Lodge Reservations

Lodge Reservations

United States Senator Henry Cabot Lodge from Massachusetts was the Republican Majority Leader and Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations and a member of the U.S. Senate since 1893. In response to the Treaty of Versailles, Senator Lodge penned fourteen reservations to the proposed post-war agreements. Heavily influenced by Wilson's Fourteen Points, the Treaty called for the creation of a League of Nations in which the promise of mutual security would prevent another major world war. Differing from his Democratic contemporary, Woodrow Wilson, Henry Cabot Lodge held that the United States should take a cautionary approach towards international arbitration after the Great War. As a result of Henry Cabot Lodge's Reservations, the United States Senate voted down the Treaty of Versailles after momentous debate. The denial of this Treaty by the United States prevented the United States from joining the newly formed League of Nations.