Whatever reasons were advanced by his foreign colleagues, they were successful in freeing the Covenant from the phrase.

It is to be regretted that the influence, which was sufficient to induce the President to eliminate from his proposed guaranty the clause containing a formal acceptance of the principle of "self-determination," was not exerted or else was not potent enough to obtain from him an open disavowal of the principle as a right standard for the determination of sovereign authority.

Without such a disavowal the phrase remained as one of the general bases upon which a just peace should be negotiated.

It remained a precept of the international creed which Mr.Wilson proclaimed while the war was still in progress, for he had declared, in an address delivered on February 11, 1918, before a joint session of the Senate and House of Representatives, that "self-determination is not a mere phrase.

It is an imperative principle of action which statesmen will henceforth ignore at their peril." "Self-determination" is as right in theory as the more famous phrase "the consent of the governed," which has for three centuries been repeatedly declared to be sound by political philosophers and has been generally accepted as just by civilized peoples, but which has been for three centuries commonly ignored by statesmen because the right could not be practically applied without imperiling national safety, always the paramount consideration in international and national affairs.