USA HISTORY

AMERICAN IMPERIALISM(1890 1919)

TREATY OF VERSAILLES

[SOURCES]
Why was Henry Cabot Lodge hesitant to approve the Treaty of Versailles?

(A) He believed the League of Nations would fail

(B) He believed that President Wilson should be impeached

(C) ** He believed Article X would drag the United States into future European wars

(D) He believed that the Treaty should demand more land from Germany

EXPLANATIONS BELOW

Concept note-1: -Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Massachusetts) objected to many details of the Treaty of Versailles, particularly the League of Nations. He believed that membership in the League of Nations would entangle the United States in foreign affairs and prevent the country from acting independently in such matters.

Concept note-2: -After World War I, Lodge became Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and the leader of the Senate Republicans. From that position, he led the opposition to Wilson’s Treaty of Versailles, proposing fourteen reservations to the treaty.

Concept note-3: -In 1919 the Senate rejected the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended World War I, in part because President Woodrow Wilson had failed to take senators’ objections to the agreement into consideration. They have made the French treaty subject to the authority of the League, which is not to be tolerated.