- Transcription
WILLIAM H. TAFT
NEW HAVEN, CONN
Room 931 - Southern Building,
Washington, D. C.
October 30th, 1918.
My dear Governor:
I have your telegram and I think I ought to answer it, though not for publication unless you think it necessary. The truth is that the President does not favor our League to Enforce Peace. He told President Lowell, of Harvard, and me that fact last March. The truth is that Mr. Roosevelt has come around to favoring the League to Enforce Peace, provided it does not mean universal disarmament. I find myself in general agreement with Mr. Roosevelt on this subject, indeed more than I would with President Wilson, who having announced his complete acquiescence in the principles of the League advised us in the conversation to which I referred that he had changed his mind. So far as Mr. Roosevelt’s opinion is concerned on the fourteen points of January 8th, I am largely in sympathy with him. I think those fourteen points cannot be made the safe basis of a treaty of peace. They are too vague and indefinite. They would give rise to as many disputes as the present war. They do not embrace all that our Allies have the right to demand and they embrace some things that our Allies would not concede. Mr. Wilson has not consulted our Allies as he should. He refuses to call them Allies. For that reason I am sincerely hopeful that a Republican Congress will be returned and an answer given to his unrepublican and undemocratic appeal for uncontrolled and despotic power during the life of the next Congress. His reflection on the Republican minority is most unjust.
Now my dear Governor these are my personal opinions. Therefore I did not answer your telegram and I am not quite sure whether you expected an answer. Whether it was not in the sending of the telegram that the importance lay. You are at liberty to publish this if you choose, but I don’t insist on it.
Sincerely yours,
Mr. T. W. Bickett, Governor and Chairman,
N. C. Division of the League to Enforce Peace,
Raleigh, North Carolina.
