Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924), was a Republican Senator from Massachusetts. He was a friend (and fellow Harvard graduate) of Teddy Roosevelt. When Lodge joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1896, he supported policies to promote American imperialism. To this end, he supported the idea of American preparedness to enter a war and the build up of the Navy under Roosevelt. 

When World War I broke out under President Woodrow Wilson, Lodge was opposed to Wilson's initial pacifist stance regarding the war. He also opposed Wilson's call for "peace without victory," and he wanted Germany to accept responsibility for causing the war. At the war's end, Lodge firmly opposed Wilson's "14 Points" and his call for a League of Nations. Lodge thought that the "14 Points" would take away the power of U.S. Congress to declare war, and he thought that the U.S. should have the power to intervene in world affairs as befitted a world power. Lodge defeated Wilson's plan to make the U.S. a signatory of the Treaty of Versailles, and the U.S. did not sign the treaty.