such a rebuke for his ignoring the senate, I hate to see men so little as to try to repay a personal affront at the expense of the country, second because it may serve to make Wilson beat the treaty for anger, and third because the executor has always been more level headed in foreign affairs than the two houses who are often duly set to…hasty action. However there will be two years to think about and take it back.” A carbon copy of Karger’s three-page response is attached with a paperclip. Irregular blocks of toning to edges and a rusty paperclip to upper left, otherwise fine condition.
Taft's League to Enforce Peace was established in 1915 to promote the formation of an international body for world peace, formed in response to the outbreak of World War I in Europe. Following the conclusion of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson helped to establish the League of Nations, for which Taft and his organization supported and lobbied. It was officially established via the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919, and 44 different countries joined. Despite this wide international success and influential bipartisan support—led by the former president Taft, a Republican, and President Wilson, a Democrat—the United States never joined, primarily due to opposition in the Senate, as Taft mentions in his letter. One main figure in this opposition was Republican Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge, who penned twelve 'reservations' regarding the treaty. Taft believed the symbolic membership in the League was more important than the exact nature of the organization, and so supported the measure when Lodge brought it up for a vote on November 19. Many of Lodge's Republicans were against it to begin with, and many Democrats were upset by the compromises made in the newly adopted reservations, preferring Wilson's original plan. As a result, both of these groups voted against joining the League of Nations, effectively ending the possibility of US affiliation. A letter with terrific content in anticipation of this historic vote. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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