He served as chairman of the
Committee on the District of Columbia during the
Sixty-sixth Congress.
Treaty of Versailles As one of the group of senators known as the "
irreconcilables" or the "bitter-enders", Sherman opposed the ratification of the
Treaty of Versailles and of U.S. involvement in the
League of Nations, and according to Historian Aaron Chandler, played a key role in its defeat. He characterized the treaty as "humanitarian in purpose, but impracticable in operation", and believed the league would be weak. Sherman was a nationalist, but not an isolationist. He maintained that the country's interests would be served by maintaining close relations with England and France, and was willing to accept limited obligations to America's wartime allies. He opposed any league that would limit America's sovereignty, and believed that membership in a league of nations with divergent interests would weaken the United States in foreign affairs, by giving equal votes to small, weak countries, and allowing them to join together and dictate foreign policy to the United States, Great Britain, France, and Italy. Sherman was concerned with America's influence in the League. He criticized the provisions of Article 7 that would give to the British Empire, counting its colonies, six votes, while the United States would have only one. He said that "Great Britain with her diplomatic influence in the Old World much superior to ours could easily secure a majority of the nations to outvote us any time she wished." He argued that the large number of predominately Catholic nations in the League were dominated by the
Vatican, which would leave the United States beholden to the
Pope in foreign affairs. He was convinced that membership in the league would result in the United States paying most of the cost for reconstructing Europe after the war, arguing that the assessments would be based on ability to pay and that "we would therefore become a perpetual taxpayer for the benefit of Europe." Sherman opposed some of the non-league provisions of the treaty. He sharply criticized the
Shantung provision of the treaty which transferred German concessions in Shantung to Japan rather than return them to China, saying "40,000,000 Chinese in Shantung were denied the right of self-determination and delivered to Japan under treaty". He also forcefully condemned Britain and France for failing, with
Wilson's approval, to honour the commitments they had made to Italy under the
treaty of London of 1915 concerning its eastern borders. He called it rank ingratitude, given the sacrifice of 5 million Italian soldiers—a contribution he considered decisive and no less important than America’s own entry into the war: Italy’s effort had compelled Germany to divert substantial forces from the western front to rescue Austria-Hungary on its southern flank. In addition, Sherman criticized the territorial concessions to Poland as insufficient. He was one of the 39 senators who joined the "
Round-robin" resolution in March 1919, declaring that the peace treaty with Germany should be separated from any proposal for a League of Nations, and vowing to vote against the treaty in its current form. During a vote on amendments to the treaty, after Woodrow Wilson had stated that he would not accept any amendments, Sherman said: When the treaty was voted on by the full Senate with
reservations attached, Sherman voted against the Treaty, as did President Wilson's supporters at his urging. After its defeat, Sherman delivered an address he called "a funeral oration over the defunct remains" of the treaty, and said it was one of the few times that he found himself in agreement with Wilson. == Post-Senate ==