A Global Milestone

I guess I'm becoming more sensitive to milestones these days — not because I've been observing significant milestones in my own life, but more because I've been getting re-connected with many old and cherished friends in recent days and I've been learning of the milestones they've marked in the years that have passed since I last saw them.

Perhaps I'm just musing a little, but please bear with me because there is a certain method to my madness.

Today is the 90th anniversary of an event that turned out to have little positive importance in its own time but has had great ramifications since and may play a key role in the future of the world.

I am speaking about the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, which was the meeting of the allies after World War I. During that meeting, the allies made decisions that they wanted to shape the conditions in which the people of the world lived for the remainder of the 20th century — and, they hoped, beyond.

The United States, France and Great Britain were the leaders of the postwar initiative, but dozens of countries sent representatives to the conference with hundreds of issues to discuss (in fact, the deliberations may have influenced the fight for women's suffrage in America because women's rights was one of the many topics on the agenda). The conference went on for six months, but it was on this day 90 years ago that the conference approved President Woodrow Wilson's proposal for the League of Nations.

Wilson's name is associated with the League, but the idea originated more than a century earlier, when German philosopher Immanuel Kant outlined it in "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." In hindsight, that's somewhat ironic because perhaps the most significant outcome of the conference was that Germany was severely punished for its role in starting the war — and it was the hardship that was placed on the German people, as a result, that made it possible for Adolf Hitler to rise to power, eventually leading to the outbreak of World War II.

The League of Nations was the victim of politics back in the United States. Wilson made many compromises during the Paris Peace Conference, but he deeply believed in the objectives of the League. In what was a virtually unprecedented move by an American president, Wilson went to Paris himself, and he emerged from the conference having won its approval for the establishment of a League of Nations. He lobbied hard for the treaty's passage in the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate, which was (and still is) required to give its stamp of approval to treaties.

That reminds me of a story. One of Wilson's chief foes in the Senate was Henry Cabot Lodge, the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. When Wilson insisted on personally delivering the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate, he was greeted by Lodge, who asked him if he could take the treaty in to the Senate body for him. Wilson replied, "Not on your life, senator!"

Because of the opposition he encountered in the Senate, Wilson set out on a physically demanding cross-country speaking trip to rally support for the treaty among the people. It is believed by many that this brought on the stroke that physically incapacitated him for the remainder of his term — although, to be fair, it has been speculated that Wilson suffered a series of "mini strokes" before and after that time that went undetected because of the absence of adequate technology for that purpose.

The Senate rejected the treaty, preventing the United States' entry into the League. The League proceeded, anyway, but that defeat in the United States made it much weaker than Wilson envisioned. The goals of the Paris Peace Conference were noble. The intentions were good. But without the United States, the League of Nations was unable to prevent the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s — and the deaths of tens of millions around the world.

After World War II, the concept was revisited and became the modern-day United Nations. Nearly 200 countries are members today, and it continues to play an important role in international relations more than 60 years after its establishment.

Actually, this gives me an opportunity to make an observation that I think would be beneficial to the new president. Wilson was the first Democrat to be re-elected president in nearly 85 years (and only two, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, have been re-elected since), largely because he had kept the nation out of war in his first term. It is said that, during Cabinet meetings, he did not take the role of the boss. He was more like the first among equals and listened to what everyone had to say, even when it conflicted with his personal beliefs.

Perhaps that was due to his experience in academics, where he presided over countless faculty meetings — he was governor of New Jersey when he won the presidency but he served for many years as president of Princeton prior to that.

In many ways, Wilson set an example that Barack Obama will be wise to follow. I know the new president has a great deal of respect and reverence for history, and his admiration for Abraham Lincoln has been well documented. But there are valuable lessons he can learn from other predecessors as well.

Wilson was seen by many as charming on a personal level but something of a cold fish on a public level. In spite of his shortcomings, he set an example every president, from the current occupant of the Oval Office to his future successors, should emulate.