<P> The treaty contained no provision for the mandates to be allocated on the basis of decisions taken by four members of the League acting in the name of the so - called "Principal Allied and Associated Powers". The decisions taken at the conferences of the Council of Four were not made on the basis of consultation or League unanimity as stipulated by the Covenant . As a result, the actions of the conferees were viewed by some as having no legitimacy . </P> <P> In testimony before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, a former US State Department official who had been a member of the American Commission at Paris testified that the United Kingdom and France had simply gone ahead and arranged the world to suit themselves . He pointed out that the League of Nations could do nothing to alter their arrangements, since the League could only act by unanimous consent of its members--including the UK and France . </P> <P> United States Secretary of State Robert Lansing was a member of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace at Paris in 1919 . He explained that the system of mandates was a device created by the Great Powers to conceal their division of the spoils of war under the color of international law . If the former German and Ottoman territories had been ceded to the victorious powers directly, their economic value would have been credited to offset the Allies' claims for war reparations . Article 243 of the treaty instructed the Reparations Commission that non-mandate areas of the Saar and Alsace - Lorraine were to be reckoned as credits to Germany in respect of its reparation obligations . </P> <P> The US failed to ratify the Treaty of Versailles which included the Covenant of the League of Nations so the US never joined the League . The US government subsequently entered into individual treaties to secure legal rights for its citizens, to protect property rights and businesses interests in the mandates, and to preclude the mandatory administration from altering the terms of the mandates without prior US approval . </P>

Palestine was a mandate of which country after world war i brainly