On January 8 of that year President Wilson in an address to Congress proclaimed his "Fourteen Points," the adoption of which he considered necessary to a just and stable peace.

The last of these "Points" explicitly states the basis of the proposed international organization and the fundamental reason for its formation.

It is as follows: "XIV.

A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." This declaration may be considered in view of subsequent developments to be a sufficiently clear announcement of the President's theory as to the plan of organization which ought to be adopted, but at the time the exact character of the "mutual guarantees" was not disclosed and aroused little comment.

I do not believe that Congress, much less the public at large, understood the purpose that the President had in mind.
Undoubtedly, too, a sense of loyalty to the Chief Executive, while the war was in progress, and the desire to avoid giving comfort of any sort to the enemy, prevented a critical discussion of the announced bases of peace, some of which were at the time academic, premature, and liable to modification if conditions changed.
In March Lord Phillimore and his colleagues made their preliminary report to the British Government on "a League of Nations" and this was followed in July by their final report, copies of which reached the President soon after they were made.