0.3 Great war (part ii)  (Page 8/16)

Thirty-nine Senators openly rejected this attack on their Constitutional authority in a letter to include the Senator from Massachusetts, a leading Republican politician, and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Henry Cabot Lodge. Lodge did not reject the whole treaty, he just held reservations on Article 10 and thus Lodge was known as a “Reservationist.” Democrats such as William Jennings Bryan supported this position.

The Republican William Borah served the people of Idaho in the US Senate from 1907 until his death in 1940. Known as the “Irreconcilables” senators such as Borah rejected the League, in any form, because of the old Washingtonian-Jeffersonian concern over entangling alliances. Borah spoke for two hours against the Treaty of Versailles in what one colleague called “one of the Senate’s oratorical masterpieces.” He began his attacks against supporting colonialism by reminding the audience of President-elect Abraham Lincoln’s advice to a friend of his in Washington, DC regarding discussions with Confederates on the issues of war: “Entertain no compromise; have none of it.”

Before the Allies completed their work in Versailles, the US had entered its second year of fighting in Russia. Russia prematurely quit the allied cause in large measure because the czar lost control of his country as a result of a revolution. By 1918 it was clear that communists had taken control of Russia and thus in 1918, the United States (along with Great Britain and other western nations) invaded Russia. By Labor Day, 1918, American troops took control of the Russian port town Vladivostok. Under the command of General William Graves, nearly 8,000 American troops protected the local railroad and supported Czech troops also fighting against the Russian communists. About 4,000 US troops fought under British command directly against communist forces in what was known as the Polar Bear Expedition. The United States actively participated in the Russian civil war until 1920.

One year and one week after the Guns of August fell silent, the US Senate voted to reject the Treaty of Versailles, US troops occupied and fought in various parts of Russia, President Wilson was recovering from his latest stroke, Americans were dying from a new illness (see below), and elements of the US Army were stationed throughout the country, such as on street corners in Omaha, Nebraska. The Treaty fight just might have been the least important thing on the minds of Americans.

Wartime Amendments

The Great War will indeed play a role in the adoption of two changes to the US Constitution. Although both changes had been looming on the cultural-political horizon since long before the Civil War, people and events during the Great War will propel this nation’s leaders to try two kinds of changes. One will be temporary and the other will be permanent.

The push to end the availability of alcohol in the United States picked up steam in the years leading up to the US entry into World War I. As more and more states tried to codify the making, selling, and consumption of alcohol, some wondered if states had the power to do so and thus in 1913 Congress passed the Webb-Kenyon Act to help states enforce their prohibition laws in light of a Supreme Court decision that struck down dry states’ attempts to prohibit the importation of alcohol. In 1917, the Supreme Court ruled that no one had “a right” to alcohol, thus aligning the Judicial Branch with the Legislative Branch.