Wilson Woodrow 1856 - 1924 Woodrow Wilson signed letter President referencing the League of Nations

TLS on White House bifolium stationary, 7" x 8.75". Addressed to Mr. Grant Squire and dated "26, February, 1919". Boldly signed in graphite by Woodrow Wilson as "Woodrow Wilson". Slight haloing to the type, with slight bleed through of typewriter ink to the blank integral leaf. Faint toning. Accompanied by the original White House transmittal envelope, slightly grubby and creased, post marked Feb 27, 1919, The neat set includes the unsigned letter (or possible draft of the letter), 8.5" x 4" by Squires sent to the President, dated February 24th, 1919.

An important TLS from President Woodrow Wilson to Grant Squires, typed shortly after Wilson's return from the Paris Peace Conference (held in January 1919). Grant Squires, a New York lawyer was active in the area of human rights, and testified before the Senate Committee on Propaganda in 1919 on the cruelties he saw perpetrated by the Germans in WWI; men and women beaten with rifle butts, children and babies murdered, and families starving without shelter. In his testimony, Squires was asked to counter earlier testimony by German sympathizer, Dr. Edmund von Mach to the effect that Sherman's March had "also been a very cruel expedition". This enraged Senator Knute Nelson (a Civil War Veteran), who angrily proclaimed that American soldiers had never "killed women and children. Whatever they did, they did not do that" Nelson specifically asked Squires to address von Mach's charges that the Germans were no worse than Sherman's men; Squires vehemently confirmed that the Germans were different from any predecessors. The importance of this exchange can not be over stated, essentially, what this exchange shows is that a new standard was being set for violations of civilians. Where once Sherman's men's "thefts and fires" were the worst that could be imagined, the Great War issued horrors of an entirely different order of magnitude! As it would turn out, this forcasted the extended horrors to arise during WWII.

At the time of President Wilson's letter to Grant Squires, Wilson was heavily promoting his Fourteen Point plan which called for a "general association of nations - formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." Many of Wilson's previous points would require regulation or enforcement. In calling for the formation of a "general association of nations," Wilson voiced the wartime opinions of many diplomats and intellectuals on both sides of the Atlantic who believed there was a need for a new type of standing international organization dedicated to fostering international cooperation, providing security for its members, and ensuring a lasting peace. The idea of the League was grounded in the broad, international revulsion against the unprecedented destruction of the First World War and the contemporary understanding of its origins.

With Europe's population exhausted by four years of total war, and with many in the United States optimistic that a new organization would be able to solve the international disputes that had led to war in 1914, Wilson's articulation of a League of Nations was wildly popular. However, it proved exceptionally difficult to create, and Wilson left office never having convinced the United States to join it. In Wilson's letter to Squires he noted "I do not believe that the opponents of the League of Nations can really do any very great damage". However what Wilson would not and could not know was that although the League of Nations was enacted, and after a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, and others and the onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war.

A significant and foreboding letter signed by Woodrow Wilson. Although Wilson fully believed in his vision, the League of Nations was unable to stop the Second World War, and the resulting unparalleled atrocities.

Provenance: The estate of Malcolm Forbes, accompanied by the original inventory sleeve.